The Best Espresso Machine for Making Shots, Flat Whites, and Cappuccinos

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If anyone tells you they can, with certainty, identify the best espresso machine, they are either lying to you, or they haven’t spent enough time thinking about the question. That doesn’t mean there are not good espresso makers and bad espresso makers. It also doesn’t mean that the machines we recommend below won’t produce coffee shop- quality drinks. But when it comes to anointing a best coffee maker, we product testers should have a bit of humility. It’s more important that a machine work well for the person using it—and espresso machines vary widely. The quality of the coffee they produce varies, of course, but so does their complexity and the level of experience necessary to operate them.

That’s why we approached our testing and our recommendations with users in mind. We had an eye toward the coffee, sure, but also toward different price points and skill levels. What will work for the specialty coffee fanatic may not be the same as what will work for the person who likes lattes but doesn’t really consider themselves a home barista, and frankly isn’t interested in monitoring the water pressure at the group head. So read on for our top picks for beginners, for experts, and for everyone in between. And for more on the other machines we tested and why we didn’t think they measured up, scroll down towards the bottom of the page.

Best espresso machine under $1,000: Solis Barista Perfetta Plus

This is an example of how longterm testing of a product can be valuable. Our top pick for much of 2022 was the flashy Breville Barista Express Impress. We still think it is a good machine, but after more than six months of consistent use, we found an issue that made us reconsider: The built-in grinder would jam with lighter roasted coffee beans (more on this below). As a result we’re putting the Solis Barista Perfetta Plus back on top. Solis is the Swiss brand behind the beloved entry-level burr grinder, the Scala and their espresso maker is a terrific balance of simplicity and customizability. The espresso shots we pulled from the Solis were great and in line with the semi-automatic Breville Machines—the Infuser, the Barista Express, and the Barista Express Impress. Shots were nicely extracted with a striped layer of crema on top. When it came to milk drinks, the steam wand on the Solis is powerful and made terrific flat whites. And it includes a hot water dispenser for Americanos. It provides all this in a tiny package. It’s barely more than seven inches wide. We cannot emphasize enough how big of a plus that is in a category filled with counter hogs.

Even though it’s so slim, it’s a solidly built machine—heavy enough that when we went to lock the portafilter in place, it wasn’t sliding all over the countertop. It has an adaptive PID controller (the uninitiated can think of this like a very accurate thermostat that keeps the water at the appropriate temperature), something that is really a must for a good semi-automatic machine, and a pressure gauge front and center to provide real-time feedback about over- and under-extracted shots. It also allows you to toggle between three different brew temperature settings, and manually program both the pre-infusion and the brew time. Finally the Solis is quite inexpensive compared to machines with similar features. At the time of writing, it cost closer to $300 than it did to $400.

What we didn’t like about the Solis Barista Perfetta Plus

Though all the settings we mentioned above are customizable, changing them is really not intuitive and requires a hard-to-remember set of button pushes. We’d recommend holding on to the user manual for reference for as long as you own the machine. Additionally, the hot water dispenser is the steam wand and the water flow occasionally has fits and starts. That’s not enough to outweigh the many, many good things about the machine, but compared to the Breville and Delonghi machines that have a dedicated hot water spouts, it just isn’t as convenient.

Best espresso machine for beginners: Breville Bambino Plus

The newest entry to Breville’s diminutive Bambino line has made huge improvements over both the not-tricked-out regular Bambino and Breville’s more expensive (and hulking) Infuser. For one thing, it heats up almost instantly; it goes from off to ready to brew in less than five seconds. It only comes with pressurized filter baskets (also known as double-walled filter baskets), which almost guarantee the proper pressure and good crema from a single or double shot even if you don’t tamp perfectly, grind your coffee beans too coarsely, or don’t have precisely the right amount of grounds. Pressurized baskets also work with pre-ground coffee (we don’t recommend using it, but if it’s your thing, you can with this machine). We should note that, even though only pressurized baskets come with the machine, we tried a non-pressurized (single-walled) filter basket from the Breville Infuser, which fit the Bambino, and the results were still quite good.

