The machine works quickly. It takes five seconds to heat water and brews cups back-to-back in about one minute per cup. After spending many a Christmas morning groggily standing at my mom’s Keurig waiting for it to heat up so we can all get our coffee fix, the ability to brew cups in quick succession with the Bruvi is one blessing that I won’t take for granted.
And finally, because of course, there’s a smartphone app. It’s pretty simple, with a brew history, descaling alerts, and the ability to quickly order B-Pods. But I liked that you can use the app to schedule or start brewing up to 36 hours in advance. The app mimics the touchscreen on the brewer itself—you can choose from the same settings—and you can schedule it to brew up a cup at a chosen time. I don’t find myself using it often since it takes less than two minutes to make myself a cup of coffee, but it’s a nice feature that some folks might like.
Photograph: Louryn Strampe
One thing to note is that once the Bruvi needs to be descaled, you will eventually have to descale it in order to use it. After about 220 B-Pods have been used, the Americano and 1-ounce buttons on the touchscreen will blink. That means you need to descale the machine soon. You can override the alert and brew about 5 more liters (or 20 B-Pods), but afterward the brewer will no longer work until you complete a descaling cycle. That makes sense considering how descaling preserves the machine (and makes your coffee taste better), but if it’ll annoy you and you want to run your coffee machine of choice into the ground as is your god-given right, this brewer isn’t for you.
Another thing to factor in is the price of B-Pods. They can be cheaper with subscriptions or if you buy in bulk, but even on sale, most of the best-selling pods I found factored out to be around a dollar per pod. That’s less than the pods for higher-end machines like the xBloom (7/10, WIRED Review) but more expensive than Keurig’s K-Cups. But to me, the trade-off for biodegradable pods is worthwhile, and so is the pure speed of this brewing method.
The only other annoyance I found is that the drip tray fills up quickly. That’s because the Bruvi BV-01 spurts a little bit of water out once you dispose of a B-Pod into the waste bin (which I do after every brew). Of course, the reason for this is to ensure that the needle is clean and that your coffee tastes good, so I can’t really be angry about it.
All in all, the Bruvi BV-01 is a precise, great-looking brewer that makes a good, strong cup of coffee in under a minute and a half. If you, like me, sometimes just want your caffeine fix without needing to deal with a kettle and a coffee grinder and a coffee filter and goodness knows what else, this is the machine you’re looking for. (But you can’t have mine because it’s staying on my counter. Sorry, Instant Pot, but you’ve been demoted.)
