Coffee Machine Reviews Blog

Review by R. E. Kraus:

2/15/07 – Received coffee maker with minor outside box damage but eveything seemed intact. Made several pots of very good coffee and espresso but after 4 days the main switch and digital readout went crazy and the water heating element for the coffee side refused to turn off. I had to unplug the unit fearing a fire. I am returning the unit to Delonghi. I will review the new unit after I have had it for a while.

4/2/07 – I recieved the new unit in good condition and set it up with some trepidation (see earlier review). All the functions work fine and the coffee/espresso maker has been chugging along fine. It has made more than 50 pots of very good coffe and about 30 pots of espresso that even my Cuban colleagues enjoy. Based on my experience with the new unit so far, I would increase my rating to 4 stars, however Amazon will only allow one review per person.

7/15/08 When I first started using this product, I must admit that I was impressed. It packed a lot of funtionality in a reasonably priced product. I have now had this machine a little over a year and I can no longer use the coffee side of the machine because it leaks water all over my counter. Since it was out of warranty, I disassembled the machine to find out what was leaking. There was a fitting at the top of the machine where the water was pumped from the reservoir to the sprayer. I could not take that fitting apart because all of the screws were rusted completely. They just fell apart when I tried to unscrew them. I would think that a company such as this could afford to spend a few extra cents per machine to put in stainless steel screws! Is this another example of planned obsolescence? Based on this experience, I would downgrade my rating to one star.

12/18/09 Well now a little over a year after the coffee side went belly up, the expresso side has now bitten the dust as well. Into the trash bin it goes. Wow! for 0 you would think you should get more than two years use out of a coffee machine. DeLonghi… Never again!!! Definately downgraded to one star, if that.

Review by unknownsomethingelsedifferent:

I loved this coffee maker for the first 11 months…then it broke (leaks water EVERYWHERE). Delonghi customer service is awful! This item was a gift, and they are refusing to repair the item and they require me to ship it to them at my cost — not reimbursed. This is one of the most frustrsting consumer experiences that I have ever dealt with, and the Delonghi reps whom I have spoken with have complete disregard for the situation. It is sad because this has the potential to be a great product, but it is not backed-up by the manufacturer who is making repair or replacement impossible. Buyer beware…

Review by Jessica Capuozzo:

I received this machine as a christmas gift, I like having the option to make expresso/cappacino but it just didn’t work well from the start. It leaked water from the bottom and now it has just stopped working. This is my second Delonghi that stopped working after about 8 months of ownership.

Review by JanFla:

I purchased this item April 27th – the espresso portion never worked right – the temperature of the espresso was lukewarm at best. The coffee maker worked fine until about a week ago. Now the coffee maker has stopped working completely after less than 90 days!

Review by J. A. Eastman:

I got a sample of this product in my new Hamilton Beach Brew Station. The first time I used it, I could not believe how great it is.

Things I like:

Dissolve in 4 cups of water, pour in coffeemaker. Dissolves easily.

Run through the coffeemaker, then wipe and rinse parts. I said “wipe”, not “scrub”! First one I ever used that I could do that. I was very impressed.

Two subsequent run throughs with clear water. The cleaner is tinted with a blue color, so that you can see if you have got it all rinsed out.

Then you are done. That’s it. No more muss, fuss, or mess.

It does say to use it once a week. I find once a month is plenty for us, but that would depend on coffeemaker usage. Fabulous product.

Review by E. Kaufman:

It works just like promised. Illy recommends this product for their coffee machines, which is why I bought it. It is pretty easy to use. Just follow directions. Note the proportions, though. My coffee maker’s water reserve needed only one half of the packet.

Review by R. E. Easton:

I picked this product up at a local store for mid ’s after getting sick of making my coffee with a stove top espresso machine. I couldn’t see spending 0+ for something conceptually as simple as an espresso machine. I know someone who got a simple Krupps machine for about years ago and it still works just great. But since I couldn’t find anything else in the sub range, I settled on this one.

It makes a fine cup of coffee if you just want to use prepackaged coffee grinds or you use a basic coarse to medium grind. BUT, when I tried to use a very fine grained “espresso” grind on my beans, almost nothing came out. It seems that too fine a grind stops up the filter holes and the machine just doesn’t have the oomph to force the water/steam through.

