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By Justin Vassallo and Ciara Murray Jordan precision coffee grinder
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After a new round of testing, the Profitec Go is now our top pick, and the Breville Oracle Jet is our upgrade pick. We still recommend the Gaggia Classic Evo Pro and the Breville Barista Touch.
Making café-quality espresso drinks at home is no longer reserved for coffee hobbyists and former baristas. New home espresso machines have made it easier than ever for a beginner to get started. With just a little practice, you can have lattes and cortados that rival those from an upscale café—all without changing out of your pajamas.
After testing dozens of machines, we think the Profitec Go is the best option for new and skilled enthusiasts alike. It’s powerful and easy to use, and it’s capable of yielding consistent, rich shots with robust flavor profiles.
The Profitec Go can pull deep, flavorful, and consistent shots, combining the capability of higher-priced machines with a basic interface. It’s simple for beginners to learn but has a build and power that will appeal to home espresso pros.
Sleek and powerful, with great programming and a solid built-in grinder, the Barista Touch lets beginners make a variety of café-quality espresso drinks at home with very little learning curve.
This affordable machine can yield surprisingly complex shots, though you’ll need to buy a separate tamper to get there. Frothing milk can be a bit tricky, but microfoam is manageable.
The Breville Oracle Jet grinds, doses, tamps, and froths your milk for you, and it guides you through the entire espresso-making process.
The Profitec Go can pull deep, flavorful, and consistent shots, combining the capability of higher-priced machines with a basic interface. It’s simple for beginners to learn but has a build and power that will appeal to home espresso pros.
The Profitec Go is a heavy, sleek, and impressive machine. It pulls shots with a full range of flavor and depth, and it can be dialed in to highlight particular characteristics of your beans. It’s straightforward, with a basic (though attractive) design, a comfortable portafilter that locks into the group head easily, and a steam wand that can be angled to a wide range of heights and directions.
The steam wand is not especially powerful, but it takes only a little practice before you’re making beautiful, silky foam. This is a great machine for anyone seriously interested in the espresso-making process, but it’ll serve a novice well, too.
Sleek and powerful, with great programming and a solid built-in grinder, the Barista Touch lets beginners make a variety of café-quality espresso drinks at home with very little learning curve.
The Breville Barista Touch is great for beginners, as it offers lots of guidance in the form of a touchscreen control center with step-by-step tutorials and multiple programs. It also includes advanced controls and allows for manual operation, for more-experienced users and people who want to get creative.
It has a good built-in grinder, as well as an adjustable auto-froth setting for milk that lets you control the amount of foam created. It’s a great choice for those who want to dive right in and start making decent drinks without too much practice, but still want the option of a more hands-on espresso experience.
This affordable machine can yield surprisingly complex shots, though you’ll need to buy a separate tamper to get there. Frothing milk can be a bit tricky, but microfoam is manageable.
The Gaggia Classic Evo Pro is the updated version of the Gaggia Classic, which has been a popular entry-level machine for decades thanks to its simple, approachable design and ability to produce barista-worthy espresso shots. While the Classic Evo Pro has a somewhat improved steam wand compared with the Classic’s, it’s still on the weaker side. It’s capable of creating milk froth with a velvety texture, but it takes time and practice.
The Pro isn’t quite as easy for beginners to master as our Breville picks, but it was able to produce shots with greater nuance. If you have a taste for high-quality espresso but little budget to spare, the Gaggia will serve you well. However, we strongly recommend buying a quality tamper to replace the flimsy plastic one that comes with the machine.
The Breville Oracle Jet grinds, doses, tamps, and froths your milk for you, and it guides you through the entire espresso-making process.
The Breville Oracle Jet does most of the work for you—but unlike super-automatic machines, it also teaches you to be a better barista, walking you through the steps and even detecting the small changes required to dial in a good shot.
Like the Barista Touch, it has a touchscreen control center that takes you step by step through the process, as well as multiple drink programs to choose from. But it has a better built-in grinder, an automatic tamper, and an updated automated milk wand with non-dairy milk-frothing options. Even a houseguest could easily walk up, use this machine, and end up with a pretty great drink.
Ciara Murray Jordan is an associate staff writer covering kitchen gear at Wirecutter. She’s tested Nespresso machines and milk frothers, and after tasting dozens of espressos and lattes from a range of coffee machines, she’s very familiar with the quality you should expect from each. In preparation for this guide, she took a barista class at Coffee Project NY, as well as a coffee sensory evaluation course.
