Keurig K-Mini: Specs
Tank capacity: Thread
Size: 12.1 x 11.3 x 4.5 inches
Brewing sizes: 6, 8, 10 and 12 ounce cups
Removable water tank: NO
Milk frother: NO
Strength settings: NO
Iced coffee: NO
Auto on/off: Yes
The K-Mini is the classic Keurig coffee maker in a diminutive form factor, with room for the power cord, a single-cup water reservoir, and a width of just five inches. Designed to be out of the way, the K-Mini is a decent machine for diminutive living spaces that saves counter space. Simply fill the water reservoir with 6-, 8-, 10-, or 12-ounces of water and brew exactly the amount of coffee you want.
The Keurig K-Mini has one button and can brew a cup of coffee in less than three minutes. It’s one of best keurig coffee makers primarily due to its compact size, as you will see in our Keurig K-Mini review.
Keurig K-Mini Review: Price and Availability
The Keurig K-Mini is priced at $79 on Amazon, but you can often find it for less. This model is widely available at retailers like Best Buy, Walmart, and of course Keurig, and as with other Keurig models, prices can vary depending on the color.
Likewise, the K-Mini only accepts K-Cup-branded pods for coffee, tea, and sizzling cocoa, though grocery stores fortunately offer a wide selection. These pods can cost anywhere from $7 to $14 for a 12-pack, with the lower price being for the grocery-brand pods and the higher price for the Starbucks brand. That’s about 60 cents to $1.15 per K-Cup pod. The K-Mini is compatible with reusable K-Cup pods, which can hold ground coffee.
Keurig K-Mini Review: Features
The K-Mini is fairly modest as far as Keurig coffee makers go. It has two buttons—one to turn it on and one to brew—and a water tank that holds up to 12 ounces.
It has a single airy around the immense brewing button to show when the machine is heating up, and of course it has a latch to lift the chamber where you insert the capsule. That’s about it.
However, the unique feature of the K-Mini is the power cord storage located on the back of the unit. The cord can be pulled through the back of the unit and hidden away, making it ideal for portability or even hiding excess cords in the kitchen.
Keurig K-Mini Review: Design
Unlike the K-Classic, the K-Mini doesn’t look like a large machine. It’s about 12 inches towering and 4.5 inches wide, which is almost half the width of the K-Classic. When the latch is open, it’s about 13 inches towering. Its slim silhouette fits perfectly on your countertop and can easily fit in with other appliances you might already have in your kitchen.
The K-Mini is shaped like a desiccated food storage container, but with a variety of color options to make it stand out. You can buy it in black, or make your K-Mini stand out on your countertop in pink, green, two shades of blue, red, or gray.
The only potential downside to the K-Mini’s design is that the water tank, located at the back of the machine, isn’t removable. That means you might have to pull the K-Mini out to reach it, depending on your countertop situation.
Keurig K-Mini Review: Performance
My experience with K-Mini coffee has been similar to K-Classic, in that it’s not good. No matter what size of coffee I brewed in the K-Mini, all the K-Cups tasted the same—that is, they were a bit stale and flat. Although if you’re a known K-Cup fan, your opinion may be different.
It takes the K-Mini a little over two minutes to heat up and brew a single cup of coffee. In testing, the shortest brewing time recorded was two minutes, and the longest was two minutes and 30 seconds. That’s lightning speedy, but it may be why K-Cups don’t always taste so good. The K-Mini opens a coffee capsule and then pours hot water through it, without fully pouring in the ground coffee or letting it brew.
Temperature is another critical element of coffee brewing, and National Coffee Association says the optimal brewing temperature for coffee is between 195 and 205 degrees Fahrenheit. The K-Mini can’t make coffee at that temperature. Of the four cups of coffee I brewed, each came out between 180 and 189 degrees Fahrenheit, despite the size of the cups. While Keurig makes a few machines that offer additional options, such as temperature and brew strength adjustments, the K-Mini doesn’t. So don’t expect a sizzling cup of coffee from this machine.
It’s also the loudest Keurig coffee maker we’ve tested, emitting 80 decibels of sound at the end of the brew cycle. Like all Keurig coffee makers, the warm-up cycle is silent, but when it comes to brewing, its biggest noise is the sputtering at the end of filling the cup. This deafening sputtering also sprays water around the coffee maker and countertop.
Keurig K-Mini Review: Ease of Exploit
The K-Mini is very basic to apply, eliminating some of the flashing lights on other Keurigs in favor of two-button operation. Simply fill the reservoir to the 6-, 8-, 10-, or 12-ounce lines, turn it on, insert the K-Cup, and press the large, light-up button to start brewing. The whole process takes less than three minutes. The worst part is that you potentially have to pull the K-Mini out to fill the reservoir, but with a reservoir this diminutive, it’s as basic as filling a cup with water and just pouring it in.
The K-Mini’s maintenance relies on Keurig’s descaler, which you should apply every three to six months to neat the machine. The K-Mini’s drip tray is removable so you can hand-wash it, but the built-in water tank means you’ll need to rely on Keurig’s descaler or vinegar to thoroughly neat the inside of the tank.
Keurig K-Mini Review: The Verdict
The K-Mini is probably the easiest Keurig coffee maker to buy for beginners. Its compact size puts it a step above the larger K-Classic, and its single-button brewing cycle makes it the simplest coffee maker in the Keurig line. While the K-Classic may have a larger water reservoir, the K-Mini does essentially the same job at a lower cost and with less countertop space. It can also brew up to 12-ounce K-Cup pods — the K-Classic has a 10-ounce cap. The retractable power cord makes it basic to hide unwanted visual clutter and make it easier to take the K-Mini on a weekend getaway.
Still, Keurig machines can suffer from impractical brewing methods that result in stale-tasting coffee. The K-Mini can’t brew coffee at a consistent or proper temperature, and even at its best, it tastes like something you’d find at a diner.
That said, the K-Mini may be best for those who already know they like K-Cup pods and want the single-serve coffee experience at home. The ability to brew a cup of coffee in under three minutes is definitely enticing, and having that convenience at the touch of a button is tough to beat — especially at this price. However, if you want the overall Keurig experience, we’d go with the K-Cafe and K-Elite.
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