Description
PHILIPS 3200 Series Fully Automatic Espresso Machine – LatteGo Milk System, 5 Coffee Varieties, Intuitive Touch Display, 100% Ceramic Grinder, AquaClean Filter, Black (EP3241/54)
| Brand | Philips Kitchen Appliances |
| Color | Black |
| Product Dimensions | 10″D x 17″W x 15″H |
| Special Feature | Programmable, Water Filter, Milk Frother, Removable Tank, Integrated Coffee Grinder |
| Coffee Maker Type | Espresso Machine |
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Paul Schulz –
Overall functionality is good. Had to replace the milk foam container after about 12 months but the 24 month warranty covered it. It needs regular emptying of the bottom tray that catches waste water and grounds, as well as pulling the side mechanics to thoroughly rinse them. In fact the only engineering flaws I find in this machine are that all of the holdings for making coffee are a little small. Beans holder on top could have a steeper and deeper so you don’t need to occasionally move the beans to the drop hole. I would have made it with twice the water storage. The milk frothier is easy and works pretty good but you can only do one large serving or two small ones. The cleaning cycles can be a little long for calcium clean and actually has one bug in the routine where it runs longer than the water reservoir supports and runs the pump dry but cleaning is only like once per month or more. Have another container ready to just fill it up quick or pause it when it empties. The catch in front fills more often than I had expected with water so possibly that could have been larger or waste less water in the operation. At $700 though it’s a nice maker for one or two coffee drinkers in the house so I would still give it a thumbs up as critical as I am in this review.
Paul Schulz –
Overall functionality is good. Had to replace the milk foam container after about 12 months but the 24 month warranty covered it. It needs regular emptying of the bottom tray that catches waste water and grounds, as well as pulling the side mechanics to thoroughly rinse them. In fact the only engineering flaws I find in this machine are that all of the holdings for making coffee are a little small. Beans holder on top could have a steeper and deeper so you don’t need to occasionally move the beans to the drop hole. I would have made it with twice the water storage. The milk frothier is easy and works pretty good but you can only do one large serving or two small ones. The cleaning cycles can be a little long for calcium clean and actually has one bug in the routine where it runs longer than the water reservoir supports and runs the pump dry but cleaning is only like once per month or more. Have another container ready to just fill it up quick or pause it when it empties. The catch in front fills more often than I had expected with water so possibly that could have been larger or waste less water in the operation. At $700 though it’s a nice maker for one or two coffee drinkers in the house so I would still give it a thumbs up as critical as I am in this review.
Merle Pfeifer –
To tell you the truth I’m a little disappointed in this Phillips 3200 Espresso coffee machine. Ok, I will admit some would consider me a coffee snob because I like strong, bold, rich coffee. ( I have tried several different beans) This machine performs extremely well in all areas EXCEPT when it comes to making a strong, bold rich coffee. No matter what settings I use and how many u-tube tricks I use it’s still on the weak side for me. The machine is very user friendly, easy to clean, burr grinder works well and my father in law loves the way it makes coffee (he like it weak) so it will become part of our home appliances.
Merle Pfeifer –
To tell you the truth I’m a little disappointed in this Phillips 3200 Espresso coffee machine. Ok, I will admit some would consider me a coffee snob because I like strong, bold, rich coffee. ( I have tried several different beans) This machine performs extremely well in all areas EXCEPT when it comes to making a strong, bold rich coffee. No matter what settings I use and how many u-tube tricks I use it’s still on the weak side for me. The machine is very user friendly, easy to clean, burr grinder works well and my father in law loves the way it makes coffee (he like it weak) so it will become part of our home appliances.
Chad Anderson –
I had this coffee makes for 2.5 years, and used it every day. Out of the box it was fine, and made sufficient coffee and cappuccino. About 12 months into using it, it began to show signs of wear and started to fail,I maintained it through cleaning and lubricating the moving parts. Then the grinder started to fail at the 2 year mark, and required maintenance in order to use. It completely failed at 2.5 years, which according to numerous blogs and threads its a very common problem.The Good.Easy to use.Coffee choicesGrinder/bean volume.Water filtration systemThe Not so Great.Requires constant cleaningDoes build up moisture and therefore molded grounds in the grinder area (under the bean plate)Does omit a smell when not used or when let to sit for a day or twoEvaporative tray must be emptied after every other use, as should the puck bucket.Puck bucket holds moisture and does not drain any access water from the ground pucksDoes a poor job of foaming milk, not creat for Cappucino, but decent for Latte Macchiatos.In all, for an entry level fully automatic drink system it’s good, but there are better machines out there for slightly more money.But if you have any experience with Bar style machines, I would recommend you go that way instead. The coffee will be much better and it will be equally intricate to clean.A good value at $600A poor value at $900.
Chad Anderson –
I had this coffee makes for 2.5 years, and used it every day. Out of the box it was fine, and made sufficient coffee and cappuccino. About 12 months into using it, it began to show signs of wear and started to fail,I maintained it through cleaning and lubricating the moving parts. Then the grinder started to fail at the 2 year mark, and required maintenance in order to use. It completely failed at 2.5 years, which according to numerous blogs and threads its a very common problem.The Good.Easy to use.Coffee choicesGrinder/bean volume.Water filtration systemThe Not so Great.Requires constant cleaningDoes build up moisture and therefore molded grounds in the grinder area (under the bean plate)Does omit a smell when not used or when let to sit for a day or twoEvaporative tray must be emptied after every other use, as should the puck bucket.Puck bucket holds moisture and does not drain any access water from the ground pucksDoes a poor job of foaming milk, not creat for Cappucino, but decent for Latte Macchiatos.In all, for an entry level fully automatic drink system it’s good, but there are better machines out there for slightly more money.But if you have any experience with Bar style machines, I would recommend you go that way instead. The coffee will be much better and it will be equally intricate to clean.A good value at $600A poor value at $900.
Jose S –
The Philips 3200 Series Fully Automatic Espresso Machine, equipped with the LatteGo Milk Frother, offers a commendable brewing experience. Its sleek design and intuitive touch display make it an attractive addition to any kitchen.The variety of coffee options, including five different choices, caters to diverse preferences, ensuring there’s something for every coffee lover. The 100% ceramic grinder contributes to a consistent grind size, enhancing the overall flavor profile of each cup.The inclusion of the AquaClean filter is a practical touch, simplifying maintenance and extending the time between descaling sessions. My Coffee Choice feature adds a personalized touch, allowing users to tailor their brew to their liking.While the performance is generally commendable, there are moments where the machine could be slightly quieter during operation. However, the convenience and quality of the coffee produced by the Philips 3200 Series make it a worthwhile investment for those seeking a reliable and versatile home espresso machine. Overall, a solid choice for coffee enthusiasts who value variety and ease of use.
Jose S –
The Philips 3200 Series Fully Automatic Espresso Machine, equipped with the LatteGo Milk Frother, offers a commendable brewing experience. Its sleek design and intuitive touch display make it an attractive addition to any kitchen.The variety of coffee options, including five different choices, caters to diverse preferences, ensuring there’s something for every coffee lover. The 100% ceramic grinder contributes to a consistent grind size, enhancing the overall flavor profile of each cup.The inclusion of the AquaClean filter is a practical touch, simplifying maintenance and extending the time between descaling sessions. My Coffee Choice feature adds a personalized touch, allowing users to tailor their brew to their liking.While the performance is generally commendable, there are moments where the machine could be slightly quieter during operation. However, the convenience and quality of the coffee produced by the Philips 3200 Series make it a worthwhile investment for those seeking a reliable and versatile home espresso machine. Overall, a solid choice for coffee enthusiasts who value variety and ease of use.
Orlando Bloom –
I bought this machine because of everything being automated, you just put the milk jug on and it frothes the milk and makes a latte all on its own. In that’s sense it’s great.The only knocks in my opinion is how quickly the bottom drain pan fills up, you have to drain the water out about 2x a week with reg usage by one person, for a family that would probably mean daily. The 2nd thing I didn’t like is how foamy it makes the milk, maybe I need to adjust some settings or smth, but my lattes come out with like 2cm of foam on top. I like steamed milk, not foam. Other than those 2 things, the auto off feature feature that sometimes drips water into your coffee if you leave it on the tray for 10+mins doesn’t bother me.Overall a solid machine
Orlando Bloom –
I bought this machine because of everything being automated, you just put the milk jug on and it frothes the milk and makes a latte all on its own. In that’s sense it’s great.The only knocks in my opinion is how quickly the bottom drain pan fills up, you have to drain the water out about 2x a week with reg usage by one person, for a family that would probably mean daily. The 2nd thing I didn’t like is how foamy it makes the milk, maybe I need to adjust some settings or smth, but my lattes come out with like 2cm of foam on top. I like steamed milk, not foam. Other than those 2 things, the auto off feature feature that sometimes drips water into your coffee if you leave it on the tray for 10+mins doesn’t bother me.Overall a solid machine
George –
It WAS an awesome everything-coffee machine until about 1 month ago it stopped after barely 5 months of use. It shows 3 solid lights blinking red after clicking for 60 seconds post start. This is apparently an issue with the device, correlated to one of the internal motors. Considering that it can still grind coffee and received all its normal cleaning/maintenance, its most likely a compressor or heating coil (my guess).Warranty woes are due to the inconvenience; having to be by your coffee machine for about an hour to “troubleshoot”, on top of being in a different time zone, in-between day to day work (and without coffee) is miserable. I feel like a customer email to support staff or a chat could very much be utilized.I miss my coffee machine.Rating will go up or down based on my experience from here…
George –
It WAS an awesome everything-coffee machine until about 1 month ago it stopped after barely 5 months of use. It shows 3 solid lights blinking red after clicking for 60 seconds post start. This is apparently an issue with the device, correlated to one of the internal motors. Considering that it can still grind coffee and received all its normal cleaning/maintenance, its most likely a compressor or heating coil (my guess).Warranty woes are due to the inconvenience; having to be by your coffee machine for about an hour to “troubleshoot”, on top of being in a different time zone, in-between day to day work (and without coffee) is miserable. I feel like a customer email to support staff or a chat could very much be utilized.I miss my coffee machine.Rating will go up or down based on my experience from here…
Matt –
I have used various coffee pod systems for years, and thought that they made great coffee until I got my Phillips 3400. This is coffee on a whole new level. Using fresh beans from my local Whole Foods market I get better coffee than you can buy from any chain coffee shop. I’ve been using mine for over 16 months without any problems. When and if this one ever wears out I will immediately be buying another one. Cannot recommend highly enough!