Writer Justin Vasallo, who worked on previous versions of this guide, is a former lead barista with 10 years of experience in high-volume coffee shops in New York City and Boston.
An espresso machine is no small commitment, even for the coffee-obsessed. But it’s an investment that quickly proves its worth.
If you’re a dedicated espresso drinker and want to drink the real deal at home, an espresso machine is your best bet. Not only is it the only way to make true espresso—it’s also one of the quickest ways to get a cup of good coffee in the morning. Most of our picks heat up in the time it takes a kettle to boil, and though dosing and tamping require a modicum of effort, it still takes only a minute or two between grinding your beans and sitting down with a hot, crema-topped espresso.
We prioritized machines that can deliver delicious espresso shots without too much tinkering. Most novices could walk up to one of our picks and find their way around, but we think more serious espresso drinkers would be happy with our picks, too.
For those who love café-style drinks like lattes, cappuccinos, or cortados, an espresso machine with a good steam wand allows you to recreate your favorite milky beverages from the comfort of your kitchen.
In time you’ll be able to tailor these drinks to your liking, by using a particular blend of beans, adjusting brewing factors to bring out certain flavors in your shot, and steaming your milk to get the exact texture you want. But if any of this sounds intimidating, our upgrade pick is designed to hold your hand through the espresso-making process and deliver standout drinks with the push of a button.
Home espresso machines can range from cheap and toy-like to hulking machines costing thousands. Since 2016, we’ve tested models costing anywhere from $300 to $2000 trying to find that sweet spot: machines that both novices and coffee obsessives could enjoy using, and that offer the best value—in build, features, and great-tasting coffee.
At a baseline level, an espresso machine works by forcing hot water through finely ground coffee beans with pressure. Good ones heat the water to just the right temperature (about 195 to 205 degrees Fahrenheit) and apply consistent pressure so that water flows through the grounds evenly, for a well-balanced extraction. Great ones are designed to ease transitions between various steps, and some offer luxe features to help the process.
We used the following criteria to narrow down the machines we considered testing, and to make our picks:
Semi-automatic: We only tested semi-automatic machines, which use a pump to create the right amount of pressure when pulling a shot. These machines keep pressure and temperature consistent but still allow you to adjust your grind size and coffee-to-water ratio, and froth your own milk; it’s a balance most skilled baristas prefer.
Manual espresso machines, on the other hand, require you to create your own pressure by pulling on a lever. The amount of pressure can be hard to control, leading to over- or under-extracted shots. Super-automatic machines, like those made by Jura, do everything for you: measure and grind the beans, pull the shot, and froth the milk. But they don’t offer much room for experimentation, and they’re often quite pricey.
Single-boiler machines: We considered only single-boiler models, which use the same boiler to heat the water for both the espresso shot and the steam wand. On most models, this can mean pulling a shot, then waiting a few minutes for your machine to heat back up so you can use the steam wand. But the technology has advanced enough that on most of our picks, there’s almost no wait between steps.
Dual-boiler models allow you to pull the shot and steam milk simultaneously, but they’re more expensive, and most home baristas won’t need that option, since it entails multitasking that’s usually necessary only in a café setting.
Fast and consistent water heater: A speedy heater provides a fun, easy rhythm to what promises to be a daily ritual. To go a step further, some machines have PID (proportional integral derivative) controllers, which help regulate the boiler temperature, allowing for more consistent shots back to back.
The Breville models we recommend also have ThermoJet heaters, so the machines heat up and transition between pulling a shot and steaming milk surprisingly quickly; some drink preparations took barely over a minute from start to finish.
Powerful pump and steam wand: An espresso machine’s pump should be strong enough to properly extract espresso from a well-packed dose of finely ground coffee. And the steam wand should be powerful enough to produce a velvety milk foam free of any big bubbles.
A solid tamper: Tamping is a key component of the espresso-making process. Coffee needs to be evenly distributed and compacted in order to properly extract a shot of espresso.
Water will always find the path of least resistance, so if there’s a weak point in your espresso puck, water will flow through it rather than flowing through the entire puck. This is called “channeling,” and it causes unbalanced flavor profiles in your shot.
A good tamper should cover the width of the filter basket and its handle should be comfortable to hold and easy to keep level. A heavy base aids in exerting even pressure onto the puck, preventing any weak points.
