I have owned three AeroPresses. The first one I bought in college and used until the plunger seal turned the color of old chewing gum. The second one I gave to my brother when he moved into an apartment with no kitchen counter. The third one — this one — I bought because the Premium came out and I wanted to see whether a $150 AeroPress was a real upgrade or a vanity object.
It is mostly a vanity object, and I am mostly fine with that.
The coffee is identical. This is the part that has to come first. The brewing chamber is borosilicate glass, the plunger is stainless steel, the cap is anodized aluminum — none of which changes the extraction in a way I can taste. I did the side-by-side, two grinds from the same bag, same dose, same water, same time. The cups were indistinguishable. If anybody tells you their Premium tastes cleaner than their original, they are tasting the upgrade money in their mouth.
What the Premium does change is the rest of the experience. The original AeroPress is the most useful seventy bucks in coffee gear, and it also looks like a piece of medical equipment. The Premium feels like an object you'd leave out on the counter. The glass chamber lets you actually see the brew, which makes inversion brewing more controllable — you can see the slurry, you can see the bloom, you can see whether you have channeling. After a year on the plastic version I had forgotten what the inside of an AeroPress even looked like.
The plunger seal is the real functional upgrade. The original uses a rubber gasket that loses its squish over time — mine started letting air past around year three, and a sticky plunger is the thing that ruins an AeroPress. The Premium uses a silicone seal that the company says is good for thousands of brews. If you make coffee on one of these every day, the Premium will outlast two or three of the plastic ones, which makes the math less ridiculous than the sticker price implies.
The complaints. The glass is glass, and I am the kind of person who has dropped an AeroPress on a tile floor, so this is a concession I am making. The Premium ships with a cloth carrying bag that is the kind of thing you throw away. The cap and filter basket are slightly heavier than the originals, which matters if you travel with one — the original was nine ounces and disappeared in luggage. The Premium is closer to a pound and a half and feels like it.
And then the price. One hundred and fifty dollars buys you the original AeroPress and roughly five years of paper filters. Or it buys you a Premium and the smug satisfaction of having the nice version. Both of those are defensible purchases. Only one of them makes you a better cup of coffee, and it isn't this one.
Verdict: Buy this if you've worn out a plastic AeroPress and want the nicer object to replace it. If you don't already love the AeroPress, get the original and find out whether you do.