Cooks Professional 15 Bar Retro Coffee Espresso Machine | Coffee Machine with Steam Wand | Built in Temperature Gauge | Black

Great machine for a good price. First cup of coffee was perfect. Have been using this for three days now and so far I’m very pleased with it. I like my coffee very hot and when I warm the cup that’s what I get.

bought as low cost for Swan Nordic that broke and was not repairable and had appalling service. This machine has worked well for several months but the acid test will be in a couple of years time, when I see if it is still working.

Genuinely brilliant, straightforward coffee maker. Very good price considering the gouging that’s going on to exploit gullible coffee connoisseurs…

I tried to like this and took weeks to decide but couldn’t live with it long term.Water reservoir is difficult to remove.Regular mugs don’t fit in the machine.There is no automatic stop on the pour.Machine vibrates so much if you leave to get milk, when you come back the mug isn’t under the portafilter and your coffee is pouring into the drip tray.The drip tray is tiny.If you don’t use the drip tray so you can fit a regular size mug, the tray holder has 2 holes in the bottom meaning the post pour drips go straight onto your counter.The portafilter is very cheap and the filter cup is very loose. This means it often falls out when emptying spent coffee, you get tiny grinds forming a tide mark in your drink, the machine occasionally spews a hot water/grind mix out of the housing and the most annoying part is, as the filter cup sits so loosely in the portafilter arm, if you are making a second cup and use a knock box to empty it, the 2 nozzles act like tiny volcanoes spewing hundreds of tiny coffee droplets all over your surfaces.I’ve had to return this. Pretty little unit but simply isn’t fit for long term purpose and the faults drive you crazy!

Easy to use, after a few failures finally made a reasonable cup of coffee.Cleaning the milk frother wand can be a pain.Can leak from the coffee holder on occasion.Overall good for the price a beginner machine.

Very good machine, before i had expensive machine Delonghi and I m glad i found this one . The coffee taste amazing and it gives a nice foam at the end of extraction. I highly recommend.The only one negative side of this product is that its smell of plastic even after washing it so I do recommend to leave it to soak several times. I m not so sure if this plastic smell will be present much longer sice I started using this machine a week already. Maybe manufacturer could consider of changing material making so it doesn’t smell so strong.

This coffee maker machine is a great product

I bought this off the strength of a "cofficionado's" review and am sorely disappointed.The coffee seems ok and at the end of the day it's a coffee machine - so technically job done, end of, don't need to read the rest of the review.It warms up pretty quickly, has a reasonably quiet pump., there is just about enough space to fit a standard sized mug, which is a plus for me as my last machine I had to use small cups or remove the drip tray. In addition the baskets/ portafilters and holder from my old machine fit this one, which is exceedingly lucky as this one only came with a double shot filter.Onto the unforgivable stuff:Aesthetics are very subjective, however if like me you enjoy inspiration taken from old styling cues, simple elegance, beautiful functionality etc... and hoped the pictures were simply not doing justice to the design, unfortunately I can report quite the opposite, it's even more jarring in reality, nothing seems to flow, the scale of pieces is all off and then the audacity to have "Professional" written on the drip tray, it offends my senses.Apart from the clear part of the water tank, the plastics used seem lower grade than you would expect from a kinder egg and I don't mean the toy but the plastic used for the egg part, especially the awful fake chrome pieces. Genuinely the only comparison I can draw is with the really cheap costume jewellery where the silver/ gold film peels off almost instantly.The water tank has a ridiculous two part lid with central hinges, meaning it is awkward to lift and leaves such a tiny slot to fill with water that unless you are very careful, most of that water will end up running off the lid and down the back of the machine, probably into the area where the electrical cord comes out.The steam wand is so loose in the machine I will be surprised if it holds on past the warranty.The three buttons on the front feel really poor quality, they manage to be loose and flimsy to the touch with little spring resistance, but at the same time notchy and sticky when pressed.The "temperature" gauge, which was the major plus on a machine of this price point (according to the review I read) is either set incorrectly/ calibrated badly/ or is just crap quality like the rest of the machine. It has a coffee cup and a steam icon on the temp gauge, but the indicator needle is nowhere near these points when either coffee indicator or steam indicator lights come on (which by the way are not even properly positioned behind their little lenses). Why have a temp gauge and separate temp indicator lights?The biggest issue is the steam dial, it has over 180 degrees of rotation, yet off to maximum power seems to be accomplished before reaching the first indicator point (about 20 degrees of rotation), add to that the flimsy imprecise and binding/ sticky/ notchy behaviour of the dial and that resulted in me firing half a jug of milk over the counter top with the remainder being slightly warmed milk with no froth. It also seems that a good deal of water comes out with the steam even after about 30-45 seconds of purging.The instructions tell you (in red ink no less, to show how important this is) when filling with coffee "Do not exceed the maximum line." Good advice unfortunately the one and only filter with the machine has no markings what-so-ever, meaning it's a bit difficult to follow the instructions. For reference all the different sized filters that came with my original machine have Max fill lines.The filter itself has two little pressed out lugs that mean it locks into place inside the basket carrier, but the carrier handle also has a flip up tab to stop the filter falling out of the basket when you are knocking the puck out. My old one just had the flip tab which worked adequately. If you want to clean the filter out and reuse quickly then you have the added issue of needing to turn and remove a hot filter with your fingers, otherwise it's not really an issue.Finally there is a cup warming area on top of the machine, like the idea, but it's the same plastic as the rest of the body. I assume the body plastic was chosen in part for its thermal insulation, which kind of nerfs the cup warmer. A single piece of steel or aluminium (as used for the top of the drip tray) would conduct the heat far better and make this warming area useful.Overall you can see what Cooks were going for, but the poor design choices, the low quality materials and sloppy build quality result in a sub-par product. The analogue temp gauge seems to have sucked up all the costs and seems to be the only reason it costs £20+ more than its competitors, but at least with my one, the temp gauge adds nothing but ambiguity.This is the only item I have ever owned where I am looking forward to it falling apart so I can get a different one, from my impression of the material quality, I'm expecting that to be fairly soon. The coffee spoon/ tamper is not even the correct size for the filters, yet it is the best part of this purchase and ironically made out of better material than the machine itself.Precision and accuracy cost money, even for a temperature gauge, so save yourself a few quid and buy one of the alternatives without one (these budget ones all seem to use similar components for the most part) or if you really want accurate temp readings, stump up the extra £300+ and get a Sage.Additional - In the 15 -20 minutes I've been drinking my coffee and writing this review half the content of the water tank has leaked out onto the work surface - Hopefully this is an actual fault and I can get my money back.