Rancilio Silvia Pro X. Literally the most bullet proof and straight forward machines.
If you don’t need a dual boiler get the regular Silvia and get a PID and a really nice grinder
Rancilio Silvia. Simple, but with some mods, can become a very prosumer machine. And it’s literally a tank. All the piping is thick copper. High quality wiring.
I love my Rancilio Silvia. I have a PID and once I get some free time I will do a pressure gauge and dimmer mod to it.
Out of all those machines, the Silvia will steam milk like a real espresso machine would the best.
hmm i have heard about king grinders never used them myself(i think manual grinding is way to much hassle) i think they can grind quite fine but you have to do some research or talk to people that own one. I think if they can go fine enough it should be good on a budget. i thought they were somwhere around 100 euro. But deff look also for grinders and machines on the second hand market.
I was also on a budget bit more then you my limit was 500 . I manged to find a really nice machine rancillio silvia v6 with pid and a df64 grinder which together new is more then 1200 i think for exactly 500. This was in the netherlands however not sure how the market is in norway but it could get you much more for youre money. Just inspect in person if they treated it well and you should be good.
But keep in mind if you go non pressurized you need fresh beans so you need to go to real roasters that put a roast date on the beans. as you dont wanna buy year old beans but ideally between 2 weeks old when bought en then they stay nice until you finished but month old or bit extra is still okay. However some supermarket beans which are unmarked can be 2 years old which is not nice. However buying beans from roasters is inherintly more expensive. So you need to consider this aswell and look at some of the prices of bean roasters in youre country and if you would be able to afford willing to spend that for beans.
This is needed because the gasses in the bean cause the pressure inside the puck that a pressurized basket is artificially creating for stale old beans.
As if you only ever want to buy supermarket beans i would not suggest going to machines like this at all but just buy senseo fully automatic or pressurized or something.
I will get downvoted to oblivion for what im about to say here, but £4k for two flat whites a day is dumb. Can you even taste the nuances of the shot in all that milk? Just get a rancilio silvia, the one with the pid. Doesnt matter that its not double boiler, youre not running a cafe and that machine will outlive you.
I’ve got a Rancilio Silvia with PID; I regularly make milk drinks for two people. I pull both the shots first and then steam the milk (separately for each drink) and it works fine.
I might want something more if I was regularly making more than, say, 4 milk drinks at a time though.
The Gaggia E24 and the Rancilio Silvia are comparable (in US the Silvia is twice the price - but you can buy and EU and ship to US and save a lot of money even with tarrifs). The Rancilio Silvia PID adds a PID) as the name suggests). If you are open to hacking add a PID via Gaggimate or Gaggiuino (to either E24 or Silvia standard) - better functionality and cheaper than stock PID that comes with Rancilio Silvia PID (and PID on Silvia is pinful to use because of the terrible display where you need to look up code numbers). Its also cheaper. I don't know much about the Turn Legato V2 but according to reviews - at that price-point E24 is far far better and durable (E24 will last you years with care, it has a brass boiler which is far superior to a thermoblock - but at the cost of warming up speed \[my Silvia takes 30-40 mins to be "ready"\]) . Same with Diletta Mio - buy the Silvia PID at that pricepoint. I cannot emphasize enough the community that Gaggia Classic and Silvia have - lots of forums, mods, spare parts.
My advice is a) save your money for a good mid-tier grinder b) (if you are open to it gaggimate/gaggiuino) and c) buy the E24 (disclosure: I have a Silvia M which I am in the process of modding with Gaggimate - also don't do any mods for 1st 6 months and spend time learning your machine e.g. temp surfing, etc).
I went from a bambino plus to a rancilio Silvia with pid.
The original reason was durability. My bambino plus sprung a major leak after a year and the replacement unit did the same after a few months (this is not a common experience in recent production lots as far as I know).
Espresso and lattes are both noticeably better on the Silvia. The espresso from better temperature control. The lattes you can get much smoother milk foam using manual steaming.
That said, the Bambino plus still made a good latte as long as you stick to espresso blend medium to medium dark roast beans. The drinks i made were not at the level of what I regularly make today, but I had no complaints at the time.
I would consider the Gaggia a Silvia level machine except for the lack of pid.
I upgraded from my Bambino Plus after a year because it sprung a horrible leak and shorter itself. Same thing happened on a replacement machine.
Replaced with a Rancilio Silva with PID. The espresso actually does taste better.
People get rancilios because they last forever. The Bambino has a high likelihood of breaking after a couple of years (mine did not make it to 2 years and now I've had a rancilio for 3 that's still working like new).
With the rancilio, I don't think the base Silvia has a pid controller (an electronic controller that measures and controls the temperature) for setting temperature. What you actually want is somethin Iike the profitec go.
On the otherhand, with a Bambino you can still make a decent espresso if you had a decent grinder. Without a decent grinder it's pretty much impossible to make good espresso.
So you are looking at something like a $200 j-ultra hand grinder or $250 df54 as baseline.
So one thought is to just get the grinder (which should be durable) and take your chances with the Bambino (function wise it's great).
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