The machine makes great coffee. It also costs more than 10 times my previous manual espresso machine that is still going strong after 10 years. Is it worth the money? Absolutely not. The main reasons I wanted a new machine were to make cappuccino and to reduce the time and messing about cleaning after every use. The milk froth is pretty good but not comparable to doing it properly with a wand. It is a single function that fulfils the role of both steamed and frothed milk so what you get is a bit of a cross between the two. One major point I am unhappy about is that it seems to use 3x as much coffee as I did before. This will be primarily because I find I need to use a double shot to get a good taste. I set the strength towards the higher end and notice the pucks are much larger than I was used to. So that's more coffee and two lots of it every time. I only drink one cup per day but I'm going through bags of coffee beans in less than a week. The 'smart' function sounded like a good idea. In reality using the mobile app is actually the only way of getting the drink I want - a double-shot cappuccino. It is a bit much to call it 'smart' to be honest. The app is a terrible experience. Most importantly, it isn't really smart as most people would understand it: you can only use the app over bluetooth; it can't integrate with eg. Alexa or any other smart home systems. There is some customisation you can do via the machine's panel and some that you can do in the app - but they are completely separate and don't have any relation to each other at all. So you cannot set the machine's one-touch buttons to produce the drinks you configure in the app. This means the buttons/functions on the actual machine are basically useless to me. It is very annoying to have to open the app every time I want a drink - especially as it will just randomly lose connnection and require messing about with resetting the bluetooth etc for about 10 minutes when you just want a coffee and need to get to work. The app itself has many poor design decisions as well as stupid, unnecessary limitations: The sliders are very fiddly to use and often change when you take your finger off the screen so it takes several attempts to set the value you want. There is a bug where some of the sliders are disabled at first so you have to save the wrong values and then edit them again to get what you want. In one part of the app your changes are never saved so you can't actually customise any of the built-in recipes. The 'Name' field of a freestyle recipe is limited to 9 characters - how ridiculous is this, it can't even fit the word "Cappuccino"! I use the two bean hoppers for regular and decaf beans - that was the reason I wanted this feature. However, you can't just set it to decaf and then produce one of your recipes - it will override the setting. You have to create an entirely separate set of recipes for decaf. But you can't call them "Decaf something" because the Name field is limited to 9 characters! You can only save 1 recipe as favourite on the front screen so for others you have to click deep into the frustrating menus. Why can't you have as many as you want? The app is nonfunctional unless it is actually connected to the machine, you can't customise or even view recipes without the connection even though such actions don't require any communication with the machine. It also pops up error messages into your status bar after you've switched the machine off. Other general niggles with the machine: I don't know why but the internal part of the tray fills up with manky water really quickly, it asks you to empty it literally every 2 drinks. You have to be really careful when removing it and emptying so you don't spill it all over. It has a power-saving mode, you can change the timer but if you forget to do the milk cleaning routine right away it will shut down automatically after the set time. You don't want to let the milk go funny in the tube but if you switch the machine back on then it will do two more rinses as well (power on, power off) and then the water tank will be empty so you have to fill that up again. There could be a simple way to inhibit the rinse but there isn't. Finally on to the customer service - I emailed to ask about only a couple of initial questions. It took them 2 weeks to reply, when they did it was obvious they hadn't even read my email because they just attached a standard troubleshooting document completely unrelated to my question. It took them 2 more weeks for a further reply to actually address my query - essentially their answer was a flat 'no'. Not even politely 'sorry no, but we will take your feedback on board'. This gives the impression they don't care about their customers, not what you expect from a premium brand. I dread actually relying on their support if there is a fault with this expensive luxury product.

Be aware to read every page of the instructions booklet or your warranty will be revoked. My machine became faulty and after being sent away fir more than 3 weeks with no feed back I contacted customer service who said they ‘ Due to the failure to comply with the correct care and maintenance of the machine, please see section 3 of the guarantee conditions, we have to inform you the machine is not covered by the warranty terms and we are unable to proceed with the repair.’ so I was left with a machine which cost nearly £800.. it was an oversite on my behalf but as per smart machine instructing believed I was cleaning every part. Terrible service I wouldn’t recommend this company. I had spoken to the service line twice and neither asked if I’d cleaned the grinder mechanism

As others have said, it took quite a lot of getting right at the beginning - we had loved our Sage Barista machine but it gave up three times just into it's second year so we decided to buy a new one and go for a bean to cup to save time and messing about with our own milk frothing. Now we have the settings as we want them (there are lots of things to play around with!) we are enjoying our coffee a lot - and so much more than we did with the Sage (and everyone said how wonderful that was). This includes: - Hotter coffee (it can even be increased to be even hotter but we found the factory setting good and hotter than our last machine) - Being able to design our own recipes - how many shots of coffee, the strength of the coffee, the aroma of the coffee, how much milk - How quiet it is (we no longer wake up the household when we make a cuppa in the morning!) - Having fun trying a range of different coffees - Everything about it feels well built and decadent - Fast to heat up and make a brew - No messing about with using/cleaning milk steamer wands - Self-cleaning machine A few things we found a little different/frustrating at first: - Because there are two containers for the different beans, the side we use most often seems to run out very quickly (our old machine held a whole pack in one go but we now need to store a part-opened packet elsewhere) - The water tray seems to fill very quickly (the machine self-rinses - we have taken to putting a container underneath so it doesn't fill quite as fast) - The water tray is shallow and awkward to empty until you get used to it - The water reservoir seems smaller than our last machine, but it may just need filling more often because we're drinking more coffee (because it is so lovely!) - Just fits the space we have for it - it is really big - The lid to the milk container is very tight, so you have to develop a knack to open it Despite these things (which were teething problems and we have got over but for the price of the machine you'd want perfection), we absolutely love the coffee and would highly recommend.

