Espresso Machines

This compact, well-made machine consistently produced excellent espresso at the push of a button and readily let us adjust the flavor, temperature, and strength of a shot. The thoughtfully designed controls and a clear display that showed what was happening made it simple to brew espresso or froth milk without consulting the manual. A simple attached steam wand with a silicone grip was comfortable to use and popped off for cleaning.

This handsome machine is perfect if you want the convenience of built-in grinding and automatic weighing of coffee, as well as push-button brewing, but you don’t mind some hands-on work. You must learn to tamp properly and move the portafilter of grounds from the grinder to the brewing position. A simple gauge provides excellent feedback, quickly teaching you to dial in the best grind setting and tamping pressure (Pro tip: Tamp on a scale, aiming for 30 pounds of pressure). This process soon became intuitive and easy. We loved that the machine came with everything you need—tamper, milk frothing jug, and portafilters for single and double espresso—and had a hidden drawer to store it all.

If you want total push-button convenience, this Nespresso machine, created in conjunction with DeLonghi, produces espresso with impressively thick crema in seconds from a pod. Some tasters found the espresso a bit weak and thin in body, but we appreciated this machine’s extremely simple, neat operation and its automatic frothed-milk dispensing. One thing we don’t love: You can store the milk carafe in the fridge overnight, but after use on the second day, you must disassemble and clean its six small, fussy parts in the dishwasher or by soaking them for 30 minutes in hot, soapy water. Another quibble: Nespresso pods are available only online or at its namesake boutiques.

This compact machine’s display was moderately easy to interpret, and it was an early favorite as it produced good shots from the get-go. But as testing continued, occasionally some beans failed to drop into the grinder, ruining the shot. Its milk frother was a standard steam wand that made good froth, but it was a bit stumpy. We disliked that we needed a lot of side clearance to pull out the deep bin for collecting used pucks of grounds.

This minimalistic machine looked sleek, but we’d prefer a display that was easier to use. The automatic froth dispenser is pretty handy, but it works with a thin, clear plastic tube that you plug into the machine while inserting the other end into any vessel containing milk; we fear we’d soon lose the minuscule cap that you remove to plug it in, not to mention the unmarked tube. When it worked, this machine made excellent espresso, but all too often “fill beans” would flash on the screen—even when the hopper was freshly filled. Also, we had to push down on the beans in the hopper with our fingers to brew a shot. We switched to medium-roast beans with a very dry surface without a trace of oil, and they slid down from the hopper onto the grinder without jamming, but we dislike being limited to one type of roast in this pricey machine.

With a cryptic display screen brimming with tiny symbols, this machine sent us running to the manual constantly, but the book was often just as confusing. When this machine worked, its shots were quite good and its froth was excellent. But its flaw was that beans too often failed to drop from the hopper onto its grinder unless we physically pushed down on them while it was grinding. When we switched to medium-roast beans with a dry surface, we were happy to discover that we didn’t have to push the beans down into the grinder, but being limited to one type of roast is frustrating.