Matt –
I have used various coffee pod systems for years, and thought that they made great coffee until I got my Phillips 3400. This is coffee on a whole new level. Using fresh beans from my local Whole Foods market I get better coffee than you can buy from any chain coffee shop. I’ve been using mine for over 16 months without any problems. When and if this one ever wears out I will immediately be buying another one. Cannot recommend highly enough!
Kaejauny Tufts –
I cannot overstate how much I absolutely LOVE this machine. I’ve had it roughly 3 weeks now and I use it 2-3x a day. It is simply a dream. I bought flavored syrups and I have been a coffee making fool! I’ve made both hot and iced coffees and I’m so so SO happy I made this purchase! I have wanted something like this for quite a while.The maintenance is a breeze! Everything is easily rinsed or washed by hand. I have yet to put anything in the dishwasher and likely never will just because that kind of intense heat can warp even heavy duty plastic over time. Not to mention, it takes me 5 mins to rinse and wash all of the components so why would I wait for a 2hr dishwasher cycle to finish??Adjusting the grinder down to the finest level was easy, only took a few brews. If you are at all nervous about this purchase, I suggest a YouTube deep dive. That is what I did, and I was aware of every pro and con people have had and was able to decide it was the machine for me.I will say, if you are suuuuuper particular about your coffee/foam then this is not for you. This is for the person who loves yummy coffee and is tired of paying coffee shop prices. I personally use coconut milk in the frother and it works wonderfully. I have also tried oatmilk and regular milk. All work about the same. Warm/room temp milk will of course froth more. I saw a few people mention that the beans have to be a particular “non-waxy” brand so maybe do your research on what to buy there.If for some ungodly reason things go pear shaped, I’ll update this review.
Kaejauny Tufts –
I cannot overstate how much I absolutely LOVE this machine. I’ve had it roughly 3 weeks now and I use it 2-3x a day. It is simply a dream. I bought flavored syrups and I have been a coffee making fool! I’ve made both hot and iced coffees and I’m so so SO happy I made this purchase! I have wanted something like this for quite a while.The maintenance is a breeze! Everything is easily rinsed or washed by hand. I have yet to put anything in the dishwasher and likely never will just because that kind of intense heat can warp even heavy duty plastic over time. Not to mention, it takes me 5 mins to rinse and wash all of the components so why would I wait for a 2hr dishwasher cycle to finish??Adjusting the grinder down to the finest level was easy, only took a few brews. If you are at all nervous about this purchase, I suggest a YouTube deep dive. That is what I did, and I was aware of every pro and con people have had and was able to decide it was the machine for me.I will say, if you are suuuuuper particular about your coffee/foam then this is not for you. This is for the person who loves yummy coffee and is tired of paying coffee shop prices. I personally use coconut milk in the frother and it works wonderfully. I have also tried oatmilk and regular milk. All work about the same. Warm/room temp milk will of course froth more. I saw a few people mention that the beans have to be a particular “non-waxy” brand so maybe do your research on what to buy there.If for some ungodly reason things go pear shaped, I’ll update this review.
Robert –
First off I have to say after watching YouTube videos we were finally able to work our coffee maker. We were very upset that the instructions were just icons and pictures and there was no wording whatsoever and also with that the picture had the smallest item in there to where I had to get a magnifying glass just to read it. My only recommendation is they do the instructions that have words so you can match it with the picture and understand it a lot better.
Robert –
First off I have to say after watching YouTube videos we were finally able to work our coffee maker. We were very upset that the instructions were just icons and pictures and there was no wording whatsoever and also with that the picture had the smallest item in there to where I had to get a magnifying glass just to read it. My only recommendation is they do the instructions that have words so you can match it with the picture and understand it a lot better.
Airbnb ManagerAirbnb Manager –
After visiting family and using their built in Miele automatic espresso machine, the hunt was on for a cheaper alternative for our own home. I noticed on their machine, cleaning it was incredibly inconvenient. I was tasked with descaling the machine over the week we were visiting. Additionally cleaning the milk tube was annoying. The lattego feature on the 3200 is a must, and is extremely easy to clean. I also like having the option to put it in the fridge for the next day. We use to own a Nespresso pod thing, but I thought the coffee was really expensive and the pod waste was ridiculous. This machine when using whole beans is like less than 25 cents a puck. The Nespresso machine was like a 1.10 a pod. In the four months that we have owned it, it has already paid for itself. You can totally compost with the used pucks too. Such a great way to treat yourself especially if you don’t have the time to go to a coffee shop to get a one. Yes it is loud, but most machines that grind, pack, pull, brew, discard and self clean will make nearly as much if not more noise than this machine. You can’t beat it on price either. I combined this purchase with applying to the amazon credit card and got 15 months of zero percent financing and a 100 dollar gift card for being accepted. So this was a great way to freely offset the payments. I have lubricated the brew group twice. I don’t think this is super intuitive. I had to watch the 40 second video that shows all the parts being lubricated a few times each time I did it. Small grip is it only pours like 6 oz. each time. I usually make 2 or 3 for the really big cups I own. No big deal, just press the button twice. It doesn’t have the hugest puck bin or drip tray, so you empty it regularly, which is a reasonable concession for everything else you get.
Airbnb ManagerAirbnb Manager –
After visiting family and using their built in Miele automatic espresso machine, the hunt was on for a cheaper alternative for our own home. I noticed on their machine, cleaning it was incredibly inconvenient. I was tasked with descaling the machine over the week we were visiting. Additionally cleaning the milk tube was annoying. The lattego feature on the 3200 is a must, and is extremely easy to clean. I also like having the option to put it in the fridge for the next day. We use to own a Nespresso pod thing, but I thought the coffee was really expensive and the pod waste was ridiculous. This machine when using whole beans is like less than 25 cents a puck. The Nespresso machine was like a 1.10 a pod. In the four months that we have owned it, it has already paid for itself. You can totally compost with the used pucks too. Such a great way to treat yourself especially if you don’t have the time to go to a coffee shop to get a one. Yes it is loud, but most machines that grind, pack, pull, brew, discard and self clean will make nearly as much if not more noise than this machine. You can’t beat it on price either. I combined this purchase with applying to the amazon credit card and got 15 months of zero percent financing and a 100 dollar gift card for being accepted. So this was a great way to freely offset the payments. I have lubricated the brew group twice. I don’t think this is super intuitive. I had to watch the 40 second video that shows all the parts being lubricated a few times each time I did it. Small grip is it only pours like 6 oz. each time. I usually make 2 or 3 for the really big cups I own. No big deal, just press the button twice. It doesn’t have the hugest puck bin or drip tray, so you empty it regularly, which is a reasonable concession for everything else you get.
EmyEmy –
I’m a huge coffee lover, and I recently purchased the Philips 3200 Series Fully Automatic Espresso Machine. I’ve been using it for a few weeks now, and I’m really impressed with its performance and ease of use.This machine makes delicious coffee drinks, from strong espresso to creamy lattes. The built-in grinder ensures fresh grounds for every cup, and the adjustable settings allow you to customize the strength and flavor to your liking. I was particularly impressed with the quality of the espresso – it’s bold and flavorful, without any bitterness.The Philips 3200 is incredibly user-friendly. The intuitive touchscreen interface makes it easy to select your desired drink and adjust the settings. The machine also does a great job of automatically cleaning itself, which saves me a lot of time and effort.
EmyEmy –
I’m a huge coffee lover, and I recently purchased the Philips 3200 Series Fully Automatic Espresso Machine. I’ve been using it for a few weeks now, and I’m really impressed with its performance and ease of use.This machine makes delicious coffee drinks, from strong espresso to creamy lattes. The built-in grinder ensures fresh grounds for every cup, and the adjustable settings allow you to customize the strength and flavor to your liking. I was particularly impressed with the quality of the espresso – it’s bold and flavorful, without any bitterness.The Philips 3200 is incredibly user-friendly. The intuitive touchscreen interface makes it easy to select your desired drink and adjust the settings. The machine also does a great job of automatically cleaning itself, which saves me a lot of time and effort.
