AeroPress Go Review: The Truly Better Travel Coffee Maker?

One of the biggest perks of owning an original AeroPress (now officially called the AeroPress Original), is that it’s fully portable, with excellent durability to match.

That means you can be a hardcore devotee of great coffee and enjoy your favorite blends—brewed to perfection—nearly anywhere you go, no matter how limited your luggage or rugged your surroundings.

The recently released AeroPress Go takes this killer feature to the max—minimizing footprint while making the device almost entirely self-sufficient for your full brew process.

In this article, we will show you the AeroPress Go review and tell you everything you need to know.

So how does the new brewer stack up against its older, bigger sibling? Does it improve the original AeroPress in any meaningful ways aside from the size?

Does it introduce any flaws or come with other downsides to using it as your go-to travel coffee maker?

Let’s explore the pros and cons of the supposed king of portable coffee makers and lay out all the details you need to know in deciding whether or not you should buy one for yourself.

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Here’s What We’ll Cover

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AeroPress Go vs. The Original AeroPress Coffee Maker

A Brief Background

Just like the original version, the AeroPress Go is an intuitively designed instant coffee brewer meant to make brewing your own coffee fast, easy, and much more rewarding than with traditional brewing methods like French press coffee.

It lets you use ground coffee at various grind sizes with varying water temperature to make a smooth, perfectly-extracted cup of coffee in a wide range of styles—from American hot coffee to cold brew style coffee and even espresso-style brews.

What’s In The Box

Just like its larger predecessor, the AeroPress Go comes with everything you need to brew coffee with it as soon as you unpack and wash it.

You’ll receive:

• The AeroPress Go brewing chamber and plunger with silicone seal

• The mug with silicone lid

• Filter cap and 350 AeroPress micro-filters

• A smaller filter holder

• A stirrer specifically designed for the shape and length of the brewing chamber

• A scoop for easily measuring out an optimal amount of coffee grounds

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Pros of the AeroPress Go Coffee Maker

There’s a lot to love about this new take on the AeroPress, and it’s a relief to be able to say that.

With such a loyal following behind the original design, there was a lot riding on the release of the new model.

A lot of these are self-explanatory, so we’ll just comment that AeroPress nailed it on its mission to take one of the most beloved qualities of the original AeroPress and maximize the value behind it.

Rubber Seal Struggles

The original AeroPress had a plunger seal akin to a rubber gasket, which makes sense considering its function.

The problem many owners experienced with it, however, was that it was somewhat fragile in certain ways.

With prolonged use, if it was left out in the sun, or when the unit was stored fully assembled, these rubber seals had a tendency to either dry out rather quickly or become somewhat sticky and slimy.

They were never billed as intended to last for the life of the device as a whole, but some users found this one component to be disproportionately problematic compared to the build of the rest of the device.

Problem Solved

Happily, the company definitely took note and revised the design of the seal with the AeroPress Go to be based on a silicone-based.

Not only does this seal hold up much better through average use, but it’s also far more pleasant to use when brewing coffee, as there’s now noticeably less friction when pressing the plunger down.

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Cons of the AeroPress Go Coffee Maker

While the enhancements significantly outweigh the downsides of the new model over the original, it’s not for everyone.

The little guy makes a great cup of coffee and is even better at brewing finely ground coffee than the original, but outside of travel use cases, the benefits are a bit more limited.

Let’s break down and examine these few but significant imperfections.

It Seems For Some, Bigger May Be Better

First and foremost, not everyone was thrilled when AeroPress Go was first announced.

For many, one of the biggest downsides to the original AeroPress is how limited it is in terms of brew capacity—with coffee produced limited to 10 ounces at a time.

In terms of new product size, it’s safe to say many AeroPress enthusiasts were hoping for a larger device or perhaps even a countertop variation that was less physically intensive to brew with.

At a max brew capacity of only 8 ounces per press, the AeroPress Go understandably disappointed these customers.

So if you’re not someone who’s interested in the travel advantages of AeroPress, the AeroPress Go may not be for you.

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Highlight: The Plastic Cup

The addition of the travel cup to the AeroPress Go was absolutely an upgrade in terms of portability, packability, and self-sufficiency.

Its materials and build quality, on the other hand, have not always been so well received.

Plastic vs. Metal or Glass

We’ve covered the long-standing desire for an AeroPress made from more premium materials.

While the plastic used in the AeroPress Go and its larger sibling is BPA-free and FDA-approved for use in products in close contact with food, that still doesn’t placate everyone.

AeroPress users who prefer their coffee warm particularly lament the need to pour piping hot water into a device made from plastic.

With the original AeroPress, this has been known to be somewhat unavoidable, as the physics involved with how the device brews coffee coupled with its very hands-on manual operation complicates the use of other materials.

It’s no different with the AeroPress Go—except when you consider the travel cup.

But Why a Plastic Cup?

And while people may be willing to overlook hot water momentarily sitting in a plastic tube before being quickly pushed through the filter cap while making coffee, nobody wants to drink hot coffee out of a plastic cup.

From our perspective, it seems this was an unfortunate oversight and a missed opportunity to ensure that one of the peoples’ least favorite qualities from the larger AeroPress didn’t carry over into this totally new variation.

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Our Verdict: Coffee Lovers Will Love the AeroPress Go

The fact that the AeroPress Go can still be used with separate mugs of your choosing (save for possibly the very widest), means you can also ignore one of the biggest disappointments we found with the new ultra-compact coffee brewer.

To Buy or Not to Buy?

Overall the (non) math works out to suggest the AeroPress Go is overall superior to the original model, and many of our colleagues in the coffee community now say they prefer to Go to the original even in scenarios that don’t necessitate using the smallest possible device.

If you’re already an AeroPress fan and you’re someone who travels often—whether outdoors or from hotel to hotel—we recommend picking one of these up to bring along for the journey.