Bonavita8 Cup Drip Coffee Maker Machine, One-Touch Pour Over, Auto Pause Brewing with Stainless Steel Double Wall Thermal Carafe, SCA Certified, Dishwasher Safe, BV1901TS

It has been 6 years since I bought this coffee maker by Bonavita. It has been simple to keep clean and it makes great tasting coffee at the perfect temperature: that temperature accuracy is key to good tasting coffee. The only downside I've encountered is that the carafe does not keep coffee warm enough for an extended period of time and 8 cups is a bit small here: we finish a pot quickly enough that it's not really a problem. It's still going strong: build quality and durability are a plus. It has increased in price by $50 here on Amazon in those 6 years, mostly a reflection of general inflation than anything else. It is simplicity itself and highly recommended.

After much research decided on this brewer. Works great. Does seem to need to be cleaned more periodically than I’m used to.

Let me start by saying I love Bonavita. I got my first one 8+ years ago, after hearing and reading about them, and how highly rated they were. I ordered a BV1800 and was very impressed. Mr. Coffee went to the storage closet to await emergency use. Well, after 8 years, the Bonavita carafe somehow developed a crack in the glass despite how careful I always was with it. Shortly after, the carafe actually lost a big chunk of the rim and even though various BV1800-owners commented on the internet that their choice of glass replacement carafe worked for them, I ordered and returned several that did not fit. And since the unit is out of production, I couldn't just order another BV1800.So that's how I ended up ordering the Bonavita Connoisseur 8 cup One Touch, after much research. My immediate reaction was to appreciate the looks of the coffeemaker. It looks really snazzy, though taking up a bigger portion of countertop real estate than the BV1800. It makes really good coffee, just like the other one, and delivers a piping hot brew in short order. But there are significant differences, some good and some bad.First off, the Connoisseur does not have a heat plate to keep brewed coffee hot. Instead, it relies on a really nice insulated metal thermos-like carafe to hold hot brewed coffee. But there are issues with that. Please note that this coffeemaker has a slide-in basket-style filter holder that suspends the brewing coffee above the carafe; that is kind of a handy idea. The BV1800 has a glass carafe that sits on a warming plate and a separate drip-down style filter holder, using cone type filters, sits on top of the carafe, just under the hot water "shower" that drizzles the coffee with steamy hot water. And it flows through the filter quickly, allowing you to pull out the carafe right after the brew cycle stops. The new Connoisseur, on the other hand, beeps after the water has finished going into the filter holder, making you think you could remove the carafe and pour some coffee. However, it continues to slowly drip coffee into the open carafe (you can't screw on the top of the carafe to hold in the heat until the carafe is off the coffeemaker). It takes so long before you can safely remove the carafe without having coffee drip down onto the recess that holds the carafe, and running onto the counter, that you loose a good deal of the heat in the carafe before you can withdraw it and screw on the carafe top. If you do manage to do that, the coffee isn't as hot as I like it once you get some poured, and it doesn't remain drinkably hot in the carafe for any length of time.Now, let me qualify all of that by describing my particular situation. I am the only coffee drinker in the house, so I brew just 4 cups (or about 2 1/2 mugs) of coffee at a time. And since I always took coffee with me to work (before I retired), my practice was to preheat a Stanley 24-ounce metal coffee thermos with hot water while the coffee brewed and then replace the hot water with hot coffee before screwing down the top and cap. That would keep coffee steamy and hot all day. So that's what I did whenever I made coffee (and still do), whether I was going to work on weekdays, or it was a weekend, or (as now) I'm retired. I can still enjoy hot coffee all day, even if it needs a quick zap in the microwave, once poured. But if you make a pot of coffee for multiple coffee drinkers, and plan to pour it all around once it's brewed, then the Connoissuer model may work for you. Or maybe you have the patience to wait for all the coffee to drip into the carafe and then have it be only sort of hot once poured. But to me, the significant advantage of the Bonavita system is hot, really good, coffee that is quickly brewed. My disappointment is that the Connoisseur doesn't deliver the same brew in the same way as the old BV1800.One final note: if you have the old BV1800 and need a new carafe, I found (finally) that the Melitta 52-oz. Pour Over Brewing Cone with Glass Carafe will work pretty well with your old BV1800, except the brewing cone is too tall to fit. So instead, I just used the plastic cone filter holder I already had, which was just short enough to sit atop the Melitta carafe and fit into the Bonavita BV1800 coffeemaker. It is still available on Amazon (Fino Pour-Over Coffee Brewing Filter Cone, Number 4-Size, Black, Brews 8 to 12-Cups).

We have been using Bonavita coffee makers since 2014. This is our third one. The first one worked great. We used it for four years before upgrading. We gave it to a friend. The second one worked great for 5 years. It recently stopped turning on, so we bought a new one, the Connoisseur 8 cup. It worked very well for about 5 weeks. The carafe was bad, as other reviews shared. You can’t empty it all the way, the lid is finicky and you can’t put it back on the coffee maker without removing the brew basket. However, it was simple and made good coffee.We noticed after 5 weeks that it was getting very loud. It had been incredibly quiet prior to this. It sputtered and gurgled throughout the brew cycle and only a few of the water holes were working. The ones that were working were working hard and left big holes in the coffee grounds. We tried descaling it 4 times, but it did not help.So, I contacted Bonavita support through their website’s chat feature. They suggested descaling it which we had tried and then asked me to fill out a warranty claim and gave me the wrong URL. I found the right one and sent it in. “Great!” I thought to myself that they will help us either get it fixed or get a new one. I didn’t hear anything back, so after a few days, I chatted with them again. They said that they never got the warranty claim and to try again. I filled it out again and waited. After about a week, I emailed their support to find out the status. They apologized and gave me a list of things to try including turning off the pre-infusion cycle, leveling it, and trying a different power outlet. None of this worked. They wanted a video, so I recorded one and sent it in. They replied by asking me to fill out the warranty claim again. I told them that I had done this twice and that the start of this email thread was the claim. They apologized again and replied that they viewed the video and that the loud noise is normal and is the sound it makes when it pumps water. Sigh. They obviously aren’t going to do anything.This will be our last Bonavita. It’s almost $200 wasted. We’re moving on to finally getting a Technivorm Moccamaster that is handmade in the Netherlands. They have a 5-year warranty and will repair their coffee makers indefinitely. They may be more expensive, but we’ve spent almost $500 on Bonavita’s over the past 9 years. $329 for a coffee maker that will last at least 5 years and is repairable, is a bargain in comparison.There is an interesting article online called “The Rise and Fall of automatic drip coffee pioneer Bonavita”. It outlines the messy changes at the company and the multiple lawsuits. They used to have a US distributor who actually had great customer support. We had worked with them in the past when our previous model had an issue with the clock drifting. It’s now an entirely Chinese-run company, Smartco, which now makes a terrible product and doesn’t care at all about its customers. If you want a SCA-certified coffee maker, look elsewhere. These are now junk.