Best Coffee Makers

The Bambino Plus removes every barrier to good espresso. The ThermoJet heating system is ready in 3 seconds — no waiting around. The automatic steam wand handles milk frothing for you, which means you're making lattes on day one without learning steam wand technique. It pulls consistent, balanced shots through a 54mm portafilter, and the whole machine is barely bigger than a toaster. If you want one machine that just works from the moment you unbox it, this is it.

The Philips 3200 grinds, doses, tamps and brews for you, from beans to cup at a touch. Five drinks are on the display: espresso, coffee, americano, cappuccino and latte macchiato, and the strength and amount can be adjusted. Milk goes in the LatteGo jug, a two-part system with no tubes that Philips says rinses clean in 15 seconds or goes in the dishwasher, which is the part of a bean-to-cup machine people stop cleaning. The grinder is ceramic, and with the AquaClean filter changed when the machine asks, Philips says you won't need to descale for up to 5,000 cups. It makes good coffee with no skill at all; what it doesn't give you is the control of a machine you work yourself.

The Kalita Wave 185 is the pour over we recommend to everyone who asks. The flat-bottom design with three small drainage holes is the key insight: instead of funneling water through a single point (like the V60), it distributes flow evenly across the entire bed. That means your technique matters a lot less. Sloppy pours, inconsistent flow — the flat bed compensates for you. The wave-shaped paper filters are equally clever: they stand away from the dripper walls, so heat stays in the coffee bed instead of radiating into the dripper. At around $35, it's cheap enough to own in multiple materials — glass, stainless, ceramic — but one is all you need.

The Chambord is the French press — the one that's been on kitchen counters since the 1950s, and for good reason. The borosilicate glass carafe lets you watch the brew develop, the chrome-plated steel frame is genuinely elegant, and the three-part stainless steel plunger does its job without fuss. It's not trying to reinvent anything. It just makes excellent coffee, every single time, for about the price of two bags of beans. If you're buying your first French press, this is the one.

Most cold brew makers are a jar with a filter in it. This one solves the two things that actually go wrong: the rainmaker top wets the bed of grounds evenly instead of channeling straight down the middle, and a brew-release switch lets you drain on your schedule rather than the moment you remember. It cuts off automatically when you lift the carafe, so you don't over-extract by leaving it draining. The concentrate keeps in the glass carafe in the fridge.