Another Disappointing Mr. Coffee

Author's Rating:

Pros: Programmable feature works great, automatic shut off works nicely, handsome looking

Cons: Brews loud & slow.  Water drips into reservoir when the lid is lifted.  Short cord.

The Bottom Line: 
For the price, I guess you can't complain too much.  A few hassles come with the design, but it makes a good cup of coffee.

Author's Review
Ironically, my daughter just purchased this new TFX23 12 Cup Mr. Coffee Maker (specifically because we were coming to visit), and we had just purchased a very similar model about a month ago.  It is uncanny how much alike these two different models are.  I don't care for either one of them!

Description

This model is made of shiny black plastic, (with a gray or silver color along the front), and it actually looks handsome on the kitchen counter.  It doesn't have all the bells and whistles such as a built in coffee grinder, but it has enough features that made the style attractive to our daughter (and to us when we purchased our very similar model).

It's shorter than other brands, so it sits under the kitchen cabinets with ease and looks proportional there (it's about 14.5 inches).  You can program this model ahead of time.  It has a digital clock that illuminates the kitchen nicely at night.  Like most coffee makers these days, it has the "pause and serve" feature that allows you to sneak a cup of joe before it's completely finished brewing the full pot.

Each side of the machine has the see through water windows, where as the machines I have owned in the past only had one window.  The automatic shut off will keep the coffee hot for 2 hours, then it shuts itself off for safety reasons.

Last, there is a place to store the short cord in the back of the machine if so desired.

Thoughts

I thought we got a deal on our machine, which was on sale at Bed Bath & Beyond for $20.00, but our daughter found her TFX23 model at Best Buy for the same price.  A great value, but then this is just a basic model that has failed to impress.

The complaints that I have with this model are basically the same complaints that I have with the Mr. Coffee that I own, the DRX23.  Here are my dislikes:

The machine brews coffee very s-l-o-w-l-y.  And it's noisy when it's brewing!  When you go to remove the filter and coffee grounds, you first have to move this lever out of the way, which can be a pain, and the basket is hard to get back into place (it has to fit a certain way or it won't go).

When I lift up the lid, just like with my model, water (or condensation) drips straight down the lid, onto the counter and back into the machine!  I don't know about you, but I prefer making my coffee with fresh water, and this is a pain to dump out.  You have to turn it upside down over the sink to get this water out!  Sometimes water will drip straight down through the unit and puddle on the warming plate.  This is not a good design folks!

The electrical cord is very short, and I assume the company does this on purpose (just like with the short cords on crock pots), for safety reasons.  However, I don't like to brew my coffee under my new maple kitchen cabinets, as the steam is not good for the wood.  A few years ago motorhome manufacturers stopped installing under the cabinet coffee makers in their campers for this same reason.  It's a stretch to pull this machine out from under the cabinets, but it is workable.

Now that I've told you the bad, there are a few positives about the machine.  We used the programmable function nearly every evening before going to bed, and woke up each morning to the smell of freshly brewed coffee.  This worked perfectly and was a nice feature for a value priced machine.  The TFX23 can be programmed 24 hours in advance.

The coffee this Mr. Coffee makes is pretty good tasting, but of course that greatly depends on the quality of coffee you choose to put into it.  Use cheap canned coffee and of course your coffee won't taste as great as freshly ground gourmet coffee!  No rocket science needed to know that, but I had to add it to my review.  It always bugs me when people use cheap coffee and then blame it's finished quality on the coffee maker.

The machine does indeed turn itself off after it has been on for two hours, and I love this safety feature on all small appliances as I feel it might prevent a house fire some day. 

Since this machine only cost $20, it's not a big investment, and even machines that I have paid four times this amount of money for have failed on me within a few years.  My daughter and her husband are just starting out in their new home and don't have money to waste, so this machine works fine for their needs right now.

All in all, I think this isn't a bad machine for the price, but it does have some things about it that really drive me nuts, mostly the way old water drips back down into the reservoir when you lift the lid.  Maybe lifting the lid and wiping the excess moisture off at the end of each brewing cycle would help solve this problem, but a consumer really shouldn't be expected to do such a thing.

This machine has it's pros and cons, and if I paid $60 for this and had these problems I would rate it 2 stars.  Since it was such a low priced item, I am going to give it three.