Have a picture of Philips HD7810/60 Senseo Coffee Machine Compare?, please send it to us.
| Ease of Use | 8.8/10  |
|---|---|
| Durability | 7/10  |
| Style | 8/10 |
| Service & Support | 5.4/10 |
| Value for Money | 5.7/10 |
| Reviewer Rating | 5.6/10 |
| Overall Rating | 5.5/10 |
By erika26
on 23rd Apr 2005
| Owned Product For: | 1 - 6 months |
|---|---|
| Special Features | Not supplied |
| Ease of Use | 10/10 |
| Durability | 9/10 |
| Style | 9/10 |
| Service & Support | 6/10 |
| Value for money | 9/10 |
| Overall value | 9/10 |
 erika26's recommendation | |
Very easy to use, sleak and stylish, quick to boil, easy to clean.
Expensive pods which can be hard to find.
The Philips HD7810/60 Senseo Coffee Machine proved to be a real problem solver. I hate buying presents for awkward people. My husband is one of the worst. It's not that he's fussy, it's just that when he wants something he usually goes out and buys it making my life hell when it comes to his birthday or Christmas. This years birthday was the worst by far. After a tight few years we'd finally reached the stage where we had money to spend, and spend he did. Unfortunately that left me in a dilema with what pressie to buy him but thankfully this coffee machine saved my life believe it or not.
I came across a review about the Philips Senseo Coffee Pod Machine purely by chance and I instantly knew what I wanted to get him. My other half loves his coffee, not to mention how addicted I can be to it, and both of us have cravings for Spanish style strong coffees that you just can't find over here. I was hoping that this coffee pod machine would be the answer to my prayers. Spanish style coffee all year round instead of waiting for that annual holiday, bliss! Of course I did research it further before making my purchase but it wasn't long before I was placing my order with Amazon for one Philips Senseo coffee pod machine.
A bit about the coffee pod machine:
********************************************
This Philips coffee machine is available in three colours (black, white and blue) and each one costs around £40/£60 depending on where you purchase it from. You can always go to Ebay and pick one up for half the price but I'm a bit wary of Ebay and like to know my goods, especially electrical goods, are brand new. It's designed to be used with Douwe Egberts Senseo coffee pods which I'll tell you about a bit later but it will take other pods such as Kenco.
The machine looks pretty damn stylish I reckon. I chose the blue one as our kitchen has touches of blue in it so I thought it'd look more in place than a boring white or a dull black machine. The price I paid was £42.97 plus a few quid postage which wasn't the cheapest available but I trust Amazon and they had the fastest delivery at the time for this item.
The machine has two settings, a one cup setting and a two cup setting. You can actually make a mug of coffee by pressing the two cup setting and sticking a mug there rather than two cups. You don't even need two pods to do this (ssshh don't tell them that) Rather than using two pods to make two cups/a mug you can get away with using one Senseo pod of the Dark Roast variety. Granted this makes the coffee a little weaker but the Senseo Dark Roast variety is very strong anyway so it's a good cost saving tip.
And how have I found this machine?
********************************************
Well firstly I have to say it takes so little hassle these days to make a cuppa. To fill with water you just unclip the back (which is very easy) fill with water and then clip back in place. It doesn't require as much water as a kettle so therefore probably saves a little energy, it's much quicker to boil than a kettle too for this reason. I reckon it only takes around 30 seconds to boil which gives you just enough time to get the milk outta the fridge and sugar outta the cupboard.
It does take up a little more space than our usual kettle but it looks so good up there on the counter I can hardly complain. As it boils away it is slightly noisy but I quite like that in a coffee machine, I get worried when electrical things like this are silent, I like to hear them working.
Where you place your cups/mugs there is also a drip tray which is an excellent idea. Stops all that mess getting on my nice clean (not) work surfaces. It rarely needs emptying as we make sure every drop of the coffee goes in the mugs, I'm not having no wasted coffee when it costs a fortune to buy (more on that later).
Another plus is that this coffee machine very rarely needs washing. Yes we wash out the container where the water goes but that requires very little effort. Just stick the container in your sink and give it a good old scrub with hot water and washing up liquid. The rest of the machine generally only needs wiping over from time to time with a damp cloth unless you've a habit of splashing muck and grime around your kitchen.
