Propeller Skies

[Full disclosure: Smoove D received the Phillips Senseo machine for free, as part of a marketing scheme cleverly calculated to leverage the power of bloggers and other viral marketing techniques to spread the word about this product. Marketing floozies are encouraged to send free stuff for review (as long as Smoove gets to keep it). Make sure to send items that do not suck, as Smoove has loads of anger and will rip sub par products hardcore like a porno flick bitch - Ed.]

A few weeks ago, The Man was walking around the cube farm waxing lyrical about how excellent his friend’s Phillips Senseo machine was. Although The Man is a coffee snob, I was skeptical, as the whole idea seemed like a system designed by an evil marketing genius to sell expensive and repugnant coffee pods to idiot consumers.

About fifteen minutes later, I came across an advertisement on Evite promising a chance to win a Senseo for filling out a survey*. Because performance review time is drawing near and The Man is always in a better mood after a cup of coffee, I took the survey. The correct answers were supremely easy to figure out and a few days later an email arrived in my inbox notifying me that a free Senseo would be on the way as soon as I provided my shipping address. [Note to marketing floozies designing surveys - ask for audited numbers of unique site visitors, the spam bots are not going to be purchasing any coffee pods - Ed.] A month later, the Senseo arrived and I dragged it into the office.

the test

Because the company coffee tastes like stale goat dung, The Man enthusiastically unpacked the Senseo, cleaned it, and fired it up.

the good

Much to my surprise, the Senseo turned out to be very premium. Key things I liked about the machine include the following:

• Fast - within ninety seconds, the water was heated and after three minutes we were drinking fresh brewed coffee;
• Decent coffee - the Senseo medium roast is much tastier than our company coffee and very palatable, although not as good as premium fresh ground beans;
• Third party coffee pods are available for the Senseo;
• Easy to clean, which is important to a lazy slacker like me - just rinse out the pod holder; and
• Looks supremely cool - like something Apple might design.

the bad

I had an uncharacteristically difficult time coming up with items to complain about regarding the Senseo. However, I disliked the following things:

• The medium roast coffee pods we sampled are not as good as beans available from local coffee shops or even national chains; and
• The Senseo only brews eight ounces of coffee at a time - I require at least sixteen ounces of coffee.

why buy?

After trying it out, I concluded the Senseo, while nifty, is not for me. However, the Senseo is:

• Perfect for one or two people who are not serious coffee addicts; and
• A sweet accessory for a swank bachelor pad - I almost kept it for that reason alone.

notes:

* Apparently, internet marketing firms have bugged the office. This shit is getting scarier than the No Such Agency tapping everyone’s phones.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 5th, 2006 at 19:01 and is filed under Consume. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.