So I have a few vacuum coffee brewers that sit on the stove--they make great coffee. I bought one of the early Bodum electric vacuum brewers when it first came out. I didn't like it at all. With the brewer that sat on the stove it was easy to control how strong the coffee was (I like mine strong) by keeping the flame on the lower pot. With the Bodum electric there was no way to do that, the lower heater would shut off, and the coffee in the upper chamber would stop brewing and fall back down, and the coffee was consistently weak--no bueno!
I had a crazy Black and Decker electric siphon that looked like it came off a Star Trek set. It made great coffee, but was unfortunately not durable.
It would scare the sh*t out of the cat when the coffee dropped. Fun times!
Bodum popularized the vacuum pot and they were very popular until the 1950s.
I have been brewing with a Hario's TCA-5 & a butane burner for the past two years & it is some of the most dramatic & best brewing methods after you get over the initail hiccups of maintaining water temperature & finding a recipe that suirts your brewing methods. Using an electric siphon it could save one the hassles of mainting a flame & make it much more stream lined to a solid cup.
Using beans from reputable 3rd wave roasters it will match quality of a filter coffee. Blue Bottle has a recipe & tutorial for siphon coffee for the hario modles that should be easy to addapt to an electric version.
I have been using a siphon brewer for over 25 years now (Cona not Bodum). In my opinion the coffee produced in my siphon is definitely superior to any other method I have tried. Siphon coffee is similar to French Press but with almost no grit (less grit also means less mouth feel).
In America many errors are made while making coffee and this method eliminates one of the most important (temperature).
This method still might not be for everyone as it can be a bit finicky and requires a bit of supervision, and the parts are somewhat fragile (I keep a complete set of spare parts).
I believe Bodum might have tamed the finicky thing a little bit by the Hario style filter (I think that this also might let more grit in also) and maybe it is more robust than the Cona.