Breville - Barista Pro™ SES878BTR4GEU1

No matter the machine, you will not get good coffee. This fact is inherent to capsules.  If you don’t care, don’t waste your money. If you care a little, get a decent automatic coffee machine (will be more than 700).  If you care a lot, put in the effort and get a portafilter machine and grinder (even beginner level like sage barista pro will get you better results than any automatic machine) 

I wouldn’t get this machine or breville/sage machines. I had sage barista pro and it’s group head leaked water, apparently its screws lose and I opened it up put some lock tide, it worked for a while but it did it again, I sold it for a very low price just to get rid of it. It is an appliance not a machine, it will break eventually. I got a Profitec Jump amd Eureka perfetto grinder, it was sold as a pair with discount. I realized the how high quality can a machine could be. For a lower price, I would get Profited Go and a eureka grinder (or other decent grinder) usually it is sold as paired with a nice discount. You would thank me later.

Get a Siebträger. But even better, don’t get one. Because you will never like and drink other coffee anymore after you got one 😄 Seriously, look at the Sage Barista Pro, really good bang for the buck and a perfect beginner machine

if you don't mind buying used, you can find the barista pro/express for <400€ on ebay. Search for servicecenter Windhorn, they are certified refurbisher of Sage.

That's about 400 times longer than any Breville thermo-jet machine and when you get accustomed to a 3 sec start up it is FOREVER!  You can't always use a smart plug  when you don't know what time you'll be called into work.    

Do you want a new hobby or just better tasting coffee than instant coffee? Espresso machines can be a pain at times, initially setting up, dialling in etc. If you have the time and patience, get a manual espresso machine. If you are busy person, get something more automatic, less faffing about in the morning! I have upgraded from a sage barista pro to the sage oracle jet. It’s excellent! I got 200 euro off it during Black Friday. I presume it’s the same deal on the UK site. I

I am not a coffee connoisseur by any stretch, I have a Sage Barista Pro. It's a nice and tidy machine once you get the hang of it and keep it clean/descaled etc. There's a bit of trial/error with grind size, extraction time etc There's a new model now with a screen that guides you through the process, so it's less hands on

What drinks do you like? How many do you make a day? I ended up considering everything and I bought a really good VA mythos one grinder and then I’m about to purchase a manual level espresso machine called the Cafelat robot. It suits my needs as I only drink black. I have a sage barista pro and will keep this maybe to use if guests come. All comes down to individual needs really

This is gonna be a rabbit hole. Welcome to the club. My suggestion is to get a Sage Bambino and a good grinder. Machines with built in grinders can be tempting but you can only do so much as some of them can be shite. I have come from a sage barista pro. After 2 yrs, i realised needed to upgrade since i’m not getting the most out of the beans because of the built in grinder. i got myself a profitec go and a mazzer philos grinder. Both from adverts.ie so it was kind of a good deal. This step into espresso machine can go both ways, either you will love the ritual of making coffee and get you hooked. Or you will find that it can be taxing sometimes and will miss the convenience of a nespresso. The sage bambino is a good machine that covers the basics and once you get the hang of it, you can upgrade. If you decide it’s not for you, then at least it’s not too expensive.

There’s always gonna be a learning curve with new machines. I just got Profitec Go recently (coming from Sage Barista Pro). Doing milk drinks really takes longer time. But the quality of the espresso is much more superb than my Sage. And this was the tradeoff I was willing to make. I guess it really is going to be based on what you want to prioritise given your budget. But i think with the Profitec, you are really buying a machine that can basically last a really long time, deliver good espresso and easily repairable whereas the Sage/Breville felt more like an appliance.

Nice, I have the black trim version. Got it for free as the boss was going to throw it out since it "stopped working". Turned out it just needed descaling 😂. I'm in a very hard water area so I descale monthly as I don't fancy spending a fortune on their filter cartridges.

Hey. Firstly, what a sweet thing to think about as a present. I went for [one of these](https://www.sageappliances.com/en-gb/product/bes878) for my first one (a sage barista pro). I think they are considered a pretty alright all in one espresso machine and in the US they are called Breville barista pro but in the uk the brand goes by ‘Sage’. If you can stretch to it - I can say I’ve been really happy with mine over the last year and a half, it’s not let me down once and produced consistently good coffee and has been fun to learn and use with. I’m pretty sure when I went to buy it I emailed sage and just asked them if they could give me a discount code and they did at the time so it might be worth trying that. For a basic essentials for what you are looking for, you kind of want these three things: - coffee bean grinder - espresso maker - milk frother The one I linked above has all of this in one machine for ease. Happy hunting and welcome to ask me any questions though I am relatively new to the espresso machine world