Best Keurig Coffee Makers for 2024 - CNET

Article updated on November 2, 2024 at 5:44 PM PDT

Whether you're the only coffee drinker in your household or trying to spend less at cafes, these are the single serve Keurig machines worth buying and why.

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CNET’s expert staff reviews and rates dozens of new products and services each month, building on more than a quarter century of expertise.

Even for the most die-hard coffee fans, making your morning cup can be a chore. If you want to save time and get out the door faster, consider a Keurig. We've found the best of the pod-based coffee machines to choose from, topping our list with the simple, affordable Keurig K-Mini.

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We've put together this list with a bunch of options, so if you love a Keurig coffee maker for its convenience, capacity (check out other small portion options like French presses or pour-over cones) or the overwhelming variety of available K-cup flavors, you'll find one for yourself here.

The concern with pod-based machines is the amount of plastic waste. If you want to be environmentally conscious, switching from single-use K-cups to a compatible reusable one can help reduce your plastic waste, which is one of the biggest drawbacks of this type of coffee maker.

This roundup focuses on Keurig brand machines, but we've also included compatible coffee makers from other brands. Options range from simple machines with one function to app-connected options that adjust to any pod and allow you to create custom recipes. (You can also check out how to clean your Keurig coffee maker.)

The K-Mini is about as simple as it gets. Fill your mug with water, empty it into the reservoir, add your coffee pod and punch the brew button. In less than 2 minutes, your cup of coffee is ready. The coffee I got from the K-Mini, like all of the options here, didn't reach our extraction standards for brewed coffee, but it consistently brewed stronger than any other machine I tested. With a brew time of 1 minute, 45 seconds, it's a little slower than some of the other Keurig machines I tested, but it's still faster than several other brands.

The best thing about the K-Mini is how simple and easy it is to use. While you have to add water to the reservoir each time you want to make coffee, it's easily accessible, even when it was placed under my kitchen cabinets. It's also simple to clean and doesn't take up a lot of space. It's an unfussy, capable machine at under $100.

The Keurig K-Duo allows you to brew a single cup of coffee or a whole carafe. While it's not the only machine that offers both options, its single-serve brewer does the job a bit better than its rivals, extracting a little more coffee from the dry grounds. It served up coffee that was hotter than the other dual coffee makers we tested, too. (For this test, we measured the temperature in the cup, which is less precise than measuring in the brew basket, as we do with drip coffee machines. That said, it's clear there's a temperature difference of several degrees between the K-Duo and the other dual brewers we tested.)

The K-Duo can brew a 6-, 8-, 10- or 12-ounce cup of coffee or a six-, eight-, 10- or 12-cup pot of coffee, offering a wider range than some of the other models. It’s priced more affordably, too.

If you're looking to improve your coffee game, the easiest way to do so is grinding fresh coffee beans right before you brew them. The Cuisinart Grind & Brew, which has a built-in coffee grinder, makes it easy to incorporate freshly ground beans into your coffee routine -- even for a single-serving. Simply measure out your preferred amount coffee, place your reusable pod in the rest beneath it and grind your beans. Pop on the cap and start brewing. You can't make it much fresher than that. And despite having a built-in grinder, this Cuisinart takes up minimal counter space. It has a removable water reservoir and can brew 8-, 10- and 12-ounce cups.

While our testing shows it doesn't brew as well-extracted a cup as the Keurig K-Mini, the Cuisinart DGB-2 still ranked in the top third of the devices we tested. It has more moving parts, but the ones that need cleaning are easily accessible.

If you want the convenience of K-cup coffee, but also want to customize brews to use in recipes of your own, the K-Cafe Smart is for you. The K-Cafe Smart has a single-serve brewer, a detachable water reservoir and a milk frother. It also reads the QR code that comes printed on most K-cups and adjusts its brew settings to fit that specific coffee. It accurately identified every K-cup variety I tried.

The K-Cafe Smart has the unique ability to brew "shots" of coffee: smaller, punchier portions designed to mimic a shot of espresso. To my taste, this wasn't close to a shot of espresso, but it did brew coffee that can be used to make tastier drinks. (Adding 6 ounces of hot water to it was my favorite form.)

Through the mobile app, which connects your phone to the K-Cafe Smart, you can access and customize recipes, and control the coffee maker remotely. (Your phone must be running iOS 13 or higher, or Android 8 or higher.)

Frigidaire Single-Serve Retro Coffee Maker: This machine from Frigidaire was speedy and did the job. It has no frills and is the cheapest option on the list at just $38. It feels and looks a bit cheaper than the others on this list, but will brew a cup of coffee in under two minutes.

Proctor Silex Single-Serve Coffee Maker: Proctor Silex's entry on this list is in the same tier as the above Frigidaire. While it’s slightly slower, it offers a similar budget-friendly price.

Hamilton Beach FlexBrew Single-Serve Coffee Maker: The Hamilton Beach single-serve option is still quite affordable at just $60, but it also offers an additional feature: regular and robust brew settings. In our testing, the robust setting produced a noticeable, albeit modest, increase in coffee strength.

