Once upon a time, every AeroPress was the best AeroPress. But the humble AeroPress coffee maker has since multiplied. It has become various. The past half decade or so has brought an explosion of new versions of AeroPress: a plastic-free premium AeroPress (7/10, WIRED Recommends), a big AeroPress, a small AeroPress, a red AeroPress, a blue AeroPress.

But at its heart, the AeroPress remains a compact and ingeniously simple coffee maker, using pressure applied by hand to extract a smooth but richly flavorful and aromatic cup. Famously created by a Stanford-educated inventor previously known for improving the aerodynamics of the flying disc, each AeroPress looks a bit like a fat syringe that injects brewed coffee through a filter and into your waiting mug. It doesn't seem like it should make coffee as good as it does. And yet it does, attaining a result somewhere between French ...