mel laytner –
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update — 12/19-2019 –So I’ve used this now for a couple of months and, bottom line, am keeping the rating at four stars.I like the simplicity of the machine. It does what it does well and doesn’t pretend to be high end. Sure, I’d love to try a DeLonghi Eleta, but at nearly $2k, I can wait.–I’ve set the “flavor” at maximum and the grind setting to finest. I’ve had no need or desire to change these settings. Now that I’m using very good Italian coffee beans, the pucks are well formed and fairly firm. Still, the “drip time” is about eight seconds. According to an Italian espresso website, the ideal time is between 20-25 seconds for a single shot of espresso to be “pressed” into the cup. I invited a neighbor down for his opinion. He had lived in Italy for a number of years and now uses this massive brass and copper pull down device with a temperature gauge…a lovely piece of Italian art. As soon as he saw the Philips 3200 producing a single shot in about eight seconds, he wouldn’t even taste it (!!)…muttering how most Americans think Starbucks is what espresso should taste like, etc. Oh well…– I pretty much do either a 2x Americano or 2x coffee every morning, and a cappuccino every afternoon. Sometimes I use the separate dosing chute for ground decaf. As I add milk, I’ve adjusted the heat from the default medium to high. It is hot enough for me.–The 2x Americano, set on medium water amount, fills an 8 oz American coffee cup to the brim. If you want room for milk, a gentle touch on the “continue” button stops the water instantly. The 2x coffee, however, fills the cup less, leaving room for milk.–I wish there were a way to program the machine to make a double cappuccino. You can increase/decrease the coffee amount, the water amount, and the steamed milk, but you cannot make a true double. I’ve made a regular size with extra steamed milk and then added a separate shot. Works ok, but still…–The new Lattego milk system is super easy and convenient. But make sure you snap the two halves together well. A couple of times I didn’t and milk poured all over the counter.– I’ve cleaned out the machine every week or so. Usually takes five minutes, but once in a while, you find ground coffee in nukes and crannies and it takes longer.– Bottom line: so far, so good.——(original review below)As far as I can tell, I am the first to review Philips 3200 Series Fully Automatic Espresso Machine w/ LatteGo.I’ve had the device now for three weeks and have made every variety of drink offered. I hope to update this review as experience dictates.Bottom line: currently (10/2019) the lowest priced super-automatic makes good espresso and espresso milk based drinks, but there are trade-offs, compromises and concerns. Also, if you wish to make Latte, look elsewhere.Overview: The most novel part of this machine is its stupidly simple milk carafe. It comes in two parts that snap together. Pour in milk, select one of the two milk-based drinks and watch the machine create steamed milk and nice foam. When finished, the two parts come apart and are easily rinsed clean – no tubes, no straws, no complicated gizmos. I am praying that the plastic tabs that snap the two sections together won’t break off. That would be a real bummer.Background: I have been studying the super automatic market more obsessively than the frog did motor cars in the Wind and the Willow (if you don’t know that Disney classic, you’ve really missed out.) When I spotted this Phillips 3200 for $700, I was intrigued and saved it. The price increased to $799 the next day. A week or two later it dropped to $709 and I bought it. As of this writing in October 2019, it’s back up to $799 just about everywhere.Disclaimer: this is my first automatic espresso maker and I am not a coffee expert but a committed fan. That said, everyone who has tried the espresso, coffee, Americano, Cappuccino, and the Latte Macchiato agree they taste good and are hot enough at factory settings. I posted a video but suggest you search online for better ones from Seattle Coffee Gear and Phillips itself. (I’m not including links because I think Amazon frowns on YouTube attachments.)The machine makes espresso, coffee, and Americano in single or double sizes. To select a double size, tap the appropriate drink button so the red led moves from x1 to x2. It makes two milk-based drinks, Cappuccino and Latte Macchiato in one size only. You can choose from three factory settings for brew strength and water level for all five drinks, and three milk levels for the milk-based drinks. You can also adjust the maximum settings for water and milk – but only for x1 sizes. When making my morning Americano, I wanted a regular American-sized coffee mug, about 8-9 ounces. The x1 size was too short; the x2 size would have poured over the top had I not stopped it. It was surprising (and frustrating) to learn from customer service that you can only adjust the maximum levels of the x1 size. So now I have to keep an eye on it. There is also a way to raise the temperature. I found the default temperature plenty hot and have not played with this. I have no idea how many grams of coffee are ground or the amount of water and milk in CC or ounces are used.The water reservoir claims to hold 61 ounces. Well, on paper, maybe, and without the water filter installed. I measured six-and-a-bit 8-ounce cups – maybe 54 ounces. But the machine stops operating when the water drops below a certain level, maybe 20% from the bottom. Also, the machine uses about an ounce of water to self-clean when turned on, and a bit to self-clean when turned off. If all you drink are espresso and Cappucciano, this may be adequate. More water leaks from the inside of the machine to the drip tray, as per normal in these machines. So if you make regular coffee and Americano, especially x2 to fill a standard American mug (8-9 ounces), you’ll refill the water much more frequently than the 61-ounce spec suggests.The bean hopper claims to hold 11 ounces. I didn’t measure so I can’t confirm. It seemed at first that the beans were not sliding toward the grinder smoothly. But even as the hopper came close to empty, the beans were fed to the grinder. But best to keep an eye on it. There is also port into which you can put pre-ground coffee, like decaf. Use only one scoop. The scoop is included. I tried this twice with decaf and it seemed to work well.When you turn on the machine, the machine’s red led lights flash in sequence and the machine goes into a self-rinse, using about an espresso’s worth of hot water. I timed this process to 60 seconds. It takes perhaps another minute to make an espresso, somewhat longer for a milk-based drink but certainly not unreasonable.The machine turns itself off automatically after maybe 20 minutes or a half hour of no use. As mentioned above, it use a bit of water to self-clean the nozzle. There is no way to set a timer for auto turn on or turn off. You can place cups on top of the machine but it’s not really a cup warmer at all, just a ridged top.Having not had one of these contraptions before, I can’t comment on whether one minute is too long to heat up for the first use in the morning, or whether it is too noisy, relatively speaking. After the deafening racket from my old Nespresso grind and brew, this doesn’t seem bad at all. Others may disagree.I’ve cleaned it per weekly instructions now three times. Takes about five minutes to rinse everything.Overall Positives:– The drinks are strong and tasty. Good crema on espressos, good regular coffee and smooth Americanos. Nice foam and steam from the newly designed LatteGo container. Plenty hot (for everyone who has tried it).– The milk container/frother is stupidly simple and easy to clean, about five seconds under flowing tap water.–I’ve cleaned the brewing mechanism per instructions weekly three times so far. It takes maybe five minutes to do everything required. Simple.Overall negatives:– Am concerned the touch buttons will become increasingly problematic. They already are not very responsive.–Fit and finish of the trip tray and metal cover are poor. It doesn’t fit well into the channel.– Not so much a negative as a fact of life, the 1.7 liter water reservoir will need more frequent filling than you might expect.– I hope the tabs that snap the milk container together do not snap off. If they do, this review will become a 1-star.Why the 4 star rating? Because despite some shortcomings, for me the bottom line is the ease of use and taste of the coffee. Why not 5 stars? wish they had a latte button instead of the latte Macchiato, which is very similar to Cappuccino. Also, the fit and finish ain’t too great, I’m concerned about the plastic tabs on the milk container.
mel laytner –
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update — 12/19-2019 –So I’ve used this now for a couple of months and, bottom line, am keeping the rating at four stars.I like the simplicity of the machine. It does what it does well and doesn’t pretend to be high end. Sure, I’d love to try a DeLonghi Eleta, but at nearly $2k, I can wait.–I’ve set the “flavor” at maximum and the grind setting to finest. I’ve had no need or desire to change these settings. Now that I’m using very good Italian coffee beans, the pucks are well formed and fairly firm. Still, the “drip time” is about eight seconds. According to an Italian espresso website, the ideal time is between 20-25 seconds for a single shot of espresso to be “pressed” into the cup. I invited a neighbor down for his opinion. He had lived in Italy for a number of years and now uses this massive brass and copper pull down device with a temperature gauge…a lovely piece of Italian art. As soon as he saw the Philips 3200 producing a single shot in about eight seconds, he wouldn’t even taste it (!!)…muttering how most Americans think Starbucks is what espresso should taste like, etc. Oh well…– I pretty much do either a 2x Americano or 2x coffee every morning, and a cappuccino every afternoon. Sometimes I use the separate dosing chute for ground decaf. As I add milk, I’ve adjusted the heat from the default medium to high. It is hot enough for me.–The 2x Americano, set on medium water amount, fills an 8 oz American coffee cup to the brim. If you want room for milk, a gentle touch on the “continue” button stops the water instantly. The 2x coffee, however, fills the cup less, leaving room for milk.–I wish there were a way to program the machine to make a double cappuccino. You can increase/decrease the coffee amount, the water amount, and the steamed milk, but you cannot make a true double. I’ve made a regular size with extra steamed milk and then added a separate shot. Works ok, but still…–The new Lattego milk system is super easy and convenient. But make sure you snap the two halves together well. A couple of times I didn’t and milk poured all over the counter.– I’ve cleaned out the machine every week or so. Usually takes five minutes, but once in a while, you find ground coffee in nukes and crannies and it takes longer.– Bottom line: so far, so good.——(original review below)As far as I can tell, I am the first to review Philips 3200 Series Fully Automatic Espresso Machine w/ LatteGo.I’ve had the device now for three weeks and have made every variety of drink offered. I hope to update this review as experience dictates.Bottom line: currently (10/2019) the lowest priced super-automatic makes good espresso and espresso milk based drinks, but there are trade-offs, compromises and concerns. Also, if you wish to make Latte, look elsewhere.Overview: The most novel part of this machine is its stupidly simple milk carafe. It comes in two parts that snap together. Pour in milk, select one of the two milk-based drinks and watch the machine create steamed milk and nice foam. When finished, the two parts come apart and are easily rinsed clean – no tubes, no straws, no complicated gizmos. I am praying that the plastic tabs that snap the two sections together won’t break off. That would be a real bummer.Background: I have been studying the super automatic market more obsessively than the frog did motor cars in the Wind and the Willow (if you don’t know that Disney classic, you’ve really missed out.) When I spotted this Phillips 3200 for $700, I was intrigued and saved it. The price increased to $799 the next day. A week or two later it dropped to $709 and I bought it. As of this writing in October 2019, it’s back up to $799 just about everywhere.Disclaimer: this is my first automatic espresso maker and I am not a coffee expert but a committed fan. That said, everyone who has tried the espresso, coffee, Americano, Cappuccino, and the Latte Macchiato agree they taste good and are hot enough at factory settings. I posted a video but suggest you search online for better ones from Seattle Coffee Gear and Phillips itself. (I’m not including links because I think Amazon frowns on YouTube attachments.)The machine makes espresso, coffee, and Americano in single or double sizes. To select a double size, tap the appropriate drink button so the red led moves from x1 to x2. It makes two milk-based drinks, Cappuccino and Latte Macchiato in one size only. You can choose from three factory settings for brew strength and water level for all five drinks, and three milk levels for the milk-based drinks. You can also adjust the maximum settings for water and milk – but only for x1 sizes. When making my morning Americano, I wanted a regular American-sized coffee mug, about 8-9 ounces. The x1 size was too short; the x2 size would have poured over the top had I not stopped it. It was surprising (and frustrating) to learn from customer service that you can only adjust the maximum levels of the x1 size. So now I have to keep an eye on it. There is also a way to raise the temperature. I found the default temperature plenty hot and have not played with this. I have no idea how many grams of coffee are ground or the amount of water and milk in CC or ounces are used.The water reservoir claims to hold 61 ounces. Well, on paper, maybe, and without the water filter installed. I measured six-and-a-bit 8-ounce cups – maybe 54 ounces. But the machine stops operating when the water drops below a certain level, maybe 20% from the bottom. Also, the machine uses about an ounce of water to self-clean when turned on, and a bit to self-clean when turned off. If all you drink are espresso and Cappucciano, this may be adequate. More water leaks from the inside of the machine to the drip tray, as per normal in these machines. So if you make regular coffee and Americano, especially x2 to fill a standard American mug (8-9 ounces), you’ll refill the water much more frequently than the 61-ounce spec suggests.The bean hopper claims to hold 11 ounces. I didn’t measure so I can’t confirm. It seemed at first that the beans were not sliding toward the grinder smoothly. But even as the hopper came close to empty, the beans were fed to the grinder. But best to keep an eye on it. There is also port into which you can put pre-ground coffee, like decaf. Use only one scoop. The scoop is included. I tried this twice with decaf and it seemed to work well.When you turn on the machine, the machine’s red led lights flash in sequence and the machine goes into a self-rinse, using about an espresso’s worth of hot water. I timed this process to 60 seconds. It takes perhaps another minute to make an espresso, somewhat longer for a milk-based drink but certainly not unreasonable.The machine turns itself off automatically after maybe 20 minutes or a half hour of no use. As mentioned above, it use a bit of water to self-clean the nozzle. There is no way to set a timer for auto turn on or turn off. You can place cups on top of the machine but it’s not really a cup warmer at all, just a ridged top.Having not had one of these contraptions before, I can’t comment on whether one minute is too long to heat up for the first use in the morning, or whether it is too noisy, relatively speaking. After the deafening racket from my old Nespresso grind and brew, this doesn’t seem bad at all. Others may disagree.I’ve cleaned it per weekly instructions now three times. Takes about five minutes to rinse everything.Overall Positives:– The drinks are strong and tasty. Good crema on espressos, good regular coffee and smooth Americanos. Nice foam and steam from the newly designed LatteGo container. Plenty hot (for everyone who has tried it).– The milk container/frother is stupidly simple and easy to clean, about five seconds under flowing tap water.–I’ve cleaned the brewing mechanism per instructions weekly three times so far. It takes maybe five minutes to do everything required. Simple.Overall negatives:– Am concerned the touch buttons will become increasingly problematic. They already are not very responsive.–Fit and finish of the trip tray and metal cover are poor. It doesn’t fit well into the channel.– Not so much a negative as a fact of life, the 1.7 liter water reservoir will need more frequent filling than you might expect.– I hope the tabs that snap the milk container together do not snap off. If they do, this review will become a 1-star.Why the 4 star rating? Because despite some shortcomings, for me the bottom line is the ease of use and taste of the coffee. Why not 5 stars? wish they had a latte button instead of the latte Macchiato, which is very similar to Cappuccino. Also, the fit and finish ain’t too great, I’m concerned about the plastic tabs on the milk container.
