upvote
I have a Lelit Elizabeth. It’s a dual-boiler machine, so you can pull a shot and steam milk at the same time. If you want consistently good coffee without going too far down the espresso-nerd rabbit hole, it hits a nice sweet spot, especially if you’re into flat whites.
reply
A good machine will always need time to heat up since the temperature stability, which is very important for getting good espresso shots, correlates with the weight of the device. For most machines this means 30-45 min or so no matter what the manufacturer is saying and in practice this isn't much of a problem once you plug the machine through a smart plug which you can program to turn on the device before you're getting up in the morning.

Secondly, adjusting pressure is almost a completely unnecessary feature so I'm not sure why do you chose to point that out as a major differentiator. 9 bars is just fine. In similar category goes the PID for adjusting the temperature. While on the paper it sounds cool in reality you will not use them 99% of the time. There's many prosumer machines which don't allow you neither of those and are still perfectly fine machines.

reply
La Marzocco Micra is up to temp in under 10 minutes and will stay there all day, it works very well indeed.
reply
Do you know what is it that it allows for such a quick warm up? Small boiler? Saturated group? Maybe my comment is more relatable to HX machines then although I don't quite get how is it possible to warm up so quickly - the machine is still a 20kg piece and you can't beat physics with such large thermal mass.
reply
Ascaso Steel Duo is an affordable compact machine with two PID controlled circuits and adjustable pressure.
reply
Ah, didn't know about that one. Twice as expensive as the ones I mentioned, though.
reply
If you, like me, are not a baby cow and don’t drink milk I can recommend the ECM Puristika. It’s a tiny, single-boiler E61 that’s just purely for making espresso (no steam wand, no hot water spout). Heats up in about 15 minutes.
reply
>Profitec Go and the Lelit Victoria

I didn't expect these prices! Think I'll stay with my Bambino which cost me a third (and does a _much_ better coffee than my parents' horrid DeLonghi Dedica) but good to know these exist.

reply