13 out of 13 people found this review helpful.
Automated Coffee Too Good To Be True
Date of Review: Apr 3, 2000
My wife and I have been avid coffee lovers for years. We really enjoy living in the Seattle area due to the fine coffees so readily available. Our favorite coffee to drink, of course, is fine espresso. We both really enjoy americanos or lattes first thing in the morning, and throughout the day. Both of us average two espressos a day accented with an americano right after dinner.
Given our love for good coffee, when we managed to save up some extra money we decided to purchase a high-end espresso machine. Up until now we had only owned a low-end machine that made decent espresso, but was messy and limited on what it could produce. We really wanted a machine that could do something special - make coffee like the kind at the local Starbuck's - without too much fuss.
We began doing research on the Web and asking around at different coffee stores, and learned that the Capresso C1000 was a top of the line machine - and fully automated. When we read the features list of the C1000 we were very impressed, to say the least. We decided to purchase one at our local kitchen store, and took it home to setup.
At first, we were very happy with the ease of use of the C1000. It is a breeze to setup, the owners manual is well written and informative, and it is very easy to use in daily practice. It also makes very good coffee, even creating the layer of crema on the top like European cafe coffee. The simplicity of the C1000 cannot be matched when you simply need to add water, whole coffee beans, and press a button. Even steaming and frothing milk is easy with the integrated steamer/frother.
So, for about a week, my wife and I had great coffee and espresso, with virtually no wait and no mess. Unfortunately, this was not to last.
After the first week, the machine began to require extensive cleaning cycles in order to make coffee. At first, only an extra cycle here and there, but soon, running a whole tank of water through the machine was not sufficient to clean it. By the end of two weeks, the machine would simply not make coffee - at all.
The C1000 would continually ask to be cleaned (which is fully automated with no manual workaround), and after about 1/2 a tank of water, would indicate it was ready to make coffee again. When making coffee was attempted, however, the machine would dribble out two or three drops of coffee, then shut down and repeat the extensive cleaning process. An important note here is that my wife and I commonly drink Starbuck's - French Roast, which is a rich dark roast and hard to beat for great strong coffee. Due to the malfunctions, the C1000 on average used one pound of coffee in two weeks!
Naturally, my wife and I thought we had a defective machine, since it would no longer make coffee after only two weeks of use. We decided to take it back and exchange it for another. The store obliged us with another unit to try out, but we experienced exactly the same behavior. After about two weeks of medium to heavy use, the machine would fail to make coffee whatsoever. It seemed to be completely plugged up. In the end my wife and I took the machine back to the store for a refund. The C1000 was simply too good to be true.
All in all - I rate the features, concept, and industrial design of the machine as excellent, however, the durability is far worse than expected. If there were perhaps a method to manually clean the system out, or access the internal workings, I might have had better luck. Also, based on the price range for this model, I would expect medium to heavy use on the capabilities list for the C1000.
Given the C1000's performance, I cannot recommend the machine to anyone.
