First Look: Keurig K-Café Smart Coffee Maker
This new $250 machine uses WiFi to enhance the brewing process and help you make barista-caliber drinks at home
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A coffee machine that will brew my morning joe as soon as I say, “Alexa, make my coffee!” aloud? Sign me up! But for all its features—including voice control—the new $250 Keurig K-Café Smart coffee maker can’t truly brew by itself. You still have to put a pod in the machine and place a cup on the drip tray, and remove the pod when you’re done.
So what makes this Keurig “smart”? While you can adjust settings and start the brewing process via Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and the Keurig smartphone app, Keurig’s marketing is focusing on the new Brew ID feature, which debuted with its Keurig K-Supreme Smart brewers. This feature scans a small bar code found on the more than 900 Keurig K-Cup pod varieties and matches it with the roaster’s brewing instructions stored in Keurig’s online database. It then customizes the brew strength and temperature to yield a coffee that’s closer to the roaster’s intention—or at least that’s what Keurig claims. And if you use pods that aren’t made by Keurig, don’t worry; they’ll still work in these new smart machines—minus the custom brewing.
Photo: Daniel Wroclawski/Consumer Reports Photo: Daniel Wroclawski/Consumer Reports
Setting Up the Keurig K-Café Smart
If you’ve ever owned a Keurig machine, you know they’re pretty easy to get up and running. Simply unbox the coffee maker, plug it in, and start brewing. The same is true for the K-Café Smart, with the exception of its WiFi connectivity.
To connect the brewer, you have to download the Keurig smartphone app, create a Keurig account, and scan a bar code on the back of the brewer. This connects the app to the brewer via a WiFi network it creates. You then input your home WiFi credentials to connect the brewer to the internet.
When I attempted this, the machine failed to connect to my network three times. Finally, on the fourth try, the brewer connected to my home network. I’m not sure what caused the problem, but in my experience reviewing smart home products (from lightbulbs and garage-door opener controllers to security cameras and smart thermostats), this is an all-too-common occurrence.
The machine worked fine after that. But after a few days of use (and unplugging the machine to use other appliances in my kitchen), the brewer disconnected from my WiFi network and I had to pair it again. But it didn’t take multiple attempts to reconnect it.
With the WiFi setup out of the way, the machine prompted me to run a “cleansing brew” to clean out the internal water lines and prep the machine for use.
Using the Keurig K-Café Smart
The next morning I brewed my first cup of coffee. I popped in a pod, selected my desired brew size, pressed start, and the appliance started brewing as expected. But then the machine didn’t stop brewing, filling the 10-ounce cup I had selected and forcing me to quickly swap out the full mug for an empty one to collect the additional coffee. The machine finally stopped brewing after producing a few more ounces of coffee.
This is a problem I’ve encountered before with both my Keurig K-Supreme Plus C and the Keurig I owned before it. It happens rarely, but it seems the machine somehow loses track of how much water its using and brews too much coffee.
I contacted Keurig via email about the problem, and its spokesperson it was probably related to the cleansing brew the appliance just ran. “The cleansing brew is typically 10 ounces, but if the system needs more priming, it can brew a few extra ounces,” she wrote, adding that it rarely happens. It’s also worth noting that I haven’t had another spillover since.
Like most Keurig machines, the K-Café Smart is incredibly intuitive and easy to use: Pop in a pod, select a brew size, and press the big “K” button to brew. In fact, it’s so easy that my 2-and-a-half-year-old is able to operate our K-Supreme Plus C without fail (with adult supervision, of course), and he had no problem using the K-Café Smart.
What Makes the K-Café Smart Unique
Brew ID: As mentioned above, this feature scans the bar code on genuine Keurig K-Cups and looks up a custom brewing recipe for each specific coffee pod blend from Keurig’s online database. These recipes consist of temperature and brew strength adjustments that the machine makes for each coffee blend. To see if it makes a difference, I brewed a Dunkin’ Original Blend K-Cup in both the K-Café Smart and my “dumb” K-Supreme Plus C, and tried each one without any milk or sweetener. To my surprise, the coffee brewed by the K-Café Smart was significantly less bitter than the coffee brewed by my K-Supreme.