Also, it does suffer from

- a very difficult to turn knob (don’t get this product if you have arthritis)

- a caraf lid that won’t stay on let alone stay properly oriented

So basically, it’s good for making a medium to fairly strong cup of coffee (by my subjective measure), but if you really want something strong and sludgy, this machine won’t do the trick unless you want to wait for an hour for it to eventually push enough liquid through.

I guess now I understand why espresso machines aren’t cheap. Years of using a really simple stovetop espresso maker led me to believe that they’re really simple machines. But perhaps when you try to package it up as an appliance it isn’t so straight forward.

Review by kermit rohrbach:

I have read so many negative reviews of this wonderful little moka machine, I must put in my 2 cents. First, this is a stream machine, meaning it makes moka not espresso. If you like Bialetti but want cappuccino instead of cafe latte, then this is perfect. The grind must be close to espresso, finer than for Bialetti, and you must tamp it down, but no tamper included. There is only 1 knob, yes it is stiff, but i don’t have arthritis. The round design makes it easy to handle even though it is very light. It descales with…vinegar! How about that, actually a traditional machine. The panarello works, just put in extra “cup” of water for steaming. Make 2 “cups”, not 1 or 4, and always start with cold machine, or use very, very cold water. Stop the brewing as soon as moka hits 2 “cups” or it starts to steam instead of brew, then switch the knob to steam for the milk. If you don’t, coffee will taste slightly burned. I have owned espresso and moka machines from USD5 to USD1,000 over a period of 40 years. If you like moka, don’t waste money on anything more expensive. But, like any machine, read the manual, and experiment if things don’t work the way you want. Finally, garbage in garbage out. If you want great cappuccino, use good organic coffee and organic milk.

Review by Bill Rhodes:

About a year ago I wanted an espresso machine that was easy to use, however I was unwilling to pay 1k or more for a fully automatic machine. The Capresso turned out to be an excellent value, providing ease of use with semi-automatic ground disposal and a reasonably sized water container.In fact, we have experienced only two problems with the Capresso since we bought it: a torn o-ring and clogging. The o-ring tore because I did not clean the rotation mechanism for several months. The accumulated grounds eventually tore into the o-ring, breaking the pressure seal. However, when I called the Capresso help line to discuss our broken o-ring, the help desk agent immediately sent us two replacements in the mail with no questions asked. Total down time for the machine was a mere two days. The clogging was fixed with a complete cleaning, and if truth be told, it did say in the instruction booklet not to use very finely ground coffee.Our last espresso machine, besides breaking after two years, was so difficult to use and clean we only made espresso on special occasions. The Capresso is convenient enough that we use it all the time. In fact, we have used our Mr. Coffee only twice (note the broken o-ring comment above) since we bought the Capresso.After a year of use, I can still strongly recommend this product.

Review by :

I bought this machine after looking around for the perfect one for quite some time. This Espressomaker is unique because of a clever semiautomatic mechanism that doesn’t require the usual, messy tampering and cleaning innate to traditional machines. This device comes at a fraction of the cost of the fully automated ones, but is almost as easy to use. The only little flaw I noted is that the frother will spill a relatively large amount of water (5cc or so) during the first couple of seconds before the full steam gets going. Usually no big deal, but if you froth a small amount of milk, you may want to “catch” these first cc’s first. Otherwise, this machine is perfect. The pump is very strong 18bar, I think) and the crema is excellent. Baseline: If you want a traditional machine, go for a Gaggia or something similar; if you are a (lazy) millionaire, consider one of the fully automated machines (00-2000). Otherwise, there is currently no alternative to the “Ultima”.

Review by J. Smith:

I love espresso, and this little baby makes a great cup. Here are a few points that might be useful for you to know:

Good points:

*It doesn’t take up too much room on the counter and looks nice with it’s silver metal accents.

*The water reservoir is a good size, you can make about 8-10 shots before you need to refill it, which is very easy to do, and there is a clear section behind the basket which shows the water level.

*Fast heat-up time (only about a minute), good frothing wand, no wait time between frothing and brewing (though you do have to wait a little between brewing and frothing).

Be warned:

*Frothing wand is only 3 1/4 inches from the counter top. Not a big deal, I just went and bought a frothing cup that is about that height.

