This is made even more confusing given that the UK Breville brand are selling some machines that look quite similar to some of the Sage machines, and have similar sounding names, so I do hear from people who made the assumption that they'd basically found great deal for a sage coffee machine. I've found myself becoming (or at least trying to become) a bit more organized when it comes to when I make my coffees, by using the auto on, and then changing the auto-on after making my first coffee, so it'll be warmed up and ready to go when I come to use the machine again. Not everyone can afford to spend this kind of money on a bean-to-cup coffee machine, but the PrimaDonna Soul does genuinely justify its asking price. It creates a huge range of drinks – 21 to be precise – and the milk carafe means that it takes just one prod of the touchscreen to produce a very pleasant cappuccino or latte. What sets it apart from the cheaper machines, however, is the Bean Adapt feature: this helps to eke far more flavour from every type of coffee bean than the average automatic machine. Alongside its coffee-making abilities, we also test the performance of any other features a machine may have. For this list, we took a particular look at the milk frothers on the featured machines, noting things such as their ease of use, whether they are manual or automatic, their frothing speed and the range of textures they can produce. We also consider how consistent each milk frother is, to ensure it produces similar results every time. But as I say, that's only by making unfair comparisons, as the Dual Boiler is a very different machine to the other Sage espresso machines.

All of these settings means that you’ll need to make quite a few shots of espresso while you fine-tune your machine, but it’s totally worth it. Once we’d got The Dual Boiler set up properly, we got, hands-down, the best results we’ve had with any espresso machine so far. Perfect, red-brown crema sat on top of our shot of espresso, which is dark and rich in colour showing excellent extraction from our ground coffee. At 68C, the shot was just about perfect temperature wise, with additional shots coming out at the same temperature. Sage has used PID (proportional-integral-derivative) controllers for its boilers, which ensure that they deliver at a consistent temperature.I wanted to add this short section before I get into my more detailed review because I don't want my enthusiasm for this machine to lead anyone to buy this machine if it's not right for them, and it's not right for everyone. This isn't an exhaustive list, it's just the most obvious stuff off the top of my head. All this, and it's one of the cheapest dual boiler espresso machines on the market! This means you can just press the milk icon first if you want the espresso to pull after the milk steams, or do it the other way around, and in either case it means you don't have to stand in front of the machine for a minute or so.

Litre drip tray capacity – with an “Empty Me” indicator | Big drip tray means fewer trips to the sink to empty it, and the empty me indicator means you don't forget to empty it and end up with an over flowing drip tray. Why this isn't a standard feature I don't know

Pour perfect lattes with the best coffee machines with milk frothers – discover our favourite manual espresso and bean-to-cup options

It has proven in many SCACE tests to be similar in temperature stability to saturated group espresso machines including the La Marzocco GS3, which is about six grand! If you’re more of a grab-and-go coffee enthusiast, bean-to-cup machines can save a lot of time and effort as they can grind and brew your coffee at the touch of a button. More affordable models come with steam wands that require you to manually steam the milk in a jug and add it to an espresso, whereas the milk carafes found on pricier models open the door to cappuccinos, flat whites and more at the touch of a button. Digital tank empty warning | So even if you don't notice the quite obvious fact that the tank is low, it'll warn you via the LCD Sage (Breville worldwide, they're sold as Sage in the UK as they sold the brand name here in the 80s) really are clever, they don't tend to do things the same as everyone else. Instead, they tend to look at the way things are currently being done and ask if there is a better way to do it which may be more convenient & user friendly. Stanley, Z. (2022, June 20). How does temperature stability affect espresso extraction? Retrieved from https://perfectdailygrind.com/2022/06/how-does-temperature-stability-affect-espresso/