Smart coffee makers: the Livingetc edit of the top 5 for a perfect start to your day

If you struggle to function in the morning without a cup of coffee, a smart coffee maker will be the perfect investment for you. Smart coffee makers are designed to make life even easier, with app-compatible designs that will allow you to brew your ideal drink from a different room, or even from your bed. After all, if there's anything that can get us out of bed in the morning, it's the thought of a delicious cup of coffee waiting for us. 

Smart coffee makers come in all shapes and sizes, from drip coffee makers that come with next-level custom controls to Bluetooth-compatible machines that allow you to make a personalized coffee program or even control your machine using one of the best smart speakers. A few of our top picks also feature in our guide to the best coffee makers, but for purely smart machines, just keep on reading.  

Smart coffee makers: our top 5

The Café Smart Drip 10-Cup Coffee Maker has smart features baked right in, with Wi-Fi compatible controls which allow you to schedule your morning coffee to brew while you're still waking up. 

Coffee connoisseurs will love that there are four unique brewing modes: Gold, Light, Medium, and Bold, to tailor your brew depending on the grounds you use and the mood you're in. The SCA (that's the Specialty Coffee Association) has even approved the Café Smart Drip 10-Cup Coffee Maker for its consistently high quality results. 

Plus, as with any machine from Café, the Smart Drip 10-Cup Coffee Maker is a beautiful piece of kit. It comes in sleek white, a sophisticated black, or a stainless steel finish. The machine can be paired with an app to set custom timers, and with smart speakers, so you can control it using just your voice.

The Keurig K-Supreme Plus is our favorite single-serve pod coffee maker from Keurig. It's also the smartest Keurig machine to date, with sensors to detect the type of pod you insert into the machine, which then adjust the brewing settings to optimize the process for a range of roasts. Keurig calls this BrewID, and the display at the top of the machine shows the detected coffee type, which is a nice touch.

Automatic settings aside, you can make up to three user profiles using the compatible app, and save your desired strength, size, and temperature. You can choose from five coffee lengths, five levels of strengths, and six temperature settings. 

The streamlined profile of the Keurig K-Supreme Plus will be perfect for those who want a smart coffee maker that won't take up too much counter-space. We also like the black stainless metal wrap design, which is very classy. 

The De'Longhi Dinamica Plus is the one that's won a permanent spot on our Small Appliance Editor's kitchen counters. It's seriously smart, with five strength and length settings, 16 drink presets, and an adjustable milk frother.

You can create your own personal account and save a selection of preferences to the De’Longhi Coffee Link App, including your perfect strength coffee. You can also take advantage of the full touchscreen display and scroll along to find your desired drink, from latte to iced coffees. 

For frothy coffees, simply attach your milk container (which features smart LatteCrema technology to work with an assortment of milk types) and turn the dial to pick the right level of foam. Like any smart coffee maker, you'll still need to make sure there is a glass under the coffee dispenser before you start brewing remotely, and you can't control this one using a smart speaker. 

If you love filter coffee and want a smarter machine, the Smarter iCoffee Maker is designed with this in mind. It has an in-built grinder that can be adjusted depending on your preferred coffee, and you can also add grounds if this is your preferred coffee type. 

When we tried the Smarter iCoffee Maker we found that the grounds were very coarse, which meant the flavor of our coffee didn't develop the way we like. Still, filter coffee is meant to be more coarse than espresso, so you might like the result you get with the Smarter machine. 

You can brew up to 12 cups with the Smarter iCoffee Maker and because brewing takes about 5 minutes it's quite nice to be able to start the process from your phone and only go in to pour it when you're done. You can also choose from three color panel options with this coffee maker, which are interchangeable. 

Breville does traditional very well, with powerful manual espresso machines that grind directly into the portafilter. This means you'll always get the freshest coffee grounds in your drink, and the Oracle Touch automatically brews at the best pressure and temperature for your chosen drink.

The controls are completely touch-operated for balanced brews, and there's low-pressure pre-infusion that encourages flavor to develop before extraction. 

If you love a milky coffee, you can take advantage of the automatic frothing wand. This textures and heats milk to the perfect consistency for your desired drink, and if you're using a plant-based milk it will adapt to get the most out of every blend. 

How to choose a smart coffee maker

As with all coffee makers, you'll need to make sure that your smart coffee maker brews the right type of coffee for you. We included smart coffee makers that brew drip coffee, espresso, and single-serve drinks using coffee pods, to make sure there is something in this guide that will suit everyone. 

While everything we included is smart, a lot of them are smart in different ways. Some are smart in the way they brew coffee, detecting specific temperatures and working with a variety of drink presets to make sure every cup is perfect. Others can be controlled using an app or smart speaker, but are a lot more straightforward in their designs. This is perfect for those who need their coffee before they can function in the morning, but are less fussy about the specific brew settings.