My coffee experience comes from making coffee for wife. I am a Diet Pepsi kind of guy.
From reading the main thing a coffee maker needs to do is to pump the hot water over the beans at the proper temp. So it needs to be more sophisticated than the basic Mr Coffee. The next most important thing is grinding in a knurl grinder then measuring with a scale. And mix in there some gourmet coffee beans and one should have an excellent cup of coffee.