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I also have the delonghi and I think it's a great little machine. I bought mine about 5 years ago when I was dipping my toe in to espresso at home but I didn't have much room and with a few modifications mine pulls shots that don't seem any worse than ones my mates pull on their gaggia classics.
First, I hacksawed the portafilter to make it bottomless, this allows you to get a good double basket in there and I replaced the steam one with a rancilio silvia wand (really easy there's step by step guides online, takes about 45 minutes). I've never found the need to upgrade as I only drink espresso occasionally these days but when I do I'm happy with the shots and with the silvia wand it makes really great milk drinks (which is basically what I use it for on the weekends).
Couple of things about the hoff review, he said it was too cold but you can change the temperature settings so I'm wondering if he had it set to medium (which it is by défault) and pulling an empty shot first gets it up to temp fine. He also must have the gentle touch of a grizzly bear as I've never needed to use 2 hands to get the portafilter in or out.
TLDR, it's obviously not the greatest machine in the world but it can make perfectly good espresso with a few tweaks.
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Gewürzt
We have that DeLonghi machine at work and I’ve been quite surprised with it. Here’s a few observations:
-It pulls pretty good shots with supermarket coffee. You can’t do that with a ‘proper’ espresso machine, because you’ll just end up with a large cup of bitter brown water.
-It slightly surprisingly pulled a great shot with that light roast from YB that we all struggled with a while back. I couldn’t get that coffee to work at all in my Classic.
-It can’t handle very fine grind, big dose or a heavy tamp, however. I don’t know what the pump pressure is but I don’t think it’s very high.
-The basket is also tiny, I don’t think Hoffmann would have got 18g in it. Maybe 15g tops.
-It’s a fixed shot size and quite short duration.
-I haven’t used it for milk but it’s a panarello wand so it’ll be thick Starbucks cappuccino style froth.