Atomi Smart Coffee Maker review: Under extracted

Most at-home drip coffee makers have barebones scheduling features, but you can take things one step further with a “smart” coffee maker. Atomi is a company that makes one of the most popular smart coffee makers you can buy. At a steep (ha) price point of $90, is it worth it, and how “smart” is this coffee maker? Find out in our Atomi Smart Coffee Maker review.

Atomi Smart Coffee Maker: What is it?

The Atomi Smart Coffee Maker is a simple at-home drip brewer with Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa compatibility. Once connected to Google and Amazon’s services, you can ask Assistant or Alexa to make you a cup of coffee with your voice. It also connects directly to the Atomi Smart app, allowing you to control the device from your smartphone even if you aren’t in Google or Amazon’s smart home ecosystems.

Functionally, it resembles a “dumb” coffee maker. It has a stainless steel and plastic design and comes with a 12-cup glass carafe and a reusable coffee filter insert. It offers regular and strong brewing modes, which can be triggered by a button on the coffee maker itself or in the Atomi app.

Related: The best smart coffee makers you can buy

The front of the device features five buttons: Wi-Fi, hours/minutes, power, timer, and the strong/regular brew toggle. You can still brew coffee even if you don’t have any of the smart features set up, which is a nice touch in case your Wi-Fi goes out. The coffee maker also has an auto-shutoff feature that triggers after 45 minutes.

What’s good?

It brews coffee pretty well

I need to be honest here: I haven’t made drip coffee in a long time, so I’m just now remembering how it tastes compared to my go-to V60 brewer. For the most part, I’ve had good luck with the coffee quality from the Atomi Smart Coffee Maker.

Water is dispensed from the six holes in the top lid of the coffee maker. Due to the deep brew basket, even brews with a large number of grounds will likely get covered completely with water. My old $40 Mr. Coffee machine had an issue with uneven brewing, so this is a nice change.

As mentioned, there are two settings: normal and strong. In my testing, the normal brew method took about four minutes for a 12-ounce brew. The strong setting, on the other hand, took about five minutes for the same amount of coffee. I definitely prefer the strong setting, and I think most other people will too.

Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa compatibility

Once you get it set up (more on that later), controlling your coffee maker with Alexa or Assistant is awesome. Functionality is limited to simple commands like “start coffee maker,” but they work reliably once you get them down. I never had any issues with poor Wi-Fi or connectivity with Assistant or Alexa during my testing.

Scheduling in the Atomi app

We’ll get to the nuances of the Atomi app in a minute, but I do think the in-app scheduling feature is quite handy. You can set the coffee maker to turn on at a specific time of day, as well as choose what days you’d like the coffee maker to turn on at a specific time. You can also specify brew strength when setting your schedule.

Many coffee makers let you set a schedule for the next day, but not many provide weekly schedules.

What’s not so good?

Setup process could be better

The Atomi Smart Coffee Maker hooks up to Atomi’s mobile app, which you may already have installed if you own another Atomi product. The app is okay. It’s not very well designed and certain parts can be confusing to navigate.

Connecting the coffee maker to Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa can be confusing if you’re new to smart home products. Atomi’s app has extremely basic instructions. They’re specifically for setting up Amazon Echo or Google Home devices — not all that helpful when you’re trying to set up a coffee maker. Not to mention, the instructions are based on the iOS app and not tailored specifically to Android.

Voice commands are extremely (extremely!) finicky

Once you get the coffee maker set up with Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, you’re on your own again in discovering what voice commands you can actually use. Atomi’s website doesn’t list the compatible commands anywhere.

Furthermore, they are so finicky. Here’s what I’ve found you can say for each voice assistant:

It’s frustrating when you ask Assistant to “turn on coffee maker,” then receive an error when you ask it to “turn off coffee maker.” I just don’t get it. Also, this is not due to the Atomi coffee maker having the wrong name in either app. It’s named “coffee maker” in the Google Home app but the Assistant still can’t recognize “turn off coffee maker.”

It’s not very smart

See above for the voice commands you can use with the coffee maker. Really, you can only ask Assistant or Alexa to turn the coffee maker on or off. You can’t change brew strength, set timers, or tell it to “brew coffee tomorrow morning at 6AM.” With “smart” in the name, you’d expect there to be more functionality here.

Concerning reviews on Amazon

It’s easy to dwell on the negatives, but we need to if you’re spending nearly $100 on a drip coffee maker. As of this writing, 17% of the reviews on Amazon are 1/5 stars. Many users cite cracks on the warming plate, frequent disconnects from Wi-Fi, leaking water reservoirs. Some even say the coffee maker completely stopped working after only a few months of use. Notably, I have not run into any of these issues during my time with the coffee maker.

I wouldn’t put too much stock in the overly positive 5-star reviews on Atomi’s website, either, however.

Atomi Smart Coffee Maker review: Should you buy it?

No, I don’t think you should buy the Atomi Smart Coffee Maker. While it does brew coffee just fine, it’s expensive, and the entire experience is clunky. Add to that the growing amount of poor reviews on Amazon, and I think you’re taking a gamble when buying this product.

Atomi’s main competition is the Hamilton Beach Smart Coffee Maker, which works with Alexa (but not Assistant, unfortunately). It’s also available for $90 on Amazon and has far fewer negative reviews across the board.

Alternatively, if you’re looking to make your coffee brewing experience a bit smarter but also want to save some money, a drip coffee maker with a smart plug is always an option.