A few weeks ago my life went into meltdown – my Delonghi Magnifica coffee machine broke down! The power light was on, but no little coffee makers were home.
The Delonghi Magnifica was my first coffee machine bought way back in 2006. We had been living in Australia, so were used to finding great coffee everywhere. Whilst the UK has many positives, at that time, good coffee wasn’t one of them (I’m talking rural UK here). So my birthday present request was for a proper coffee machine. That little machine kept making beautiful coffee everyday for about nine years. Unfortunately, in the last year of the machine’s life more and more features began to fail. I knew the time was approaching for a new machine, but I just kept hanging on, until finally it just gave up completely.
I rushed off to the shops for a replacement. As my first Delonghi Magnifica had worked so well, it was a simple choice of finding the same machine.
As you can see, my new Magnifica is very like the last one but with a few modifications that provide a smoother and quieter coffee making process. The difference in the coffee production was noticeable and made me realise just how sick my old machine had been before it fizzled out. I now have really great crema on every cup.
So, the best bits of the Delonghi Magnifica:-
- It’s a bean to cup machine – there’s a simple hatch on the top of the machine to add your fresh beans. You can set the ‘grind’ level to make sure you get the coffee crema just right.
- There are two dials which allow you to adjust the strength of the coffee ‘puck’ and how much hot water you wish to drip through. I find this feature really helpful as I love my coffee super strong but if my mum comes over, she prefers it weak. It’s really easy to adjust each individual cup of coffee.
- There is a manual milk frother. It’s only got 15 bar pressure but it’s perfectly adequate for home coffee making. Again, I prefer this to an automated milk frother, as I can control the temperature and the amount of froth to exactly how I like it.
The only down side I find with this machine is that you have to switch between coffee mode to hot milk mode. This causes the machine to adjust it’s heating elements to high. If once you have made one drink and then want to make another, you have to wait an awfully long time for the machine to reset to a cooler temperature to make coffee again. To get around this, I make up all the black coffees I want and then heat the milk to add after. This does mean the coffee is cooling slightly whilst you are getting them all ready. There are machines that have separate heating elements for the coffee process and milk heating which avoids this problem, however they are really expensive!
Overall:-
For the money being charged, I think the Delonghi Magnifica offers a really good range of features that allow you to control how you make your perfect cup of coffee. My experience so far has been that the Magnifica lasts really well with no breakdowns over nine years of use.
If you have a coffee machine, then let me know which one, with a little review – it’s always good to share info on equipment!
This is an independent review. I bought my machine from http://www.johnlewis.com