samda –
I cannot make a good coffee with this machine and have to return it.1. it always leaks water to the dripping plate. When starting, it will leak a little bit of water from the nozzle, I think this is to clean it, it is ok. But after I made 2 cups of coffee, I found about 1 cup of water in the dripping plate with coffee grounds in it. I cannot figure out where this water leak comes from, certainly not from the nozzle. And this way, I found the water in the water tank soon ran out, much more than the water used in my coffee.2. it cannot brew ground coffee. I pour some ground coffee from the small port from the top, ground coffee directly leaks to the bottom container and there is no coffee to be brewed, only water comes out of the nozzle.3. The coffee puck in the bottom container was quite wet, I can see water flow in the container.4. The dripping plate and container of coffee puck are quite messy every day, hard to clean.Beside all the above, the coffee flavor is not bad and milk frother works very well.I brought this automatic machine to make coffee easier and less work. However, it causes a lot more work to clean it and adjust it. Eventually I have to return it.
samda –
I cannot make a good coffee with this machine and have to return it.1. it always leaks water to the dripping plate. When starting, it will leak a little bit of water from the nozzle, I think this is to clean it, it is ok. But after I made 2 cups of coffee, I found about 1 cup of water in the dripping plate with coffee grounds in it. I cannot figure out where this water leak comes from, certainly not from the nozzle. And this way, I found the water in the water tank soon ran out, much more than the water used in my coffee.2. it cannot brew ground coffee. I pour some ground coffee from the small port from the top, ground coffee directly leaks to the bottom container and there is no coffee to be brewed, only water comes out of the nozzle.3. The coffee puck in the bottom container was quite wet, I can see water flow in the container.4. The dripping plate and container of coffee puck are quite messy every day, hard to clean.Beside all the above, the coffee flavor is not bad and milk frother works very well.I brought this automatic machine to make coffee easier and less work. However, it causes a lot more work to clean it and adjust it. Eventually I have to return it.
TK –
At the price point for this machine, there is really nothing to compare. I’ve had it now for a few months and I like it so much, I bought a second for our condo. It gets daily use and replaced a perfectly good nespresso machine mainly because I was tired of having to order pods and wasn’t fully satisfied with the coffee from the nespresso.On the plus side – this machine is the easiest I’ve ever had to clean. The milk frothing system is pure genius. And yes -it’s not quite as good as a dedicated frothing tube, but it works well enough and given how easy it is to keep clean, it gets used a lot more. As for the coffee drinks, They are delicious. I find myself drinking more coffee because it’s that good. My favorite is to do a full cup and then add in an espresso shot. Basically a “red eye”. That’s how I start my day and it’s always delicious. The instructions and setup were easy and everything is accessible and super easy to keep clean. I wish it had more metal parts and less plastic, but it seems well built and I can see it lasting a long time, which would be expected since even though it is cheaper than similar machines, it is still extremely expensive compared to your basic Mr Coffee.So what do I like… 1. The coffee it brews is delicious. 2. I can use ground coffee or beans. 3. Pretty much every drink I want can be made and it’s great for entertaining when everyone wants someone different. 3. It’s super easy to clean. 4. The water tank is removed to fill. 5. Overall, it seems very well built.So now some negatives and the reasons I went with 4 instead 5 stars.First off. It’s nosiy. Really noisy. You get used to it, but between the warm up routine, the grinding of beans and then the brewing of coffee, it can sound like there is a constructions site in your kitchen. This could be a show stopper in a smaller home or apartment if someone gets up early and someone likes to sleep.The second issue is that it’s pretty tall. If it sits under a cabinet on a counter, the beans can be hard to fill without moving the machine. This isn’t a huge negative but just one of those little things.Third – sometimes – usually when the gut need cleaning – the ground coffee bypass won’t work correctly and you wind up wasting a scoop of coffee. Again – just a minor inconvenience.Finally – it’s a bit slow from start. It runs through a warm up cycle. Dispenses some water, Does some other things and then it’s ready to go. So not something for the impatient.Overall – I love this machine and highly recommend it. Very happy so far.
TK –
At the price point for this machine, there is really nothing to compare. I’ve had it now for a few months and I like it so much, I bought a second for our condo. It gets daily use and replaced a perfectly good nespresso machine mainly because I was tired of having to order pods and wasn’t fully satisfied with the coffee from the nespresso.On the plus side – this machine is the easiest I’ve ever had to clean. The milk frothing system is pure genius. And yes -it’s not quite as good as a dedicated frothing tube, but it works well enough and given how easy it is to keep clean, it gets used a lot more. As for the coffee drinks, They are delicious. I find myself drinking more coffee because it’s that good. My favorite is to do a full cup and then add in an espresso shot. Basically a “red eye”. That’s how I start my day and it’s always delicious. The instructions and setup were easy and everything is accessible and super easy to keep clean. I wish it had more metal parts and less plastic, but it seems well built and I can see it lasting a long time, which would be expected since even though it is cheaper than similar machines, it is still extremely expensive compared to your basic Mr Coffee.So what do I like… 1. The coffee it brews is delicious. 2. I can use ground coffee or beans. 3. Pretty much every drink I want can be made and it’s great for entertaining when everyone wants someone different. 3. It’s super easy to clean. 4. The water tank is removed to fill. 5. Overall, it seems very well built.So now some negatives and the reasons I went with 4 instead 5 stars.First off. It’s nosiy. Really noisy. You get used to it, but between the warm up routine, the grinding of beans and then the brewing of coffee, it can sound like there is a constructions site in your kitchen. This could be a show stopper in a smaller home or apartment if someone gets up early and someone likes to sleep.The second issue is that it’s pretty tall. If it sits under a cabinet on a counter, the beans can be hard to fill without moving the machine. This isn’t a huge negative but just one of those little things.Third – sometimes – usually when the gut need cleaning – the ground coffee bypass won’t work correctly and you wind up wasting a scoop of coffee. Again – just a minor inconvenience.Finally – it’s a bit slow from start. It runs through a warm up cycle. Dispenses some water, Does some other things and then it’s ready to go. So not something for the impatient.Overall – I love this machine and highly recommend it. Very happy so far.
KNReadergirl –
I had a Philips Gran Barista Avanti that I enjoyed for a long time. Even though I faithfully cleaned and maintained the machine, which is a lot of extra work, it stopped working after 6 years. (My previous Jura lasted at ten). After extensive research I found Philips still had the most positive reviews, machine options and reasonable price range for coffee machines. I have had this new 3200 for two weeks and as it is much less expensive I was curious to compare. The coffee is delicious. I really like the way the grinder works. The milk dispenser which at first glance i thought was too small, is perfect for me. It holds less milk but is easier to clean (less parts) and makes a better froth. You can make a few choices regarding strength and size (you cannot adjust temp) There is no bluetooth app to save everyones choices like the barista – altho it will save the last one you made. I have not gone through the cleaning process yet but it looks similar to the barista which although is time consuming is better than Jura where you cannot get in the machine to clean at all. My absolute only criticism and reason it is not five stars is because the setting for size of coffee is very small. The largest choice available it much smaller than what I am used to and I have to get creative to make a size I am happy with. For example, I make a cappaccino and then add an espresso. If you make double cappaccino it is too much milk. The price was excellent and I bought the extended warranty insurance which I thought was a good value considering the deal I felt I was getting as it was also Amazon Day. Overall, I am very happy with my purchase!
KNReadergirl –
I had a Philips Gran Barista Avanti that I enjoyed for a long time. Even though I faithfully cleaned and maintained the machine, which is a lot of extra work, it stopped working after 6 years. (My previous Jura lasted at ten). After extensive research I found Philips still had the most positive reviews, machine options and reasonable price range for coffee machines. I have had this new 3200 for two weeks and as it is much less expensive I was curious to compare. The coffee is delicious. I really like the way the grinder works. The milk dispenser which at first glance i thought was too small, is perfect for me. It holds less milk but is easier to clean (less parts) and makes a better froth. You can make a few choices regarding strength and size (you cannot adjust temp) There is no bluetooth app to save everyones choices like the barista – altho it will save the last one you made. I have not gone through the cleaning process yet but it looks similar to the barista which although is time consuming is better than Jura where you cannot get in the machine to clean at all. My absolute only criticism and reason it is not five stars is because the setting for size of coffee is very small. The largest choice available it much smaller than what I am used to and I have to get creative to make a size I am happy with. For example, I make a cappaccino and then add an espresso. If you make double cappaccino it is too much milk. The price was excellent and I bought the extended warranty insurance which I thought was a good value considering the deal I felt I was getting as it was also Amazon Day. Overall, I am very happy with my purchase!
HC F –
Over the years, I have owned a number of espresso / coffee makers, some of them from some very well known and pricey brands. This espresso maker is very easy to program with on-the-fly adjustments for intensity, volume of water and amount of foam, makes all sorts of coffee drinks. One feature that is very clever is the design of the milk container for foam – extremely easy to clean, which cannot be said for many other machines!
