BES920XL

Love the different views this topic will generate :) Barista Express (and most of the all-in-one Breville's) are good in the longish term. Parts fail and these machines have limited repairability. I have a refurb, and this is my second personal Breville machine, and 4th of their's I've bought/used o

i had a bambino and love it. i use a breville dual boiler now and miss it occasionally

The BDB is no slouch. It's way beyond entry-level espresso making. That machine regularly retails for very roughly the equivalent of $3000 AUD outside of Australia and is still considered a good deal and good buy at that price. That's more than 3x what you're paying! For what you get, if you're seri

The dual boiler is an excellent machine, great choice The breville grinder is not famed to be really, i would recommend a baratza grinder but im not an expert on them, but if you have the budget maybe go for a niche zero

For milk drinks with medium to dark roasts, Breville Dual Boiler and a Niche Zero would suit you well.

My first machine was the La Pavoni. I had trouble with the workflow and couldn't get more than one or two good shots out of it for every 10 I pulled. So I picked up a used Breville Dual Boiler.Two totally different machines. I love my BDB, and I'm starting to really master getting good espresso out

You are already end game with the bdb and niche zero if you are making medium dark / dark traditional espresso and milk drinks. Anything else is just changing to change to get nicer gear, it won’t improve cup quality. I had the niche zero and compared to the 01 (3k) and the Weber key 2 (2.2k) the ni

Oracle touch is a bit more complicated - ie more parts that is more likely to fail. Saying so, it is a fantastic machine if you like something semi-automatic. I have the Oracle. So much easier as I have young kids. The upper end coffee machines Breville uses baratza grinder, ie it is better than you

Breville Dual Boiler and single dose grinder on the side. All in about $1250 + $750 for grinder, if you wait for it to go on sale. Probably doesn't pass the "not too big" criteria but I can make Barista quality coffee with my setup these days.

I had an older Barista express and found the grinder mediocre, inconsistent and ultimately unreliable as it eventually died and we got a Baratza Sette grinder as a replacement before then replacing the Breville. The newer ones may be better - this was over 10 years ago. I then moved to a Dual Boiler