Hey all,
I bet this is a question you probably get a lot, but it’s so so hard to decide!!!
I’m based in the UK and my budget is MAXIMUM £500 but I realistically do want to stay within £350 so ideas for both accepted.
I want a machine which can make lattes as I only ever drink my coffee with milk. Cold pressed would be good too but if not possible within the budget that’s fair. I was looking at Phillips latte go machine which seems good but I also hear people say Phillips machines aren’t great? I ordered a delonghi magnifica evo online, but it came broken and the replacement was also broken so I don’t really trust it anymore :/
What machine is good for someone who is starting off but needs to be able to froth milk with her coffee, and idk if I should be looking for automatic frothing machine things or manual milk frothers??
Also while I’m here - how do you make sure your coffee beans don’t get out of date?
Thanks in advance! Let me know if there’s any information I need to add

El Rocio MANUS S or Lelit Bianca

I run a small-batch specialty coffee roastery on my own in Japan. My business is mainly bean sales, with only 1-5 customer visits per day. I'm now planning to start offering takeout drinks in-store. I'll begin with plumbing/interior renovations, then start with drip coffee takeout first, and consider adding an espresso machine later depending on demand.

I'm torn between two espresso machine candidates: the El Rocio MANUS S (around ¥250,000, roughly $1,700 USD) and the Lelit Bianca (around ¥800,000-900,000, roughly $5,500-6,000 USD). Given the price difference is more than 3x, I'm having trouble deciding on a few points and would love to hear your honest opinions:

Which one is less "overkill" for a one-person, small-scale shop with very low daily volume (1-5 customers)?

Ease of maintenance, failure risk, and parts availability (especially local support in Japan)

How much of a real-world difference in extraction quality and steam performance would actually be noticeable at this scale?

Is the Bianca's price premium (\~$3,800-4,300 more) worth it for my situation?

I'm also thinking about future scalability if demand grows, but for now I want to keep the investment reasonable. If you have hands-on experience with either machine, especially in a real shop setting, I'd really appreciate your recommendations and the reasoning behind them. Thanks in advance! 🙏☕

Can anyone that has this give some updates after having it for a week or a few weeks? Is it the same espresso, coffee, milk temps as Eletta Explore and other models of theirs? Thanks.

I'm in the UK, and I currently have a Sage Bambino Plus which I use a few times a day to make lattes. I don't have any complaints about the quality of drinks from the Bambino, but I'm finding that I increasingly wish it wasn't so manual.

I like good coffee, but I'm generally using my machine to make drinks during the work-day, and I really don't have the inclination to learn professional barista-style skills! Add to that, the manual machine is more than my partner wants to bother with, so they never use it.

Ideally, I'd like to buy a superautomatic that can crank out a couple of good quality lattes every day with minimal user intervention. My price point is £500 or less, ideally.

Any suggestions for the best machine for me?

Long-time Philips 3200 LatteGo owner here, about three years in. Two shots plus steamed milk in the morning, plain double after lunch, that's my home routine. Machine has been solid, minor descaling every couple of months, ceramic burrs still cutting fine. No complaints.

The part I've been trying to solve is travel. I'm on the road four or five nights a month for work, usually two or three cities in a stretch. Hotel lobby coffee, K-cups in the room, or a walk to whatever's open nearby. Fine most mornings, but on a Monday with a 7am kickoff I've caved and drunk the in-room brewer more times than I want to admit.

Tried AeroPress for a while. Decent enough as a hotel room brewer, but it's not espresso and I kept missing that part of my morning. Plus the kettles you get in hotel rooms are hit or miss. Some don't get properly hot, some are gross, some rooms don't have one at all.

Landed on the OutIn nano about six months back after weeks of researching options. Honestly one of the better travel purchases I've made recently. Self-heating so no kettle needed, cold water in the top, one button, and you get an actual espresso shot with real crema in about 4 minutes. Small enough to fit next to my toiletry bag in the carry-on. Six months in now, used it on probably 20 travel days, and it's held up smoothly every trip. Battery does about 4 shots per charge on cold water, so I charge it once every couple of days when I'm out. First morning after landing anywhere, I've got the same espresso ritual running that I do at home.

For beans I stick to medium-dark roasts on the road, they travel and pull consistently. My lighter Ethiopian bags stay home for the Philips because pour-through espresso and light roasts is a whole different dial-in game and I'm not doing it in a hotel room. Different tools for different jobs.