HC F –
Over the years, I have owned a number of espresso / coffee makers, some of them from some very well known and pricey brands. This espresso maker is very easy to program with on-the-fly adjustments for intensity, volume of water and amount of foam, makes all sorts of coffee drinks. One feature that is very clever is the design of the milk container for foam – extremely easy to clean, which cannot be said for many other machines!
Leslie de Graaf Leslie de Graaf –
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I can’t say enough great things about this coffee maker! We love it and everyone who comes over to our house usually ends up buying one for their house too. This is professional grade quality coffee at home. This machine is totally worth the investment and we’ve been so happy we get to make coffee at home that tastes so good!! I have to say, we have become quite coffee snobs since purchasing this machine. It’s also wonderful that we have five different coffee options to choose from. I also use the hot water feature every day when making my hot tea, too. Typically, we have to clean out the tray that pulls out at the bottom about once every 4 to 5 days. When I say you have to clean it out, I mean you need to dump the grounds in the trashcan and rinse out the part that holds the grounds. Easy peasy! Philips did a great job with this machine. The bottom part also has a tray that holds water that comes out during the powering up process. This is to ensure that the lines are clear and there’s no stale water in the system. It’s very easy to clean out too-you simply pull the tray out and dump it in the sink. This accommodates very tall mugs and small cups too. We bought the one with the added milk frother because we do tend to enjoy cappuccinos and latte macchiatos and our guests enjoy this feature, as well. This has been a great addition to our house and our friends that come over to visit us always want to make a cup of coffee. I can’t tell you how many friends and neighbors we have had who have seen this machine and end up buying the same one for their home. This brand is known to be high-quality and we’ve been very happy with our purchase. One of the features that made us choose this coffee maker was the fact that it was so easy to use. The machine grounds the beans for you and makes it so fast to clean. If you were looking for a coffee maker at home and you want to experience quality coffee shop coffee, I can’t recommend this machine enough. We love it and I feel confident you will, too.
Leslie de Graaf Leslie de Graaf –
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I can’t say enough great things about this coffee maker! We love it and everyone who comes over to our house usually ends up buying one for their house too. This is professional grade quality coffee at home. This machine is totally worth the investment and we’ve been so happy we get to make coffee at home that tastes so good!! I have to say, we have become quite coffee snobs since purchasing this machine. It’s also wonderful that we have five different coffee options to choose from. I also use the hot water feature every day when making my hot tea, too. Typically, we have to clean out the tray that pulls out at the bottom about once every 4 to 5 days. When I say you have to clean it out, I mean you need to dump the grounds in the trashcan and rinse out the part that holds the grounds. Easy peasy! Philips did a great job with this machine. The bottom part also has a tray that holds water that comes out during the powering up process. This is to ensure that the lines are clear and there’s no stale water in the system. It’s very easy to clean out too-you simply pull the tray out and dump it in the sink. This accommodates very tall mugs and small cups too. We bought the one with the added milk frother because we do tend to enjoy cappuccinos and latte macchiatos and our guests enjoy this feature, as well. This has been a great addition to our house and our friends that come over to visit us always want to make a cup of coffee. I can’t tell you how many friends and neighbors we have had who have seen this machine and end up buying the same one for their home. This brand is known to be high-quality and we’ve been very happy with our purchase. One of the features that made us choose this coffee maker was the fact that it was so easy to use. The machine grounds the beans for you and makes it so fast to clean. If you were looking for a coffee maker at home and you want to experience quality coffee shop coffee, I can’t recommend this machine enough. We love it and I feel confident you will, too.
Josh N –
I’ve had this machine for about ten months and it’s already been replaced with a newer model. The newer model has more drink options and better looking controls, but is otherwise the same.I’ve been fortunate to not have the negative experiences cited by some users. My machine has not accomulated mold and has not broken down. Hopefully it continues to perform well as it gets closer to the end of warranty.In my opinion the coffee tastes really good. I have the coffee concentration and cup sized settings turned up to maximum, and that is possibly due to my personal preference for full flavored coffee . I wish I could brew even bigger cups, but that is not an option on any of the fully automatic coffee machines out there. I also wish it brewed a wider variety of coffee drinks, and it looks like the newer model does that.Mechanically the built in burr grinder has performed well. I have not had issues with the milk frother. The water filter lasts several months of routine use.As other reviewers have suggested, be sure to keep a cup underneath the spout when not in use, to catch the garbage water that comes out when the machine cleans the lines when the power is turned on or off.
Josh N –
I’ve had this machine for about ten months and it’s already been replaced with a newer model. The newer model has more drink options and better looking controls, but is otherwise the same.I’ve been fortunate to not have the negative experiences cited by some users. My machine has not accomulated mold and has not broken down. Hopefully it continues to perform well as it gets closer to the end of warranty.In my opinion the coffee tastes really good. I have the coffee concentration and cup sized settings turned up to maximum, and that is possibly due to my personal preference for full flavored coffee . I wish I could brew even bigger cups, but that is not an option on any of the fully automatic coffee machines out there. I also wish it brewed a wider variety of coffee drinks, and it looks like the newer model does that.Mechanically the built in burr grinder has performed well. I have not had issues with the milk frother. The water filter lasts several months of routine use.As other reviewers have suggested, be sure to keep a cup underneath the spout when not in use, to catch the garbage water that comes out when the machine cleans the lines when the power is turned on or off.
TechThule –
Bought this to replace a Saeco Odea that broke down after more than 15 years of service. The 3200 Latte Go is a reincarnation of the Saeco. We know it will be durable.What we like about this product is its versatility. Sometimes we want espresso, but often we like a cup of strong coffee.On occasion we enjoy a cappuccino, and the latte attachment works very well. Even makes a decent macchiato!The keypad is very intuitive and provides lots of options to adjust the strength of the brew to suit your tastes.It gives you multiple options for adjusting the grind coarseness, which is important.Of course the quality of the coffee you use is critical.Wife is from Colombia, so her standards are very high.If you only drink espresso there are other good options. But if you like versatility, this machine will serve you well
TechThule –
Bought this to replace a Saeco Odea that broke down after more than 15 years of service. The 3200 Latte Go is a reincarnation of the Saeco. We know it will be durable.What we like about this product is its versatility. Sometimes we want espresso, but often we like a cup of strong coffee.On occasion we enjoy a cappuccino, and the latte attachment works very well. Even makes a decent macchiato!The keypad is very intuitive and provides lots of options to adjust the strength of the brew to suit your tastes.It gives you multiple options for adjusting the grind coarseness, which is important.Of course the quality of the coffee you use is critical.Wife is from Colombia, so her standards are very high.If you only drink espresso there are other good options. But if you like versatility, this machine will serve you well
UlkaUlka –
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Easy to use and easy to clean. Makes awesome espresso and the automatic milk frother is awesome. I like to make iced lattes with it too and it works, no problem. The only reason I didnt give 5 stars is because I wish it had the option just to froth milk by itself without actually making a full on cappucino.
UlkaUlka –
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Easy to use and easy to clean. Makes awesome espresso and the automatic milk frother is awesome. I like to make iced lattes with it too and it works, no problem. The only reason I didnt give 5 stars is because I wish it had the option just to froth milk by itself without actually making a full on cappucino.
Kindle Customer –
Thing has been a game changer for us for over a year. Cleaning is literally just taking parts out and rinsing. Many components are dishwasher safe. READ THE MANUAL BEFORE USING AND USE THE RIGHT TYPE OF COFFEE BEANS AND YOU WILL BE FINE.
Kindle Customer –
Thing has been a game changer for us for over a year. Cleaning is literally just taking parts out and rinsing. Many components are dishwasher safe. READ THE MANUAL BEFORE USING AND USE THE RIGHT TYPE OF COFFEE BEANS AND YOU WILL BE FINE.
Kaejauny Tufts –
I cannot overstate how much I absolutely LOVE this machine. I’ve had it roughly 3 weeks now and I use it 2-3x a day. It is simply a dream. I bought flavored syrups and I have been a coffee making fool! I’ve made both hot and iced coffees and I’m so so SO happy I made this purchase! I have wanted something like this for quite a while.The maintenance is a breeze! Everything is easily rinsed or washed by hand. I have yet to put anything in the dishwasher and likely never will just because that kind of intense heat can warp even heavy duty plastic over time. Not to mention, it takes me 5 mins to rinse and wash all of the components so why would I wait for a 2hr dishwasher cycle to finish??Adjusting the grinder down to the finest level was easy, only took a few brews. If you are at all nervous about this purchase, I suggest a YouTube deep dive. That is what I did, and I was aware of every pro and con people have had and was able to decide it was the machine for me.I will say, if you are suuuuuper particular about your coffee/foam then this is not for you. This is for the person who loves yummy coffee and is tired of paying coffee shop prices. I personally use coconut milk in the frother and it works wonderfully. I have also tried oatmilk and regular milk. All work about the same. Warm/room temp milk will of course froth more. I saw a few people mention that the beans have to be a particular “non-waxy” brand so maybe do your research on what to buy there.If for some ungodly reason things go pear shaped, I’ll update this review.
Kaejauny Tufts –
I cannot overstate how much I absolutely LOVE this machine. I’ve had it roughly 3 weeks now and I use it 2-3x a day. It is simply a dream. I bought flavored syrups and I have been a coffee making fool! I’ve made both hot and iced coffees and I’m so so SO happy I made this purchase! I have wanted something like this for quite a while.The maintenance is a breeze! Everything is easily rinsed or washed by hand. I have yet to put anything in the dishwasher and likely never will just because that kind of intense heat can warp even heavy duty plastic over time. Not to mention, it takes me 5 mins to rinse and wash all of the components so why would I wait for a 2hr dishwasher cycle to finish??Adjusting the grinder down to the finest level was easy, only took a few brews. If you are at all nervous about this purchase, I suggest a YouTube deep dive. That is what I did, and I was aware of every pro and con people have had and was able to decide it was the machine for me.I will say, if you are suuuuuper particular about your coffee/foam then this is not for you. This is for the person who loves yummy coffee and is tired of paying coffee shop prices. I personally use coconut milk in the frother and it works wonderfully. I have also tried oatmilk and regular milk. All work about the same. Warm/room temp milk will of course froth more. I saw a few people mention that the beans have to be a particular “non-waxy” brand so maybe do your research on what to buy there.If for some ungodly reason things go pear shaped, I’ll update this review.