*Distance from grounds basket to tray is only 2 1/2 inches, I usually use a small espresso cup.

*Built-in tamper sucks, buy a good metal one.

*You don’t end up with a nice dry puck, the grounds basket is a watery soup after your espresso is made, so I dump it down the disposal.

*You will end up drinking more espresso than you mean to, it’s that good!

Seriously, I chose this machine after a lot of online researching, and decided on this one based on its outstanding reviews and great price. What led me to it were the reviews of another DeLonghi, the EC140B, which is an older and less attractive model, but had reviews from people who had owned theirs for 6 and 10 years! I’m hoping that this one will have the same longevity.

—–> UPDATE: I’ve now had this machine for 8 months and it started running very slow. I’d been using only distilled water, so I knew it wasn’t a calcification issue, so I looked into it and it turns out machines like this one (no backflushing) need to be cleaned every month or so to remove built up grounds that work their way inside the machine. So I ran some cleaner through it and all this nasty brownish liquid came out, and now it runs great again! So remember people, take good care of your things and they will take good care of you. A lesson I am still learning…

- and to answer a question commented on this review, my tamper is 2 inches in diameter.

Review by OhioGardener:

First, a couple of disclaimers:

1. This is the first pump-driven espresso machine that we have owned.

2. We generally drink cafe Americano, which is an espresso with a little added hot water (or cold water with an iced Americano). We make an occasional cappuccino and have thus used the steam wand, but not extensively.

After doing a cost/benefit analysis in regards to our current cafe Americano habit (~10 per week), we realized that there would be some justification to buying a home unit. We first considered the Breville ESP8XL Cafe Roma Stainless Espresso Maker, but reviewers consistently lamented the unit’s tendency to clog the filter, necessitating time-consuming cleaning. Also, not being completely sure that we would actually use the espresso maker, we balked at the 0 price tag.

We also considered moving up to one of the superautomatico machines that grind, tamp, brew and dispose of the grinds, but we worried about the reliability of technology that had only recently hit the consumer-grade appliances. After reading zillions of reviews, we realized that every mid-priced machine had some glaring flaw and, in the end, we decided to buy an inexpensive pump-driven unit and wait for the technology to catch up before investing a huge chunk of change in an espresso machine. Moving our investigation to low-end espresso makers, we were impressed by the reviews of the DeLonghi EC155 and purchased it from Amazon.

I put off writing a review in order to make sure that the DeLonghi was going to last until we had at least broken even on it. We received it in mid-July and since then it has produced about 200 double shots flawlessly. By my reckoning, that’s about 0 worth of Americanos at the local cafe. Even considering the price of the coffee, we have more than broken even. So, here’s our pros and cons:

PROs

- Price–we paid .28.

- Crema Production–this unit consistently produces a thick layer of delicious crema.

- Powerful Stream Wand–Easily froths milk.

- Mechanicals–After six months of nearly daily use this mighty-mite works as well as it did the day it arrived.

- Easy Cleanup–Filter cleans easily.

CONs

- Ergonomics–As other reviewers have noted, there could be a little more room between the area where the cup sits and the output nozzle. Also the steam wand could be longer.

- Features–No cup warmer. Not a big deal to us, especially considering the price of the EC155, but it will put off some buyers.

SOME THINGS WE HAVE LEARNED

- Using a coffee especially made for espresso, such as Lavazza, produces a much better espresso. Lavazza has the added benefit of allowing you to go for hours without blinking.

- Preheating the unit for 15 minutes and warming the cups in the microwave improves the results and experience.

Review by S. Jacobsen:

Maybe these pods aren’t compatible with my otherwise ESE compatible machine, a Francic-Francis, but these pods make a watery espresso. If you like your espresso very long and diluted, these pods might be good for you. They don’t seem to be packed tight enough. Same goes for Lavazzo ESE pods, btw. Only Illy’s are really tight and work well with my machine. I believe the quality of this coffee is rather high, though, so I intend to try some whole beans.

Very expensive also.

Review by Joanie:

This is a serious espresso. 100% Pure Espresso Roast Kona coffee that produces the finest espresso you will ever have.

It’s extremely smoooooth and rich and not even a hint of bitterness. If you’re looking for the best cup of espresso you just found it!!!!