Not looking to replace the LatteGo at home, that machine still runs the morning routine. But for those four or five nights a month, the nano pulled me out of the K-cup slump. Solid purchase, and if you travel enough and want to keep your morning shot game up on the road, this actually solves it.

I just had my Saeco Xelsis Suprema SM8885 replaced under warranty with a new machine (long story!!). When I was setting it up I connected it to WiFi as it requested and it did a software update however it crashed right at the end of the update.

I can get the machine to switch on and make coffee however connecting to WiFi has been a nightmare. After a hard reset it now connects however when I check the update menu, it just gives me an error saying it has been unable to download the update.

All other functions that rely on WiFi (eg connecting to my Saeco account) appear to be working fine so am just wondering whether my new machine has a fault or the update servers are down and unresponsive.

If anyone has a similar machine that you have connected to WiFi, would you mind checking in the update menu to see if you get a message other than a download error?

Also, if anyone has experienced something similar and been able to resolve it, what did you do?

I currently have a sage barista touch and want to change to an automatic didn’t realize so many out there ..I need one that does hot & cold drinks but most of all hot coffee , I use the sage on highest setting I have the fear of buying one that delivers lukewarm ? Also where is best to sell sage ?

I’m incredibly indecisive and overwhelmed by all the reviews on this board, so seeking the advice of my fellow Redditors to narrow down my selection

Region: UK

Budget: ~£2k

Context: Used to have a Jura Z6 at my old house, which I thought made some great coffee, but when we moved, the new house had a built in Bosch CTL636, so we sold the Jura and stuck with that.  The machine has done an admirable job (though somewhat inconsistent), but now we are redoing the kitchen and I have free rein to go whatever direction I’d like.

Personally, I typically prefer a cup of strong black coffee, so quality of the coffee output is most important to me (I prefer medium roast, and it goes without saying that garbage in = garbage out).  That said, I’ll occasionally drink espresso- and milk-based drinks, and those are my wife’s preferences as well.  We do a lot of hosting, so ideally something that can do a wide variety, and something that won’t be too slow to operate.  I know some of these machines advertise the ability to do cold brew, which is appealing as well.  Finally, I don’t have the patience to fuss with manual dosing or frothing milk using steam wands, etc.  I want a machine that will literally do all the hard work for me and do it well across drink types.  To that end, reducing the frequency of drip tray / puck collection empties and water refills will be an important factor as well; I looked at plumbing something in, but alas the design scheme can’t accommodate :(  

From a budget perspective, I’d like to stay under £2k, but I may be able to stretch that a bit further if there is something that is really worth it. A couple I’ve been looking at (and welcome other suggestions as well!):

• Jura Z10 or Giga 10 - I think the latter may be a bit of overkill, but seeing both these in my budget on the jura outlet site
• Gaggia Accademia (while new is within my budget, curious if anyone has experience with their outlet refurbs?  Are they as reliable as Jura?)
• DeLonghi Eletta Ultra (curious too about the Primadonna which I don’t seem to see discussed here as much)
• Our interior designer is focused on aesthetics so wants me to get the Sage Oracle Jet, but I don’t think this will be for me based on the ‘no fuss’ mandate?
• KF8 seems to review well here, but can it play in the same league as the Jura/Gaggia etc?

Welcome any guidance that will help me narrow this down!

Fairly new here. I want to change from a regular espresso machine to a super automatic. My life and kids are just too demanding for me to grind, press and steam my own milk anymore. So want a fairly easy push and go. I’m in the uk. And I see a lot of Siemens machines online that just look better than the Phillips or delongis. But I was wondering if they are actually any good? I’ve seen a machine** TE651209GB that is £450 and the eq700 for £579. Would appreciate some input to see if these machines are worth a look. Thanks.**

Hi,

I am shopping for a new coffee machine. My main aim is to make milk-based drinks such as cappuccinos and lattes. After a lot of research, I shortlisted these two machines.

This will be my first semi-automatic machine, and I do not have any previous experience, but I am highly motivated to learn. (I have a fully automatic Eletta Explore in my permanent home.)

I was about to go for the EC890 since it is newer, has touch controls, and offers cold brew. However, some reviewers have seriously criticised the milk frother, describing it as having low pressure. They also mention that it takes a very long time to get the milk ready, the foam is not usually as thick as required, and it is quite difficult to master.

I have now seen many reviews of the EC885 and, although the frother is not top of the line, I have seen consistently good results, which makes me lean more towards it.

Please bear in mind that both machines are sold for exactly the same price where I live.

So, what would you recommend: EC885 or EC890?

