****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
The fact that you're reading this review means that you're looking for an espresso machine (yeah, I know - duh). The fact that you're looking for an espresso machine means that you probably want either the convenience of making fun little coffee drinks at home, and/or you want to save money because you've been spending a significant portion of your disposable income on similar concoctions at the overpriced coffee house down the street. To which concern I can most assuredly relate - we have the misfortune to live half a block from what is arguably the best coffee shop in Seattle, and I don't even want to think how much of the owner's retirement fund has come out of my pocket. Good thing he's a friend.So anyway, here you are on Amazon, trying to filter - ha ha, please note clever pun - through the endless product choices, which range from cheapo plastic crap to espresso machines so expensive and complicated that you wonder if you'll need a degree in engineering to operate them. Your head is getting ready to explode as you read about things like burr grinders, with some Amazonians subtly implying that if you don't use one of these for your home-roasted gourmet coffee beans - the ones you import weekly on a private jet from an exclusive estate in the Ethiopian Highlands - then your intellect must compare unfavorably with that of certain lower primates. And then there are the reviews that provide detailed instructions regarding this or that machine's temperamental foibles and intolerance of idiots, advising you sternly that if you don't do X, Y and Z in a very particular order, accompanied by ritual chanting and animal sacrifice, your $2000 espresso machine will never perform in the optimal way.Or so it sure seems sometimes.So here's the key question: WHY do you want an espresso machine? Do you truly want to become an espresso master, the envy and talk of all your Yuppie friends ("Wow, Bob has a Lockheed-Martin X-320 Parisian-Bistro-Espresso Cafe Super-System with built-in burr grinder and rocket launch module, and he sure knows how to use it!") Or do you just want a machine that costs (way) under a thousand bucks that'll make a tasty latté or cappuccino in the morning, and in so doing save you from supporting your local coffee shop owner's boat payments?If it's the latter, then I humbly recommend this fine little machine. It's easy to set up, and if one uses decent ground espresso (for the record, I use Lavazza) it makes excellent coffee drinks with a minimum of fuss. You don't need to fiddle with frothing yourself - just hit the right buttons and it will turn out coffee that will have you saying "Mmm, that's good!" before you proceed with your day. Unless, of course, you're a coffee snob who wouldn't dream of using anything smacking of "automatic" that doesn't involve multiple complex steps, a $300 grinder, manual frothing, a degree in engineering and animal sacrifices. But then if you're that person you're probably not looking at this machine.Put the machine through a clean cycle regularly, and DO delime it at least once in a while. It's a tedious procedure but not doing so may affect performance (we had some issues a few months in and deliming fixed them).Do follow the setup instructions carefully, especially with regard to priming the machine the first time. And don't do what I did, which is to wonder why nothing was happening - specifically, why no water was coming out - and then finally notice the sticker on the back of the water tank that said "Remove plastic plug before use".Duh.UPDATE, SEPTEMBER 2021: we have now owned several of these machines over a period of 8 years, so I can tell you with confidence about their durability. Bottom line: they're good for about a year of daily use. Eventually, the frother stops working well. Despite deliming, it will have a harder time getting up to pressure and producing froth. Eventually it ceases to be functional. Since there's a one-year warranty, you might want to trigger that before the year is up - we did that with a previous machine and Mr Coffee's customer service was terrific - they immediately sent us a new machine for free. So, basically, you get two years of use out of one purchase.Key point: despite the durability issue, this machine has saved us a ton of money and I'd still highly recommend it (and will likely buy another when our current one dies next year).P.S. As some others have noted, the reservoir sometimes leaks water; we had this on one unit. My stupid but effective solution to this was to insert a strip of thin cardboard (part of the flap of a small cardboard box works) between the machine and the reservoir (i.e. behind the reservoir). Apparently this "pushes" the reservoir back enough to set it right, and it fixed the issue.
