Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Hello, I thought I'd throw out a review for this espresso machine now that I have been living with it for 6 months with daily use. My background- I am not a hardcore espresso drinker. I had a $30 Mr Coffee machine, then when that started acting up replaced it with a $150 Cuisinart that served well for about 6 years. I used pre-ground coffee with those machines. I'm not one for straight up espresso or plain lattes/cappuccinos. I like my drinks sweeter- mint mochas, caramel, white raspberry, etc. I did work at a coffee cart for a couple years in college, though I was the first employee, so my training may have been lacking. I would say in general this is a great machine, assuming- 1. You have proper expectations, 2. The machine you get doesn't have a breakdown. For expectations, here's what I believe to be reasonable for this machine- -It will make a mess. If you're looking for a mess free experience, you may want to double or triple your spending and look at fully automated machines. -You are not a hardcore espresso drinker who is looking for the perfect shot and the best components for the money. To get that, you should be looking at separate grinders and espresso machines most likely totaling more than this. -You are looking for convenience, but something that still leaves some room for experimenting. -You better be comfortable with having a 2 in 1 machine. If the grinder or the espresso machine goes kerplooey outside of warranty, you have half a machine left. You might look a little silly when friends come over. They'll be expecting something super fancy from you because of all the espresso machines on your counter... For me this machine has worked great. I am the only coffee drinker in the house, so it is harder for me to justify spending money on high end separate components. For purchases like this, it is possible to use coupons, and I also like to redeem credit card points for gift cards. So when I purchased this machine, I only spent a couple hundred out of pocket for it (if it breaks after 18 months, I'll be sad, but I'll probably buy it again since I didn't `pay' full price for it). I do not have extensive experience with home grinders, so to me, the grinder on the 870 seems sufficient for its purpose. Not a top of the line grinder, but I'm not looking for `perfection', just what tastes good and works well for me. Depending on the beans, I usually have the grind setting somewhere between 4 and 2. Beans have gotten stuck on me twice in the grinder. Both times tapping the side of it freed them up instantly. However, I have to say going from using pre-ground coffee to having a grinder is a huge step up, and I can't imagine going back to pre-ground in the future. One of the things that really appealed to me about this machine was the pressure gauge. It has worked perfectly for me, with the assumption that it is functioning properly. I've seen some people say they had issues with it not registering any pressure, but it's hard to know their circumstances- beans, grind, tamp, broken gauge, etc. By my third shot I had the pressure well within the ideal range. It is surprising how much adjusting the dosage or grind one step can throw off the pressure. When switching beans, I've had situations where the current settings yielded a little too low pressure. Then I increase the fineness of the grind, and suddenly the pressure is too high, or vice versa. So a lot of the times, to dial it in may require a combination of changing the grind setting, changing the dosage, and adjusting the tamping. However, I've never found it difficult to keep a consistently good shot. I have not played with the temperature settings on the machine. I did however increase the amount of water for a double shot a bit to compensate for the amount the grounds soak in. I have only used the single wall filters, and to me it seemed easy enough to use them, there is no need to use the double walls. As for the steaming wand, it also works well and has a metal ball joint, which hopefully means it will last. After 6 years of use, the steam wand just fell off the Cuisinart. I typically steam 20-26 oz of milk, it does take a few minutes. I have also steamed closer to 8-10 oz and heating that amount up was noticeably quick. (I made the mistake of making hot chocolate for my 2 year old when I make coffee, so now the first thing I am tasked with each morning is making hot chocolate...) Here are some tips that may help- People mention it makes a mess with coffee grounds overflowing the filter basket. That is to be expected. If you are using the minimal dose amount, there's a good chance you're not using enough grounds. The end of the tamper is silver metal. When tamping, the top of that silver should line up with the top of the filter. For me, that usually ends up being somewhere in the 1:00 position on the dosing dial (this will vary based on beans). There is also an included dosing trimmer, but the 2 times I tried it, it made more of a mess, so I do not use it. If you want to minimize the amount of grounds falling onto the counter, you can rest your index finger cross ways on the front exposed lip of the filter when the grinding process is halfway done. That will let the grounds pile up a little higher and/or fall off to the sides more to stay on the tray, which you can sweep down. After removing the portafilter, I gently push the grounds down into a pyramid shape with the tamper, starting with the most precarious looking side, eventually pushing them down enough that the grounds are lower than the top of the filter except for a small hump in the middle. Then I tap it a few times on the counter to settle them, and proceed to tamp. The other common complaint I see is that when steaming milk, the first few seconds of the steam is watering down the milk. There is a work around for this. When you turn the steam off, there is supposed to be an 8 second wait before the machine purges, I think it's closer to 5 from my experience. So what I do is turn on the steam with an empty cup under the wand, or a rag, to catch the water. Leave it on for about 20 or 30 seconds until you have nice consistent steam coming out, slide the dial to off, put the wand into the cup of milk and turn the dial back to on, in less than 5 seconds. Once you get used to it after a few times, it's pretty easy. I've only had the machine purge on me twice while steaming. One time was when I turned it on, off, on, off, and on. After I turned it on the 3rd time, it still purged, so it may not work after more than one on-off-on cycle. I usually run through an empty shot first once the machine is heated and before doing the espresso shot, to heat the components and put the hot water in my coffee cup. On occasion the filter basket will get stuck to the shower head, mostly