A Whole Brew Way To Listen

Haven’t you always dreamed of listening to the audio from a classic Folgers commercial while making a cup of instant K-Cup coffee using Folgers grounds? Or, haven’t you always wanted a coffee maker that you could put on your bedside table, preferably one capable of playing Squeeze’s “Black Coffee In Bed” as you enjoy a cup of black coffee in bed?

No?

Too bad!

You see, what we have here is a product that is simple yet baffling. The ‘what’ of it is easy enough to explain: it’s a coffee machine and a speaker. The ‘how’ is likewise straightforward: the speaker can be paired with your devices via bluetooth; and the coffee is brewed from standard K-Cups, or using your own grounds (it comes with a reusable filter to put them in).

It’s when you get to the ‘why’ that things start to go a little haywire. Because, at first, you might think: ‘yeah, totally, that makes sense.’ But upon further inspection, the whole premise is total nonsense. It’s like having a water bottle that doubles as an ice-scraper, or a front loading washing machine with a bamboo cutting board built into the top. It serves two functions that, while appealing, don’t really interact with each other in any meaningful way.

Some of the Amazon reviews try to make sense of it. One says:

Speaker sound is not amazing, but good enough for a quick listen while your coffee brews.

Of course! A little entertainment while you wait for your coffee to brew! That would be reasonable enough… if this were a normal coffee pot. But it’s a K-Cup machine! Like, isn’t the whole point here to make coffee as quickly as possible? Which this seems to do, by the way; that same reviewer loves how it can make a “super-fast and hot cup of coffee.” So what are they listening to? Speed metal?

This probably explains why a lot of the other reviews don’t even attempt to justify the combination at all. They either ignore the speaker entirely, or say that it’s “fun.” And you know what? Maybe that’s actually the best way to look at this. It’s not necessary, nor more useful than the sum of its parts. But it’s fun. It’s silly.

It’s really the quintessential Meh item, because it basically highlights a large part of our business model. We’re not here to provide substantive answers when asked why you something exists; rather, we’re here to say, “we don’t know, and frankly, at this price, we don’t think you should care.”