If you like coffee and want a machine to just do everything for you, including adding frothed milk to make specialty coffee recipes, then you may want to check out the Saeco Philips PicoBaristo Super Automatic Espresso Machine. And unlike some home coffee machines, with the included filter you can make 5,000 cups of coffee without having to descale the machine!
The footprint of this machine is fairly compact, especially considering all the features: the thermoplastic unit measures 221 x 335 x 430 mm, and weighs 8.9 kg. The pump pressure is 15 bars. Overall, the unit makes espresso, ristretto, espresso lungo, caffe crema, espresso double, cappuccino, baby cappuccino, flat white, latte macchiato, milk froth, and hot water, with five aroma strength options and ten grinder settings for the coffee drinks. The removable water tank has a capacity of 1.8 liters and the coffee bean hopper capacity is 250 grams. The coffee grounds drawer capacity is 15 pucks.
Though the footprint is fairly compact, the company recommends that you leave 15 cm above, behind, and on both sides of the machine. In fact, this machine may not be ideal if you have low cabinets in your kitchen–the water and coffee bean reservoirs are accessed by raising hinged lids on the top of the unit, which may hit your cabinets if they are too low.
The controls on the front panel are fairly intuitive, with a dedicated power button (the unit’s on/off switch is in the back of the unit) as well as dedicated buttons for one-touch espresso, espresso lungo, caffee crema, cappuccino, and latte macchiato. Other buttons on the panel include an aroma strength button, a menu/specialty-drinks button to customize machine settings and make additional drinks such as the flat white that do not have dedicated panel buttons, an escape button to return to the main menu, an OK button to confirm or stop a function, and up/down buttons to scroll through the display menu. The buttons themselves are plastic and wobble a little, but are otherwise easy to use.
The machine has a hot water spigot so you can dispense hot water for tea, though the machine’s full functionality comes into play when you remove the hot water spigot and replace it with the included milk carafe. The milk carafe holds up to 500 ml of milk and allows you to make milk froth and coffee recipes that include frothed milk at the touch of a button. In use I found the froth to be, well, quite frothy–I didn’t see much of a difference between the froth from a commercial coffee shop and this unit.
My favorite coffee drink is a flat white, and I’ve long wanted a machine that can reproduce what I used to only be able to get at the coffee shop. Now, with the Saeco Philips PicoBaristo Super Automatic Espresso Machine I can easily make those drinks at home, fully customized with my favorite beans, aroma strength, and grind settings. Even better, not having to descale the coffee maker for 5,000 cups makes this coffee machine a real joy. I’m spending a lot of time at home lately, so I’m really loving this coffee maker.
- Pricing and Availability on Amazon: Saeco Philips PicoBaristo Super Automatic Espresso Machine
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