The Vue V500 is one of 5 brewers in Keurig's Vue series: V500, V600, V700, V1200, and V1255.
Originally released to give customers the ability to brew a larger, hotter cup with a max 18 oz brew size (16 oz on the V500) and Temp Control functionality, Keurig ultimately decided to discontinue its Vue brewers because they weren't popular enough to justify the hassle of producing special K-Vue pods.
These Vue brewers used Keurig 2.0's pod-scanning system (also known as DRM or "Digital Rights Management") to lock out unlicensed third-party pods while simultaneously having programmed brewing instructions of the pod you selected.
This is the same system found on Keurig's K200-K575 brewers, which also have been discontinued.
But that doesn't mean Vue brewers are totally worthless today. You can actually buy an inexpensive adapter to use either K-Cups or ground coffee with any K-Vue brewer.
With the adapter, there's actually an advantage to owning a K-Vue brewer: You can brew a 16 oz coffee. We wouldn't recommend doing that with a K-Cup (it would be too watered down) but you could definitely make a good tall cup with your own ground coffee.
Since we aren't writing the entire K-Vue series off, let's look at the Vue V500 versus the other 4 Vue brewers:
Of note, the V1200 and V1255 are both commercial models and are identical. The only difference is where they were originally sold with the V1200 available through Authorized Keurig Distributors and the V1255 available through office supply stores like Office Depot.
