For it's price and purpose, this little coffeemaker is darned near perfect. There are a couple design elements that are bothersome but not to the point of not recommending this unit. First, as others have noted, the stainless carafe is not designed to keep the coffee warm, so it gets cool faster than an insulated glass carafe. You can also not see whether there is coffee in the carafe. The upper lid over the brew basket and water tank "clicks" shut, so you cannot "one-hand" open it while holding the carafe to pour water into the tank. Also, despite it opening a full 90 degrees, if you use the carafe to fill  the tank, you will likely spill some water while filling it because of the narrow carafe spout.The upside of the carafe spout is that there are no drips and spills when pouring a cup of coffee. The auto-shutoff feature is fantastic - no more accidentally leaving the warming plate on!