Keurig Platinum B70 Coffee Brewer Review

Introduction

Design Overview

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The {{product.name}} features the traditional Keurig look, with a mainly black facade and a gray plastic orbit around its brewing chamber.

Brewing Chamber

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You can open up the brewing chamber by lifting the silver ring. The K-cup fits in the small recess inside. Be careful: there are sharp needles both at the top and bottom of the chamber, which pierce the K-cup during brewing.

Controls

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The menu and controls are located on the right side of the device, and they're pretty hard to miss thanks to a persistent blue glow. There are four buttons located under the screen. The bottom button is the brew button, above that is the menu button, which is flanked by a left and right button. The buttons primarily help navigate the menu.

The menu itself has a few interesting options. You can configure the clock, set the machine to turn off after a set amount of time, program an automatic brewing schedule, and change the brew temperature.

Reservoir

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The coffee brewer's reservoir can hold about 1750ml, or about 59 fl. oz. This is pretty big, and should just about yield five of the machine's largest cups of coffee before needing a refill. Like most mid-range or high-end Keurigs, the water reservoir will start blinking a blue light if the water level is too low.

In the Box

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Again, the {{product.model}} doesn't buck the trend of including a few free K-cups with a Keurig-compliant coffee brewer. In this case you'll net a dozen free coffee pods of various flavors. While standard for K-cup devices, some one-cup brewers don't include starter pods.

Brewing

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For this test we brew a few cups at the largest and smallest settings on the device, then measure the resulting coffee with a refractometer to determine the total dissolved solids (TDS) of the brew. This can tell us a lot of things, including how developed the brew is and how bitter it will taste.

Since this standard may differ from your own tastes, just use this information on strength and bitterness to determine if the brew aligns with your tastes.

While the brewer's size settings are a nice feature, they're really detrimental to a strong cup of coffee. Basically, regardless of what size you choose, you have a set amount of coffee grounds: choosing a larger size just pushes more water through the same grounds. The result is a very watered down brew. We measured the total dissolved solids at 0.36. More on how we test the brewing process.

With a smaller cup, you'll find a much higher TDS, but it still falls significantly short of ideal. Our refractometer put the smaller cup at .90 TDS, which is still fairly weak. This isn't a problem that's limited to this model, however: most one-cup machines produce a relatively weak, undeveloped cup of coffee, and most do about as bad a job as the {{product.model}}. What you get with the {{product.model}} is ease of use, virtually no clean-up, and negligible waiting time: what you aren't getting is a quality cup of coffee.

Time to Brew

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The {{product.model}} can make a cup of coffee pretty fast. Since the machine doesn't really shut off unless you tell it to, it'll always be ready to brew you a cup. If you're looking for the smallest cup of coffee, the {{product.model}} will have it ready in about 35 seconds, maybe 34 seconds if you get lucky with drips. The largest cup takes 1 minute, 23 seconds to brew, which makes sense since the largest cup is about three times as large as the smallest.

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Quantity

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The {{product.model}} has five different size settings. It's probably more than you'll need, but the extra choices are a nice feature. The smallest cup measures about 4.22 fl. oz. (125 mL), which is about as big as a triple shot of espresso. The next size up is a teacup-friendly 5.41 fl. oz. (160 ml). We measured the third size at 7.61 fl. oz. (225 ml), which should fit comfortably in a coffee cup. The fourth size will fill a mug with 9.47 fl. oz. (280 ml). The largest size, a travel mug, dispenses about 11.83 fl. oz. (350 ml).

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Brewing Process

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The {{product.name}} throws a curve ball into Keurig's streamlined brewing process: now you have five sizes to choose from instead of somewhere between one and three. The only real complexity it adds is a bit of uncertainty regarding whether or not any given size will overflow your cup. As long as you use each setting's icon as your guide, however, you'll avoid any coffee spills.

Step 1

The first part of any brewing process starts with the water. Fortunately the {{product.model}} has a fairly large canteen at its size, so you probably won't have to refill it often.

Step 2

If the reservoir has enough water, step 2 is as easy as putting the K-cup into the brewing chamber. Just don't go poking around in there or the machine will poke right back.

Step 3

Once you've shut the brewing chamber, the screen off to the right will start blinking the five size options. Use the left and right button to select the silhouette of your desired cup. Confirm the selection by pressing the bottommost button to start the machine brewing.

Step 4

A few seconds after you hit the brew button, the machine will start dispensing hot coffee. Make sure you have a cup ready to catch it.

Cleaning & Maintenance

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Cleaning the {{product.model}} is relatively easy. You can remove the water reservoir and lid, the coffee platform and drip catcher underneath, and even the little black plastic part the K-cup fits into inside the brewing chamber. All of these are an easy hand wash and dishwasher safe. De-scaling your brewer is a bit more of a process, but the machine will let you know when there's enough mineral buildup to become a problem. De-scaling itself is relatively easy: it just requires you to run 48 ounces of vinegar through the machine. Make sure to not have a K-cup in the system, unless you want the grossest coffee ever.

Other Features

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The {{product.model}} has a handful of good additional features you can access through its menu system. You can program the machine to automatically brew coffee for a certain time, set the brew temperature, and change the default brew size. The machine, additionally, is always on, so there's always a hot brew waiting for you. If you'd rather not have this feature enabled, just enable the "auto off" feature, where you can set an idling time after which the machine will shut down. Keep in mind that you'll have to use the switch on the back of the device to turn it back on.

Comparison Overview

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While the differences between these two are subtle, they can make the difference in terms of accommodating a large number of people. The {{product.name}} has a larger reservoir, has a separate reservoir to reduce the wait for heating, and features additional size options. If you have a lot of coffee drinkers in your office, it might make sense to upgrade to the {{product.name}}: less refilling and quicker cups mean better productivity. This being said, if you want to save some money and don't mind the extra upkeep, the {{product.name}} will provide very similar functionality.

Comparison Overview

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This is the battle of the at-home and in-office titans. The {{product.name}} lets you customize a cup, brews it quickly, and can brew cups pretty much continuously until the reservoir runs out. The {{product.model}} takes a longer time to brew, has only one cup size, and makes a strong cup of coffee. Both are good devices, but both have a realm in which they excel.

Comparison Overview

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These two models do very different things. Are you looking for a brew to serve an office full of people, or just something to use around the house? In the former case, the {{product.name}} is definitely worth the extra money for the efficiency of a larger water reservoir, faster brewing, and the ability to brew to multiple sizes. In the latter, the {{product.name}} is probably overkill: you'd be better off making a cup at a time with the {{product.model}}.

Conclusion

The {{product.name}} is a really easy to use one-cup coffee brewer, and can brew continuous cups of hot coffee with no real wait in between. The main downside of the device is the coffee itself won't be very strong. Of course, this is more an indictment of Keurig and most other one-cup brewers than the {{product.model}} itself. If you have a high traffic area you need to provide with coffee, the {{product.model}}'s speed and large reservoir will ensure nobody wastes too much time getting caffeinated. If you only use the machine occasionally, or want a stronger brew, this probably isn't for you. For those who don't need to brew quick back-to-back cups, you shouldn't be looking for something in the $150 price range; there are cheaper brewers out there that will better suit your needs. If you're looking for a stronger cup of coffee, we'd recommend one of the Tassimo units we've reviewed. Their T Disc system offers less freedom than the K-cup system (there's currently no reusable T Disc) but the resulting coffee is much stronger overall.