Melitta One:One Vs. Senseo One Cup Coffee Makers

Regular drip coffee makers are great if you want to make an entire pot of coffee. But with the way they are designed, you need to make an entire pot at a time to get the most flavor. But what do you do if you're the only coffee drinker in the house? It seems wasteful to brew ten cups of coffee when you only want one. Pressure brewers like the Melitta One:One and the Senseo shoot hot water at high pressure through a single serve coffee pod allowing you to brew only one cup at a time. Which one is right for you?

Design

Both the Melitta and the Senseo offer very modern, linear designs and a variety of colors to match your kitchen. The Senseo's arced cylinder, however, is a bit bulky and awkward looking, whereas the curved pyramid design of the Melitta One:One is much more classic and works better with many different decors. One big plus to the Senseo, though, is the optional 10 cup water tank that you can purchase to add on to your machine. I can only brew 2 mugs of coffee with my standard Melitta One:One tank full, which is perfect for my normal day, but when having guests over I can get five out of the Senseo before I have to refill. The larger tank adds even more bulk to the Senseo machine, but it's great to have when entertaining. Both the Melitta One:One and the Senseo offer different spout sizes to accommodate different cups, and everything from tea cups to large travel coffee mugs will fit in either machine.

Brewing Time

It seems like neither the Melitta One:One nor the Senseo heat up fast enough for that first cup of coffee in the morning, but the reality is there's no faster way to get a cup brewed from start to finish. Both have a pretty quick prep time, about 2 minutes, and once they've heated the water it's just a matter of a quick push of the button before my coffee's done. Both machines also offer small brewing sizes, about half a mug, so if you're a strong coffee lover you can brew half at a time and switch to a new pod in the middle, or reuse one pod for a not quite as strong cup.

Coffee Pods

The most noticeable difference in the Melitta One:One and the Senseo machine are the coffee pods. The Melitta One:One Javapods are far superior in quality to the Senseo in my opinion, and come in more flavors and blends. My personal favorite is the Melitta One:One Kona Blend, and it's difficult to find blends like that in single serve coffees. Melitta One:One also offers a number of teapods, from herbal teas to black teas and my favorite, the chai tea. Senseo also offers teapods, but only in Earl Grey and green tea. Senseo does have one option that Melitta One:One does not, they offer a cappuccino pod, but it is a noticeably artificial cappuccino and I don't like it nearly as much as the cappuccinos you would get from a real coffee house.

Even though the Melitta One:One Javapods are better than the Senseo, they are smaller, and the Melitta One:One machine can only handle that particular size of coffee pod. They are hard to come by, and I always end up ordering them online. The Senseo, on the other hand, is meant to handle larger pods and can even accommodate the Melitta One:One javapods and teapods. The Senseo machine can hold Folgers Home Cafe, Millstone, and every other brand of coffee pod out there, making it very easy to find coffee for the machine.

My Final Decision

Unless you absolutely have to have the look of the Melitta One:One one cup coffee machine, get the Senseo. You can still use the Melitta One:One pods, plus any other pods you can find. If you opt for the larger tank on the Senseo, you will never need another coffee maker again.