The great triumph of this machine though, is its automatic milk steaming. You can set how foamy you want your milk, place the milk jug under the steam wand, push a button and just let it go. You don’t need to angle the jug or even hold it, it’s totally hands-free. And while a feature like this could be gimmicky, the texture of the milk was rich and smooth. We even tried the function with oat milk to see how it would handle something nondairy and it gave more volume and texture than we got on any other home machine.

The bottom line: This is the most dummy-proof semi-automatic espresso machine we’ve used. There are some ways to manually adjust the Bambino Plus—you can set different brewing times and different water temperatures, you can switch from automatic milk steaming to manual—but you don’t need to touch any of them if you don’t want to. It’s got functionality that’s as simple to use as some of the truly entry-level beginner machines (which we do not recommend at all), but produces coffee drinks that are closer to a machine like the Solis.

What we didn’t like about the Breville Bambino Plus

Even though it’s really not necessary with this machine, a pressure gauge would be nice. While it’s possible to get a sense of how the extraction is going by just watching the coffee come out, the information from the gauge is helpful. There is no hot water dispensing function, so you’ll need to use a kettle for an Americano. And while the automatic milk steaming is a really useful feature for beginners, it comes with a couple downsides: To accommodate the process, the steam wand doesn’t rotate the way it does on lots of machines in this price range, it just slides up and down like a lever. It also requires a little more milk than we typically use in our drinks to work correctly because the jug needs to have a certain volume in it to trigger a sensor. Finally, the wand auto-purges after use, which is nice, but it caused a small amount of milk to spray on to the counter.

Our favorite prosumer espresso machine: Diletta Mio

Prosumer (that is, professional + consumer) is a portmanteau that could accurately describe a whole lot of elite-level home kitchen gear—Vitamix blenders come to mind—but it’s used quite often to refer to high-end home espresso machines. Often, prosumer machines are scaled-down versions of the most sought-after commercial machines. Lots of people who use prosumer espresso machines are very passionate about their coffee and their coffee-making equipment and may disagree with this, but after testing several of them we believe it: When you get into high-end espresso machines, there are not huge differences in the quality of coffee. For that reason, choosing an espresso machine at this level is more about design, both aesthetic and functional. And the Diletta’s design was the smartest of the bunch.

It uses buttons for all of its functions instead of switches and dials, which not only looks sleeker, but offers a much better user experience of the steam wand—toggling on or off immediately instead of manually opening and closing a valve. Speaking of the steam wand, it’s connected to its own heating circuit, which you can turn on or off—better to leave it off and save energy if you are just drinking espresso shots. Because it’s on its own circuit, we were able to use it immediately without waiting for the machine to shift from brew mode to steam mode as we did with the Breville.

The Diletta has a digital PID that is easy to adjust, again, with simple button presses (the letters stand for proportional integral derivative, but what a PID controller does is precisely control the water temperature during brewing). It also has an adjustable eco mode that that puts the machine to sleep after a selected amount of time to save energy without turning it off. That cuts the heat-up time, which is typically substantial on nicer espresso machines, quite a bit. According to the temperature gauge, the Diletta did heat up in just a few minutes, although after speaking with one of the designers behind the machine, we did wait at least 10 minutes to allow the temperature to stabilize.

The pressure gauge consistently showed reliable brewing between 8–10 bars and the portafilter felt nice and heavy in hand (do note that this and most high-end machines use a 58-mm portafilter while less expensive machines use a 54-mm one. So if you are upgrading, you won’t be able to use the same tamper). All in all, the Diletta was a good-looking, user-friendly machine that feels worth the expense.