Beginner-friendly milk frothing: Machines that offer (effective) automatic milk frothing can be great for beginners who are still learning to steam milk—or anyone who doesn’t want to hold and angle a steam pitcher first thing in the morning. However, the exact nuances that distinguish good microfoam from excellent microfoam are ultimately better achieved manually. (There are great online video tutorials for that.) So although both of our Breville picks offer good automatic-frothing programs, we didn’t consider it a flaw that our other picks do not.
Manual and programmable brewing options: Many machines come with programmed settings, but beans can vary so much that we find you’ll get much better-tasting shots by starting and stopping your extraction manually (alongside some tweaking of your grind, dosing, and tamping). But once you’ve dialed in your favorite espresso, it’s nice to be able to save your shot volume and/or timing, to streamline your routine and keep it consistent.
In our latest round of testing, we pulled and tasted dozens of shots while dialing in on each machine, using the Baratza Sette 270 and Ninth Street Espresso’s Alphabet City blend (in previous testing, we used Blue Bottle’s Hayes Valley and Café Grumpy’s Heartbreaker). We then pulled shots using the same blend, but pre-ground with a commercial grinder, to see how each machine fared with the same puck.
We used the built-in grinders on the Breville machines that had them, and used a Kruve coffee sifter to compare the grounds produced by these grinders to those from our Sette 270.
We timed how long each machine took to heat up from first powering on, and timed the transition from extraction to milk steaming. We steamed whole milk with both manual and automatic settings, and used oat and almond milk when testing the non-dairy settings on the Brevilles. We looked for machines that produced silky froth with barely visible bubbles. What we heard mattered too: Steam wands that maintained a smooth sound rather than unpleasant sputtering had more power, frothed faster, and created better microfoam.
We then brought the espresso machines to the Academy at Coffee Project NY, where founder Kaleena Teoh tested the machines with us, using Coffee Project’s The Retro blend. She pulled a few shots to dial in on each machine, providing her feedback on each machine’s capabilities and feel. She also steamed whole milk with each machine (and finished every drink with beautiful lotus latte art).
The Profitec Go can pull deep, flavorful, and consistent shots, combining the capability of higher-priced machines with a basic interface. It’s simple for beginners to learn but has a build and power that will appeal to home espresso pros.
The Profitec Go is a single-boiler machine that punches far above its weight. It pulls balanced, nuanced shots, and is easy to learn and use. It’s a heavy-duty machine that will delight beginners and expert espresso aficionados alike with its consistency, usability, and build. Though it’s not cheap, we think this machine provides outsize value for its price.
It’s sturdy. At about 30 pounds, the Profitec Go is no flimsy machine. It sits firmly on your countertop, and requires serious intention to be moved around. There’s no need to brace the machine with one hand when locking the portafilter into the grouphead––it won’t budge (our budget pick, the Gaggia Classic Evo Pro, needs to be held still while locking in the portafilter).
The portafilter also has a comfortable heft to it—Kaleena Teoh of Coffee Project NY said it reminded her of a commercial portafilter.
It pulls complex shots. The shots we pulled with the Profitec Go had a full wave of flavor, with some acid and depth. Our shots brought out the warm chocolate and nutty notes of the coffee we used, though of course the flavor profile will depend on the blend you use.
Of all our picks, this machine allows you to control the most variables when pulling a shot. It responds well to slight adjustments in grind size, and dose, and lets you set a brewing temperature (either Fahrenheit or Celsius) to bring out the desired flavors in your coffee. Like our Breville picks, the Profitec Go also has PID temperature control, which helps keep successive shots consistent.
You can also adjust this machine’s pressure, so skilled hobbyists can really experiment with every parameter. (Though we think most people won’t need to fiddle with changing their machine’s pressure.)
It heats up quickly. Though the Profitec Go doesn’t have the ThermoJet technology that our Breville picks have, it doesn’t take significantly longer to heat up. We could pull a shot in as little as five minutes after turning the machine on (it may take a couple minutes longer in a colder room). By the time you’ve ground your beans, prepped your puck, and filled up your milk jug, the machine will have reached brewing temperature.
The machine will remain ready to brew until you turn it off, but you can also set a timer with its eco mode to shut it off after a certain period of time.
It also only takes about 30 seconds for the machine to transition from pulling a shot to steaming milk, so you’re not waiting long to finish your drink.