And now onto the coffee itself
**************************************
As I mentioned previously the coffee pods you need for this machine are the Douwe Egberts Senseo brand. You can use other brands such as Kenco but as they're made to a slightly different size you get a weaker cuppa. Besides which I reckon the Senseo ones are the best by far anyway. With our machine we received a free pack of Senseo Medium Roast pods and I would assume that wherever you buy it from you'll also receive a free pack.
You place the pods in the top of the machine either before or after the water has boiled. I prefer to place them in before I boil the water as then you get a lovely smell of coffee as the machine starts to work. It drifts through your house and smells out of this world. The pods look like large tea bags and can only be used once so after brewing just open the top of the machine and chuck them in the bin, no mess at all.
These Douwe Egberts Senseo pods are without a doubt the best coffee I've ever tasted without having to go to Spain. Rather than tasting fake or bitter like granules they have a creamy, strong but very pleasant taste. The top of the coffee goes all creamy and frothy and the colour is a deep dark brown. The smell is one of a posh coffee shop, in fact drinking this makes me feel like I've bought it from a posh coffee shop. It's almost like having espresso coffee, but definitely tastes very Spanish to me.
Unfortunately there are downsides as with most things in life. The pods are by no stretch of the imagination cheap and when you drink as much coffee as us two do it gets very expensive very quickly. At our local Tesco they cost a shocking £2.19 for a pack of 18 which is pretty much the standard price everywhere. Not only that but many supermarkets don't actually stock pods at all so finding them can be a major chore. Our Tescos are that crap at restocking their shelves that more often than not the only choice of Senseo pods they have are the decaffinated variety which I don't particularly want to buy. Then we either have to go for the Kenco ones, which I don't like as much, or go without. Inevitably we end up going without, and sometimes for up to 2 weeks.
I contacted Philips about the shortage of the pod suppliers. I told them my two local Icelands don't sell them, Morrisons doesn't sell them, the three Kwik Saves doesn't sell them, and Tesco's do sell them but somehow forget to restock the shelves. I asked them how could they sell machines (and they sell a lot) and yet make it so hard to get the correct pods for them. I sent a really long email singing the praises of their coffee machine but pointed out the fact I can't get hold of the pods. Do you know what they said when they replied? They said something to the effect that they'd checked their website and forwarded a list of shops I could buy them from. One of the shops was Asda which is a nightmare to get to sometimes, and the other two shops were Tescos. Did they read my email at all? I wasn't happy. I felt like i'd been fobbed off, and just bare in mind we used to go through about 3/4 bags a week which is nearly a tenner. So much for customer service. Pah.....
Anyway, their coffee is great and this machine used in conjunction with Senseo coffee is to die for. Just bare in mind that pods aren't widely sold though, I wish someone had told me that before I bought it. And remember, don't throw away your kettle as we still use ours almost as much as we used it before we bought this kit.
Overall conclusion
*************************
Well even though i've had problems getting hold of the coffee I can honestly say I am really pleased I bought my other half this for his birthday. I probably use it more than him because I'm at home more so I've kind of adopted it as my own. Yes we spend an absolute fortune on pods, especially because we have to buy 3/4 packs at a time incase Tesco run out, but at £2.19 for 18 pods it works out at just over 10p per cuppa which isn't bad value I suppose. We should really just be using this machine for the odd treat but once we have pods in the house they are too irresistable and we end up glugging back 4 or 5 mugs each a day so the expense is our own fault really.
I did look at other coffee machines before I bought this one and from what I saw this Philips one is very well priced, some cost an absolute fortune. So if you're looking for a coffee pod machine I would highly recommend this one. No problems have occured with it, there's barely a scratch on it, looks smart in the kitchen and brews the most heavenly cuppa. If it wasn't for the fact I struggle to get hold of pods i'd have given this machine a full 10 stars but as pods can be a chore to find (and as Philips customer service didn't seem to care) I have to dock them a star.
One last tip
****************
Ebay is a great place to find a larger variety of pods. Across the pond around the Netherlands area (think that's where Philips are based but wouldn't swear by it) they have around 10 Senseo varieties, whereas in this country you can only buy 4 (mild, medium, dark and decaf) Usually if you look on Ebay you'll find foreigners selling the pods in bulk. It doesn't exactly work out much cheaper than buying pods from this country but there is a wider variety of choice.
| Helpful | Unhelpful | Agree | Disagree |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
Total Respect: -2
Would you like to see a review that's not being listed?
peter noad on 24th May 2005
robbos on 28th Sep 2005
Anthrakas
on 30th Oct 2005