I took ages (months) to decide whether or not to spend the money on quite an expensive machine or buy a cheaper model. My aim was to have a one touch coffee machine which all the family can use. I have to say that I am pleased and so far not dissappointed by the performance. Great tasting coffee, the app is fine and allows up to 8 people to tinker with their drink selection to make a good cups of different style coffee. My teenagers use the hot milk function to make hot chocolate which they say tastes really good. Was it worth the money, I think so, sometimes you really do get what you pay for, I'm glad I didnt go cheap.

This coffee machine is fantastic but there are a couple of things I would improve if it could. I chose this one because of the dual hopper (among other things). The idea being one for good strong coffee and the other de-caff. Whilst it will do that I think it's more geared up to dark and light roast. There is a slot into which I could add preground coffee though so I could buy ground de-caff. The buttons (which are screen buttons not physical ones) have to be pressed quite hard and that can be frustrating when trying to reduce strength or add water which has to be done quite quickly. Speaking of water it cleans itself more than a cat and therefore uses lots which then has to be emptied. The good news is that it makes really lovely coffee and the app allows you to connect and make recipes of your own and then send the instruction to the machine. It's relatively low maintenance and takes almost no setting up, no adjusting things or faffing about, just add beans and water and start then sit and enjoy. I feel harsh scoring four stars but it's not a cheap appliance and a blossoming market so I should be tough.

Bought this in November 2019 and it started off well. However, 16 months later and the drip tray needs emptying more and more frequently, twice a day sometimes. The milk froth doesn't always work and it doesn't take the beans from the tray I selected when I programmed my recipes. Also, when I checked the statistics a lot more drinks were listed than I had made. Other than around 10 other drinks made to test I only make cappuccino and latte. I queried these problems and was given an answer to the statistics query that was incorrect and was told to send the machine back for repair. Apparently, there is nothing wrong with it. I'm not sure what they tested but it is clearly not working properly. It made really nice coffees with no issues initially but not any more so it would be nice to know how they came to this conclusion. Maybe the machines just don't last and it is running how they would expect after 16 months. It would have been nice to know before purchasing. On top of this you have to buy milk system cleaner, liquid descaler and cleaning tabs as well as new filters on a regular basis. While I enjoy the coffee when the machine decides to make it properly, without asking for the tray to be emptied or for one of the cleaning cycles to be run, I won't buy another Melitta product. It would actually be quicker and cheaper to go to my local coffee shop. I would love a decent coffee machine but won't buy a new one without first looking at all the extra costs involved and how the machines perform after a year, if the information is available.

The product is expensive and so it should (does) offer a wide range of options and impressive performance. It has many options that you will probably never care to use such as very milky coffees so take this into consideration. The bluetooth app is great when it works but you have to pair it often and so you may as well learn to program the buttons to save time (given that you will be standing at the machine to put the cup under!) The cleaning products cost about £150 a year if you buy the recommended ones!! After one and half years the grinding mechanism has stopped functioning on mine correctly and spins without any coffee being ground which results in a weak coffee. So its going to have to be sent off to be fixed. Machines such as Jura do give a better coffee flavour in my opinion. This machine is robust but expensive to run and do i really need 2 coffee hoppers and a ground coffee option ?(which definitely produces inferior coffee taste due to the small amount it requests). Buy a machine with less features for the same £. Thats what i will do next time- I will probably buy grinder and a single expresso making machine. I think the pods and similar make better flavour coffee than this machine will. Coffee from expensive expresso machines are much much superior and so you may be disapointed with this machines flavour performance. As the machine cleans itself after use (the milk circuit) and when it turns off, the small capacity tray quickly gets full so constant emptying is needed. Milky water is splattered everywhere so cleaning and wiping is constantly necessary. Need to use another container to catch water from cleaning cycle to avoid taking out the under tray (which is ridiculously shallow - spillage alert!) which is more messing about.

Great coffee, great features. Milk frothing is amazing, nice fluffy milk with brilliant foam. Unfortunately though, my machine became faulty after just 6 days of use. We have only been having 2-4 cups of coffee per day so we haven’t exactly been overusing the machine either. The machine started displaying ‘system error 8’ when switching on and wouldn’t allow it to be used. I called Melitta customer service who went through some troubleshooting over the phone but could not fix the machine. They said this is a common issue at 6-8 months use but not usually after 6 days. Hearing this didn’t fill me with confidence, and paying this amount for the machine I would expect it to last years. I have therefore arranged to return the machine for a full refund. It’s a shame because I am struggling to find any other machines with as good reviews as this one for coffee taste and features. That said, I have found the build quality of this machine to be a cheap and very plasticky. Not what you’d expect for the price.