Melitta CI

I have now had this machine over a week and I am so so happy with it. I spent weeks researching coffee machines to find the one that best suited my needs. I wanted a machine that did everything at a touch of a button. I really didn't want to do the steaming milk process and pretend I am a barista in my own home. This fit the bill. This machine offers the following coffee options; espresso, cafe crema, cappuccino, latte macchiato, hot water and warm or forthy milk. You can adjust the strength of the coffee with great ease, press the coffee button. It ranges from 1 bean to 4 beans. As a guide they say 2 is normal strength. I personally enjoy strong coffee so I leave it on 4 beans for everything unless it's evening and I might drop to the 3 bean. There are two coffee wells, so you can have two types of beans at your disposal. An ease flip of the latch and the well is swapped over. The milk container comes with the machine and is attached via a tube. You get a spare so altogether you have 2 tubes. The milk container is a brilliant size and slots straight into the side of your fridge. You can adjust the heat of the coffee through settings which are so easy to follow. You can preset 4 users which is an amazing function. This allows you to tailor your coffee so for example with a cappuccino you can set how much coffee (ml) and the strength and then how much frothy milk. Don't be scared to posh around for your optimum drink. I made terrible coffee for the first two days during my attempt to find the perfect settings. A week later and I don't have to adjust a thing. When the machine turns on it does an automatic rinse. It also does one when it is switched off. When you make a milky drink it asks you if you want to 'easy clean' which flushes the milk tube and faucet. It navigates through for you as to what you need to do so it is so easy to follow. You can adjust the grind but I'll be honest it's already set at the optimum so I've not even played with that! It looks so sleek and professional, like you're in a coffee shop. It's not loud at all. You can put coffee glasses on the top and it looks fab. There is an led under the faucet which just looks cool! The machine is easy to dismantle for eg to clean the coffee chamber. I rinse it once a week under running water and let it drip dry. The water vessel is so easy to remove and put back in. The box contains various full size cleaning fluids and there are clear instructions in the manual detailing the process but it's all automatic so it's not hard at all. I have used two different coffee beans and I can tell you now if you get bad coffee with this machine it's definitely the coffee bean. I bought an ASDA brand bean which was okay but not amazing. I wouldn't buy again. I brought it to compare it to Lavazza Espresso beans which are hands down my favourite at the moment. My parents aren't the biggest coffee drinkers but even they could taste the difference and I can say they are slowly becoming coffee converts. This is a superb buy. For obvious I cannot comment on its durability so I will just have to wait and see. I could not recommend this enough to coffee drinkers who want an easy to use machine but good tasting coffee. The crema is just beautiful from this machine. Oh before I forget there are a few comments about the drip tray. Yes it needs emptying often but when you think about how it rinses twice in one use (on and off rinsing) it really isn't that bad. I must say only those lazy folks would raise this as a complaint on a too notch coffee machine. My advice don't be lazy, get into a habit of emptying more frequently than when it tells you and if you're really lazy move the machine nearer your sink so it's closer to empty the drip tray!!! I've had it a week and I don't even realise I'm emptying when I do do it!

