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I’ve used about 30 different drip coffee makers, and while companies have made great strides in the quality of the coffee these machines can produce, they’ve made, let’s say, fewer strides in their aesthetic appeal. That’s not to say every coffee maker looks like it belongs in a rerun of The Office, but even most of the options with countertop appeal have a quasi-industrial stainless-steel look to them, which is not the vibe everyone wants for something required to be on a permanent display. However, Ratio, a small company out of Portland, Oregon, has built a lineup of coffee makers that not only make some of the best coffee out there, but are in a league of their own when it comes to looks.
The company’s newest coffee maker, an updated version of its Ratio 8, has pulled off that most elusive trick when it comes to coffee: Combining top-quality brewing with dead-simple operation, all in a stunning package.
One of Ratio’s calling cards is ease of use. Just fill it with water and ground coffee the way you would any cheap Airbnb coffee maker and push the only button on the machine. It will bloom and brew the coffee, keeping water in the sweet spot for pour-over, around 200°.
I can’t go further without acknowledging the elephant in the room, though, which is the Ratio 8’s price tag. It costs about $900 or $1,000 with a thermal carafe. And that is for a machine that offers none of the customizability of other high-end coffee makers like Fellow’s Aiden or Breville’s Luxe Brewer. The somewhat shocking price of the Ratio 8 comes primarily from the things most people don’t think much about when buying an appliance: the materials and component parts.
When I first pulled the Ratio out of the box, I could feel it was a bit different. It was heavier than a number of coffee makers I’ve tested, even more expensive ones. That’s because the Ratio contains very little plastic. The company says it contains just five pieces of plastic, with the rest being mostly die-cast aluminum with some real, actual hardwood thrown in to give it the kind of luxurious accents that would make it look at home in the kind of high-design kitchens most of us just dream about. Ratio machines are also assembled in the United States (a relative rarity in the world of small appliances), which, while good for many reasons, is not the least-expensive way to make something.
But let’s be real: No one is paying $1,000 for something if it is essentially just a beautiful coffee-maker-shaped sculpture. It better make good coffee too. On that front, the Ratio 8 continues the legacy the company began more than a decade ago. Though it comes with nothing but an On/Off button, it does as good a job mimicking the pour-over process as more feature-laden machines. A powerful heating element gets water very hot, very quickly, and a spiral showerhead (removable for easy cleaning) evenly distributes water around the ground coffee.
The Ratio 8 also comes with the heaviest insulated carafe I have ever held. The coffee maker doesn’t have a hot plate; that’s to avoid overheating coffee and leaving it stale and gross. But the carafe kept coffee hot for more than four hours just sitting on the counter.
It comes with a couple of other nice features—it automatically blooms the coffee and can brew a half pot, and a five-year warranty, which, after using Ratio machines for years, I don’t think you’re likely to need.
I can’t credibly say that any appliance that costs close to $1,000 is for everyone, but if you blacked out the price, the Ratio 8 could be. It’s simple enough for even the most serious technophobe to operate, but it makes coffee good enough to impress an intense coffee nerd. And that’s a hard mix to master.