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Something nice for me to ask for a change. Wife said she would buy me a new best friend. Current Gaggia Titanium is dead'ish. What would you buy? Any recommendations to buy or steer clear
De Longhi Magnifica for reliability - I bought mine in 2014, still going strong. Minimal maintenance but it's worth putting some silicone grease on the piston in the infuser once every few years - that's one of the few places where they can have a problem.
Perfectly acceptable coffee, probably not the best in the world but it's also one of the cheapest machines.
Magnifica is. Group of products.
I had a magnifica s. It did passable coffee.
After 4 years it started playing up. I had it serviced. It came back worse. I returned it. It worked for about 6 months and then the original failure came back.
I replaced it with a Jura E8 for 899 and did not look back. Bean for bean the coffee is night and day against the magnifica s
My old man got a magnifica s+ about the same time and it suffered a similar fate. He went the other way and replaced it with an Albert hinje special and he is happy.....but he drank Nescafé for 40 years so I'll reserve judgement.
For the 300 quid the magificas cost.... You can't knock them but having seen the insides in detail. It's understandable why they breakdown once the plastic goes brittle in hestcycles your just chasing the failure round the machine.
I've got a Magnifica S, it had a (rather ridiculous IMO) RRP of around a grand, I got it for around £300 on Delonghi's ebay refurb site. It had just one tiny scratch on it.
I can't remember the exact number from the stats page but I've made a few thousand shots with it, no reliability issues so far. It is rather plasticy inside so I've no doubt I'll hit the same things as trail_rat eventually but so far it's been decent.
The coffee it makes is fine. Not as good as when I had a separate grinder etc, but it's about 1/20th of the effort.
To answer the OP's direct question, i.e. the best machine: Jura. If you want cheapest, or best compromise, that's a different question.
dafydd17
To answer the OP’s direct question, i.e. the best machine: Jura. If you want cheapest, or best compromise, that’s a different question.
Best value for money he said 🙂
I have a Melitta Avanza 600. Think it was around £350 in the sales and I'm pretty pleased with it
Ninja ES601UK if you can find it. Just for context, i've had Jura E8, 2 x Melitta Purista and a Delonghi Magnifica. The Ninja, which turned up last week is awesome - the taste from my coffee beans is completely differnt compared to the others ive had (in a good way). plus the auto milk thing is brilliant.
It's not a true bean to cup, it;s a "Semi", but it takes all of about 10 seconds longer to make what you want than a full auto machine and ou get to feel slightly like a barrista. Ninja have pulled a blinder! ask Coffee Kev.!
The Ninja sounds good, if you don't mind using a portafilter. Interestingly, in France they're selling an ES501 model, which seems to not have the cold brew option, which I wouldn't want, and it's 100 euros cheaper than the ES601. Very tempting, but if I buy another machine it will end in divorce...
Why bean to cup?
IME If you get a separate grinder then if something breaks you only replace that part of it. You also have greater control which should lead to better coffee.
Our grinder has lasted years, never missing a beat but our £1k sage dual boiler had a series of problems before dying. There are also no repairers with solid reps that we could find.
We eventually bought a Bambino Plus and it’s much cheaper and tech has moved on so now it’s better than a dual boiler and coms with a 2 year warranty so we’ll see how it goes.
I’ve had a delonghi Magnifica S for almost 4 years now. Makes a nice enough coffee for me. Done an average of probably 5 a day in that time which is somewhere around 7k cups total. For the £350 ish that it cost, seems pretty good value to me.
We have an early De Longhi Magnifica....possibly c 2013/14. It has worked perfectly since new and made perhaps 8 cups a day since then. Regular cleaning of the innards and it just kjeeps going. Daughter has a Sage something or other. With identical coffee beans, I'm not good enough to suss any difference between the two machines coffee making ability.