As we continue our Working from home series, our breakdown today comes in the form of one life’s absolute necessities. The morning cup of coffee.

Times are strange, your routine is broken and the trips to your favourite coffee place, be it a quick stop or a long sit down to people watch are now non-existent. The one thing that got your day started has gone and let’s be honest, it’s miserable.

It’s not all doom and gloom, however, we’re here to tell you that there is a way out. Put the instant coffee in the bin, save the kettle for the tea and level up. It’s time to invest in a coffee machine and bring that in-store vibe straight into your kitchen.

Now everyone likes to drink their coffee in a different way and its very important to choose the right machine to suit your style of coffee, lifestyle and also your kitchen space.

Some machines specialise in certain types of drinks while others can offer you the whole range both of which can have a huge price range. Confusing we know. Before we move into our favourite machines we thought it’d be best if we break down the different type of domestic machines in the market today.

Filter Coffee Machine

Seen on every set of every American movie and TV show since the beginning of time, the filter pot coffee is ideal for those who like to prepare their coffee in bulk. The benefit of a filter coffee machine is that it can stay warm throughout the day allowing you to pop back for refills of Americano style coffee.

Espresso Machine

Espresso machines are great for those that love the theatre of making coffee but also the freshness. You’ll need a separate grinder when purchasing espresso machines but this also has the added benefit of choosing the beans you want before every cup.

Pod Machines

Pod machines are favourable by many due to their ease and convenience. The market is dominated by the Nespresso cup in the UK and Keurig in the US, with Nespresso pods making smaller Espresso type shots while Keurig K-cups are centered around the long “Americano”.

The benefits of Pods and pod machines is that they’re easy to clean and the machines are very quick to start up. There are also a wide variety of pods you can choose from however you’ll be limited to the strength and size of your coffee in most cases.

Bean-to-cup

Bean to cup machines are generally more expensive than pod machines but you’ll save money on the coffee itself as usually end up paying a premium for pods.

It’s essentially the best of both worlds from the espresso machine and the pod machine. Beans are only ground upon demand and its relatively mess-free as they’ll fall into their own bin after the coffee is made.

With bean-to-cup grinding on demand, The aroma will be stronger and crema usually a little thicker. Better bean to cup machines also come with steam wands and milk frothers built in to give a closer commercial experience.

Aside from the cost of the machine, the other downsides are that it may take slightly longer to prepare your coffee cup upon starting up and you’re limited to whatever coffee is in your hopper at the time.

Here are some of our favourite machines that we’ve shortlisted.

Avanza® Series 600 Fully Automatic Coffee Machine, Mystic Titan

£524.99

BUY NOW

Melitta.co.uk

- The Melitta® Avanza® has an impressive design and equally impressive features. The newly developed control panel makes it even easier to use, the grinder is especially quiet and the new Melitta Easy Cappuccinatore makes it simple to prepare latte macchiato or cappuccino.
- Which? - Best Buy
- Plus X Award 2020
- Whisperquiet grinder
- The Avanza® offers a XL water tank of 1.5l and an XL bean container of 250g.
- Adjustable coffee strength
- Five grinder settings
- Double Cup Mode

Carmen Adkins

The post The Best Coffee Machines To Use When Working From Home appeared first on CRISP..

If you’ve landed here it’s probably because of one 1 of 2 things. 1) What on earth is Mesh Wi-fi?! and 2) How on earth do I stop my zoom calls from dropping out in other rooms around the house.

The Pandemic has changed everything, some for good, some for bad but we can all safely say there has been a complete shift in the way we live. We’re going through testing times and being forced to adapt but one of the biggest changes a significant amount of us are going through is the way we work and your internet connection is the heartbeat behind it all.

We’ll save the chat around your ISP for another day but we’re going to focus on how to make the most of that internet being supplied to you.

The demands that WFH brings means that some of those routers being supplied by ISP’s are simply not cutting the mustard. More and more consumers are experiencing dead spots and there is no surprise that Wifi extenders and the like have seen a surge in sales during lockdown.

There are a few different ways to boost your signal for consistent speeds. Some people opt for a standard wifi extender and some choose to hardwire and extend via powerline adaptors. Another method being adopted my many as the market grows is Mesh Wi-fi, but what exactly is it?

What is Mesh Wifi

Mesh Wifi, also dubbed “whole home wifi” is when you use your existing modem to supply an internet connection but use satellites or nodes to talk to each other throughout your home to create one (or more) networks.

Whilst the traditional wi-fi router set-up may work for some, for others you often find that you’re getting only a fraction of the speed coming into your home when you move further away. Similar to how a speaker will start to lose its volume as its audio waves begin to wane over larger distances.

Mesh Wi-fi effectively blankets your home by distributing new waves from each of its satellites, the beauty of it being that it’s completely modular so you can daisy chain nodes in more than one dead spot and it doesn’t matter how far you are from your original router.

Why is Meshi Wifi better than a range extender

A lot of people having coverage issues in their homes with simply opt for Wifi extenders but compared to whole home wifi, they have their limitations.

When using Wifi extenders, you’re essentially setting up an extension of your current network but more often than not it sits on its own SSID. What you’ll often find is that your devices will drop out when trying to connect to one or the other and it also proves troublesome when you’re trying to control devices over wifi such as Chromecast and Sonos that require you to be on the same network.

Mesh Wifi works differently in that you each node is still on the same network with the same SSID, so no matter where you’re moving to in your home you’ll always lock onto where the strongest signal is which is also optimised on the right channel.

In order to get around sloppy wifi signal altogether, some people often like to hardwire their connections using powerline adapters allowing you to network your home through your existing electrical outlets.

It doesn’t have to be a one or the other however as there are products on the market that now offer the best of both worlds.

Best for Mesh Wifi and Powerline combined

CRISP. Recommended

Best for bigger homes

Best for price

Max Boker

The post The Best Mesh Wi-fi Systems When Working From Home appeared first on CRISP..