when it's an empty shot, once in a while when there are coffee grounds in it. If that happens, I just put the portafilter back over the filter about half way up, then give it a little tug and it usually pops off easily. If you're looking for dry pucks, the key to that is to steam the milk after getting the shot of espresso with the portafilter in place. The steaming process directs pressure to the filter basket, which will squeeze out more water from the grounds. In some cases, the puck is dry enough that it just falls out when I turn it over. Otherwise a tap on the side, then a tap on the face pops it out. I think tapping from 2 angles helps. I've never had a problem with the whole basket popping out. I have dumped grounds without steaming afterwards, and while they were noticeably wetter, when the puck dropped it stayed together as one formed piece instead of falling into pile of mush. That was better than I expected. (I did that last week, knocked over my travel mug while steaming milk, so I needed to do a second shot, now my 2 year old gives me a friendly reminder to not spill my coffee every morning). For maintenance, I perform the clean cycle with a tablet every 2 months (I average using the machine once a day). The drip tray is a bit of a pain to deal with. It is 3 pieces. However, with the Cuisinart I had, I cleaned the drip tray daily. With the 870, I can go up to 9-10 days before it gets completely full. I usually clean it once a week, so it's more of a pain cleaning 3 pieces, but I do it less often. I have been very happy with this machine with very few complaints (some issues have been self-inflicted, like forgetting to add water to the tank, it survived). I have to say from my experience, this machine is worth 5 stars. I have not had any issues with it, and have not had to contact Breville. The other thing I noticed on their website is that do they do have a fair amount of replacement/serviceable parts available. The obvious stuff like portafilters, filters, tray pieces, etc. as well as other items like a frothing tip, shower head, and outer burr assembly. The prices on most of the pieces are not outrageous, so that leaves me hope that a year or two down the road as components wear out, it should be possible to replace them yourself and keep the machine running. Sorry this got long... Hopefully someone finds this information useful, and if you're looking for an easy to use machine that still gives you room to play around with, this is a good one to consider, I highly recommend it. And if you can't trust a random guy from the internet, who can you trust? Hi, I just wanted to add an Addendum: 1/28/2015 I have now been using this machine for 14 months, once daily about 95% of the time, and officially out of warranty. I have no issues to report, as it still works as well as it did when new. The only issue I did run into was doing bulk drinks, 3 cappuccinos back to back to back. By the third shot, after doing espresso-steaming-espresso-steaming-espresso, the machine did lose pressure. I ended up turning it off and back on and redid the third shot without further incidence. Also, I stepped away one time with the steam wand in milk to finish heating it up, and ended up getting distracted and forgetting it. I came back over 10 minutes later with the machine silent and blinking. It appeared it shut itself off after X minutes of steaming for safety reasons, I assume. I had quite the mess and felt a little dumb, but cycled the machine off and on and started over to heat the milk appropriately this time. I change the charcoal filter once every 6 months (water is already filtered), do regular cleaning with the tablet every other month, ran vinegar water through the machine around 12 months, and emptied and cleaned the grinder once per the manual. I still recommend this machine. 6/25/2016 Hi, just thought I'd mention I am still using this daily, and have had no issues with it since my last update. Following periodic cleaning recommendations, and it's still working well. 1/20/2017 Thanks for the comments on my review. I hope it has been useful for folks. I will add I am still using it regularly, right now down to about 3 times a week (too many kids to get ready in the morning to make anything for myself). I've continued to have good luck with it, just needing to adjust the grinding settings on occasion when switching beans or seasonal changes that affect the house temp and humidity. I've continued with normal maintenance. It did seem the frothing wand was not expressing its usual amount of steam at one point, so I cleaned with it a small little pin, inserting it in the tip (I can't recall if one of those came with this machine or if it was from a previous one, I think one came with it tho, little metal stick in a black plastic thumb drive looking thingy). I decided that would be a good time to follow the maintenance to run a tank of vinegar water through again, then swapped in a new filter for the tank after. I have had no more issues with beans getting stuck in the grinder or any other issues. I hope my experience with the machine up to this point is the norm for most people, as it's been a pretty good machine for me. 12/3/2020 I thought I'd do a quick update, maybe I've been one of the lucky ones with this machine as I've seen other reviews with leaks and issues. But when this machine works, it's a dream. My 2 year old is now 9, and with 2 other siblings the quantity of hot chocolate made has increased significantly, as well as the usage of this machine overall. I've gone from using 3-4 times a week, to using it daily since about April. I did do a super thorough cleaning then, ran through some vinegar water and used a descaler too, which didn't get much out, just mostly clear water. So that's a good sign with the filtered water we've been using. I did replace the gasket for the shower screen. Not for any particular reason other than I came across one online here, and decided at this age, it might be good to start replacing items that could fail/crack. It was fairly straightforward, removing the screen and swapping out the ring. Went back together fine and had no issues. Other than that and dismantling the grinder to clean, that's about it. One other thing I started doing, was doing a single dose for the grind. I still use a double filter, so I'll tamp after dose 1, then do another single dose (both on the lowest setting) and tamp again. Probably not the proper way to do it, but it makes less of a mess that way overfilling the filter. I also saw someone mention doing a single dose and turning the grind volume way up, to fill the double filter. I thought I tried it once, and it wasn't enough, but I may give that a try. Even if/when it does fail on me at this point, it outlasted my previous machine and I would be hard pressed to think badly of it.