The LED screen times your shot. Once you press the button to pull your shot, the tiny screen on the front of the machine automatically starts counting the seconds. It’s a small feature, but it saves you from fumbling with your phone’s stopwatch, which makes a big difference in accurately timing and stopping your shot.
The steam wand isn’t especially strong. The steam wand on the Profitec isn’t as powerful as other machines we tested, and it can be difficult to get the milk moving in a vortex to incorporate air into it. But the milk wand can be moved around easily to better obtain a comfortable angle, and though it may take a round of practice, silky microfoam is achievable.
The tamper is a bit thin. While the handle on the tamper is comfortable, and allows for you to hold it properly, the base is thinner than we’d like. So it can be a bit trickier to keep the tamper level as you press. But again, it’s just a matter of getting used to it.
It doesn’t come with a steam pitcher: The Profitec Go lacks some of the nice accessories that come with Breville’s machines. You’ll need a steam pitcher, preferably one with a volume of 12 ounces so as to reduce milk waste. There are many low-cost generic options, but we recommend a simple design like this one.
Sleek and powerful, with great programming and a solid built-in grinder, the Barista Touch lets beginners make a variety of café-quality espresso drinks at home with very little learning curve.
If you want both technology-assisted convenience and the ability to hone your technique using manual settings, we recommend the Breville Barista Touch.
The well-organized touchscreen menus—along with built-in tutorials, a built-in grinder, and automatic milk frothing—allow you to finesse café-quality drinks with a beginner’s knowledge. And if you don’t need the guidance, you’ll still appreciate this machine’s powerful steam wand and consistent shots, as well as the ability to refine your results with the help of on-screen timers and custom settings.
But the automation comes at a small cost: the Barista Touch offers less control over your shots than our top pick, makes less-nuanced espresso, and has a non-standard portafilter that can make it tricky to dial in.
The touchscreen is easy to use. The Barista Touch’s touchscreen is no gimmick—instead, it’s sophisticated, visually appealing, and easy to use.
The digital menu walks you through the basics of making good espresso drinks, and it provides step-by-step troubleshooting, from grind to extraction to milk frothing. If you want more automation, there are factory presets for the classic espresso drinks (lattes, cappuccinos, and so on), but you can also program and save your own drink specifications, or use the machine manually.
It makes solid shots. The shots we pulled on the Barista Touch were balanced, with decent depth. Like the Breville Bambino Plus, this machine comes with both dual- and single-wall filter baskets.
Dual-wall filters (or pressurized baskets) force espresso out through just a single hole in the center of the basket, which ensures adequate saturation of the espresso grounds. This helps prevent the unbalanced extraction that can occur from an inconsistent grind, old coffee, or an uneven tamp. But it won’t produce the full body and complexity of flavors that you can achieve with a correct grind, dose, and tamp from a single-wall basket.
We spent the bulk of testing using the traditional (single-wall) basket to make sure the Barista Touch could capture some of the nuance that can be lost with dual-wall filters (it could).
The majority of shots pulled with the Touch emphasized a cocoa-y mid-tone, sometimes with a slight, pleasant tartness. Depending on the blend, some shots sang with a bit more citrus or even blackberry. But while still flavorful, the espresso from the Touch didn’t have the full complexity we could achieve with the Profitec Go and the Gaggia.
The portafilter size makes it harder to dial in your shots. The portafilter on the Breville Barista Touch is narrower and deeper than most portafilters. This makes it a bit harder to properly dial in and extract a shot, as the water has to push through a thicker bed of coffee, introducing more variability into each pull. It also can’t accommodate larger doses—we found that the double filter basket barely fits 15 grams, which is on the small side for a double shot.
It has great milk frothing settings. The Touch has a powerful steam wand that is capable of making anything from super-dry milk froth to a smooth microfoam. For automatic frothing, you place the steam pitcher on a temperature sensor on the drip tray—though this can set your pitcher slightly off-balance.
Alternatively, you can choose to froth your milk manually, which works quite well, although you have less control over the wand’s placement than with our top pick.
The steam wand also has a handy auto-purge feature, which helps keep it clean after you steam your milk. The temperature scale gives you the option to steam cooler cortados and toddler-friendly hot chocolates, or extra-hot lattes.