What we didn’t like about the Diletta Mio

We wish it had a hot water dispenser. We did get a deep-in-the-weeds explanation from one of the product managers that leaving it off allowed them to build the machine with more easily available parts, which in turn would allow for easier repairs or part replacement should a problem arise. The drip tray is quite close to the group head, which doesn’t allow for regular-size coffee mugs. You can either get lower profile mugs like these, or brew shots into shot glasses and pour them into mugs if you’re making cappuccinos or Americanos. The water reservoir, though stylishly textured, is a little hard to remove if there is anything next to the machine; it slides out from the side instead of lifting out from the back. We’ve taken to filling it with a large spouted measuring cup instead of bringing it all the way to the sink. Also, after more than six months of use, we noticed that the temperature can drop quite a bit and require waiting up to 10 minutes to automatically bounce back. The best resolution we found to the issue is to regularly flush the machine with a cleaner like this Urnex powder.

The best super automatic espresso machine: Delonghi Eletta Explore

If we’re being honest, the Eletta Explore didn’t come out of the gate strong. We really struggled to get the espresso grind dialed in. The built-in burr grinder has 13 settings, and you’re going to want it set coarser than you’d probably expect—we ended up liking it set at around eight. It was taking so long to get it right that we were ready to tag the Jura E8 as our super-automatic pick (more on that below). But we’re glad we took the time to get it right, because the Delonghi is a terrifically versatile machine. The espresso shots were good—not as good as the Jura—but something we’d be happy to drink after dinner. However, the sheer number of drinks available on the Eletta Explore’s touchscreen (more than 40) is impressive.

The risk with any machine that claims it can pull off that much is that, in practice it ends up being more like one of those push button gas station coffee machines that makes things like a mocha chockerato™. But the milky espresso drinks from the Delonghi are smooth and creamy, and quite different from one another, which is not always the case with automatic machines like this. In lower quality machines, the difference between a latte and a cappuccino is really just size. Not so here, where you can zero in on a flat white or a macchiato.

It also has the ability to make cold milk foam for iced lattes or flat whites—and here it really exceeded expectations. The iced drinks were easy drinking and had real body to them, even if the coffee itself could get a little buried under everything else going on. Do note that for cold drinks you’ll need to use either skim milk or an alternative milk like oat or almond. Skim milk works better for cold foam because it has a higher percentage of protein, which in turn results in more volume of foam. Speaking of oat milk, the Eletta Explore also handled our oat milk tests better than its competitors, making a thick, uniform head. The Jura, which ran a very close second here, produced foamed oat milk with huge bubbles that was a little all over the place in terms of texture.

Finally, for a fairly complicated machine, it offers real ease of use. The water tank is big enough that it doesn’t require refilling for days. It tells you step by step what to do if you aren’t sure—what setting the milk frother should be on, how much ice to add, what to do in order to rinse or clean the machine—and is very clear about how to adjust the settings to make drinks stronger or larger. We’re pretty tech savvy, but would feel totally comfortable giving this to a person who struggles to log into their email.

For its quality performance over such a wide range of tasks, the Delonghi Eletta Explore is our pick here.

What we didn’t like about the Delonghi Eletta Explore

This may seem shallow, but we don’t love how it looks. The images of coffee drinks on the control panel seem off for a high-end machine and the body doesn’t have the same wow factor as the Jura. And while we liked the espresso drinks quite a bit, we weren’t crazy about the plain old cup of coffee—it was a bit flat. We won’t judge too harshly for that because we were specifically looking at it as an espresso maker, but think it’s worth noting.

Best espresso maker under $100

Okay, hear us out here: When you dip this low in price on an espresso maker, you’re not going to get the same shot you would out of the Diletta or even the Breville Bambino Plus, but if you’re willing to use a little elbow grease, you will get good espresso and give up zero counter space. The Nanopresso is a 6x2" manual espresso machine typically marketed as a coffee maker for camping, hiking, or combatting bad hotel coffee, not unlike an Aeropress. But we found that the Nanopresso gives espresso makers even three times its cost a run for their money.

