Single serve coffee makers are about only one thing, and that is convenience.

A few years ago there was no such thing as a single serve coffee maker. At least, not in the sense that we know them today.

One way or another we would take our ground coffee and add it to a regular coffee maker of some description.

It was only a matter of time before someone thought, "There must be an easier way. It's a pain measuring the correct amount of loose coffee for each cup of coffee, and then throwing away that wet, messy filter."

If you think about it, the same transition happened for tea lovers, but much sooner.

It used to be that you had to make your tea with loose coffee leaves in a tea pot. And then someone invented the tea bag. Much easier.

Now we have the exact equivalent of the tea bag in the coffee pod used in machines like the Senseo brewers. A coffee pod is round and definitely thicker than a tea bag, but the principle is the same.

Then someone else thought beyond the simple coffee pod and designed K-Cups, T-Discs and other proprietary package designs for a variety of other single serve brewers.

Do we need quite so many different types of single serve package options?

Not really. Every new entry into the market is simply trying to find a new group of customers.

If you don't want to make coffee with loose coffee grinds, then we believe your best bet is to choose one of the first two single serve formats – either a brewer that takes coffee pods, or a Keurig machine, which takes K-Cups.

All the more recent entries are simply variations on the K-Cup design.

Reviews of the best K-Cup and coffee pod coffee makers:

The Keurig B60
The Senseo SL7810