It has a decent built-in grinder. Even though we approached the Barista Touch’s built-in grinder with some skepticism, it’s a handy feature that allowed us to dial in about as well as we did with the Baratza Encore ESP and Sette 30 grinders (though the Oracle Jet’s grinder and the Sette 270 were better). Like the Oracle Jet, the grinder burrs on the Barista Touch are made by Baratza, which is owned by Breville.
A wheel on the side of the machine adjusts the grind, and we were able to settle on a very fine grind that was consistent on the whole. But the grinder can’t make the fine adjustments that the grinder on the Oracle Jet can, so the jump between each grind size is pretty large.
Senior editor Marguerite Preston has been using the Barista Touch at home since 2019. She says: “My husband and I use this machine every day. We haven't played around much with all the programs, but I love how easy it is to adjust all the settings with the touchscreen. Neither of us fully nerd out on espresso, but this makes it possible to pull a decent shot while still bleary. Reminders sometimes pop up to replace the filter or descale the machine. It's annoying to keep dismissing them until we can get around to it, but it's also probably the only thing that gets me to descale the machine at all.”
She finds that the first shot tends to be a little cool, and recommends running hot water through the group head for at least 8 seconds before attaching the portafilter and brewing.
Marguerite also notes that the grinder is messy: “This would be true of any espresso grinder where you're grinding straight into the portafilter—you have to overfill the basket, so grounds go everywhere while you're grinding and while you're tamping. But it's something people should be prepared for. We'll stick a shallow bowl under the portafilter while grinding to catch the excess (otherwise be prepared to clean a lot of grounds from the drip tray every time you use it).”
This affordable machine can yield surprisingly complex shots, though you’ll need to buy a separate tamper to get there. Frothing milk can be a bit tricky, but microfoam is manageable.
The Gaggia Classic Pro is one of the least expensive espresso machines of its caliber, allowing you (with a little skill and practice) to pull delicious, full-bodied, complex shots. It’s a bare-bones machine that prioritizes shots of espresso above all else, which makes it a great machine for budding coffee geeks to satisfy their palates without sacrificing their budget.
It pulls high-quality shots. The Gaggia Classic Pro was the only machine we tested in its price range that yielded balanced shots with the depth that we expect from much pricier machines.
We sampled shots that brought forth notes of dark chocolate and bright citrus from the beans, and had the same wave of flavor that the Profitec Go produced. But the Gaggia doesn’t have a PID controller, so shot consistency can be harder to sustain if you’re pulling several back-to-back shots.
You’ll want a new tamper. The provided tamper for the portafilter is a flimsy piece of plastic that doesn’t cover the entire width of the filter basket, which will interfere with the extraction of your shot. In order to pull the complex shots that the Gaggia is capable of, we recommend buying a new tamper. We tried the LuxHaus 58mm Tamper and Normcore V4 58.5mm Tamper, and both were effective. If you struggle with tamping evenly, you may prefer the spring-loaded, self-leveling Normcore.
The controls are straightforward. With just an on/off button, a button for espresso, and a button for steaming, the Gaggia is easy to understand. Lights under each button indicate when that function is ready to be used.
It’s ready to brew quickly. After turning the Gaggia on, it takes only about a minute before it’s ready to pull a shot. Of course, you’ll likely have better results after giving the machine more time to warm up, but you can get a good espresso immediately if you need it. And we only had to wait about 30 seconds between pulling a shot and using the steam wand.
The steam wand is tricky to master, though. It’s not especially powerful, so getting enough air to move the milk around is difficult. It’s similar in power to the steam wand on the Profitec Go, but unlike the Profitec Go, it can’t be moved to a comfortable angle to hold your milk pitcher under, which makes it a little harder to get the results you want. But once you get accustomed to the angle and power, you can make silky microfoam.
And it doesn’t come with a steam pitcher. Like most non-Breville machines, the Gaggia doesn’t come with a steam pitcher. We recommend getting an inexpensive one with a simple design, like this one.
The water tank fills from the top. Unlike those of the other models we tested, the Classic Pro’s water tank fits underneath the boiler, not behind it. The tank gets filled via a chamber at the top of the machine.
Putting the tank back in place after cleaning it can be a touch hazardous—you have to place the plastic tubes that channel the water to the boiler back inside the tank properly (and avoid touching the hot grouphead if you’ve just pulled a shot).
Sleek and powerful, with great programming and a solid built-in grinder, the Barista Touch lets beginners make a variety of café-quality espresso drinks at home with very little learning curve.