Hamilton Beach FlexBrew Dual Coffee Maker: This coffee maker is essentially the Hamilton Beach single-serve model combined with a drip machine. The single-serve function performed similarly to its standalone counterpart. It’s slightly cheaper than the Keurig K-Duo, but the K-Duo feels more robust and brews a bit better.

Cuisinart Coffee Center Two-in-One Coffee Maker: The Cuisinart two-in-one Coffee Center brews both single servings and carafes with both bold and regular options. It has additional features -- like the option to keep a carafe of coffee warmed to different temperatures -- but in my opinion, it doesn't compare to the K-Duo. The K-Duo feels more solidly built and produced better results in our tests.

Keurig K-Supreme: The K-Supreme, like the other Keurig machines on the list, performed a bit better than other brands. It's a smaller option with a detachable reservoir. It has four size options and settings for strong coffee and brewing over ice. If you want a couple more options than the K-Mini, but don't want to inundate yourself, it's a good choice.

Ninja Dual Brew Pro: This Ninja coffee maker can do it all and was a close contender with the K-Cafe Smart for best machine for customizing. It can froth milk, brew carafes and coffee pods and even has a separate dispenser for hot water, all while having a smaller footprint than the K-Cafe Smart. In my experience and based on our tests, it didn't brew quite as well as the K-Cafe Smart, but at $180, it's a similarly priced option.

Testing K-cup compatible coffee makers differs from testing other coffee makers, but still involves a mix of objective and subjective measures.

To test single-serve coffee makers, we measure how fast the machine brews, and the extraction percentage and temperature of the final cup of coffee. The speed test is straightforward: We use a stopwatch to measure the time from pressing the brew button to the moment the cycle finishes.

Measuring temperature is less precise when testing single-serve machines compared to drip machines, as it's not feasible to measure the temperature at the point the grounds and water actually meet. For these Keurig-style machines, we measured the temperature in the mug of brewed coffee rather than the brew basket. Because the conditions are harder to control outside the coffee maker (mug temperature being the big variable), the temperature reading has less weight in the ranking here than for other coffee maker rankings.

The most valuable data for ranking Keurig-style coffee makers is the extraction percentage -- the amount of coffee that actually moves from the ground beans to the final cup. We calculate this by starting with a Brix reading from a refractometer. Brix is one measurement used to determine the amount of dissolved solids in a liquid. And a refractometer calculates Brix and other measures by reading how much light bends when passing through a liquid. For each machine, we brew three test cups and take 10 Brix measurements from each. We calculate the average Brix measurement for each cup and use that to calculate the extraction percentage.

Testing also relies on subjective criteria. We look at how easy the machines are to use and clean. We also sip each cup we brew to see which one makes the tastiest coffee. We explore specific use cases as best we can. For example, our pick for small spaces was based not only on the machine’s actual dimensions but also on how well each machine performed in a real small-space setting.

You clean a Keurig like you would any other appliance or dish you use to make food. Alongside washing the outside of the machine and the drip tray to keep it looking fresh and new, you'll want to clean where the K-cup is inserted, too. Most machines allow you to remove the K-cup holder, making it easier to hand wash.

Keurig recommends descaling your machine every three to six months. You can do so using a Keurig descaling solution or vinegar. For machines that have a detachable reservoir, simply add the solution or vinegar and brew until you're prompted to add water. Then let the machine sit -- 40 minutes if you're using the solution and at least four hours with vinegar. Afterwards, rinse and refill the reservoir, then run fresh water through the machine to flush out any remaining cleaner.

For machines without large reservoirs, the process follows the same basic steps of cleaning, soaking and rinsing. Keurig and most other brands mentioned on this list provide model-specific instructions on each product's webpage.

Keurig and K-cup compatible machines brew one cup at a time using coffee pods. You can choose between single-use pods, prefilled with a wide variety or roasts and flavors, or resuable pods that you fill with your own ground coffee.

Once your pod is ready, its as simple as inserting it into the brewer, making sure there's enough water in the reservoir, pushing a button and waiting about one minute. K-cup compatible machines can come with more bells and whistles, but the basics remain the same.

The biggest environmental knock against these single-serve coffee machines is the widespread use of single-use K-cups. The fact of the matter is that used K-cups often end up in landfills, leading to negative environmental effects, like other single-use products. While some K-cups claim to be made of recyclable plastic, in practice, it's hard to imagine much of it getting recycled. To recycle a K-cup, you need to peel it open, empty the coffee grounds and filter inside and rinse it before putting it into your recycling bin. If someone is opting for K-cups for convenience, are they really likely to take the extra steps needed to recycle them? And if you throw used K-cups, coffee grounds and all, into your recycling bin, you run the risk of contaminating other recyclables and keeping other plastics from being recycled.

Using a reusable coffee pod gets around this problem. A recent analysis showed that, from an energy perspective, K-cup compatible machines actually use less energy and create fewer carbon emissions than drip machines. That doesn't necessarily make them "good" for the environment, but using a Keurig-style machine while avoiding the disposable K-cups will have a similar environmental impact to other brewing methods.