I was ecstatic to find out I was chosen to receive the Keurig Voxbox and now that it's here, I thought to myself, how was I ever living without a Keurig? It honestly is the easiest machine I have ever used to make coffee and much more.
Keurig 2.0 K500
I'm sure most of us know what a Keurig is or the gist of what it does. To quickly summarize, it is an instant coffee,tea,hot chocolate, indulgent beverage maker. In order to make any of these drinks, you will need to purchase k-cups that are made for this machine. Inside this box, it came with the machine itself, a sample box of k-cups and carafe cups, the carafe, and the instruction booklet.
What is different from the Keurig 2.0 and the older models, is that the new Keurig can make carafes now! The carafe is the black pitcher looking thing, and with carafe cups, you can now brew coffee for up to 4 people at once! K-cups are for one people, while the new carafe cups are big enough for 4.
What is different from the Keurig 2.0 and the older models, is that the new Keurig can make carafes now! The carafe is the black pitcher looking thing, and with carafe cups, you can now brew coffee for up to 4 people at once! K-cups are for one people, while the new carafe cups are big enough for 4.
Customization
For the K500 series, and maybe the K400, you receive a Keurig machine that has a coloured screen and a cool reservoir light. Navigating the machine for use was fairly easy as there were only a few buttons to click on. I was able to set the time and change the background with ease. The cool thing about the Keurigs is that not only can you change the background of the screen, the backgrounds match up with brewer accents they sell, so you can truly customize your Keurig to match your kitchen!
Preheating
The first time you turn on your Keurig, or anytime you turn it on, you get this coloured circle that says "pre-heating" on it. That means that your machine is heating up the water for you. I want to say it takes about 2-3 minutes to fully preheat the water. Another cool feature is that you can set an "alarm" or timer for your Keurig to turn on in the mornings to start heating up!
Now lets start brewing!
The machine itself isn't as bulky as I thought it was, so it sits nicely on my kitchen counter. Luckily for me, even though we moved into a much smaller house, our new kitchen has so much counter space that the Keurig doesn't look like a giant in our small new home.
K-cups
This is where most people are running away from the Keurig 2.0. For the 2.0 series, Keurig switched it up and now you can only use Keurig brewed k-cups in the new machines. What does that mean? It means that the older K-cup models or any "off brand" cups without this white ring around it saying "Keurig Brewed" will not work for the machine. Personally, this isn't that big of an issue for me. The only thing that bothered me about this is that Keurig only sells 24 packs of one specific coffee/hot chocolate/tea, and they don't sell variety packs! How will I know which one I will like unless I try all of them? That is one downside for me with the new system. There are "hacks" that you can do to get around the system, but I'll let you google that one yourselves if you really need to use older k-cups haha.
Brewing
So of course you've filled your Keurig machine with water already (filtered/bottled/whatever you prefer) and pop in the K-cup of your choice. Since it was almost 11pm I decided to go for a hot chocolate.
Before you start..
Before starting your first K-cup journey, the machine asks you to do a test brew first and it pours out 6oz of water. Then you are ready to do a K-cup. I thought 6oz was way too little water when I did the test brew, so I did my hot chocolate with 8oz of water.
Go!
As easy as 1,2,3, I pressed the button and it started to make my hot chocolate.
Done.
In less than a minute, my hot chocolate was done! The flavour was quite delicious, despite the fact 8oz of water was probably too much for the hot chocolate. I will probably go with 6oz next time. It says on the site that they have 10 brew sizes, but I only seen 4 (4oz, 6oz, 8oz, 10 or 12oz?). Maybe the other sizes are when you use the carafe but I have yet to do so!
Unfortunately for us, we recently purchased that water kettle beside the Keurig machine and already threw away the box. I had no idea I was getting a Keurig and that it also dispensed hot water! I can see myself using this everyday now. Whether it be for my morning coffee, afternoon tea, or late night indulgent beverage. The Keurig has a new place in my home and in my heart.
Lets get down to business.
Many of my coworkers and friends asked me "wow how did you get a FREE Keurig?" The answer was simple. Influenster.
What is Influenster?
As stated in the photo, it is a community of people who live to influence. Mainly how it works is you fill out surveys and answer questions on what YOU love and your lifestyle. This helps you gain different badges such as the foodie, fashionista, urbanite, eco, techie, wellness, and many many more.
What to do:
The site is filled with reviews and posts from other people in the community. It's a great place to share and read others opinions on products.
Voxboxes:
This is probably what most people want to know about. Thousands of Voxboxes are shipped out every month to members. ALL FOR FREE. They sometimes have variety boxes with a few different items from different brands, falling under certain product categories (beauty, food, health, etc). There are also times when Voxboxes are focused on one specific brand, like the Keurig Voxbox I received. (Unfortunately, I believe Influenster is only sending out boxes to the US and Canada as of now. Sorry international readers!)
Being an active member:
This is where some people might decide this is not for them. Being an active member is crucial in order to get chosen to receive free products. This is an overview of my dashboard and what you will also see when you have your own Influenster account. Your impact score is based on how many reviews you do on the site, how many people you reach based on your social media accounts, and how many badges you received from different categories. An impact score of 1168 may seem high, but there are people with scores of almost 8000+, so mine is nothing compared to that. As noted, your impact score doesn't reflect 100% of your friends and followers due to the privacy settings they have on their Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram pages and etc.
My public profile
This is what other users see when they look at my profile. I have a total of 18 badges and I've done 12 reviews. You get points towards your impact score every time you review something or answer questions people in the community ask. I've been a member on Influenster for two years now, and I've only received 2 Voxboxes. I got the Impress Manicure Voxbox which you can read here and I received this Keurig Voxbox. The more active you are, the more badges you get, the higher your chance of being chosen for voxboxes. If you are ever chosen, Influenster will send you a pre-survey which means you are close to getting chosen for a voxbox. If you fit their criteria once doing the survey, they email you back letting you know you've been chosen! Of course with being chosen to do a campaign, you have to do the tasks and reviews for the products. Doing the reviews of the product and completing all the tasks, guarantees you will most likely be picked for another campaign in the future.
I know, this all seems like a lot of work just to get free products, but I know many of you, if not all of you have an opinion and sometimes it's nice to get it heard. Being a blogger, I always have opinions on products, and Influenster gives me the opportunity to share my opinions in another community. Don't give up hope if you feel like you're never chosen to get a voxbox, it just takes time! Of course if you join now you won't get a free Keurig, but this is apparently their second year giving out Keurigs to test out, so you just have to remain active and hope for the best! They are always having new Voxboxes every month, so always keep an eye out!
If you want to join Influenster and have a chance at getting free stuff, just click here!
If you want to learn more about Influenster, or feel I didn't cover everything, you can check them out here.
(All opinions of the product I reviewed are my own based on my experiences. I am in no way getting paid to talk about Influenster, I just strongly believe its a great website and service that provides free products to people who would love to review them.)
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