PeteFree.comCuisinart DCC-1200 Brew Central 12-Cup Programmable Coffeemaker — Review
© 2011 Peter Free
30 December 2011
Not worth buying, due to poor longevity
We bought this “made in China” coffee maker, when we couldn’t find an American-manufactured product.
Our DCC-1200 quit working completely after about 18 months of comparatively light use (6 to 8 cups a day). Although the unit still powered on, its circuits refused to do anything.
Other shortcomings
Coffee taste was adequate (which means “just okay”) for a coffee maker of this type, but the Cuisinart suffers from poorly thought out design.
Most annoying is placement of the water reservoir immediately adjacent to top lid’s rear-located hinge. The carafe is too wide to fit into this space and still align perfectly, when filling the reservoir with water. One has to be careful not to spill, especially when the unit is located under an overhanging kitchen cupboard.
Second, the DCC-1200 has a penchant for dripping brewed coffee onto its heat plate, even after the carafe is supposedly ready to remove after the brew cycle is complete. That meant that I regularly had to clean both the heat plate and the bottom of the carafe.
Our unit required frequent de-calcification, even on softened well water.
The DCC-1200 compared poorly to a previously owned Braun
Before buying this Cuisinart, we had a simple, inexpensive, attractive, and not “made in China” Braun. The Braun was utterly reliable and lasted many years, until it finally developed a water leak into its electronics. It needed de-calcification only infrequently.
Unfortunately, Braun quit making that model.
Not recommended
I wouldn’t buy another of DCC-1200. In fact, I wouldn’t buy another Cuisinart product. You appear to be paying for the name, which in this case was worthless, and nothing else.
The moral? — Go cheaper and save
In our era of (inescapable) cheap and unreliable Chinese products, it is arguably financially wiser to buy bottom-end coffee makers and toss them, when they fail.
Expensive units don’t seem to do anything worth doing that their cheaper sisters can’t, and they “croak” just as soon. So why pay more?
On the other hand, I would pay four times the original cost of this poorly-designed and constructed Cuisinart for a reliable American-made coffee maker.