De’Longhi Eletta Explore Espresso Machine with Cold Brew

This fully automatic espresso machine from De’Longhi FAR exceeded my expectations. I don’t think you’ll find a better espresso machine anywhere – this machine is pure excellence!! I’m not exaggerating when I say that I wake up groggy in the morning, but thinking about making myself a yummy drink using this machine makes me more than willing to get out of bed and start my day!!

Out of the box, I found it to be a bit intimidating, even though my previous machine was a fancy one from Saeco. But don’t let the accessories or the thick instruction manual fool you, this espresso machine is incredibly intuitive and user friendly and honestly puts my Saeco Pico Baristo to shame!!

It comes with everything you need to make hot or cold drinks and the touchscreen menu has a large variety of drinks that you can choose from with the ability to customize the size and strength. It has a carafe especially for making putting milk in for cold beverages and one for hot beverages. Each carafe has an adjustment for the amount of foam and the machine will tell you what to turn the adjustment to depending on the type of drink you’ve chosen. Note that the machine specifically calls for plant-based milks (almond, coconut, etc) and discourages the use of dairy milk. There is no effort on the part of the user – the machine steams and foams the milk, grinds the beans, and then once the process is done, the machine will instruct you to turn the knob on the carafe to “clean” and the machine actually rinses out the milk carafe so you can stick it back in the fridge!!

You can add different users and then save their favorite drinks under their individual profiles. The options are truly endless because this machine can make most any coffee drink that you can think of.

Some of my favorite features are:
*The foam is makes is fantastic…better than you’re going to probably get from your local coffee stand!
*The ability to make true cold foam! To me, this is decadent and such an amazing option to have at home.
*The ability to make a true cold brew…it doesn’t make hot espresso and tell you to put it on ice, it actually brews it COLD (mind blowing!)
*The ability to brew a cup of coffee (not an Americano, although you can make an Americano as well!)
*The ability to just use the machine for a cup of hot water using the attached spout.
*The water reservoir is on the side and slides out for easy refilling, especially for those with limited clearance between the countertop and the cabinets.

Only a couple of things that I’ve noticed that would be nice to have, but definitely don’t take away from the excellence of this machine:
*It doesn’t seem to have a notification for when the coffee beans are running low.
*I wish it had an adjustment for what temperature you wanted your milk steamed to.

Overall, this machine is basically like having your own personal coffee shop in your kitchen. It looks sleek, doesn’t take up a ton of space, and is unbelievably user friendly!!! The price point is high, but the value and quality is absolutely there, no questions about it. I’ll be adding some videos to my review to demonstrate how great this espresso machine really is!! If I could give it 10 stars, I would!!

I always wanted a coffee machine like this one and I decided to buy a more traditional branch.
In the beginning everything was perfect and I enjoyed my cappuccino and expresso.
After the first descaler process, the machine was not able to process any milk. It looked like the machine was “clogged”.
I contacted the Customer Service and after some back and forward, they accepted to take my machine for repairing.
Now, I just got it back and looks it is working well. However, the panel shows a lot of scratches and stains.
This is so disappointed, I bought an expensive new coffee machine and, now, I have a used damaged one.

This has dropped by $600?
So many red flags and pricing games with Amazon and Delonghi.
Bought this at $1699 and the next day it’s at $1305?
Cancelled my prime membership and done with Amazon when possible.

At Starbucks, I’d have a Venti Americano with 5 shots of espresso literally every day. That’s not exactly an inexpensive drink; and thus this machine will pay for itself inside of 12 months. I had to experiment a little with beans, grind, and “intensity” settings to arrive at a drink I love, but once I found the magic mix, it’s been great. My wife also has a daily Starbucks habit (venti matcha latte w/ soy and 5 scoops of ground lawn clippings) and she’s started making her drink with this machine as well. So it could end up paying for itself within 6 months depending upon her usage. Anyway, it’s easy to clean, easy to operate, intuitive, and cranks out delicious espresso shots. Spending this much money on an espresso maker seemed a little crazy at first; but in retrospect, it was totally worth it.

UPDATE:
4 month now and the hot milk frother isn’t working and stopped pumping milk. Their online support didn’t help and instead provided a phone number to call and troubleshoot. A machine at this category I never expected something like this to happen too soon.

I have been brewing coffee of all sorts for years and I had my share of using fully automatic espresso machines for the past 5 years. All machines I used had a few things that I didn’t really like but here comes the Eletta Explore to rule them all. I am impressed. Here is what I really like:

– Amazing build quality it’s built to last
– Absolute control over all and every drink.
– Bean extraction is amazing.
– The grinder in the Elette Explore is top quality and can be set to match all kinds of beans and bewing
– Milk-based drinks hot and cold are superior in this machine, basically your very own barista.
– Great interface and software, step by step and great GUI
– Space saver I problem I had with other machines given the positioning of water or bean reservoirs.
– To-go big mug fit and brewing is just what we needed.
– The milk frother is one of the cleanest ways among espresso machines to maintain milk and cleanliness of the actual machine.
– Tea/Hot water comes from a separate spout away from the coffee brewing water spout.

