I'm amazed at all the good reviews for this product. It looks great, and the settings are fun. But.

Two really annoying design flaws:
1) A lot of coffee grounds circulate throughout the mechanism after each brew, so after several uses it begins to clog and make coffee very slowly, finally clogging altogether. So every week or two you have to do a system clean with vinegar or you won't get your coffee brewed at all.
2) It leaks water out the bottom of the mechanism as it brews. I kept wondering why my counter was wet every morning and finally realized water was welling under the thing every time it brewed and spreading over the counter.

Unless you enjoy maintaining your stupid coffee maker on a regular basis and cleaning up puddles after every use, avoid the Cuisinart, it's a lemon!

Two of my closest friends own the Cuisinart DCC-1200, so I knew what I was getting before I bought this guy: delicious coffee, a really attractive, user-friendly package, and a reputable brand.

That said, I've been even more impressed after owning the Cuisinart for a few weeks. The coffee isn't just good--it's *consistently* good. The machine minimizes variability in the brand of beans, the grind of the coffee, the filter type, and the amount of water used, and always yields a respectably good cup. (The same can't be said of my charming but sensitive French Press.) The water filter, which removes chlorine and odors from your water, probably helps.

A nice feature that I didn't anticipate is the "1-4 cups" setting. Usually when you make a very small pot of coffee, the water doesn't get as hot as necessary because the water heater doesn't have time to warm it sufficiently before sending it through the filter. The Cuisinart "double heats" the water when the 1-4 cups setting is selected. I haven't done double-blind taste tests to see if this really makes a difference to my palate, but it brings psychological comfort. ;)

I also like the heater plate control knob, which allows you to set the post-brewing carafe temperature to low, medium, or high. Mine is on high, but if you don't want your second cup of coffee to be scalding hot, this could be a nice feature.

There are only two small design aspects that could be improved. First, the water reservoir is small and somewhat difficult to access without spilling, so you have to be sure to fill it before putting your ground coffee in the filter, especially if you're programming it the night before. (You don't want wet coffee sitting in the filter all night.) Second, the lid on the pot doesn't flip up, but rather has to be removed entirely. This is a bit of a hassle for cleaning.

Other than these features, I think the Cuisinart DCC-1200 is just about perfect, and I'd buy it again without hesitation.

I thought it would be difficult to top my previous coffee maker, but the Cuisinart DCC-1200 has done just that! I'm amazed at the piping hot coffee in the smaller quantities (1-4 cups). The no-drip carafe is true! It's the first one that can pour slowly and quickly without a separate stream going down the pot or missing my cup entirely. The cone-shaped basket is ergonomically correct, meaning #4 paper cones expand to fit perfectly so there are no grounds in the brew. The only drawback for me is the step system water fill. The place where you pour the water into the machine has a series of steps starting at 12 and going down by two cups per level (10, 8, 6, 4, 2). The problem is that you'll have to lean over the entire machine while pouring water into it. It would have been much more effective to have an external gauge. My other alternative has been to measure the water in the carafe and then pour it into the water fill. It's minor, but it's a daily obstacle. Otherwise, best coffee maker I've owned, and I'm a coffee connoisseur!

We had this coffee brewer just over a year when it started not allowing the water to enter the pot, just steamed it away. I tried cleaning every orifice available and removed the charcoal filter and still no coffee would brew. All we got was steam. We only used it occasionally for family parties and such and at this price, it is a shame that it didn't function for very long. I will never buy another cuisinart piece of junk again!

This coffee maker had worked great for a couple of years--easy to use, great taste etc. "Had" worked great until it started sputtering just after the warranty expired (of course). The symptoms were similar to a clog caused by mineral deposits, but the "self-clean" light had never come on, and I had cleaned performed self-clean occasionally with vinegar, etc. Very perplexed.

Faced with paying money to have it fixed, I took it apart instead. There were no mineral deposits, and I learned something very important instead.

A very, very tiny piece of a wood-like substance had clogged a one-way valve just before the heating element. We grind our beans and so perhaps it was part of a bean, but it seemed coarser.

I always use the water filter but somehow this "something" had gotten past that filter. An improbable--but not impossible--set of circumstances had caused that blockage. We grind our coffee, usually smaller than this particle; the particle had dropped into the water reservoir; and it went past the water filter somehow.

Lessons learned:
* Always, always make sure the water filter is inserted.
* Be careful not to let grounds fall into the water reservoir. If they do, clean them out immediately.
* If the same problem occurs anyway, flush water backwards through the coffee maker. The plastic parts that drop heated water on the ground can unsnap apart.

Perhaps all coffee makers are subject to the same design problem, but I dropped the rating a star for this problem.