Photo: Daniel Wroclawski/Consumer Reports Photo: Daniel Wroclawski/Consumer Reports
Voice control: Thanks to its WiFi connectivity, the K-Café Smart responds to voice commands from Amazon Alexa and Google Home/Assistant. I own both Amazon and Google smart speakers, and connecting the brewer to each was a breeze and simply required me to log in to my Keurig account. I was then able to ask both Alexa and Google to start brewing, and the machine did so almost instantly. While both integrations were speedy and worked well, they seem more like a party trick than something truly practical or useful because you still have to place a pod in the machine and a mug on the drip tray. And the commands for Alexa were a bit clunky because you had to start each one by saying, “Alexa, ask Keurig …”
Keurig app: The Keurig app is fairly intuitive. It allows you to control the brewer, look up drink recipes, and (of course) buy more K-Cup pods. You can also set up smart auto-delivery, which uses the K-Café Smart’s internet connection and Brew ID to keep track of which pods you’re using and the amount you’ve used. It then determines when you’re running low and automatically sends you more. But my favorite part of the app is its Barista Mode, which walks you through each of Keurig’s more than 70 coffee drink recipes step-by-step. It will even ask you what type of milk you’re using and tweak the frothing instructions accordingly. I had no problem whipping up Jason Oppenheim’s oat milk latte or a more complicated pumpkin pie coffee, and both tasted quite delicious.
Multistream technology: This is Keurig’s name for the new design of its brewing system, which first debuted in the Keurig K-Supreme line of brewers. It punctures five holes into each pod (instead of one, like older Keurig brewers), sends hot water through each hole, and “extracts more flavor and aroma” from the pod, or so Keurig claims. Without making a side-by-sde comparison, it’s unclear how much this feature actually improves the taste, so we’ll have to wait until we can get the machine into the hands of our expert taste tester to find out. One downside to this new technology is that it requires new reusable K-Cups with five holes punched in the top instead of just one, so if you use reusable pods, you’ll need to invest in the new type.
Photo: Daniel Wroclawski/Consumer Reports Photo: Daniel Wroclawski/Consumer Reports
Other Useful K-Café Features
Built-in milk frother: The K-Café Smart uses a whisk to create froth (not a steam wand), similar to the standalone milk frothers I’ve evaluated. It can make both cold froth and hot froth. For hot milk froth, it has three numbered settings; each makes increasingly more froth than the last. I tried it with both whole milk and oat milk and it did a great job of creating milk foam for lattes. I also liked that the frother is integrated with the brewer so that you can start both at the same time and the machine will wait until the frother is done to brew the coffee.
Photo: Daniel Wroclawski/Consumer Reports Photo: Daniel Wroclawski/Consumer Reports
Over-ice brew mode: This feature allows the K-Café Smart to brew iced coffee. You simply fill a glass with ice, put it on the drip tray, and watch the brewing. This mode brews coffee at a lower temperature than normal so that the ice doesn’t melt completely. The resulting brew is a bit watery for my liking, but it scratches my iced coffee itch, so to speak.
Brew-strength and temperature controls: This brewer features five different brew strengths and six different temperature levels, giving you very granular control. You can also save your preferred settings as “favorites” in the Keurig app. In addition, the brewer features a coffee-shot mode that allows you to brew either a single shot or a double shot for making specialty drinks.
How It Compares With the Other Keurig K-Café
The regular, nonsmart Keurig K-Café performs quite well in our lab tests, with Very Good or higher scores for repeat-cup speed, temperature consistency, size consistency, and ease of using and cleaning the appliance. It’s unclear how the K-Café Smart will compare in these tests until we get it into our labs. But there are some notable differences in its feature set.
The K-Café Smart is more similar to Keurig’s K-Supreme brewers than it is to the original K-Café because of its multistream technology, WiFi connectivity, Brew ID, over-ice brew mode, and adjustable temperature controls. These are all features that the regular K-Café lacks.
Should You Buy the Keurig K-Café Smart?
If you like the idea of a smart coffee maker that can help you learn how to make barista-caliber drinks at home, then the Keurig K-Café Smart is a great choice. It’s highly customizable to suit the tastes and preferences of everyone in your family, and if your taste buds are sharp enough, you might enjoy a richer-tasting brew thanks to its Brew ID and multistream technology features.
But if you don’t care for a coffee maker with WiFi or a smartphone app and all you crave is a hot beverage in your hands, then the regular Keurig K-Café might be a better choice. It has many of the same features as the smart model and costs $50 less. The only feature it’s missing that might make you think twice is the over-ice brew mode, but if you aren’t a big iced coffee drinker, you probably won’t even notice it’s gone.
Stay tuned to find out how the Keurig K-Café Smart fares against the competition (and its sibling, the Keurig K-Café) in our in-depth lab tests. You’ll find those results when we have them in our coffee maker ratings.
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