Both Kitchen Aid and Cuisinart make excellent small appliances, and have for some time. These two brands know their way around a kitchen. These two units are very straight forward in terms of both design and operation. The styling on the Kitchen Aid JavaStudio is, as the name suggests, more modern. Cuisinart follows a more understated path of design, and that causes the unit to be placed unremarkably in just about any kitchen.

Kitchen Aid's JavaStudio is 14-cup, as compared to Cuisinart's 12-cup capacity. If you are a serious coffee drinker who enjoys a regular routine, the Kitchen Aid has some great and thoughtful features, such as an electronically regulated 1100-watt heat pump, and a clever time display that shows how long since that particular pot of coffee was brewed. Unless you're using purified water, the Cuisinart Brew Central's Charcoal water filter is welcome addition. In the war over features Kitchenaid's JavaStudio strikes another big blow with a super-cool "pause and pour" feature which allows the anxious to get a hot fresh cup of coffee before the brewing is finished, and while Cuisinart has a "brew and pause" feature as well, it's not as quickly located.

Before you buy, consider style before price. The variance is $20 and for the style concerned that may mean nothing, if however you are a consummate drinker of coffee then the larger capacity Kitchen Aid may be a better choice.