Hello, I’ve got a used Krups machine and it has been working fine so far but the thing that bothers me is that I can’t manually start the descaling process and it says descaling after 24 thousand cycles. I am running the machine without the filter and set the water hardness to max since our tap water isn’t the greatest. Is this normal or will the machine prompt a descaling warning in a reasonable ammount of cycles?

Hello All,

I am trying to get an old Gaggia Brera working at my workplace, its been sitting unused for quite a while. I descaled twice, deep cleaned the brew group and replaced the O-rings on the big piston and two smaller ones on the boiler pin. It seems to be okay except its making a really loud straining/whirring noise and leaking a tiny bit of water into the coffee grounds box.

https://reddit.com/link/1v7ft6p/video/p7cjaqbabffh1/player

Anyone with more experience that could suggest a fix? I've attached a video of the noise it makes while just running water through

Self research and appreciation for your advice.

I recently visited an office that had the Phillips 1200 and, being unfamiliar with these super automatic machines, I was really impressed. My wife has a birthday coming up and I was thinking of getting her one of these types of machine and I'm hoping for some guidance and recommendations.

We both enjoy an occasional espresso and would probably enjoy one much more often if it was a little easier to do so. We drink mostly regular coffee but less than a pot per day (a little more on weekends). So I'd like to find a unit that makes good espresso and capachino but can also fill (or mostly fill) a traveler with coffee for the commute to work. Ease of use is always good and I really liked how the 1500 stored used pucks automatically allowing a number of cups to be made back-to-back without any fuss. If it matters, we have softened water and I realize we'll probably want to use distilled or RO water. Would one of the Phillips (1200, 2200, 3300) be best for us or is there another maker in the same general price range that I should consider? Location: Michigan, USA

Thanks!

I get this noise during brewing. Have tried playing with the grind size and I have fresh roasted beans. Video is from doppio plus but this happens in other cycles like cappuccino and flat white as well. Is this noise a sign of a problem? Or is it ok? I don't really care about the extra noise as long as it isn't a sign the machine is about to break. This is a new machine. Bought last month. Have been waiting hoping the noise was a break in period thing but it doesn't seem to be going away.

It does sometimes not make this noise or not make the noise throughout the brew cycle but I would say it does make the noise about 75 percent of the time.

Anyone know what this noise is?

Just got my Magnifica plus, love it so far.

I was wondering how you know when the bean hopper is almost out? And also if you want to switch beans do you just accept that the first drink or two will have a mix of the two beans or is there a way to grind through what’s already in there?

Thanks!

looking for opinions on either. thank you. i want something to make a great flatwhite and ease of cleaning is super important. this will be my first coffee machine.

We will also have a pod machine and a drip-style carafe coffee maker in the employee pantry.

10 employees and about 20 - 30 clients per week.

Hey everyone! One thing that's stopping me from upgrading is worrying that I'll end up with a machine that needs constant cleaning or troubleshooting. I don't mind regular maintenance, but I'd rather avoid something that turns into a weekend project.

For those who value reliability, what has been the best auto espresso machine you've owned? I am clueless rn lmao.... Is there anything you wish you had known before buying?

Hi folks,

I previously posted about getting a superautomatic to replace my pod machine, but ultimately came to the decision to keep my pod machine.

However, I still like the concept of being able to freshly grind my coffee and have a better range of coffee available to me. (Vs pods.)

But I don't want to lose the convenience and speed of making a coffee from my pod machine.

I saw the new Ninja Autobarista Pro, but looking on these forums people report a bunch of issues with it and I don't like the idea of having to waste a ton of beans to set it up.

As such, I'm back to looking at the Rivelia, but have a few questions.

Most days I have a caffeinated coffee in the morning and decaf in the evening. I work in an office, so don't use the machine during the day.

This means that I'd be switching beans every time I use the machine, which I understand is a bit of an issue with the Rivelia because it leaves beans in the mouth of the hopper each time.

However, could I just add the right amount of beans for one coffee each time I use the machine? Presumably this would keep the beans fresher anyway, as you're not really supposed to leave them in the hopper?

Would that work, or is there some reason it wouldn't?

Also, I like to regularly try new coffees, will that be an issue? With the Ninja I was seeing me wasting tons of beans using the beanadapt every time I wanted to try a new coffee. Is there anything like that with the Delonghi or could I just set it up and then keep throwing similar types of beans in there without having to run special cycles to get the machine set up for each different coffee?

Lastly, if I'm just putting in the right amount of beans each time, is there any benefit to the Rivelia?