The tiny tool works by creating pressure through a piston pump: If you’re at home with a scale and a grinder, just fill the machine with 8 grams of freshly ground coffee, tamp it down with the back of the plastic scoop, and add 80 milliliters of water heated between 190°–200°F, then squeeze a button on the front of the machine repeatedly. Position your coffee cup below and a stream of espresso comes out of a small hole at the bottom of the little pill-shaped espresso maker. We were able to pull a shot with a decent layer of smooth crema on top. Tasted side by side with a shot from a Breville Infuser machine, it held its own, even if it had a bit less brightness than the machine-pulled shot. However, the Nanopresso was very forgiving. We made coffee as we might have to in the woods—water measured without a scale or thermometer, coffee measured with a spoon—and still got a shot that was much better than the $100–$200 espresso machines we tested for this review. If you’re making coffee with a Moka pot right now, you should definitely consider upgrading to the Nanopresso.

What we didn’t like about the Wacaco Nanopresso

Accepting this little gadget for what it is means adjusting expectations accordingly. Given that we didn’t expect it to perform to the level of a good semi-automatic espresso maker, there was nothing not to like.

Other espresso machines we tested

Breville Barista Express Impress

We were incredibly impressed with this machine during the first couple months we used it. It took everything that was good about about Breville models like the Barista Express and the Barista Pro and added a smart grinding and tamping system that made it easy to consistently dose and tamp your shots properly. But it also showed the limitations of the built-in grinder. Even though the grinder is an improvement over earlier models, it has 25 settings to adjust grind size instead of 18 for example, It jammed with very light roast beans. We actually had to take a vacuum to it to completely clear it out. Again, this was not an issue with medium and dark roast beans.

The rest of the experience was terrific. The shots were flavorful, the steam wand created a smooth blanket of foam with both dairy and nondairy milks, and the hot water dispenser was convenient to use. If you stay away from light roasts you will be more than happy with this machine.

Rancilio Silvia Pro X

Often, prosumer machines are scaled-down versions of the most sought-after commercial machines. Rancilio does a nice job of scaling down. The countertop presence of the Pro X screams no-nonsense professionalism. It won’t wow anyone with a flashy design, but it is compact, streamlined, and extremely powerful for its size and price point. It has a dual boiler, which means the coffee maker and the steam wand are each hooked up to their own heat source, so you won’t have to wait for the machine to come to the right temperature for steaming milk after pulling a shot. (The steam boiler is held at a higher temperature than the espresso boiler.) The steam wand performed well, although we preferred the one on the Diletta slightly.

Rancilio also made a nice upgrade from earlier versions of this machine by adding a pressure gauge, so it was easy to tell we were pulling shots with the right pressure. We also liked the alarm clock feature. Because it does take a good 15 minutes for the machine to heat up, you can set it to turn on and be ready for you in the morning so you don’t have to wait. It also does come with a hot water dispenser.

As we said for the Diletta, with machines at this level it’s about design and a lot comes down to personal preferences when choosing one. We recommend the Rancilio Silvia Pro X without reservation. We just preferred the operation of the Diletta Mio.

Breville Infuser

The Breville Infuser is a very good machine. It brews just like the Express Impress and it also has a pressure gauge and a hot water dispenser separate from the steam wand for making Americanos (or tea if that’s your jam). It lost out for a few reasons: The steam wand is not as powerful as the Solis’s and didn’t produce quite as high a quality foam. The Solis came with a heavy tamper and the Breville’s felt flimsy by comparison. Finally, and this was the big one, it took up so much more space on the countertop. If we can get the same coffee in a smaller package, we’ll take it.

Breville Barista Express

The Breville Barista Express is basically an Infuser with a built-in burr grinder, so, while still a very good machine, it lost a close race to the Solis for all the above reasons plus our reservations about built-in grinders. You can get a better package that takes up basically the same amount of space and costs almost the same amount of money getting a Solis, along with a good stand-alone grinder like this KitchenAid.

