Coffee Machines - Cuisinart Coffee Bar 10-Cup Automatic Coffee Maker

The coffee maker with the biggest (and longest) name in the business, this outstanding model is widely sold in department stores (in fact, it’s one of the hottest items on the market right now), but the reviews are not as kind as the marketing suggests.

Where it has a distinct advantage over many models is that the Cuisinart Coffee Bar actually grinds beans AND makes the coffee afterwards. That’s a pretty nifty feature, saving you time and mess shifting the grounds from one machine to another, and the sleek design, and timer, clock and ‘flavor system’ are nice touches, but the devil’s in the details.

The Cuisinart Coffee Bar coffeemaker is an absolute bitch to clean. It has a permanent cone filter, which saves you from needing to keep filter papers around, but it also means you have to clean it every so often, a process which is not simple. First you take out the entire basket unit, which contains the grinder and filter holder, then remove the grinder cap, then take off the filter unit cap, then the permanent filter, and then you have to run the base unit under water. That’s a lot of messing around, especially if you’re not mechanically minded, and if you’re not, then the complicated controls will likely give you nightmares too.

The largely plastic design of this coffeemaker suggests it won’t necessarily be an investment that pays off for a decade, like some other coffee makers, and consumer reports do question the durability of the unit. It’s a large piece of coffee-making equipment - 14.75 inches tall, 11.5 inches wide and 12 inches deep v so you better have a good piece of empty counter-top to purchase one.

That said, the Cuisinart really does pack a lot into that counter space, and if you don’t want multiple pieces of equipment lying around when you make your home brewed coffee, you could do worse than this, especially at the bargain price of around $40.

We give the DGB-300 a score of 2 BEANS out of five.