Great machine, very happy with the coffees produced so far. Do read the instruction book carefully, it’s worth the effort. A number of comments in reviews elsewhere can be answered in this way. Almost every aspect of your coffee can be adjusted in the menu system – strength, volume, temperature, amount of milk and/or foam. You can store your preferences and even add your name to these. You can also override these memories as you make your coffee, such as tweaking volume to suit cup or mug size. Standard presets for espresso, café crema, cappuccino, latte macchiato can also be customized, other presets offer hot water, hot milk and milk froth. Switching between two bean types works well too, although the hoppers aren’t huge. You may also use ground coffee if you wish. Do be aware of the drip tray, it needs regular emptying. A little red button comes up when it is full, which you probably won’t notice, but also a message comes on the display reminding you. Whilst this is a bit of a pain it is worth it, the machine rinses itself automatically each time you turn it on and off. Don’t forget to leave a cup under the dispenser at these times. Also, after using milk supply the clear tube can optionally be cleaned (a good idea) and this water ends up in the drip tray. A more intensive cleaning programme is available which uses a cleaning agent (supplied). The “cup warmer” is not actively heated, after a while heat rises to it from the boiler during use, so your cups do not get heated if they are just on it whilst you prepare one or two coffees. Think of it as a convenient resting place for two cups. There is a setting in the menu for your water hardness. This is straightforward to set however if you are fitting the supplied water filter then don’t bother because the machine will override your setting and default to soft. It is quite a large machine, check the dimensions and make sure you’re happy with them before buying. However, it’s worth it if you are because the benefits are considerable. It is very convenient being able to quickly make great cappuccini, then immediately choose a café crema then an espresso on demand, whilst adjusting size to suit your mugs and cups, strength to suit your friends’ tastes plus switching between decaff and regular too. Having looked inside the machine at component parts I noticed that it is largely the same as a Jura and suspect they might both be the same company? Quality of construction seems excellent and Melitta doesn’t have the same promotional overheads as Jura.

Fourth impression: I now bouth a Delonghi Primmadonna DeLonghi ESAM 6900.M . Bad ass, double boiler, double the price top of the range machine... and is not much better than this Melitta. by comparison: The Melitta still requires a lot more water and cleaning. I preffer the coffe of the Melitta. The milk temperature of the Melutta is better. The double boiler only shaves 20 seconds on the speed to prepare a cappuccino. ( 2m20 from cold instead of 2m40). The interface of the Delonghi is prettier, but Melitta's is easier to use... The alarms and cleaning process of the melitta are better. So this Melitta is a lot of machine for the money. Third Impression: Not so great the fact that it stopped working after 5 months. Amazon service made up for it by accepting a return. Second Impression: Despite the good coffee, the amount of maintenance is exhausting, is continuously giving problems and pouring half the coffee in the cup, half in the inner tray. (I have water softener and do regular intensive cleaning and descaling... not enough) First Impression: Great coffee, not so good usability. I wanted to get an automatic coffee machine that could do milk, to avoid doing the froth myself and having to move the cup from coffee side to milk froth side. The alternative it replaces was a nesspresso with milk container. The good bits: The coffee is just fantastic, either in the preset modes, that are easy to use and adjust for a single time and make it fuss free to get what you want. You can also save profiles to adapt the coffees in the memory. ( You don’t save Coffe n1 and n2, you save, user 1, likes expresso this way, long this way, cappuccino this way, etc. ) On each section you adapt, amount of coffee, foam, milk strength and temperature. It’s great. I love that you get the use grind in one container, so it’s a task less for each coffee. In my case I use it for compost and it’s the main advantage vs the Nespresso, it feels a lot more eco friendly since you are not generating a Ton of garbage on used pods. The milk container is easy to clean, you connect the hose and it rinses the system, so you don’t have to be washing the milk container in the dishwasher twice a week as it happened with the nesspresso. The neutral ones: The coffee bean selector, it’s great to have an alternative, but if you don’t use it, then you have half the capacity, I use the same beans on both sides, but you have to switch if often. So you ask the machine to do a coffee and leave, when you come back to get your coffee and it’s not done yet, because it has a message asking you to switch to a different coffee type (it’s a manual selector). It’s not too fast: You turn it on, it needs just under a minute to warm up, then you select the coffee and it takes just under a minute to brew the coffee, 2m40 sec if it’s a large cappuccino. The 2 x coffee is great because it requires one click, however, it can’t grind enough coffee for two in one go, so it literally takes as long as two separate coffees. It can also run out of water or coffee during the task. The bad ones: It’s big, do measure your space, it’s easy enough to do. It requires a lot of cleaning and maintenance. You buy a fancy coffee machine to make it easier to get coffee. It’s easier to get one coffee, but when you reach the third one you need to fill up the water tank and empty the drip tray and the coffee grinds. The water container has 1,5L capacity, but it will never wait until it’s empty to ask for more water, it only uses 1L. If you do a coffee at a time: You turn it on, it rinses, make a coffee, turn it off and it rinses again. This may be 100 ml for the coffee and 200ml for the rinsing. In three coffees you have to empty the tray and fill up the water. DO NOT install this coffee machine far from a tap and a sink. By comparison the nespresso needed drip tray empty once a month, not twice a day. ( I have some 5 coffees a day) There are no audio alarms for anything missing. For instance, or coffee: You want a latte, the machine starts the work, you leave and come back to find a message that the water tank only has 0,5L of water, so you need to fill it up again to finish the coffee, some with the beans. In short, to use it, you don’t need to do a great deal, but you have to pay attention to it and keep it watered. By comparison with the Nesspresso with milk container… it’s 4 times the money, that’s a lot of nesspresso capsules, may need the machine lifetime to make up the savings. The coffee is not better but it can be customized to each person. And it doesn’t generate that much rubbish (if you recycle properly the coffee machine at the end of it’s lifetime) It’s only two months with it and I’m very happy because I’m keen on the coffee and machine and I’ve got the patience, if I wanted a fuss free solution and good coffee I would get the Nespresso.

