De'Longhi EN560.W Lattissima Touch Animation Nespresso Single Serve Coffee Machine, Plastic, 1400 W, White

I purchased this machine some time ago from the Amazon Warehouse, for £96, and it turned out to be in perfect condition with just a slight dent to the box - obviously, I was very pleased about the saving!The machine is easy to use; Remove the water container from the back by lifting up, then fill and replace. Lift up the lever on the top and insert a pod, push down the lever and turn the machine on. The available drinks will light up - if you don't already have the milk frother connected then you will only be able to select the top two drinks which are Espresso and Lungo. If you connect the milk frother by slotting it into the right-hand-side of the machine, then you can also select from Capuccino, Latte, Latte Macchiato and Frothed Milk.Once you have selected a drink, it will automatically begin to heat the water and / or milk before dispensing. In total it should take a minute or less for most drinks.The milk frother produces excellent tasting milky drinks, and also allows you to customise the amount of milk dispensed by changing a dial on the top. I always use small cups and the smallest milk setting will just about fill my cup with a Capuccino without overflowing.You do have the option to customise the amount of water it dispenses for each drink, to change the size of your espresso or lungo. I have done this a couple of times but it is difficult to remember how to do this, but Googling how to do it brings up plenty of results (it is also mentioned in the manual).To clean, the pod capture compartment is removable, as well as the drip tray. The milk frother has several components which can be removed by twisting, and the water container easily pulls out. All of these components can be cleaned in a dishwasher, but for the rest of the machine I would suggest an antibacterial wipe.Because the internal components are quite small it will suffer from limescale, even if you filter your water. In the last nine months I have descaled it twice, so I would say you should expect to descale every 4-5 months if it is used around five times per day. This is easy enough to do and just requires you to lift a flap at the front under the milk frother, which reveals a removable pipe which fits into the milk frother outlet. This then enables the Descale function, where you will need to situate bowls over the spouts at the front to capture the descaled water, after adding acid into the water tank.Be careful after descaling, as I once had a very acidic Capuccino after not running water through it to clear out the descaling fluid.All in all I am extremely happy with my purchase, especially as it produces far nicer drinks than my employer's £2,000 coffee machine (and I've been working from home all this time). If you love Nespresso, I think this would be a fantastic purchase even at full price.

On reading the reviews of this machine, I was very close to saying "this seems AWFUL, on to the next option!". However, I really liked the way it looked, it uses Nespresso capsules of which I already have a load, so I thought "I'll have a go, and if it's as bad as folk say, it'll be back to Amazon within a week with no harm done".So, I ordered it on the Thursday, they said it would be delivered on the Saturday, and it turned up on Friday evening, so great job on the delivery and a very favourable start to the experience.First time use was a little bit of an adventure - the manual told me what to do, and I was following it through, but on page 14 in step 7, it says for first time use "Place container under coffee outlet and press lungo button - repeat 3 times" and then very very clearly points to the espresso button in the accompanying graphic. I decided to use the lungo button instead of the one they point you towards, and it all seemed to work fine.Once I'd done all the setup stuff, I made one of each type of drink. The default measure for the "lungo" was, for me, too small - it dispenses 110ml, I like 200ml, but changing the default amount dispensed was an absolute doddle. It's probably heresy for any devout coffee drinker, but I like to make a 200 ml coffee, warm 30ml of single cream in the micro for 20 seconds and use that to provide the milkiness. You don't get froth, but washing up a small measuring jug is way easier than cleaning out the Nespresso milk foaming mechanism.Having said all that, the drinks made with the frothed milk taste absolutely lovely, and I'll definitely be using that function for special days. On a day to day basis, the micro'ed cream will do me fine.I suspect that a lot of the negative reviews stem from folk who would do well to observe the old RTFM maxim - there definitely seems to be some anger from folk who haven't done the basics, which would imply that they haven't read the manual...The machine, for me, consistently makes excellent cups of coffee even from 3rd party capsule makers. I had previously tried using the Happy Belly brand Rwanda Rainforest alliance capsules at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Amazon-Brand-Nespresso-Compatible-Capsules/dp/B08FRSGQK5/ref=sr_1_7 and my old machine (from a German discount supermarket) hadn't been able to push water through them, so I just got drips in the bottom of the cup. With this machine, I get a full cup of excellent tasting coffee out of the capsules that supports Rwandan farmers for less than 14 pence per cup, which makes me very very happy.I would recommend this machine to anyone who likes an easy to make, excellent tasting cup of coffee