delicious. reviews: KitchenAid Fully Automatic Espresso Machine

In the market for a premium coffee machine? The KitchenAid KF8 is a fully automatic espresso machine with 40+ presets for different hot beverages, four colour options and a special setting for plant-based milks; impressive features but with a high price tag of nearly £2K. Clare Mansell put the KF8 through its paces to see if it’s worth the investment.

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delicious. reviews: KitchenAid Fully Automatic Espresso Machine

Star rating: ★★★★☆
Best for: Quality espresso
Price: £1,899 RRP

BUY NOW FROM KITCHENAID

What’s good about it?

KitchenAid’s new premium espresso machine is intuitive to use with the coffee menu accessed via a clear 12-inch touchscreen display. You can choose between a range of coffees including espresso, macchiato, americano and latte as well as milk-based drinks and settings for tea. If you like to have your coffee with a plant-based milk substitute this appliance is engineered to accommodate that with a special setting on all of the coffee menus, too.

The KF8 is Quiet Mark certified, which means it’s among the quietest coffee machines on the market. In addition, you can also go into the settings and turn off the chimes and pings it makes while being operated. Of course it does still need to grind beans, but the loud part of the brewing process is speedy and relatively low volume.

Cleaning the KF8 is a breeze: not only does it give you on-screen prompts to tell you when you should run each of the eight different cleaning cycles, but it also guides you through them step by step. The whole brewing unit inside the machine can be removed for cleaning via a removable side panel and there is a generous-size drip tray for rinsing out the frother and dispenser.

The KF8 and its touchscreen display

 

The bean hopper is easy to remove for refilling away from the machine and the water tank is both generously sized and easily accessible on the front and side of the machine, not tucked away at the back.

This espresso machine comes with a three-year guarantee and also a 10-year repairability promise, which means that your machine should be able to provide you with a decade of service with affordable repairs if required. I really like KitchenAid and its parent company Whirlpool’s efforts to ensure kitchen appliances have long lives and don’t go to landfill prematurely.

What’s not so good about it?

I found it surprising that KitchenAid haven’t made the KF8 a smart appliance. It would be nice to have the option to lie in bed on a Sunday morning and build your custom drink in an app before coming downstairs and hitting the start button! An app would also be useful for keeping on top of the cleaning schedule if you could, for instance, access information about the last time each cycle was run.

There are some ongoing costs with this machine. If you don’t have filtered water at home, you’ll need to buy a water filter for the tank every couple of months and cleaning the brewing unit requires a special tablet which you can purchase in packs of eight direct from KitchenAid.

My favourite feature

I love the ability to customise your drinks and save them as favourites in your own personalised profile on the machine. It saves arguments at home when one person changes the setup of the coffee machine to suit how they like it. With six user profiles there’s even enough room for regular visitors to have their own profile or perhaps to set this machine up in a small office.

Personalise your coffee with this premium machine

 

Overall verdict

The KitchenAid KF8 gives you the barista experience at home. It’s an industrial-size machine expertly engineered for ease of cleaning and has some great features. Although it will take up a big chunk of worktop space this machine is aimed at those with a generous budget and probably an equally generously sized kitchen!

This is for coffee lovers who value quality over quantity. The ability to swap the bean hopper over to try an alternate roast is aimed at caffeine connoisseurs and the servings the machine dispenses aren’t as big as some appliances. The largest single coffee you can make is only 260ml so it is very much for those who want to savour a high quality brew rather than just getting a high volume caffeine hit.

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