This is a great coffee machine. It makes good coffee, and has lots of adjustments you can make to the grind, temperature, and everything you’d expect. It will make various drinks at the push of a single button and you can customise these to your exact requirements. I like it a lot but sadly it is not built to last. I bought it in January 2018 and in March 2020 I had to send it away to the only place in the UK that repairs them, as it had stopped dispensing coffee. (I do run the maintenance, cleaning and descaling programmes regularly). It is May 2022 now and it has stopped working again. Very disappointing! I will not be buying Melitta again. After less than 2 years it broke down and cost me £220 to get it repaired. After another 2 years it has broken down again. I would recommend you spend your money elsewhere, or be prepared for it to stop working just after the warranty has ended. I am going to buy a De’longhi machine now and throw this Melitta Caffeo CI in to the bin.

In short, a great bean to cup machine that has proven to be totally reliable since I purchased it in July 2016. Background: happily drank instant coffee for years and enjoyed visits to Starbucks and Costa Coffee for treats. Decided to enter the world of having nice coffee at home and purchased a bean to cup machine from a reputable brand that entered the market a couple of years ago. Alas, great coffee but it kept breaking down. I received a refund and held back from buying another. Then this machine appeared in Amazon Prime day and I decided to try again. This machine is a pleasure to use. It makes espresso, long black coffee, cappuccino and latté. Key to me is how it handles the milk based drinks, which is fully automatic and with an easy clean system that works well. Things I am especially pleased about: - great tasting coffee - it works without fail - fast start from cold - really easy to adjust to your taste - maintenance is a breeze and it guides you all the way A really nice touch is that there is a roller under the back of the machine. This means you can slide the machine under a worktop cupboard. When you want to refill the water tank at the side, or add more coffee beans at the top, or clean the brewing unit on the other side, you simply lift the front a little and it rolls forward. Genius. I find the frequency of filling the water tank and emptying the drip tray is just right and never a chore or disappointment. It helps reduce drip tray emptying if you place a cup under the nozzles at the front when rinsing on startup or doing easy cleaning. If you have latte or cappuccino, the machine suggests easy cleaning when you've finished your run. It then rinses the milk unit and cleverly flushes steam through the milk inlet pipe. I'm really happy with this machine. It would be nice if it did flat white as well but that would mean spending even more money and I would never have made the purchase.