OreoMoreoOreoMoreo –
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The quest for the perfect cup of coffee ends with the Philips 3200 Series Fully Automatic Espresso Machine – LatteGo Milk Frother. This exceptional coffee machine is a game-changer, combining cutting-edge technology with exquisite design to deliver an unparalleled coffee experience. From its user-friendly interface to the outstanding quality of the beverages it creates, this espresso machine is truly a coffee lover’s dream come true.Design and Build Quality:The Philips 3200 Series is a marvel of engineering and design. Its sleek and modern appearance adds a touch of elegance to any kitchen countertop. Crafted with precision and attention to detail, the machine feels sturdy and durable, promising years of use. The compact footprint ensures it won’t take up much space, making it ideal for both small and large kitchens. The thoughtfully placed buttons and intuitive display make navigating through the various options a breeze, even for those new to automatic espresso machines.LatteGo Milk Frother:One of the standout features of this espresso machine is the LatteGo milk frother. It revolutionizes the way milk-based beverages are prepared, delivering silky smooth froth in seconds. Unlike traditional frothers that require manual intervention, the LatteGo frother is fully automatic. With just a touch of a button, you can effortlessly create perfectly textured milk for lattes, cappuccinos, or any other milk-based drinks. The frother is also remarkably easy to clean, thanks to its detachable components that can be rinsed under water or placed in the dishwasher.Brewing Performance:The brewing performance of the Philips 3200 Series is truly outstanding. Equipped with a powerful 15-bar pump and a high-quality ceramic grinder, it consistently produces exceptional espresso with rich crema and intense flavor. The adjustable grinder allows you to customize the fineness of the coffee beans, ensuring optimal extraction for every cup. The machine offers a variety of beverage options, including espresso, lungo, cappuccino, and latte, all easily customizable to suit your preferences.User-Friendly Interface:Philips has placed a strong emphasis on user-friendliness with the 3200 Series. The intuitive interface and clear LCD display guide you through the entire brewing process, making it a seamless and hassle-free experience. The machine offers multiple customizable settings, including coffee strength, temperature, and milk froth level, allowing you to tailor each cup to your liking. Whether you’re a coffee connoisseur or a novice, this machine provides a level of control and convenience that is unmatched.Hygiene and Maintenance:Keeping the espresso machine clean is essential for maintaining optimal performance and flavor. Philips has made this task effortless with its innovative design. The machine features an automatic cleaning cycle that rinses the brewing unit after each use, preventing any residual flavors from affecting subsequent cups. Additionally, the LatteGo milk frother is designed to be hygienic and easy to clean, ensuring that no milk residue accumulates over time. The machine also provides reminders for descaling and other maintenance tasks, simplifying the upkeep process.Final Verdict:The Philips 3200 Series Fully Automatic Espresso Machine – LatteGo Milk Frother is a true standout in the world of coffee machines. Its sleek design, exceptional brewing performance, and user-friendly interface make it a top choice for coffee enthusiasts. The LatteGo milk frother is a game-changer, elevating milk-based beverages to a whole new level. With its versatile customization options, this machine caters to the unique preferences of every individual. If you’re looking to enhance your coffee experience and enjoy barista-quality beverages from the comfort of your own home, the Philips
OreoMoreoOreoMoreo –
The media could not be loaded.
The quest for the perfect cup of coffee ends with the Philips 3200 Series Fully Automatic Espresso Machine – LatteGo Milk Frother. This exceptional coffee machine is a game-changer, combining cutting-edge technology with exquisite design to deliver an unparalleled coffee experience. From its user-friendly interface to the outstanding quality of the beverages it creates, this espresso machine is truly a coffee lover’s dream come true.Design and Build Quality:The Philips 3200 Series is a marvel of engineering and design. Its sleek and modern appearance adds a touch of elegance to any kitchen countertop. Crafted with precision and attention to detail, the machine feels sturdy and durable, promising years of use. The compact footprint ensures it won’t take up much space, making it ideal for both small and large kitchens. The thoughtfully placed buttons and intuitive display make navigating through the various options a breeze, even for those new to automatic espresso machines.LatteGo Milk Frother:One of the standout features of this espresso machine is the LatteGo milk frother. It revolutionizes the way milk-based beverages are prepared, delivering silky smooth froth in seconds. Unlike traditional frothers that require manual intervention, the LatteGo frother is fully automatic. With just a touch of a button, you can effortlessly create perfectly textured milk for lattes, cappuccinos, or any other milk-based drinks. The frother is also remarkably easy to clean, thanks to its detachable components that can be rinsed under water or placed in the dishwasher.Brewing Performance:The brewing performance of the Philips 3200 Series is truly outstanding. Equipped with a powerful 15-bar pump and a high-quality ceramic grinder, it consistently produces exceptional espresso with rich crema and intense flavor. The adjustable grinder allows you to customize the fineness of the coffee beans, ensuring optimal extraction for every cup. The machine offers a variety of beverage options, including espresso, lungo, cappuccino, and latte, all easily customizable to suit your preferences.User-Friendly Interface:Philips has placed a strong emphasis on user-friendliness with the 3200 Series. The intuitive interface and clear LCD display guide you through the entire brewing process, making it a seamless and hassle-free experience. The machine offers multiple customizable settings, including coffee strength, temperature, and milk froth level, allowing you to tailor each cup to your liking. Whether you’re a coffee connoisseur or a novice, this machine provides a level of control and convenience that is unmatched.Hygiene and Maintenance:Keeping the espresso machine clean is essential for maintaining optimal performance and flavor. Philips has made this task effortless with its innovative design. The machine features an automatic cleaning cycle that rinses the brewing unit after each use, preventing any residual flavors from affecting subsequent cups. Additionally, the LatteGo milk frother is designed to be hygienic and easy to clean, ensuring that no milk residue accumulates over time. The machine also provides reminders for descaling and other maintenance tasks, simplifying the upkeep process.Final Verdict:The Philips 3200 Series Fully Automatic Espresso Machine – LatteGo Milk Frother is a true standout in the world of coffee machines. Its sleek design, exceptional brewing performance, and user-friendly interface make it a top choice for coffee enthusiasts. The LatteGo milk frother is a game-changer, elevating milk-based beverages to a whole new level. With its versatile customization options, this machine caters to the unique preferences of every individual. If you’re looking to enhance your coffee experience and enjoy barista-quality beverages from the comfort of your own home, the Philips
S. Robinson –
I purchased this machine in May, 2022, and thought I’d wait on submitting a review until there had been time enough to see whether it would make a reasonable return on investment. I’m pleased to share the fact that, for me, this was a great buy. My assessment is based upon the fact that 1) the machine has lasted 18 months and is still going strong; 2) it’s paid for itself several times over based upon the coffee consumption habits in my household; and 3) it makes a very good mocha or latte style coffee, easily as good or better than Starbucks, as far as I and my wife are concerned.More specifically, in terms of cost/benefit, I’ll share that in our household, we drink about three 16 oz mocha or latte style coffees per day, on average (excessive, I know). The cost of buying this much coffee at Starbucks or the local coffee stand would be approximately $25/day, including tip. The machine cost about $699 at time of purchase, and we’ve run, by this measure, about $13,500 worth of coffee through the thing. Sounds crazy, but $25 x 550 days does in fact equal a ridiculous amount of money spent on coffee.Plus, I think the frothing apparatus is ingenious: two pieces of plastic pressed together, which work quite well, certainly as well as a conventional wand frothing tool. Prior to buying the Phillips machine, we owned a Breville Oracle Touch Espresso Machine. The Breville is a large unit, fully automated, with all the bells and whistles. It costs about $3,000. We loved it for the two and a half years that it worked. Then it started leaking and we learned an important lesson about Breville products: you can’t get parts to fix Breville products locally. When I contacted Breville about the issue, I was told that I could pay them $500 and ship the machine back to them for repair (on my dime). They’d repair it, return it to me and provide a six month warranty. Yeah, I got a laugh out of warranty – real vote of confidence in their work. In any event, I decided to try the Phillips as a low-cost option and have really been pleased. Definitely an interesting compare and contrast with the Breville unit (which I do not recommend).The Phillips machine does have a few quirks, and there are a couple of changes to the unit I’d love to see. For example, the water supply is limited and therefore requires frequent refills. Similarly, the drip tray is fairly small and fills up pretty quickly. Also, the machine occasionally displays a warning that the drip tray needs dumping when, in fact, it does not. In these instances, I pull the tray out and wait for the warning to switch to the ‘no tray alert’ warning and then reinsert the tray. This said, the Phillips unit is easy to clean and maintain, and it’s relatively small and light.All in all, I highly recommend this product.
S. Robinson –
I purchased this machine in May, 2022, and thought I’d wait on submitting a review until there had been time enough to see whether it would make a reasonable return on investment. I’m pleased to share the fact that, for me, this was a great buy. My assessment is based upon the fact that 1) the machine has lasted 18 months and is still going strong; 2) it’s paid for itself several times over based upon the coffee consumption habits in my household; and 3) it makes a very good mocha or latte style coffee, easily as good or better than Starbucks, as far as I and my wife are concerned.More specifically, in terms of cost/benefit, I’ll share that in our household, we drink about three 16 oz mocha or latte style coffees per day, on average (excessive, I know). The cost of buying this much coffee at Starbucks or the local coffee stand would be approximately $25/day, including tip. The machine cost about $699 at time of purchase, and we’ve run, by this measure, about $13,500 worth of coffee through the thing. Sounds crazy, but $25 x 550 days does in fact equal a ridiculous amount of money spent on coffee.Plus, I think the frothing apparatus is ingenious: two pieces of plastic pressed together, which work quite well, certainly as well as a conventional wand frothing tool. Prior to buying the Phillips machine, we owned a Breville Oracle Touch Espresso Machine. The Breville is a large unit, fully automated, with all the bells and whistles. It costs about $3,000. We loved it for the two and a half years that it worked. Then it started leaking and we learned an important lesson about Breville products: you can’t get parts to fix Breville products locally. When I contacted Breville about the issue, I was told that I could pay them $500 and ship the machine back to them for repair (on my dime). They’d repair it, return it to me and provide a six month warranty. Yeah, I got a laugh out of warranty – real vote of confidence in their work. In any event, I decided to try the Phillips as a low-cost option and have really been pleased. Definitely an interesting compare and contrast with the Breville unit (which I do not recommend).The Phillips machine does have a few quirks, and there are a couple of changes to the unit I’d love to see. For example, the water supply is limited and therefore requires frequent refills. Similarly, the drip tray is fairly small and fills up pretty quickly. Also, the machine occasionally displays a warning that the drip tray needs dumping when, in fact, it does not. In these instances, I pull the tray out and wait for the warning to switch to the ‘no tray alert’ warning and then reinsert the tray. This said, the Phillips unit is easy to clean and maintain, and it’s relatively small and light.All in all, I highly recommend this product.
