De'Longhi ECAM23460S Digital Super Automatic Machine with Lattecrema System, Silver

After six weeks, we’re very happy with this machine. My wife fell in love with a superauto machine in a hotel in Europe, and she's never learned how to operate my high end, classic espresso machine, which doesn’t fit well in the kitchen anyway. So we bought this one. It arrived very well-packaged, and it probably took maybe 20 minutes to get all the components unpacked and assembled. It then took another hour or so of playing with it to understand how the various settings work. Since then, it’s been nothing but a lot of good coffee.Good:--Machine is easy to use, even though it offers many options: ristretto? Americano? something in between? stronger? weaker? It can do it.--The separate hopper for ground coffee is very convenient when we need to make decaf; we grind beans to order as needed. The ground coffee hopper is single-cup, so it’s easy to change from one bean to another.--machine looks good in the kitchen, and it’s reasonably compact for what it does--machine heats up quickly, so we don’t have to wait long for coffee--machine turns itself off automatically after about 10 minutes of non-use.--although some reviewers say that beans don’t always feed into the hopper, we have seen no sign of that problem.--the pour spouts adjust up and down easily, making it easy to switch from smaller espresso cups to larger mugs.-- most important, the coffee is excellent, with a nice, reliable crema.Bad:--water reservoir could be a little bigger, but refilling is easy and only takes a couple of minutes (pull tank, walk to sink, fill tank, walk back to machine and reinsert).--its height only leaves about six inches clearance under the cabinet above it, which makes it a little more awkward to add coffee to the hopper: Instead of just pouring coffee in, I use a scoop.-- With the main hopper, there’s no easy way to know how much coffee is in there except by grinding until it runs out.--The descaling process is a small nuisance, though probably vital for keeping the machine going. The process takes maybe 30 minutes and mostly runs on its own, but make sure you have a large container to collect a tank's worth of water. Delonghi's EcoDecalc descaling fluid does the job, but at ~$3.75 per run, it's a little pricey. The machine nagged us to descale after about six weeks of use.It’s too soon to know how reliable it will be – this is a pretty complicated piece of equipment, so it’s not likely to be problem-free forever. But so far, it’s a great success.Update, April 2020: Our machine, purchased July, 2017 and used almost daily, still works as well as ever.Update, April 2023: I don't want to jinx it, but this machine is still chugging along after more than 5 years, still getting a lot of use. The one small issue we've been seeing lately is that since we moved it from one house to another, the grinder tends to run on longer than it used to. That's not a problem for us because we only put in beans for one cup at a time (sometimes darker, sometimes lighter, sometimes caf, sometimes decaf, etc.), but if we had more beans in the hopper, it might be a problem.

