With so many coffee machines available, it’s only valid for tea lovers to feel a little slighted. But it doesn’t have to be a matter of choosing one over the other, as the Wells Home Café makes its debut as the first dual coffee and tea machine from Wells, the same brand that designed the super stylish Wells The One water purifier.
The launch of the Wells Home Café also coincided with the grand opening of the new Wells Experience Centre, so we felt that it was the perfect opportunity to give the appliance a test run and see if it could finally bridge the gap between lovers of coffee and tea. But before diving into our review of the Home Café, we took a tour of the Wells Experience Centre to see what it has to offer.
The Wells Experience Centre: Behind-the-scenes of Wells’ filters
Kitchen installation zone
Image credit: Wells
One of the main draws of Wells’ appliances is its simple, minimalistic design that takes up little to no space on your kitchen countertop. This is done through the installation of the filters underneath the countertop where it can be hidden away and keeps the rest of your kitchen looking neat and tidy.
For those curious about how the dispensers can fit into the aesthetics of their kitchens, the new Wells Experience Centre has a Kitchen Zone that has a suite of Wells appliances on display, including a kitchen sink area for you to experience the convenience of having a sleek water dispenser right by your sink.
Discover how Wells’ filters work
We’ve come a long way from using a cloth filter over our taps. And while many of us like the idea of drinking properly filtered water, most of us have no idea what goes on behind the scenes and how water is actually purified. The knowledge zone in the new Wells Experience Centre shows how the Wells filtration process works to filter out contaminants like sediment and chlorine so that you know the quality of the water that you’re gulping down.
Wells Home Café – Brews coffee & tea from one machine
It’s also impressive to note that Wells Home Café lso has the iF Design Award and Red Dot Design Award under its belt.
While the Wells Experience Centre has plenty of space dedicated to The One water purifier, the star of the show today is the Wells Home Café which we got to try out.
Our first impression of the Home Café is that it bears a striking resemblance to its water dispenser sister, although it has a wider silhouette to account for the tea and coffee pods. But more on that later. Here’s a quick overview of our thoughts on the Wells Home Café:
| Pros | Cons |
| Dual-function (water purifier and brewer) | Has to be in a fixed position as filters need to be installed underneath the countertop |
| Sleek, space-saving design | Limited to specific tea and coffee capsules |
| Easy-to-use touch controls | |
| Advanced dual extraction method | |
| High-temperature cleaning system |
Features: Separate capsule drawers & separate nozzles
Brewing a cup of tea or coffee is also an easy task, as all it requires is just a few taps on the screen and our drink of choice is immediately dispensed into our cups. And rather than rely on one nozzle, the Home Café has separate spouts for the tea and coffee brewing, so that you won’t be drinking mint tea laced with hints of espresso.
The magnetic capsule drawers make it easy to switch them out.
To ensure that your drinks come out tasting like you’d expect them to, the Wells Home Café has 2 separate capsule drawers that are clearly labelled so you won’t accidentally place a coffee capsule in the tea drawer. This design prevents any mixture of flavours, which will be appreciated by households that have both tea and coffee lovers.’
The Wells Home Café can also automatically detect if you’ve put in the coffee or tea capsule drawer and present the corresponding brewing options. That’s a nifty feature we felt would come in handy to avoid any mixups, especially when we’re groggy in the morning.
There are also LED labels that will tell you at a glance what the Home Café is doing, including when it’s performing a cleaning cycle or when it’s pre-heating the water.
If you already have a Wells The One water purifier in your home, you’ll be happy to hear that the Wells Home Café utilises the same filtration system. You can connect both appliances for a unified aesthetic and be the ultimate beverage dispenser in your home.
Performance and user experience: Easy to use with minimal buttons
When we wake up in the morning, the last thing we want is to have to fiddle with multiple buttons and knobs just to get a piping hot cup of coffee in our hands. The Wells Home Café, thankfully, is a no-frills appliance that has minimal buttons for us to press to get our morning pick-me-ups dispensed in a matter of seconds.
During our trial of the Wells Home Café, starting it up and brewing a cup of coffee was simple and intuitive, and it was way easier than operating the coffee machine we had in our office. It was clear that the tea options were on the left side of the panel and the coffee options were on the right.
Our cup of tea was brewed in around 60 seconds, far shorter than the time it’d have taken for us to boil water in a kettle and let a tea bag steep. The coffee brewing function also uses 19 bars of pressure to ensure that each cup of joe has a strong and rich taste, although casual coffee lovers like us would not be able to tell a huge difference.
What added to the experience was the build quality of the Wells Home Café as well. Not only did the materials used feel super luxe, we could tell that there was plenty of thought put into the design so that we’d never feel inconvenienced. For example, there’s an elevated drip tray that you can slide around to fit bottles or cups of any height.
However, unlike other coffee machines we might be familiar with, capsule disposal is a manual process. After each brewing, we’d have to remove the capsule drawer and the capsule pod, and it doesn’t automatically bin itself as how some other coffee machines do.
But Wells has provided a chic and organised way to keep your capsules tidy by way of the capsule holder. The Wells Home Café is also compatible with capsules from other coffee brands like Nespresso, so you can keep on brewing your favourite morning brew.
The capsule holder can store one capsule drawer and up to 30 coffee and tea capsules in a sleek tower. We love that it can be rotated since it gives us the option to store 15 tea capsules on one side and 15 coffee capsules on the other.
Shop Wells’ full collection of water dispensers at the Wells Experience Centre
If your household or your office is divided between coffee and tea drinkers like ours is, then the Wells Home Café would make a great addition to your kitchen or pantry. Not only does it brew both beverages in one appliance, it also saves you space and time, since you don’t have to find a corner for another machine nor do you need to wait around for water to boil.
Wells Showroom
Address: 8 Boon Lay Way, #01-20 Tradehub 21, Singapore 609964
Opening hours: 11am-8pm, Daily
Contact: 8828 8383 | Wells Singapore website
Shop Wells at the Wells Experience Centre
This post was brought to you by Wells Singapore.
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