The coffee isn’t bitter, but you might be

The Keurig K500 is among the first of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters’ new generation of single-serving coffee brewers, dubbed Keurig 2.0. Like the brewers that brewed before it, the $190 K500 will serve up a mug’s worth of pod-based coffee at the touch of a button in less than a minute. Unlike the last generation, however, it’s also capable of brewing an entire pot of the stuff by way of new, large sized pods called K-Carafe Packs.

Those K-Carafe Packs give Green Mountain a fresh patent to work with — unlike the original K-Cup patent, which expired back in 2012. That’s led to the unsurprising emergence of lower-priced, store-brand K-Cups that undercut the Green Mountain business model. So, accordingly, Keurig 2.0 brewers like the K500 come with a new solution: a scanner that will only let them brew Keurig-approved K-Cups. Toss a knockoff-Cup into the thing, and you’ll get an error message.

The K500 is Keurig 2.0’s flagship brewer (pictures)
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This new design means that Keurig 2.0 users will actually have less coffee-making options than people using older Keurig models. Aside from being unable to brew bargain-branded cups, Keurig 2.0 brewers also won’t work with the kinds of reusable plastic cups that let you use your own grounds, or even with Keurig’s own recyclable Vue Packs. Moving forward, there’s potential for Green Mountain’s new brewers to grow, but as of now, there really isn’t a great reason to upgrade to such a restrictive system, or to choose it over a competitor that’s more flexible and less expensive, like the Editor’s Choice-winning Bunn MyCafe MCU.

Design and usability

The K500 keeps many of the same curves and design touches that we saw built into the Keurig Vue V700 last year. It’s still a bit bulky, though perhaps a touch more refined than the V700. The grey-bodied design looks good sitting on a kitchen counter, though the flimsy-feeling faux chrome accents might veer towards tacky.

Like previous Keurig brewers, the K500 puts a color touchscreen front and center for easy coffee controls. The menu is intuitive and careful not to crowd too many options into the basic coffee-making process. Design-minded home baristas might also appreciate that you can change the menu’s color scheme, along with the color of the LED that shines up through the water reservoir.

Brewing a cup of joe is as simple as popping a K-Cup in and pressing the big “Keurig 2.0” button, which maintains the hallmark simplicity of the Keurig brand. In my tests, a single cup would routinely brew in about fifty seconds. Thanks to that new scanner, the K500 will automatically know if you’re brewing a single-serving, or if you’re using a K-Carafe Pack to brew an entire pot.

In addition to that scanner, the K500 uses a nifty slot at its base to figure out what you’re trying to brew. The normal drip tray that you’ll sit your mug on top of slides into place using a specific tab. To make a full pot, you’ll pull the tray out of the way and replace it with the K500’s proprietary carafe, which has its own unique tab. This is a smart, subtle design touch, as it means the K500 won’t brew an entire pot’s worth of coffee unless it senses there’s actually a pot in place to catch all of it.

The K500 doesn’t offer quite as much control over the brew process as we saw with the V700, which is a little disappointing. You can customize the size of your drink from four to ten ounces, but you can’t tweak the temperature of the water, like you could before. You can press a button for a slower, slightly stronger brew, but there are no dedicated settings for brewing optimal iced coffee.

This lack of precision controls for more advanced brews is a bit puzzling to me given that the Keurig K500 is coming out of the gate with fewer coffee brands to choose from than the previous generation. I was expecting more of a focus on features and customizability to help compensate for the fact that you can’t brew the bargain brands, but those settings just aren’t there.

Features and performance

The K500 didn’t leave me impressed with its features. As a single-serve brewer, it performs well, but not noticeably better than its predecessors or competitors. It’s quieter and at 49 seconds per cup, a few seconds faster than the V700 — but not quite as fast as the last generation’s K-75 Platinum, which brews a cup in 44 seconds. The Bunn MyCafe MCU will get you there in 42.

In sum, there just isn’t enough that’s new and exciting about the K500 to make up for the fact that you can’t brew the cheap stuff anymore. It’s a consumer-hostile strategy that goes down like unwanted medicine sans the spoonful of sugar.