Gaggia Classic Pro

With its black and stainless-steel body, the Gaggia Classic Pro has that Italian café look about it, but it’s not just beautiful on the outside. It’s a nice machine and was the only one we tested in this price range that came with a commercial-size 58-mm portafilter. The problem is that the cheap plastic tamper the machine came with is actually too small for the portafilter. The espresso came out just slightly under-extracted, although it’s hard to know whether that’s because it was challenging to tamp correctly or because of something in the machine itself. Also, unlike everything else we tested in this price range, it has manual controls meaning you have to start and stop every shot with a switch. That’s not a deal-breaker (a lot of great prosumer machines have the same set up), but it is one more step in the process 

Delonghi La Specialista Arte

Operationally this Delonghi has the same features as a Breville Barista Express but it comes with a number of nice design touches that make it more user friendly. First, a screw-on dosing funnel attaches to the portafilter and fits comfortably into the built-in grinder, which makes it very clean to use (not many stray coffee grounds). It also has a small step that you can place on the drip tray if you’re brewing into a shot glass instead of a mug, which again, makes it cleaner to use (no coffee splashes). The coffee was very tasty and the steam wand performed well, though not quite as well as the Solis or the Breville machines. The timed dosing took a little trial and error to figure out—ultimately we had success with it set around 18. The other thing to be aware of is that Delonghi’s portafilters are a slightly different size than other similar machines; they are just a touch deeper and narrower, which means a standard 54mm tamper won’t work and you will need to use the (quite substantial) one that comes with the machine.

Rocket Appartamento

When compared to the other high price point prosumer models, we thought the Rocket Appartamento wasn’t as good for a few key reasons. First, it only has a single boiler, so you have to wait (not that long, but still) between pulling shots and steaming milk. Second, while the machine includes a pressure gauge, it appears to only go up to three bars of pressure. It includes a high-quality portafilter, but we didn’t like its tamper; it didn’t reach all the way to the sides of the portafilter, so it left some straggly bits of grounds around the sides. It doesn’t include a timer or external temperature control, so to dial in all of the components of your espresso, you have to rely on external devices.

DeLonghi Dedica Deluxe

The DeLonghi Dedica Deluxe was probably the most disappointing machine we tried, not because it performed the worst, but because of the huge mismatch between its quality and its $300-plus price tag. From the body to the portafilter, it feels pretty flimsy, and the default brew setting filled the espresso cup so high it was impossible to move without spilling. The coffee was surprisingly flavorless; the espresso reminded us of a so-so pod machine. If you are considering the DeLonghi Dedica, we think you might actually be happier with the Nespresso machine passionately argued for by senior staff writer Emily Farris.

Cuisinart Espresso Machine

The Cuisinart Espresso Machine performed surprisingly well for a semi-automatic machine that costs under $200. It produced a shot with good crema, although it only had pressurized filter baskets, so it was kind of cheating to get it. Like the Gaggia, the Cuisinart has manual controls (it has a dial instead of a switch) to start and stop each brew. The steam wand was quite powerful, but hard to control, leading to more foam than we’d like. But all in all, this is much more than we’d expect from a machine in this price range.

DeLonghi 15 Bar Espresso and Cappuccino Machine

The acidic coffee (sans crema) from the DeLonghi 15 Bar Espresso and Cappuccino Machine is what it tastes like if you buy a semi-automatic machine for under $100. The steam wand was hard to move out of the way during brewing and produced very firm, almost merengue-like foam. If you’re focused on this price point, get the Nanopresso.

Hamilton Beach Espresso and Cappuccino Maker

The Hamilton Beach Espresso and Cappuccino Maker: Yikes. Hamilton Beach makes a lot of budget-friendly appliances we like (its electric kettle for example, is excellent). This is not one of them. The coffee was watery and yet there was a mysterious crema on top so thick it was almost a mousse. It was incredibly hard to remove the filter basket from the portafilter to clean, because no matter how hard we knocked on the knock box, we couldn’t dislodge the coffee, which had not formed into a puck. The steam wand: Oy. It heated the milk so unevenly, we couldn’t get it heated all the way through without badly scalding part of it.