If you are an avid coffee lover like me then you know how frustrating it can be while you wait for the coffee to brew in the cafetierre or come to the boil in the Italian style makers, or for the water to heat up again so that you can froth up your milk under the nozzle of your 'all in one' maker. Well, allow me to let you in on a secret........... THE MELITTA CAFFEO IS WONDERFUL!!! No more waiting, watching, faffing around with filter papers, grinding OR frothing cos this sweet thing does it all for you in a couple of minutes. Yes, it's true. Just fill up with beans (you can have two on the go at the same time); fill up the water reserve (it has it's own filter cartridge); fill up the milk jug; press the button that will deliver you your perfect espresso, cappuccino or latte and watch it works it's magic. It's not too noisy either, even when it's grinding your beans. And when you are done it reminds you to give it a clean..........and that's just another quick button press! Even the other half will be able to rustle you up a coffee without a hint of a moan or a sigh! Oh, and if you fancy a change then it will deliver hot water for a cuppa and frothy milk for hot chocolate or Horlicks. OK, it's not cheap but as long as it is reliable (yet to be confirmed as I've only had it a week) then it is well worth it and, let's say it, "You're worth it too"!! :-)

I love this machine. I’ve upgraded from a nespresso, although, that’s probably the wrong phrase...yes, nespresso isn’t true espresso and there’s lots to be snobby about, but it is still a very good product and easily accessible - just a lot more expensive per drink than ground coffee machines or b2c... Anyhow, enough digression, I just wanted to give a reference point to the review for anybody who is looking at this machine from a pod system. This machine makes lovely coffee drinks at the press of a button. And if you can’t see the button for the coffee that you like to drink, you can make your own recipe up, whatever strength, amount of coffee / milk or foam and even control the temperature. I like flat white - 50/50 espresso and hot milk. There’s no button for that coffee, so I make a recipe up, use the preset memory and I’m away. If you want a double size drink or to make 2 drinks at the same time, just press the x2 button and job done. The major difference between this and the nespresso machines is the amount of cleaning required. I used to put all the nespresso milk prep gear in the dishwasher, but with this machine there’s a dedicated milk cleaning solution that will cost about a £1 / week (£5 / 5 x weekly cycles) and then there’s anti calc fluid (same as other machines) and then some detergent tablets that the machine chomps to clean the mechanism etc, so be prepared for these costs of the consumables. I bought this machine on offer for £450 and it was a choice between this and the sage barista machine for £500 and I’m glad I went for this one. I’m sure there would be plenty of maintenance and cleaning involved with that one too, along with a steep learning curve to making great coffee, which unfortunately as I live in a busy real world don’t have time to partake in. I love coffee and I want to choose my own rare beans etc, but I also want an easy life, so bean to cup is the way forwards. Add this machine to your wish list and keep an eye on the price as it fluctuates dramatically and buy it when it seems like value. I hope this review has been helpful.

I'll start with the good points. 1. I really like the coffee that this machine makes, especially the milk based ones. There are also loads of settings that you can use to get the brew just right. 2. Yes, like other reviews you have to empty the drip tray and fill the water tank regularly but that's the price you'll pay for a system that cleans itself regularly. 3. I like the milk container and the self cleaning the system performs after a milk brew. 4. I like that you can do two milk based drinks at the same time. Now for the bad points 1. Its noisy, but this is my first bean to cup, so that's probably just normal. 2. It takes a while to get going, but as above, this is my first bean to cup and I have no comparison. 3. I've had the machine for less than a year and after only 800 cups, it started to leak. 4. Amazon very kindly offered a full refund, but I got the machine during black Friday last November so couldn't have got a comparable machine for the same amount of money. I opted for a repair with Melitta, which is where things went from bad to worse. Melitta collected the machine promptly however it was over three weeks and several calls later that I got the machine back. The machine is still broken (with the addition of scratches from the repair) and Melitta were unable to offer a replacement (only another repair). I got a refund from Amazon in the end. I don't entirely blame Melitta, who were always very courteous and called me back promptly. As I understand it, it was their third party repair service who were not able to get the parts from Germany or do a satisfactory repair. Given the price of the machine, it is something I would expect to get repaired way into the future. Maybe I just had bad luck, but I would have expected the repair process to be considerably better, which is why I don't think I could recommend the machine (however much I like it and the coffee it made).