De'Longhi Magnifica Plus

The Magnifica Plus sits at the top of De'Longhi's Magnifica family and is the model owners point newcomers toward when the cheaper Evo's interface starts to grate. At $1,000 the money buys two concrete things over its siblings: a large touchscreen that walks you through every maintenance step in plain language instead of asking you to decode blinking lights and button combinations, and De'Longhi's higher-dosing brew system, which puts more coffee in the puck than the standard Evo and produces a correspondingly stronger cup. It is a popular first super-automatic precisely because it removes the two things that frustrate beginners — not knowing what the machine wants, and drinks that taste thin. Owners report it holding up well in heavy use, with one logging over 1,300 drinks in under a year without a hiccup.

Nearly every complaint attached to this machine traces back to grind setting or beans, and the pattern is consistent enough to be worth stating plainly. New owners reason that espresso should be ground as fine as possible and set the dial to 1, which is too fine here: the puck channels, water forces through one path, and the result is sour, acidic coffee often pouring from only one spout. The settled advice from owners is that 3 to 4 is the sweet spot, with 4 to 5 for lighter roasts, and that anything below 3 causes more problems than it solves. The other half of the problem is the beans. The mass-market Italian espresso blends people reach for first are heavy on robusta, which builds crema but brings a bitter, rubbery, almost peanutty edge — several owners convinced their machine was defective or flavourless simply changed beans and were happy. As always with this grinder, only turn the dial while it is actually running. One genuine expectation gap is drink size: portions here are calibrated to European sizing, and buyers used to large North American mugs are regularly startled that even the largest preset barely fills a cup. That is programmable, but it surprises people. Day to day, a useful habit owners share is leaving a cup under the spouts, since the machine flushes water at both startup and shutdown and otherwise fills the drip tray fast.

At $1,000 this is a strong buy if you want a stronger cup and a friendly interface without stepping into the premium tier — and it is the machine most often recommended as the upgrade from a disappointing entry-level super-automatic. Against its own family, the Plus is generally preferred to both the Evo and the Evo Next, whose extra money buys less than the jump to the Plus does. The most interesting comparison is the Eletta Explore, which frequently sells for only a little more and adds cold extraction, a chilled carafe and app-based custom drinks; owners who cross-shopped the two in Europe, where the gap can be as small as fifty pounds, call the Eletta the obvious pick. Against a KitchenAid KF7 or KF8 you would pay substantially more for a touchscreen and a removable brew group, though De'Longhi's brew group also comes out and needs no greasing. Pricing varies enormously by region — the same machine can cost hundreds less in Europe than in North America — so it is worth checking whether a sale or a different market makes the decision for you.