Jeanine Conway –
My husband and I love this machine!! Our son and daughter in law have one and we used it when visiting over the holidays! It is so easy to use!! The machine grinds the coffee and the Latte Go system will froth your milk as well!! So many variations of drinks to choose from!! We love our!!
Jeanine Conway –
My husband and I love this machine!! Our son and daughter in law have one and we used it when visiting over the holidays! It is so easy to use!! The machine grinds the coffee and the Latte Go system will froth your milk as well!! So many variations of drinks to choose from!! We love our!!
Tim E –
Been watching the price on the 3200 and was excited to see it on sale for 2023 prime days.Unit comes well packed and assembled fairly easy. Instructions in the box could be better, but you can find more detailed info online.Brewing custom drinks is fairly straightforward and has the ability to adjust and memorize how you like it. The milk foaming unit works well and cleans up easily.Using locally fresh roasted beans, I was a bit disappointed in the taste and crema of the espresso. I had expected the output to be somewhere between a large chain and a small coffee shop, but it didn’t meet those expectations. After some adjustments that you can find online, I think the flavor was improved, but still lacked body and richness that would be expected from quality beans. Even with the improvement, the cost/quality ratio didn’t make sense to keep the unit.Overall, it was a pretty convenient machine (setup/use/routine maintenance). However, the quality of each morning cup made me regret the purchase and I will be looking for another option moving forward. I would not recommend unless easy use and relatively low cost when on sale are a much higher priority than flavor.
Tim E –
Been watching the price on the 3200 and was excited to see it on sale for 2023 prime days.Unit comes well packed and assembled fairly easy. Instructions in the box could be better, but you can find more detailed info online.Brewing custom drinks is fairly straightforward and has the ability to adjust and memorize how you like it. The milk foaming unit works well and cleans up easily.Using locally fresh roasted beans, I was a bit disappointed in the taste and crema of the espresso. I had expected the output to be somewhere between a large chain and a small coffee shop, but it didn’t meet those expectations. After some adjustments that you can find online, I think the flavor was improved, but still lacked body and richness that would be expected from quality beans. Even with the improvement, the cost/quality ratio didn’t make sense to keep the unit.Overall, it was a pretty convenient machine (setup/use/routine maintenance). However, the quality of each morning cup made me regret the purchase and I will be looking for another option moving forward. I would not recommend unless easy use and relatively low cost when on sale are a much higher priority than flavor.
L. Carter –
Reddit can tell you all about this: For some reason, the first several coffees will be weak, producing sludge instead of pucks when the grounds are discarded. I would do the milk in my cup and then swap out another container to catch the espresso in case it was too weak. I don’t know why the machine needs to “learn” instead of being properly calibrated when it’s built, but whatever. For the first week (I drink two cups each morning) I was afraid I was going to have to figure out how to get all the packaging back together to return the machine, but then it settled in just fine and I’m able to work on making drinks to my specific taste now, not just decent coffees.This has a Saeco brew group and is ridiculously easy to clean, with everything coming apart very straightforwardly. The LatteGo container is a magnificent design, with the tiny “pipe” having about 3/4 of the circumference built on the outside edge of the cup, with the last bit closed up by being pressed against a silicone pad when it locks into the frame piece. Crazy easy to clean, and so far it is working well to put the whole assemby into the fridge in between coffees, so that I’m not having to wash and refill each time. This isn’t a big deal, except that it can’t get the last half teaspoon steamed out, and I don’t like pouring the cold milk into my coffee to avoid wasting it. This way it’s only every fourth cup or so.The bypass works well, if you want to switch between caffeinated and decaf, or if you’re annoyed waiting for the machine to learn to make a decent puck and want a good cuppa in between the crummier ones.I still probably need to adjust for a finer grind, to make the coffee stronger, but this is so much better than my old steam espresso machine that I don’t feel a big hurry.The main downside of this machine is a whole lot of plastic. As far as I can tell, nothing hot ever touches plastic, except for the milk very briefly as it shoots through. I don’t like that, but it’s still a million times better than regular drip coffee where the grounds sit in a plastic hopper while it’s brewing!I was looking for a good quality bean-to-cup machine that wouldn’t cost thousands and would be easy to clean, and it looks like this is a winner.
L. Carter –
Reddit can tell you all about this: For some reason, the first several coffees will be weak, producing sludge instead of pucks when the grounds are discarded. I would do the milk in my cup and then swap out another container to catch the espresso in case it was too weak. I don’t know why the machine needs to “learn” instead of being properly calibrated when it’s built, but whatever. For the first week (I drink two cups each morning) I was afraid I was going to have to figure out how to get all the packaging back together to return the machine, but then it settled in just fine and I’m able to work on making drinks to my specific taste now, not just decent coffees.This has a Saeco brew group and is ridiculously easy to clean, with everything coming apart very straightforwardly. The LatteGo container is a magnificent design, with the tiny “pipe” having about 3/4 of the circumference built on the outside edge of the cup, with the last bit closed up by being pressed against a silicone pad when it locks into the frame piece. Crazy easy to clean, and so far it is working well to put the whole assemby into the fridge in between coffees, so that I’m not having to wash and refill each time. This isn’t a big deal, except that it can’t get the last half teaspoon steamed out, and I don’t like pouring the cold milk into my coffee to avoid wasting it. This way it’s only every fourth cup or so.The bypass works well, if you want to switch between caffeinated and decaf, or if you’re annoyed waiting for the machine to learn to make a decent puck and want a good cuppa in between the crummier ones.I still probably need to adjust for a finer grind, to make the coffee stronger, but this is so much better than my old steam espresso machine that I don’t feel a big hurry.The main downside of this machine is a whole lot of plastic. As far as I can tell, nothing hot ever touches plastic, except for the milk very briefly as it shoots through. I don’t like that, but it’s still a million times better than regular drip coffee where the grounds sit in a plastic hopper while it’s brewing!I was looking for a good quality bean-to-cup machine that wouldn’t cost thousands and would be easy to clean, and it looks like this is a winner.
Art JArt J –
At 16 months, unit continues to work dependably again I would say 90% of time. Other 10% implies give it a cleaning and its back in action. Based on another solid month of good service raising from 3 star to 4 star for dependability and use. Coffee taste was always a 4 star review.While the Latte-Go does froth milk decently, we have switched to using this for our milk froth and reserve the Philips to making espresso’s and coffee only. The device shown below really takes frothing to another Starbucks like level and its much less finicky than using the Philips. See my review on this product below. Been using this now for like 7 months. Between these 2 machines very happy with our coffee drinks now.Maestri House Milk Frother, Variable Temp and Froth Thickness Frother and Steamer, 21OZ/600ML Smart Touch Control Milk Warmer, Dishwasher Safe, Memory Function for Latte Cappuccino, Hot ChocolateStripping out some older review content due to space allowances…….————————–14 month update. What a difference a month makes! At 13 I was completely ready to write this machine off. I was exhausted with its constant maintenance and cleaning needs and very iffy results that it would work properly even after that time consuming maintenance. It was 50/50 at best that the machine might work properly. For this entire 14th month, I would say 90% of the time this machine works without any issue. The rest of the time, some basic normal cleaning and light greasing of the o-rings corrects whatever the issue is and it’s off and working again. The only thing I can think of timing wise which fits into this complete turn around in the machines behavior is that I completely disassembled the brew group to its entirety (watch you tube video), deep cleaned and scrubbed each piece and then regreased brew group and o-rings with a new grade of of safe silicone grease (Haynes Silicone Grease, Food Grade Sanitary Lubricant). I was using the Philips brand grease previously. Since then coffee making is a bliss again. I still don’t really believe the turn around, but seeing is believing! Raising my total review back to 3 stars based on latest performance. I need some further protracted good performance history for upgrading its score beyond this. We will see. Leaving earlier review(s) down below for contrast and explanation of previous issues and reviews.———This is my 13 month product review of the Philips EP3241 Latte Go automatic coffee maker.Below all the plus signs down below is my original 1 year review. Between there and here is my 13 month update. Also had to trim some of my previous 1 year review text to fit the 20,000 char posting limit…Taste of coffee from this maker still rates a 4 star review. When the machine *works* its makes a very good cup of joe. The bad new is that it doesn’t always work. In fact, it seems to be taking an increasing amount of work from me to keep this beast going. I like to putz with stuff *to a degree* but I don’t think most buyers will be appreciative of the effort that this thing takes to keep the caffeine fix going. Dropping my overall review from 3 stars to 2 stars because of never ending and increasing maintenance/cleaning overhead. I’ve had the brew group get stuck in the unit twice in this past month. Fixing required another YouTube video search (search for “stuck brew group”) and some significant disassembly to not force break removing the brew group from that stuck position. Its not terribly difficult to do once you learn this latest trick and nothing was broke or broken in the fixing process but its a pain, that simple. Shouldn’t have to put this much effort into getting a cup of coffee every day. In good conscience, I can no longer recommend this unit from an overall operational standpoint. It’s good coffee that hasn’t changed – but the cost in labor is getting to be really irritating. Worst of all I have to admit that my wife’s assessment of this expensive purchase is turning out to be correct, “its a bit of a lemon”. So swallowing a bit of crow along with my joe….not fun, and it was almost $800 bucks+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++This is my first “fully automatic*” coffee machine, all of my other coffee making methods previous to this machine consisted of the following: Stove top and electric peculators, instant coffee, coffee presses, drip coffee makers (very low end to very high end in price), poured over coffee making processes. I have many great memories of really good cups of coffee from all of these methods, but in terms of day in and day out coffee making and consistently getting a really good cup of coffee, I really like this Latte Go machine. The other methods were much more touch and go and fleeting in those really good cups of coffee, this machine is pretty much all of the time.So my grade of this coffee maker in terms of consistently producing a very good cup of coffee is like 4 out 5 stars – in my stage of present coffee snobbery. I think my wife would agree with this grade which regards the aspect of “taste” in this review. I am sure there are better coffee makers out there, like anything there always is, but I’m sure pricing on those machines which might yield those 5 stars is completely outrageous – the cost of this machine was close enough to that for me. I’m very happy with the purchase from this point of view, it makes really good coffee in my opinion.What most of this review will be about though, is where I’m not quite so happy with this machine, with that being its daily maintenance. This is what drives my final product grade down from a 4 to a 3. For this machine to be “fully automatic” it does require a considerable amount of daily “manual” intervention, i.e. cleaning, so one could really argue the fully automatic selling feature of this machine. When it works, it works great, when it doesn’t it just needs cleaning – its just really that simple with this machine. This aspect of this