Senseo 7810 Single-Serve Gourmet Coffee Machine, Black

Excellent Product
We have this machine, bought in 2004 and used 2-3 times a day. It still works fine, but it's white and we wanted a black one to match our new kitchen appliances. So the old one goes into storage in case the new one breaks down.

There are a lot of so-called "single-serving" coffee makers on the market today. My wife and I have been very select coffee drinkers all our marriage - nearly 30 years. We started with a beautiful La Pavoni expresso maker, which we still have although we had it completely overhauled about 8 years ago.

When we saw the Senseo we thought we'd try it because it seemed much less trouble - although we were highly suspicious of anything that made coffee from "pods" because we were used to grinding our own coffee from beans stored in air-tight containers in the freezer and each cup of coffee we made was made from freshly ground beans.

From the very beginning we were impressed with the Senseo. Push a button and 90 seconds later the water...

Convenient & fun
I received the Senseo coffee maker as a birthday gift 2 years ago and use it almost daily. I'm the only coffee drinker in the house and hate to waste a full pot of coffee if all I want is one or two cups. Making coffee with a Melitta one-cup filter is just too much work compared to the simplicity of the Senseo coffee maker.

The Senseo coffee maker has a reservoir that is easy to fill, and the pods are very convenient to just drop into the pod holder. Two tips I picked up from a single-serve review web site:

1: Pre-moisten the coffee pod so that the edges seal better to the holder, and

2: Preheat your milk so that the milk doesn't cool the coffee when it pours into your cup. I preheat my milk for 30 seconds in the microwave, easy to do while the water is warming up.

I like being able to make a quick double for my travel mug when I'm running late--much faster than driving to Dunkin' Donuts or Starbucks and not knowing how long the line will...

Great for espresso, design problems with coffee, compare with Keurig
For the most part I love the coffee that comes out of my Senseo. Unfortunately there's too little of it.

Before you start railing against over-sized everything, look at your coffee cup. I bet it's a 12 ounce cup, or at least a 10. A 4 oz cup is an espresso cup, tiny, great for espresso, too small for coffee.

So, it takes 2 pods to brew an 8oz cup. I've lived in Japan, and it'd be perfect for the way they drink coffee, but not the way people seem to drink it in the states. Mug in the morning to get going, mug mid day to keep going. Two "cups" of coffee would mean using six senseo pods in a day, every day.

The coffee is delicious, rich, soft... yes its crema. Very yummy. But it costs roughly 40 cents per 8oz, depending on which pods you buy and where.

My buddy gave me his Senseo machine because it was impractical to fill a travel mug with it, and it only filled his coffee mugs (12oz) 2/3 with the 8oz max pour (yes, you could do multiple runs,...

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