ack.

On the plus side:
+ Makes a good cup of espresso. Not fantastic (not with a touch of that burnt taste that you get from boiler models), but a very drinkable cup. And that’s what it’s supposed to do!
+ I LOVE the auto milk frother. I just tuck the tube in a cup of milk and it draws out the milk and spits it into my cup all frothy and warm. Very nice (though a bit diluted with water from the frother, but I’m ok with that).

On the not such a plus side:

- Noisy! OMG! This thing rattles obnoxiously, much louder than the older platic Krups model I’ve been using. Sounds as if the stainless surfaces are not well mounted or… or… I dunno, but it’s just stupidly loud and buzzy. Every time I run it my wife jumps back, ‘it’s broken, it’s broken’ Nope. Just seems to be how it works…

- Drippy! In two ways. First, the espresso seems never to end… I find that the factory “double cup” setting is almost twice the content that is traditional, not sure why it’s set this way, but it is programmable, so I can change it. Either way, when I depress one of the buttons to stop the espresso (because I haven’t reprogrammed the double seting yet to decrease amount), it continues dripping for a long long long time, very strange and very unlike my old machine, which dripped away, surely, but not for minutes on end… And this isn’t a fault of manual control, either, I checked. Because when I hit the single cup button and let it run its programmed course, the dripping continues for so long that it more or less makes a double cup! Just, bizarre. Terrible flow control. Is it broken? Lord knows. But I just pull out my cup when it’s got the correct amount (because I’ve been making espresso for so long I know how much a single or double should be), and stick a second cup beneath to receive all the drips. Rather defeats the notion of programmed flow control, though.
Secondly, huge amounts of water gather in the drip tray. Again, substantially more than the old model. I find that I have to change the drip tray every other time I used the machine (the old model would go weeks b/w drip tray changes). Again, odd.

In sum, I’m rather disappointed with this new model. While the espresso is acceptable and I love the auto-frother (go to Krups web site for a demo of that), the things seems very poorly engineered, with obnoxious rattling and buzzing, catastrophically bad flow control, and drippy mess underneath, wasting half of the water that you put into it.

This is not the kind of engineering I expect from Krups. I don’t recommend this product and will likely not keep this one for all that long.

Firstly I am just a wee amateur when it comes to coffee. I hate instant coffee and wanted quality coffee at home that was easy to make.

I just purchased this machine last night; it’s our first pump espresso machine. It took me a couple of goes, messing around with the machine to produce a good coffee, but I seem to be getting quicker and better with each additional coffee I make.

It’s fairly simple to use. The pre-programmed 1 or 2 cup buttons take all the guess work out of the coffee creation – process. It is also very quick to fire up (become ready from power up to coffee creation) in comparison to some of my friends machines.

The auto- cappuccino (milk foamer) also works well, with surprisingly little mess or effort, but be sure to use very cold milk.

So far the machine seems to be very easy to clean after your perfect cup, no drips or mess which I have read about in other reviews.

I have not tried the ESE pods yet, but I am sure this eliminates any coffee ground mess.

I hope this helps, enjoy