Barista Touch

Never thought about it. I have the Breville Barista Touch Express. I'd be surprised there were plastic tubes in there given the price...

I have one I picked up used. Been using it for 6 years now, it’s great. I had a separate grinder which was better, but had to ditch it moving to a small apartment. The built in unit still does the job fine. If you can get it for a good price I’d say go for it. It’s a great starter with legs to hold you over for a while. In fact I just picked up a barista touch off the side of the road that needed repairs, and even after fixing it, the BBE is the unit I decided to keep for home and the Touch got sent to the office for work duty.

I got myself a second hand sage barista touch and never looked back. I rarely buy coffee out anymore. Brilliant machine.

I've had the Breville barista touch for about 6 years now and it's still going strong. its not cheap, but it has solid build quality and has an integrated grinder which saves some space. if you keep up with basic maintenance, it’ll definitely last a while. You can find some good options [in this thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/productbible/comments/1ljvgzh/the_best_home_espresso_machines/)

Same reason I have a barista touch. I’m not particularly consistent on when I have coffee and sometimes I want one in the middle of the day too. Not waiting for the thing to stabilize. 

I have a breville barista touch and a bambino plus ($1000 and $500). I only ever use my 3 cup bialetti ($30) and the milk frother of one of the machines. the barista touch has a grinder, frother and touch screen and you can adjust the grind size, timing of brew, customize certain settings for different types of brews and more. its actually amazing. except a long time to set up and get it right. if you and your family prefer different coffee beans then the built in grinder will be inconvenient because the holder is big and the beans will still be inside the holder even though you already grinned them. in short I think its more convenient to do the moka pot, buy your own grinder, and frother. will come out insanely cheaper than buying a machine and has more diversity

Yeah i have the breville touch, which doesnt have as much control as I would like, but its shared with roommates that dont know the first thing about coffee. The touch is easy for anyone to use, but the coffee from a barista express or pro is better. As long as they choose a machine theyre suited to, they’ll be fine

I got a Sage Barista touch espresso machine from eBay for £300 and it’s been fantastic. Looks to be an ex rental judging by the number of cycles, but had a small warranty included.

We have a sage barista touch and it’s fantastic. Make a better quality cappuccino at home than I get out anywhere. Costs a good bit more than your budget but if you add in the savings you’ll make on not buying coffee out any more it makes sense.

The sage barista touch is an incredible machine. Might be a deal on it for Black Friday somewhere.

I owned a Touch for a couple of years, and was pleased with the performance and convenience for all of the reasons you mentioned. After a while, however, the grinder seemed to get harder and harder to dial in. And when I say dial in, I'm not talking about trying to draw out subtle tasting notes from the beans, I'm talking not have one shot completely choke the machine, and the next shot spit out a pseudo-espresso mixture of water and coffee in 5 seconds or less. My first "fix" was to get a new grinder, and that extended the life of the machine for a couple more years. Once I started having other problems with the machine, I just bought a Bambino Plus, and I've been using that happily ever since. It is a little more work to pull a shot than the Touch, but I get much more consistent results. It also has the exact same auto milk frother, so there's no loss of convenience in that aspect. And, I will say, the Bambino plus nags you a whole lot less than the Touch. With that touchscreen, there are all sorts of cleaning/calibrating/desacling, etc. notifications it is more than happy to convey to you on a regular basis. If I had to do it all over again, I would just go with the Bambino Plus and a good grinder. The Breville grinders are not very good at the start, and they definitely get worse over time.