Are Delonghi Coffee Machines any Good? A Review of The Delonghi Espresso Machine
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We've had our Delonghi ecov 311 bk icona vintage style espresso coffee machine for 12 years. 12 years! We bought it in the days when we didn't review things and it's a shame that we can't go back and review things so far down the line as this kind of durability should be celebrated. Especially in this throwaway culture that we live in, getting 12 years out of a daily multi use anything is rare. Especially a kitchen appliance that's used every day.
This is the model that we have.
The Delonghi coffee Machine has been an absolute workhorse, making us delicious fresh coffee from ground coffee, keeping me (hello waves from Fletch) & Si (say hi Si) alive since 2010 and it was a really great price back when we bought it and even rarer - it still is. We're basically dead until our morning coffee. And then one more. We are used to coffee shop style coffee's at home and could never be without a home coffee machine now. This machine looks neat, sleek and you can keep the cups on the top of the machine on the rack to heat when the coffee machine is turned on. Read on for our honest review.
We like to try different ground coffees from around the world. When we go to Borough Market London - (see my write up on Borough Markets - a must visit market in central London if you're a foodie and coffee lover) we pick up a Monmouth coffee, a variety of our choosing.
We now live in Bali and are spoilt for choice with the coffee varieties here and in South East Asia in general (we recently got back from Vietnam and oh my the coffee game there is next level)
Monmouth coffee shop at Borough Markets London. They do ground coffee and beans suitable for the Deloghi Espresso making machine
When in England UK we take a trip to Borough Markets to visit Monmouth and pick an amazing coffee from small 1-2 acre farms all over the world. From Bolivia, Brazil, Costa Rica to El Salvador. They do a write up of the farm / farmer and a detailed synopsis of the history and flavour. And their ground coffees for domestic blends work well in the Delonghi Fresh Coffee machine. We are coffee geeks so love all the background with coffee. It's the little things!
The Delonghi Coffee machine is neat and compact. It fitted in my tiny first apartment kitchen and looked stylish on the tops. Even though its compact it does 2 cups or single if preferred, which is handy as I rarely have coffee alone really and some of the smaller machines at this price range only do the single cups. It's pretty noisy by comparison to some of the bigger machines, but I don't care. I get great noisy coffee at a bargain price - and also I think it's gotten noisier as times gone on. I'm sure it wasn't this noisy to begin with. Again I don't care!
Because it's got a retro vintage style it has not aged. It looks just as good in the kitchen now as it did when we first bought it. We've changed kitchens in the time that we've had this machine!
It has a milk frother, which we only ever use for the kids hot chocolates. Never milk in coffee. And the machine comes with an attached tamper so no need to buy that separately. If you do love coffee art then you'll want to get the milk pouring jug with the machine to allow the neat arty pouring, it's just not something we do with ours so never needed one.
So if you don't think Delonghi make good coffee machines, think again. This is the perfect entry level coffee machine, that has seen us through our maturation of home coffee making like barista's.
Things that I like about the Delonghi Coffee making machine are:
It's price you can make a coffee from 15p per cup!
It Makes all coffee shop favourites to a high standard
It has a Steam arm to froth fresh milk for cappuccinos and lattes
You can Use your own choice of ground coffee
Just add Hot water delivery for americanos
You can make two espressos at once - good for if you have a guest or are in a couple
Theres a cute matching kettle and toaster set
For the ground coffee that you can use in this coffee machine, Day to day we use The already ground variety for this current model Lavazza Qualita Rosa Ground Coffee. It's a full bodied and well rounded coffee that's finely ground and filters well through the machine. It makes a perfect coffee every time with the delicious crema on top. I've added the Amazon link to buy the best Lavazza ground coffee in bulk here because buying in bulk you definitely get more bang for your buck. So my basic machine is purring away nicely still after 12 years. And I've had my head turned recently, by a shiny new bean to cup La Specialista machine that comes in at a bigger £400 $500 price tag. I know call me fikle, but I've waited so long for this machine to die on us. But no it troops on making amazing coffee day after day. There's nothing to grumble about is there. And the Delonghi basic machine will live on and will move to the office in the UK as the office machine (it's still really too good to throw out and I hate waste).
But we will definitely soon be upgrading to this snazzy model the De'Longhi La Specialista Metal Barista Pump Espresso Machine, the Bean to Cup variety and we'll be stocking up on the Lavazza coffee beans rather than ground, although the coffee in Bali is amazing and cheap so not too much stocking up as we recently made the big move to Bali. I'll do a review of the new machine once we get that up & running. And maybe an unboxing video on my new youtube channel too if you like that kind of thing? I'm still new to YouTube so not sure what people want to see over there. Still finding my feet with that one! Btw please do follow it as I'm still pretty new over there and trying to grow that right now.
So are Delonghi coffee machines any good? if you like long lasting, durability and a dependable machine that makes coffee shop quality coffee at home. Then yes! The Delonghi Ecov 311 Icona Vintage Espresso Coffee Machine could serve you, like it has us very well indeed. For a price thats pretty darn good.
You can buy the Delonghi coffee machine
The old work horse of a machine that I have.
They do the same model in Cream too here which looks pretty stylish
And this is the little head turner that grabbed my attention recently.
The De'Longhi La Specialista Arte Evo EC9255.M, Espresso Pump Coffee Machine.
Dreamy! But also have you seen the price!! I wonder how much better this one performs compared to the cheaper models... I'll let you know when mine arrives.
And ahem the king / queen of the coffee machine has to be The Sage but at £600+ I'll be leaving this one until I can justify the spend. I'd love to know how this performs for you if you have one.
Let me know if you buy a Delonghi coffee machine which one you go for. I'd love to hear your thoughts and I can tell you what independent coffee blends we're enjoying at the moment that you might love to try in your new machine.
(This post is not sponsored by DeLonghi I'm just a lifelong fan of their machines, but if the marketing team at DeLonghi wants to reach out to me benothinglike@yahoo.com to review The King of coffee machines 'The Sage' I would bloody bite your hand off)
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