What I don’t like:
– The APP, definitely needs work it’s slow and buggy. It has great potential but needs some bug fixing.
– The prints/pictures of the drinks on the sides of the screen are not the best print quality.
– There is no way for any water from the ground chute to drip into the water tray.
– There was no tool included to clean the milk tube inside the milk frother.

In Summary:
Absolute pleasure brewing coffee every day with the Eletta Explore. 100% top quality all around, great coffee drinks and flavor. no limits to what this machine really can do. tons of recipes on the app and a statement. A top choice for any coffee connoisseur.

I haven’t experienced such bad customer service in a very long time! We had the machine for three weeks. There’s only two of us drinking coffee and we don’t drink more than one coffee a day, so this machine was barely used. It must have been the second or third refill of the coffee beans when it started showing a message that a refill is needed.
Needless to say, we tried everything- cleaning , resetting, restarting everything we could. Called customer service, (since the manual is basically useless) several times. We opened tickets and waited for them to send labels and boxes to service the maschine. We have received these, as much as eveyone reading this review did!!!
They said many of the beans are oily and the grinder can get clogged. It makes perfect sense. What it doesn’t make sense for a $2K machine is that you provide no way to clean the grinder. And even more outrageous is that when you sell a coffee machine of this value you do not assist after the purchase!! Amazon was the only place where I could place a review!
Next step is to contact Customer Affairs and file a complaint.

We decided to treat ourselves to a fully automatic espresso machine last Christmas and picked this one based on stellar reviews. The espresso? Fantastic. The variety of drinks? Delicious. We were loving it—until a few weeks in when it asked us to descale.

No problem, we used the manufacturer’s recommended solution. But after that, the hot milk carafe just stopped working. I cleaned it, took it apart, tried everything—no luck. Oddly, the cold carafe still worked, so I knew it wasn’t the machine itself. Frustrating!

Finally, we called customer service and learned something surprising: De’Longhi does not recommend using reverse osmosis (RO) water. Guess what we had been using for both brewing and cleaning? RO water.

One more descaling cycle with plain old tap water, and boom—problem solved. Note to self: DO NOT use RO water! I know, it seems counterintuitive, but trust me on this one.

Also, the mobile app is sluggish and pretty useless, but that’s a minor gripe.

Despite the hiccup, I’m still giving it 4 stars because at the end of the day, it makes truly great coffee. Just be mindful of the water you use! ☕️

I purchased this machine back in January and wanted to give some time before writing this review. I will start out by saying overall, this is a great machine. Many hot and cold drink choices. Very easy to use. The display guides you along and provides instructions on what to do next and how to do it. Very cool!
The only draw back that I have experienced is milk drink serving temperature. I feel that this is a major issue with this unit.
I followed the instructions as noted for a flat white and the serving temperature as measured by a calibrated digital thermometer is 125F where coffee serving temperature using the same thermometer is measured at 157F.
I called DeLonghi customer service and had several discussions about this issue. I followed their instructions which included preheating the cup and also sent a video of making a flat white.
They finally agreed to replace the unit.
Welll………The new unit arrived and had the exact same issue!!!
Flat white with medium foam (as recommended by DeLonghi) serving temperature measured at 125F

I’m frustrated that I spent a lot of money on a “state of the art” expresso machine and still have to microwave my flat white after it is done brewing.
My honest feeling is that DeLonghi knows about this issue and simply does not want to address it as you can see other reviews that also list cold milk drink serving temps.

I hope this review helps you in making a decision to purchase or not purchase this unit.
If you buy it and like milk drinks, make sure your microwave works!

We purchased this machine and gave it the “old college try” for several weeks. This was our take:
-Preheating a mug, the milk does not get hot enough. So latte’s are cold quickly.
-The machine pulls what looks like a good espresso shot, but they are generally more bitter than we like (and yes, we’ve tried A LOT of beans).
-Water usage is VERY high.
-The interface is less than ideal. It is slow. Changing detailed settings from your phone can take 1+ minute or longer. It makes setting up new beans a BIG, BIG chore, as again, it takes forever.
-Adjusting the hot water level, for an americano for example, is challenging. It must be done from the app, and you are reliant on a slider, no way to input a specific quantity. Pretty annoying for the engineer in me.

My house hold drinks a lot of coffee…I mean A LOT.

Before this machine, we were buying coffee at coffee shops multiple times a day. This machine is amazing! I don’t say that lightly either. We’ve gone through multiple machines in the past and this one feels like the ultimate keeper. We haven’t felt the need to purchase individual coffees since owning this. We only buy beans.

Very easy machine to operate, great HOT coffee, and this machine will pay for itself within 7 months.

Only mild complaint, the water reservoir is not big enough but it’s not a deal breaker.