First attempt at coffee. Followed instructions on filling with water and beans. Placed the cup under the coffee headset volume to about 80ml and pressed the coffee button. The machine made some noises and proceeded to squirt about 300ml of hot water out of the wand some of which went everywhere until I got a jug under it. Tried twice more with the same result. checked water gave the beans a shuffle around, and checked the coffee bin, empty.

Tried again, and I got some grinding noises and coffee! The steam wand was steaming slightly for a while. The coffee had almost no crema, it was bitter and too hot to drink straight away and not dark like coffee normal. Tried again using the stronger coffee button. This produced a dark coffee with a thin layer of crema, but too hot and bitter again.

Open the coffee bin to find the coffee pucks had fallen apart. The strong coffee puck was 50% thicker than the standard, but even this had partly fallen apart. When touched they were very soft with no real density.

Tried the wand to froth some milk. Firstly, getting the wand in the jug and jug on the stand so the wand was in the milk is a faff. As mentioned in other reviews the wand came off as reliant on a plastic ball and rubber cup arrangement. Once in position, I pressed the frothing button. A little noise and nothing. Pressed it again and hey presto steam. The froth produced was actually okay and though not obvious pressing the button again stops it.

This is a £300 bit of kit, yes I got it in the sale at £190, but it is not worth even this. The coffee is bitter, tastes thin, no crema to speak of. It was more like a poor-quality filter coffee than a silky smooth espresso.

As a result, I am returning it and hope to find something capable of making a nice coffee.

Pros:
1). Incredibly simple to make just about any coffee.
2). The display clearly shows the percentage of coffee to milk being used when creating (nice touch).
3). Plenty of customisable options – strength, heat temp and volume.
4). Even has a favourites settings for customised coffee – just touch the favourites button once customised.
5). Milk based drinks are so simple to make (the latte is a real winner) – just insert the supplied tube in and drop the wand end into some milk.
6). Dimensions of the unit is very small – so fits well under kitchen units however, water tank filling is a problem when stored this way as removal and filling is from the top back of the machine.
7). So far, it’s been easy to clean.

Cons:
1). Not great for hot chocolate fans as only seems to have one frothy milk setting – which doesn’t get hot enough for me. You can increase machines temperature but this didn’t seem to help for this.
2). Water tank removes straight upwards (and needs space to do it) so doesn’t really fit under kitchen units easily. Workaround is to pull out and either fill directly or remove (but does mean pulling it out each time).
3). Waste water tray is quite small so will need emptying regularly and notification looks to be based on numbers of coffee and not if the tray is actually full.

Other comments:
1). Unsure about the descaling options but it looks quite simple in Krupps videos.
2). As it’s a warehouse unit, this didn’t come with the free sample water tank filter (that a new one would have) however we only fill our coffee machines using filtered water anyway.

Conclusion:
Very simple, Very neat machine. Blows my old Delonghi out of the water for the money. Thankyou Amazon!