The Breville Oracle Jet is an espresso machine and countertop barista in one gleaming package. We’d consider it a suped-up Barista Touch, with a better grinder, more guidance, a more effective portafilter shape, and a slightly better steam wand design, plus an automatic tamper. It’s as close to a super-automatic machine as you can get with a semi-automatic.
You don’t need any prior espresso-making knowledge. The Oracle Jet guides you through every step of the espresso-making process, from setting up the machine to the adjustments needed to ensure a properly extracted shot. During set-up, the large screen displays an interactive diagram of the machine, which allows you to learn what each part of the machine does and how to use it, effectively teaching you the basics of an espresso machine.
When making your first drink, the machine walks you through each step, with supplemental video clips showing you what to do. As you pull your first shot, the Oracle Jet reflects the extraction on its screen, and tells you if the shot was over- or under-extracted, based on how long it took to pull. It then recommends which grind size to adjust the grinder to before trying again. Following the instructions of the machine, it took us only two tries before we pulled a balanced shot.
Of course, if you understand how to dial in a shot and what the extraction for your beans should look like, you may wish to disregard the machine’s guided dialing (which can be turned off in the settings), and use your own judgement. But it’s a helpful tool for those starting out, and it won’t lead you astray.
But manual experimentation is limited. Unlike on any of our other picks, the Oracle Jet does not allow you to set your own dose. The machine automatically doses for you based on the size of your filter basket. By adjusting the tamp height, you could change the dose size, but it’s not an accurate method.
Unlike with our top pick, you can’t adjust the pressure—which we don’t think is a feature most people need, anyway. You are, however, still able to change the brewing temperature.
It has an automatic tamper. Tamping evenly can be a pain for new espresso drinkers (and causes literal wrist pain for seasoned baristas).
With the Breville Oracle Jet, tamping is taken out as a factor. After locking your portafilter into the grinding outlet, the machine automatically doses and tamps for you, without any stray grounds making a mess on your counter.
It’s like a magic trick—in goes an empty filter basket, and out comes a smooth, level espresso puck. The consistency of the automatic tamper allows you to focus on other aspects of dialing in your shot, which gets you to a balanced cup of espresso faster.
The built-in grinder is high-quality. Like the Barista Touch, the grinder on the Oracle Jet uses burrs made by Baratza, the same manufacturer behind our recommendations for espresso grinders and our top pick for coffee grinders (Baratza is owned by Breville).
There are 45 grind size settings, which allows for more adjustment than even the Baratza Sette 30. The grounds produced by the Oracle Jet have a consistent size, and the finest setting produces grounds identical to the finest setting on the Sette 270 (though that’s likely finer than you’ll need).
Small features make it easier to use. A couple features, though not integral to the espresso-making process, add to the ease of use of the machine. A small lever underneath the drip tray raises the Oracle Jet onto a wheel, which allows you to move the 27-pound machine around your countertop with little effort.
Though the water tank is removable, it sits at the back of the machine, and it can quickly become annoying to reach around or swivel the machine when you need to refill it. A small port above the touch screen gives you the option to fill the water tank from the front instead.
Accessories are included. Like Breville’s other machines, the Oracle Jet comes with a stainless steel milk pitcher, as well as single wall one-cup and two-cup filter baskets. It also comes with a knock box, which you can knock your portafilter against to remove a spent puck. The knockbox is a nice inclusion, and makes the clean up process quick and easy.
The Oracle Jet also includes a standard 58mm portafilter. It’s wider and shallower than the portafilters included with the Barista Touch and Bambino Plus, which allows for a more balanced extraction.
It can make cold espresso. We were pleasantly surprised by the Oracle Jet’s cold espresso setting. It only took about twenty seconds longer to brew, and the espresso came out noticeably cool (though not cold). It was balanced, though slightly watery. If you prefer cooler drinks, or need some cooled-down espresso for cooking or baking, it can be a handy feature.
The cold brew setting was less impressive. It made a mug of lukewarm coffee (about 95 °F) that just tasted like an Americano left on the counter for too long. But if you just want a cool-ish drink and don’t want to add ice to your Americano, it does the job.
The steam wand is an upgrade. Like the Barista Touch and the Bambino Plus, the Oracle Jet has excellent automatic milk frothing functions, with a range of textures and temperatures to choose from. But it can also froth non-dairy milk quite well, and includes programs for frothing soy, almond, and oat milk.
