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Proper coffee machine
Published by Matt Polaine | Filed under Cottage, Matthew's wishlist
I love my coffee. Yes it is my Achilles’ heel, and I would drink far too much coffee if I had access to really decent coffee. I used to at work when on site, but even then, they couldn’t quite get the taste right with £7,000 of Brasilia. I think the beans were on the cheap.
Anyway, my brother kindly bought me an expresso machine quite a few years ago, which has been great, but it has one boiler, and provides just two small shots. You need to reheat the water to create steam for the steamed milk. It also uses only ground coffee, and makes quite a mess. Because of this, it is only brought out for special occassions, as Naisha doesn’t like it cluttering up the worktop (unlike her bags, drawers of filing, mineral water bottles etc.). Sadly the seal on the coffee grounds holder is quite worn, and someone broke the original coffee jug that went underneath.
Having seen my brother’s Delonghi EAM3200S and tasted the beans-to-cup quality, I am sold on upgrading to one of these entry level beans-to-cup machines that have enough quality to cope with regular domestic use. In my quick research of what is available, and the numerous reviews out there, I think I’d go for the Magimix Robot Cafe (not the slightly smaller R500).
But let’s face it, with all the others costs I have flying out the bank account, £350 worth of coffee machine just isn’t going to fly within the domestic accounts department. So here is another dream…
Meanwhile, I’ll just pop into Sainsbury’s Cafe every now and then for a bitter cappuccino at £1.80 a throw.
I compared:
- Magimix Robot Cafe - £350
- Delonghi EAM3200S - £380
- Saeco Odea Giro Plus coffee maker - £360
November 23rd, 2007 at 1:38 pm
After reading even more reviews, the Magimix seems to still be out on top. I also came across some interesting comments:
“I must admit I felt a little sick at spending such a vast amount of money on a coffee machine, but the results have been amazing. The machine has a very though cleaning process every time you start it up. Initally I thought this was annoying but quality of the coffee is superb - as close to Costa and Starbucks as you’d want to get £340/£2.00 = 170 cups of coffee and you’ve paid for it ~ish. The frother is awesome and very quick. - This also is not always a good thing as I have to make frothy hot chocolate 3+ times a day now for the whole family”.
November 23rd, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Another comment:
“The only real down side is that although you can make the coffee and steam the milk really quickly (latte in well under a minute), you then have to spend almost as long cleaning the thing afterwards, especially the milk which seems to have gone everywhere… This is mainly because the frothing nozzle is far too short. You also have to buy the cleaning tablets separately (£9 every 350 cups) which is a bit cheeky given the price of the machine in the first place”.
November 23rd, 2007 at 1:42 pm
Another comment:
“My Magimix is indispensible and it gets heavy duty use in the house. Excellent mugs of coffee every time. Better than Starbucks by miles. The way the machine runs, you’re convinced it must break down but I’ve had few problems and I really use it a lot. I had a problem initially with it clogging up, but called the helpdesk and they talked me through the problem - basically coffee grounds clog the thing up, but simply reaching under and behind the coffee nozzles with your fingers and clearing away the grounds fixes the problem. This is obviously common as the helpdesk spotted it straight away. This isn’t in the manual, so potentially users could get really put off by this and give up as the cleaning cycle doesn’t fix it. Brilliant piece of kit, but be patient with it and it’ll work”.
November 23rd, 2007 at 1:45 pm
Roughly 1 in 20 reviews rated reliability as poor for the Magimix, but no-one rated the design or coffee as anything but 5 stars. Those who rated reliability as poor seem to have a machine built in 2004/5 and were expecting a fit and forget appliance like a washing machine. No coffee machine is like that!