For a morning mocha:* Turn on machine (it will prime itself and shoot out water into the drip tray, or into a cup if you remembered) and put your coffee cup on the warmer on top of the machine, and the machine will warm up for about a minute as you get your other things ready* Get milk tank and chocolate sauce from fridge* Snap milk tank onto the left nozzle on front of machine, and make sure the dial is set to the foam level you want* Put your cup under all three nozzles--(one milk, two coffee)* You can adjust for the height of your cup by moving the nozzles up and down; cups taller than 6" will not fit standing up, and cups taller than 6.5" or so probably won't even fit at an angle. Lowering the nozzle as far as possible into your cup is supposed to make better crema, so I do that* If it isn't already set from the last time you used it, set the center dial on the machine for the correct amount of coffee you want (I like extra long, which is about 4 oz.) and, if you need to,* Press the center dial (where the beans are) to select coffee strength, from extra mild to extra strong* Press "Cappuccino"* The machine will shoot out steamed milk first, and stop at the preset level or the level you customized, and then your custom coffee will drizzle in after that. There will be a message on the display with "loading" bars, just like for software installation :)* Move coffee cup, place 4+-oz heat-resistant cup under milk nozzle, turn foam dial on milk tank to "CLEAN." The machine will automatically shoot water through the top of the milk tank mechanism, and you don't want that in your drink!* Put chocolate sauce into your coffee and stir* Turn the machine off (it will rinse itself again)* Remove tank and wipe off the milk nozzle that's on the main machine* Put tank and chocolate sauce back into fridge* Dump and rinse the cup you used for rinse water* Drink coffeeI may have missed a couple of steps (I'm new at this), but you'll have to do something like that every time you make a drink with milk in it. It doesn't take too long and you can leave it alone most of the time as long as you don't forget to clean the milk nozzle and put the tank back in the fridge! I requested this machine so that I could save time in the morning, and make repeatable drinks, and save money. The morning time investment is VERY IMPORTANT(!!!) to me. I am always late. I know I'm not alone in those things, so I thought I'd share. You can set up the machine the night before using auto-start, putting a cup on the warmer, and making sure the water tank and bean holder are full, which will shave off a minute or two. The cup warmer won't really make a difference if you use it only for the couple of minutes that the coffee is ... espressing.To some extent, this machine takes as much time as my AeroPress; it just moves the work to another part of the day, and I am totally happy with that. There are cleaning, filtering, descaling and other maintenance tasks for this machine that are more involved than those for any other coffeemaker I've used, but fortunately they can pretty much all be taken care of at night or on the weekend.PROS:Very fast, very little user input required once preferences are set upOne-touch, no need to move cupsAlmost everything is automated (right down to the descaling schedule)The drip tray is big enough to hold quite a bit of water, so forgetting to put a cup under the rinse water isn't the end of the worldSo customizable!The steamed/frothed milk is ennnnnchannnntinnng. I am so happy with the consistency of it--I use soy milk and I've tried maybe six other methods of frothing milk, and none of them cut it. At all. I set this machine to medium foam and the texture is amazing.CONS:The milk temperature isn't adjustable, and it isn't as hot as I'd like (although the coffee temp can be raised to compensate)It's very big, tall, deepThe menu wheel is sensitive but sometimes takes a moment to respond, so it sometimes doesn't do anything, then skips over a few choicesTakes quite awhile to set up at firstIt can only accommodate about a 6"-tall cupThe cup warmer doesn't warm that much of the cup unless you leave it there for quite some timeThe menu isn't as straightforward as it should be for something this expensiveRinses constantly (!!) so if you haven't used it much yet, or you're very tired, it might shoot out hot water when you aren't expecting it (and I can't find a place to press "stop" or "pause")Takes time to figure it outOkay, so!I watched videos before receiving this machine, and I read the Getting Started booklet. Neither one really showed what would actually happen when I set up the machine. I had a lot of false starts because the booklet isn't linear, and the machine doesn't walk you through setup as I expected from the videos I watched. The documentation has a LOT of information, but you will have to skip around from chapter to chapter to find what you need, and if you're like me you're probably going to get rinse water in your frothed soymilk. Give yourself an hour and maybe some less-expensive coffee to experiment with.The machine comes with a starter kit that includes a couple of spare parts, descaler fluid and a water filter. Very nice! Also, the manual has a water hardness test taped into it, so you can test the hardness of your water, and change the machine's water-hardness setting (although I'm not sure how filtering affects this setting). I believe the setting is only used to determine the descaling schedule, though, so it probably doesn't matter too much.The machine is not one that you would tell a guest to figure out on their own. You will most likely have to make coffee for or instruct anyone who wants espresso from it. There are quirks, and steam shoots out unexpectedly. Make sure to empty the drip tray regularly, because the machine rinses itself a lot, and until you get used to it, it's hard to remember when to expect it.The body of this machine is just under 18" deep, about 14" tall and just under 9.5" wide. I live in a teeny apartment and most of the cupboards are too low to accommodate this machine. I had to put it in an inconvenient spot because it's so tall, and it needs a lot of clearance above for steam and bean-pouring.Altogether this espresso machine is faaaan-tastic. It takes awhile to get the nuances down, and the menu is not entirely intuitive (maybe because it's translated from Italian?) but once you figure it out, you'll be so happy, and have so much more money, and be so early for work :)

I love this coffee maker - but - our first one displayed a random error message after only 3 or 4 cups of coffee and their tech support said it had to be replaced. The second coffee maker that we received would not heat water over 140 degrees, even following all of the advice again of technical support - strike two. We almost just returned this and gave up on DeLonghi, but we let them replace it one last time and the third one has now been working perfectly for a few months now. From a coffee drinker's perspective, my wife and I love this unit. It's easy to use, easy to clean, and makes great espressos and cappuccinos (I like a double short with a cappaccino). I like the way the frother unit works, allowing you to easily select how much froth you get along with the milk.