And unlike the Barista Touch, the temperature gauge on the Oracle Jet is built into the tip of the steam wand, so you don’t have to balance the pitcher on top of a sensor. But while the machine can make glossy microfoam for you, learning to pour latte art is still your responsibility.
But of course, it’s very pricey. The $2,000 price tag is no small thing. For a single-boiler machine, we’d normally balk at such a cost. But you won’t feel cheated with the Oracle Jet—the entire experience is smooth and utterly undemanding.
The built-in grinder is high-quality, and it would cost a few hundred dollars to buy a similar stand-alone grinder. You also save time, mental energy, and beans with the machine’s guided dialing-in.
If you’re willing to pay for a luxe feel: The Lelit Mara X is a beautiful machine with the look and feel of a commercial espresso machine. We’d think of it as the sports car of single-boiler espresso machines. The tamper fits well in your hand, and has a good weight to it—it was one of the best included tampers of the machines we tested. With a lever mechanism to pull the shot and a curved double-spouted portafilter where you can watch your espresso slide down, every part of the experience with this machine is sumptuous. We pulled balanced, sweet, nutty shots with a hint of smokiness, as well as lighter shots with florals and notes of honey. But aside from the aesthetics and experience of the machine, we don’t think it’s much more capable than our top pick, and it takes about 10 minutes longer to heat up—and costs about $600 more.
If you want some automation at a lower price: The Breville Bambino Plus was our former top pick, and we still think it’s a solid machine, especially considering its price. It’s straight-forward to use, comes with all the necessary accessories (as well as dual-wall filter baskets), and has a strong steam wand with a similarly impressive automatic function as the other Brevilles. But we found that dialing in a shot was harder than with our other picks. And while it has automatic presets for single and double shots, you’ll likely need to reprogram them anyways to get decent results.
Since getting the grind size right is one of the most crucial factors for timing your shots—and getting the flavor of your espresso dialed in—you’ll want a good burr grinder.
While we recommend a few grinders in our coffee grinder guide, grinders specifically designed for espresso tend to grind coffee finer and allow adjustments in much finer increments. (They also tend to be a bit more expensive.)
If you already own the Baratza Encore or another grinder from our guide, you can absolutely try using your grinder’s finest settings to see how you like it. It may not allow the precise fine-tuning to bring out the most nuanced flavors in your espresso, but if you’re just starting out and not keen to spend money on another grinder, it may suffice.
We are currently testing the Baratza Encore ESP, which has 20 grind sizes for espresso, and another 20 for methods like pour-over, French press, or drip. This combination is handy for those that don’t want to constrain themselves to one type of coffee preparation.
But if you’re ready for a dedicated espresso grinder, we recommend that you start with the elegantly designed Baratza Sette 30. In comparison, the espresso grounds produced by the Encore ESP are not quite as consistent as those from the Sette 30, and the difference between grind sizes is larger, so fine-tuning your shot may be tricky.
This is the best entry-level espresso grinder we’ve tested. Its 31 grind settings and timer function allow you to dial in your espresso quickly and cleanly.
While not as refined as commercial-grade grinders, the Sette 30 still grinds very quickly and with good precision. It fills the portafilter cleanly, and allows you to set the grind time to the hundredth of a second (which gives you greater control over how much coffee you dose at a given grind setting).
One drawback is that the Sette 30’s detachable arms are kind of flimsy and don’t hold a portafilter securely on their own. But we think this grinder is overall a good deal.
With a second grind-adjustment wheel, the Sette 270 allows for more precise grind sizes, so you have even more control over your shots.
If you want to experiment with lighter roasts and single-origin beans—coffees with distinctive, often fruitier flavors that can be extra sensitive to small grind adjustments—the Baratza Sette 270 is an ideal upgrade.
It’s almost identical to the Sette 30 in look, feel, and functionality. But the Sette 270 has a second, stepless grind-adjustment wheel that lets you make even smaller tweaks to the grind size in between grind settings, for a total of 270 individual grind settings. We found this stepless wheel seamless to use throughout all our testing.
This grinder also allows you to save up to three grind-duration settings. And importantly, unlike the Sette 30, the Sette 270’s arms hold the portafilter securely, so you can step away if need be.
