We remodeled our kitchen and in the process made loads of countertop space. So my trusty aeropress that kept me caffeinated during lockdowns got relegated to the cupboard. Opened it up, put some Starbucks beans through the grinder and made the worst cup of espresso ever. Dialed it in, made the necessary adjustments to the grinder burrs, found better beans and I’m doing better. If you get this thinking you’ll save money not going to the coffee shop, it probably won’t happen. But it is a fun hobby. Kind of like golf where the goal is consistency with your swing (or in this case, with pulling your shot). I love that it holds a load of water, it heats up almost instantly and that the grinder is pretty good, but I hate that the tamper isn’t brilliant, that without a dosing funnel or cup, it is way too easy to spill grinds and that the grinding time isn’t dosing by weight, but by how long it takes to grind. So to be accurate and not lose grinds everywhere, you need a scale, you also need a dosing funnel or cup, if your machine isn’t next to the bin, a knock box, a better tamper. That all said, I love it.

This machine is great. When you first get into espresso it is difficult to pull a good shot or learn how the different variables of espresso work together to pull an amazing shot. The grinder on this espresso machine is great and with over 30 settings and the ability to change the burr on the inside machine to over 9 more settings makes it extremely customizable when dialing in a shot of espresso. This machine looks great and is easy to clean. I rec come to this over other espresso machines because the popularity of it. It is so easy to find accessories for it unlike other machines where you can only get it from the manufacturer. I 1000% recommend this machine for your at home espresso needs

This machine is great. There are so many customizable features to pull your perfect shot of espresso. The machine heats quickly and the steaming wand works great for making latte and cappuccino foam. It also comes with a number of tools to help create a home coffee shop experience. It doesn’t take up too much counter space and it looks beautiful with the stainless steel finish.

Great machine if you are a true espresso connoisseur and/or have barista experience! Makes a phenomenal cup truly tailored to your individual preferences as the appliance is quite customizable. This machine is designed for semi-pros who have a basic understanding of both grinding whole beans then the brewing process as their are settings that need to be configured respectively. That being said, anyone could learn how to use it but will have to do some research online about the basic concepts of coffee grinding and brewing along with some experimentation to get the proper settings (but this will vary coffee to coffee). I will say this has allowed my wife and I to no longer need to visit Starbucks and other such coffee shops as this really brings the coffee shop to home! This is not an intuitive machine to use in that if you have guests or kids (old enough to drink coffee of course), you will initially have to make their drink for them as it is too complicated for them to figure out on their own, unless they have experience with using a portafilter, grinding and brewing. BEWARE: This machine is semi-automatic! This is not a good or bad thing, just a fact and for your awareness. This is why the coffee is always consistently good but essentially, you need to understand the basic principles of coffee making (like on a Barista level - hence the name) before you use it (you can YouTube it for the most part). This is not a machine whereas you select the type of coffee you want and it instantly does all the work, there are various manual stages that require you to know what you are doing so do not buy it and return it because it was too hard to use or figure out! PROs: - Eliminates going to the coffee shop as it the same level of quality (if not better in some cases) surprisingly - Color touch screen along with software adds automation to take the legwork of making a particular type of coffee (for the most part) but again, there are still two (three if you want milk) distinctly manual stages you will need to perform - Truly makes a remarkable cup of "real coffee" types and allows you to create and save custom drinks too - The built in self cleaning options for the brewer, milk frothing and water descaling are neat and useful. They neglected the hopper cleaning process however (see below). - When water tray (drip till) gets full, you will see the water level EMPTY ME pop up slowly as it fills (manually) - When water is low, you will be notified CONs: - Expensive but good quality costs money and this would be of good example of you get what you pay for! - Machine could have been QA'ed better as far as on screen verbiage (see attached screenshots) - Hard to get a hold of their support and customer service is not great as far as follow-up (had to call vendor as they did not return tickets I submitted). Might be a training issue. - As previously pointed out, the water temperature could be hotter but its not a deal breaker as its still "entry level hot". One workaround that helps is to preheat mug or cup in advance. - Milk frothing was not designed well as far as self cleaning as it makes a mess. - Cleaning the underneath the hopper grinding component (after removing) it very hard! If all the small particles of beans are not removed, you will not be able to secure the grinder back in place. The only way to clean successfully I found is to use an air can, which as you can imagine is very messy. This is poor design in my opinion as consideration should have been taken to make cleaning much easier. - No way to remotely update firmware for typos or misinformation (see screenshot) so machine has to be sent to HQ Bottom line: Its a great machine overall, I just think my expectations were higher due to the cost. My standards are akin to the Bose and Apple standards whereas you almost always get consistently great customer service and product support. I think if they can work on that, this could be a 4, maybe 5 star product. If this was at a lower price point, my review would reflect accordingly and I wouldn't be as critical but in this category, I expect perfection or close to it.

I haven’t spent money on Starbucks or any coffee shop since I bought this last month. It’s easy to set up, use and clean. It’s a very good middle ground espresso machine I suppose as far as cost goes from the research I did. But I don’t think I’d get anything else more pricey. I also really like the grinder that’s built in- only complaint is the grounds make a mess, so I set a small bowl underneath it. The steamer works very well and is easy to use. This is our first espresso machine and we are pleased! Worth the money!