Legato V2

I bought recently the V2 and I honestly have some buyers remorse. No issues with the machine, but, laugh as you like, it does not brew any better coffee than my old bambino did. its dual boiler, which on paper would be nice, except bambino had also 0 waiting time for steaming due to the thermojet. But now I can wait minutes for heating up, and have to backflush all the time. Yay. Ive seen soke reviews just recently from kaffeemacher, and the thermal stability is also pretty bad. Go eith the Quick Mill

How about a Turin Legato V2? I have a similar machine at home and it warms up fast with no waiting time to steam too. I can wake up, switch on the machine, go take a shower and the machine will be ready to make the first cup.

Nope. Single boiler with separate thermoblock for steaming. You can’t steam and make an espresso at the same time. However you can start steaming almost immediately after extraction.

Legato v2 and DF64 are great choices for entry into espresso and are very capable. May need to modify burr alignment, but it’s not difficult. If you want a more trusted machine brand, look at Gaggia Classic Pro. You can eventually mod Gagguino or Gaggimate for more control/profiling.

I was going to recommend the Legato as well. [https://www.turingrinders.com/products/turin%E2%84%A2-legato%E2%84%A2-v2-espresso-machine](https://www.turingrinders.com/products/turin%E2%84%A2-legato%E2%84%A2-v2-espresso-machine) I have the v2 in black, and I think it looks nice. You could get it in white to match your grinder. Yes, its better than any of the Breville machines. It's got an E61 group head which is the same size as commercial machines, so you can use all the higher quality portafilters and tampers and baskets and whatever else you want. I think it heats up a little slowly, but just plan on a ten-minute warm-up period and you'll be fine. If you can find a deal on a Rancilio Silvia, those are tanks. I really like my Legato, but I do miss the Silvia I left behind in Australia.

Turin Legato - $479 Turin D54 - $215 That's a bit over your budget, but that's been my setup for the past year and I've been really happy with it. If you swap the Breville Bambino ($299) for the Legato, you'd come in pretty close to $500. One of the downsides to the Breville is that it uses a different size for all its tools: 54mm. So that's your portafilter and tamper at a minimum. But if you want a puck screen or a grounds distributor tool, those will have to be 54mm as well. Oh, and the D54 dosing cup won't fit into that size portafilter. But if you get a machine that uses the commercial standard size ("E61" which is 58mm) then you can keep all your tools if/when you upgrade your machine. The Turin Legato, the Gaggia Classic and the Rancilio Silvia are the entry-level machines that have E61-size groupheads.

Nothing...you can literally achieve the same results on any espresso machine that does 15 bar, which is almost all of them. You change the makeup of your shot based on grind level. Get the new Bookoo Motto80 grinder. It's as good as the current $3000 grinders but will only cost like $1000. You can't go wrong with the Motto 80. If you really care about having a shiny looking machine, there's plenty of options like the Turin Gallatin but you could have everything needed in an espresso machine with the Turin Legato v2 which gives you full control over flow, pressure and temperature. It also does pre infusion.