Jura E8

Of all the fully automatic machines, the Jura made the best espresso, full stop. We drank it side-by-side with the Breville Barista Express Impress, and the Jura's flavors were a little muted in comparison, but they were all there. We know plenty of people who actually prefer a slightly toned down espresso shot. It also got high marks for its many milk drinks (as long as they were made with real cow’s milk; as we noted above we had issues with oat milk). The texture of the milk in our flat whites and cappuccinos was thicker and smoother than what we got from any semi-automatic machine. 

The E8 was also fairly quiet. Super automatic machines can make a lot of noise (they’re working hard!), but the decibel level of the grinding and brewing in the Jura was on the low side. We think the Jura E8 is a great machine and recommend it, especially if you aren’t an iced coffee person. Ultimately we chose the Delonghi Eletta Explore instead because it could just do a bit more and it had a lower price tag. We should note that there are Juras that can do everything the Delonghi can and more. They just come with price tags close to $4,000—and that was higher than we were ready to consider for this review.

Delonghi Magnifica EVO with Milk Frother

The Magnifica is sort of a slimmed down version of the Eletta Explore both physically (it has a smaller footprint) and in terms of what it can do (it only makes seven different drinks). It made very nice espresso, but the milk didn’t come out quite as smooth as it did on the Eletta Explore. We liked that it was smaller and the fact that it’s $900 less than our top pick is no small thing, but given the limitations in terms of what it puts out, we actually think you’d be better off with one of the Breville semi-automatic machines. If you do want something fully automatic, you get a lot more machine by leveling up to the Eletta (or the Jura for that matter).

Philips Lattego 

Philips super automatic machine was fine but didn’t wow us. Its interface is similar to the Delonghi Mangnifica above, which is to say, intuitive and easy to use. It offers five different drinks (espresso, coffee, americano, cappuccino, and latte) and the coffee you get in each ranks in the middle of what we tried. The real issue with the Lattego is with its milk, which had very little body. Even the milk cappuccino, which should be quite firm, was closer to steamed milk than it was to foam.

Espressione Concierge

The Concierge, which does come with a milk frother, produced fine single, double, or lungo coffees within a few minutes of powering up, but it felt more limited than the Jura E8, the Philips or either Delonghi. The machine was fine, but the competition has really leveled up what an all-in-one super automatic espresso machine can be.

Gaggia Anime Prestige

The coffee from the Gaggia was on the same level as the Espressione, but again, the machine is just very limited in what it can do when compared to the more robust Delonghi Eletta Explore and the Jura E8.

Flair Pro 2A

We’ll admit that it isn’t exactly fair to compare the Flair Pro 2 to most of the other machines in this test because it is a fully manual lever machine. After some messy rounds of trial and error we were able to pull truly delicious shots of espresso with this, but in the meantime we made a bit of a mess with coffee splattered around the kitchen. The trick, should you go this route, is to allow for a short period of pre-infusion by not pressing the lever too hard (the included pressure gauge helps with this). The Flair does offer excellent portability, though, so if you’re looking to take good espresso (better, really, than the Wacaco—the other manual espresso maker we tested) on the road and don’t mind the learning curve associated with this machine, this is a smart choice.

The takeaway

To get a quality semi-automatic espresso machine, it will cost you $400–$600 plus another couple hundred bucks for a grinder. But, in that price range, there are several good choices. We like the Solis Barista Pefretta Plus for its slim body, high-quality espresso and powerful steam wand. If you want a machine that does most of the hard work for you, the Breville Bambino Plus is a great bet. And if you’re looking for a café-quality appliance, we loved the Diletta Mio.