Note that if you’re interested in the Breville Oracle Jet or Barista Touch, their built-in grinders (which both use Baratza burrs) are more than sufficient for beginners and intermediate users, and will yield complex, expressive shots the more you practice. The grinder on the Breville Oracle Jet is especially impressive, with 45 grind settings compared to the Barista Touch’s 30, and the ability to produce a consistent, fine grind that was on par with that from our Sette 30.
The Lelit Anna PL41TEM is similar to the Gaggia Classic Evo Pro, but it features a PID temperature controller that you can adjust and program manually. It also features an ergonomic portafilter and comes with a backflush basket to clean the boiler head. While the espresso it made was often well-balanced and capable of hitting different flavor notes, its steam wand lacked power and we struggled to produce finely textured milk froth with it.
The Ascaso Dream PID is a cute machine, and has a steam wand that is as powerful as those on commercial espresso machines, but it takes nearly a minute to transition from pulling a shot to steaming milk. We struggled to pull a shot with the same depth as the Profitec Go. The shots we made weren’t bad, and had some fruity and fragrant notes, but they were a bit flat. We also had some leakage underneath the machine, as any coffee or water that escapes the drip tray slides out through the seams of the base.
The Breville Barista Pro is another of Breville’s all-in-one models, with a built-in grinder similar to the one on the Barista Touch. But the Barista Pro offers fewer features and less customization than the Barista Touch—so it doesn’t hold your hand as much, nor does it allow for quite as much experimentation. It also didn’t pull very consistent shots.
The Breville Bambino is a simpler, less-expensive take on the Bambino Plus. It’s slightly more compact, with a smaller tank, and it comes with a lighter portafilter and a lighter tamper. While it made decent espresso, the shots weren’t quite as flavorful or consistent as ones from the Plus. The steam wand is also slightly less powerful, and lacks the Bambino Plus’s auto-froth and auto-purge options. We think you would get more value from either the Bambino Plus or the Gaggia Classic Evo Pro.
The Breville Infuser doesn’t froth milk as quickly as the Breville Bambino Plus, and it also didn’t achieve as creamy a texture. It was also more difficult to dial in the espresso using the Infuser, and its best shots were less robust than those from our picks.
The Breville Barista Express is basically the Infuser plus the built-in grinder. The grinder is adequate, but you’re missing some of the key selling points of the Barista Touch while opting for less power and precision than the Gaggia Classic Evo Pro affords.
The Breville Duo-Temp Pro lacks programmable buttons, so you have to start and stop pulling a shot manually. We found that the pump wasn’t as strong as on Breville’s other machines, so we had to use coffee that was ground a bit more coarsely, resulting in a duller-tasting shot.
We experienced a few recurring issues with the Solis Barista Perfetta. Despite its featuring three temperature settings, we found the espresso it made to be noticeably cooler than shots from other machines, even on the hottest option. The machine also cut off manual extraction multiple times, and its steam wand frequently leaked in between pulling shots and frothing milk.
The De’Longhi Dedica tended to yield muddy, under-extracted shots. The steam wand also features an awkward “hot milk/cappuccino” switch that was easily bumped into the wrong froth mode.
The Gaggia Carezza Deluxe costs less than the Gaggia Classic Evo Pro, perhaps because of its plastic-oriented design, but it’s simply not a great investment. It couldn’t froth milk with precision, and the results were always too bubbly. Shots were generally unremarkable and tended to be a little sour. During extraction, water occasionally leaked from the portafilter.
The Rancilio Silvia made the best shot we were able to get from any of the machines we tested in 2016. But it doesn’t regulate its temperature using PID, so it takes some practice to get consistent shots. The Silvia costs around $900, so if you’re willing to spend that much, you’re much better off paying a little more for the PID-regulated Profitec Go.
This article was edited by Marilyn Ong and Marguerite Preston.
Alison Nowak, barista at George Howell Coffee, email interview, January 24, 2019
Phil McKnight, global business manager for the beverage category at Breville, email interview, January 22, 2019
Matthew Davis, product expert for the toast and beverage category at Breville, email interview, August 2020
ChiSum Ngai and Kaleena Teoh, owners of Coffee Project NY, email interview, April 2021
Kaleena Teoh, owner of Coffee Project NY, in-person interview, September 1, 2024
Ciara Murray Jordan is an associate staff writer on the kitchen team at Wirecutter. She previously worked as an artisanal cheesemaker on a small farm in Vermont.
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