specific machine is where I think many people may find this purchase potentially off putting. If you don’t have an issue with being hands on with this machine from a daily cleaning perspective to get that great cup of coffee, then you will be okay. If you can’t or don’t have the desire for that sort of commitment and willingness to experience this “pain in the butt” factor, then I don’t think then that this machine would be for you. This isn’t your drip coffee maker which your probably used to. My experience with this machine is that it absolutely needs almost daily fussing with in the cleaning department for it to work properly. I am typically willing to make that expenditure in time and effort to achieve that great cup of coffee from this machine. I will be absolutely honest here though, there have been mornings where I have really wanted to punt this machine to the curb. Its at times very frustrating, especially in the early morning when all you want is that first cup of wonderful coffee to drink and to fully wake up, only to find that this machine is having another one of its hiccups…I will bring something up at this point which may be a large influencing factor with my direct experiences with this machine. We make and drink a lot of coffee every day in our house. I drink the non-milk based drinks from this machine, the Americano’s and the regular coffees. My wife drinks the frothed drinks from this machine, the Lattes mostly and sometimes the Cappuccino’s. I probably use the machine a minimum of 7 times a day for my drinks, all of which are doubles, and my wife a minimum of 5 drinks a day. These are minimums, so we use our machine a great deal each day. This may greatly influence the degree of issues and problems we experience and which then revolve around the cleaning aspect of this machine, so please keep this in mind as you read.Cleaning, my reality with the machine. There are basically 2 issues I which I experience with this machine.1) More water going into the drip tray vs the actual coffee drink, than what is desired and normal. This is by far the worst issue with this machine.2) Milk frothing of the machine not working properly.These 2 items above constitute 99.9% of my issues with this machine. Item #1 is fixed by cleaning. Item #2 is fixed by cleaning/using different milk/and messing with the heat settings of the machine.Fixing Issue #1. More water going into drip tray vs the coffee drink than what is desired and normal.Remove the brew group and give it a thorough rinse out in the sink. Wipe out where the brew group sits within the machine with paper toweling to get rid of any grounds and general gunk buildup. My tip here is to use a flashlight (I use a very nerdy led headlamp but excellent for this purpose) and to peer into the cavity where the brew group sits and look for gunk that way. You will be amazed and possibly grossed out by how much gunk collects within that cavity in all of the nooks and crannies. Its black plastic (by design I’m guessing) and very dark in there, so without the light your going to overlook a bunch of gunk. So use the light and give it a good cleaning. It will help resolve issues and improve coffee taste. When I rinse the brew group, I fill the sink with hot soapy water and let the brew group soak in it for a while. After that sitting period , I then agitate the brew group in the water by hand. I like this because it does a general deep cleaning of the brew group and does a good job of removing oils. I have found that just performing general under the faucet rinse outs to be less effective. One mistake I was consistently making, which may have aggravated some of my issues with this machine, is over lubricating it. I was touching up the lubrication of the brew group almost every time I rinsed the brew group out. Your only supposed to do the greasing about every 500 cups, in general. That period of times seems a bit long to me, so I would just say lubricate it when you think it really needs it – bad squeaking noises, the brew group visibly moving a bit hard as you manually exercise it through its full range of motion when you have it removed from the unit for its rinse out, etc. The point is that I was overdoing it. It doesn’t need to be anywhere near the frequency I was performing it at. Possibly because I was over greasing, I at one point had to completely dissemble the brew group because it had reached a point where it was just so gunked up by grease, fine grounds and the combined mixture produced by those two items, where the unit was still moving hard even though I had just performed my deep rinse process on it. Grease and finely ground coffee dust creates a thick sludgy gunky mess in the brew group. No matter how often I rinsed the brew unit out, I was just getting tons of water in the drip tray vs the actual drink. So I found some videos on YouTube which demonstrated a complete disassembly of the brew group unit, just search brew group disassembly for those videos. I disassembled my unit, with the confidence gained from watching those videos, and then gave my brew group a super thorough clean out with a stiff nylon dish brush and a long soaking in a sink filled with hot water and Dawn dish-washing soap. I then re-assembled it after lightly re-greasing the moving parts again. This resolved the issue of over greasing and just having that constant amount of water bypassing the drinks and going into the drip tray. I had to do this once in my 12 months of use about 7 months into my ownership, again most likely self induced rather than a defect in the unit. A bit scary to do as a new replacement brew group is like $80 after just having plunked down $700-$800 for this purchase of this coffee maker in the first place, but totally doable after watching those disassembly several videos from several sources as reference. You will need a Torxs #10 bit, and a small flat bladed screwdriver to act as as pry bar, and a good shot of whiskey for resolve :). Don’t use power tools. The brew group screws, those screw directly into soft plastic and you will strip them out if you don’t tighten the screws by hand and use a gun or something like that. After having done it once, I would call this process no big deal, just time consuming. I could see myself having to perform this process again even despite cutting back o my re-greasing of the brew group. I am hi-lighting this mistake on my part to bring attention to the fact that you can take apart the brew group and recondition it if the need arises. You don’t need to spend $80.Another thing which I just “very recently” ran across in my almost daily battle of too much water into the drip tray is something you want to pay attention to as it greatly reduces the severity and frequency of that irritating issue. If you look at my second attached photo you will see a picture of the water outlet valve which sits inside the cavity where the brew group slides into. Those 2 red O-rings on that water outlet valve, keep a **light** film of grease on those rings (all red O-rings which you see in the unit for that matter). Greasing those O-rings creates a much stronger and easier seal in my unit, which does not dry out over night. Hence I have much less occurrence of water bypassing the drink and ending up in the drip tray. I think this is my top tip to remember! Perform the light greasing of those rings with your finger tip is my suggestion.This leads me to resolving issue number #2. Issues with milk frothing. You will know when you have this problem when you see large air bubbles in your milk froth instead of tiny little ones. The large air bubbles result in less loft and volume of the milk froth and result in flat tasting drinks. It will be very apparent when you experience this issue. The vast majority of the time the solution to this issue is thecleanliness of the Latte-go cup. There is a milk channel in this cup located in the area of the cup where it hooks into the machine where steam comes out and where it ends, where the frothed milk eventually comes out of the cup when you use it. This channel will get clogged with dried up milk enzymes. This occurs when you let milk sit in the Latte-go cup or store milk in the Latte-go cup in the fridge and don’t empty it out and rinse it out quickly under the sink after each use. To fix it, same as the brew group. Fill the sink with hot soapy water and let the cup soak. Agitate the cup by hand in the water after it has soaked and things have softened up. If that doesn’t correct the issue, I resort to making a fake Latte in the machine. Use water in the Latte-go cup instead of milk. Set the machine to use coffee grounds instead of beans, and don’t put any ground coffee into the ground coffee receptacle. Your fooling the machine to make a Latte without any milk or coffee. You just want the water and steam to pass through the Latte-go cup to dislodge those dried up milk enzymes. It this method doesn’t work, I have also made a water and Rinza cleaning agent mixture in the Latte-go cup, again replacing milk in the cup with this mixture, and again no coffee grounds. Run this cleaning agent through a fake Latte process and that should clean out the channel. So same as previous method but also using Rinza cleaning agent along with the water. Rinza is especially made to clean milk enzymes in coffee making equipment, buy it on Amazon.If cleaning the Latte-go cup does not correct you milk froth issues, look to your milk. Our experience with producing milk froth in this machine has always been with whole milk only, we have not tried or used other milks, so I can only say that I have experienced this issue with whole milk, but I’m sure it will apply to other milks perhaps at other degrees. If you are getting large air bubbles in your milk froth and the Latte-go cup channel is clean, then its your milk. BUY NEW MILK. This is the shortcut to prevent just ripping your hair out. Just BUY NEW MILK. I have had 2 instances so far where my frothing issues have been directly caused by milk which I believe was not fresh enough or had some other defect which I could not analyze. Just switching to new milk from another source corrected the issue immediately.I also had one occurrence in the past where I had frothing issues. Cleaning the Latte-go cup did not solve it. I think I tried replacing the milk in the Latte-go cup several times but it may have been from the same carton of milk, I am no longer sure. In that one instance of time, I reduced the coffee maker brewing temperature from its hottest 3 dot setting to its medium 2 dot setting (read the manual), and in that case it corrected the milk frothing issue immediately as well. In hindsight, I think that was most likely also caused by the milk and not the heat setting of the unit overall. Just throwing this out there as something which I did run across, but while the heat setting corrected the issue, I think now looking back with further experience, that the issue was really just the milk. I think reducing the temperature just sort of put a chemical reaction sort of band aid on some milk which just possibly wasn’t fresh enough – that’s my guess.Just very recently had another frothing issue, large air bubbles. We had bought 2 half gallon cartons of whole organic milk with exact same expiration date at exact same time at exact same store, Aldies, which is where we buy 90% of our milk – all of the time. For whatever reason, the one half gallon was causing us frothing issues with large air bubbles. Switching to the second half gallon immediately cleared up the issue. Visually, I could see no difference between the 2 milks. So good example of just trying different milk instead of going to other cleaning extremes to try to correct the frothing issue.Descaling the coffee maker. I don’t know if I am correct here and/or potentially harming my machine or not but here goes. About once a month, I deep clean my entire machine using Rinza agent and water instead of buying a Philips specific descaling solution. I have done this for 11 months now. I own the Rinza cleaning agent, I don’t own the Philips descaling solution, so I am making use of what I have which is cheaper and on hand. I remove the water filter from the water tank. I fill the tank with a solution made up of 3 ounces of Rinza agent to remaining parts of cold water. The tank is filled with this solution. I then make several styles of drink using the machine and this solution without its water filter. I select ground coffee and like with the Latte-go cleaning process, I simply neglect to put ground coffee into the unit tricking the coffee maker to make a drink without actually using coffee. I make drinks using this method until all of the solution is used up. Both frothy and non-frothy drinks. Then I rinse out the water container in the unit and just refill it with 100% water as usual, still with no filter in place. And I run that through the coffee maker, again making a wide variety of drinks minus the coffee. This rinses all traces of the Rinza solution out of the machine. I then replace the water filter back into the tank and I’m back in normal coffee making business. So far this has worked very well for me, no issues. Try this or not for yourself, just putting it out.Final words of advice. Search you-tube for videos relating to brew group cleaning and maintenance. Much better and informative then the official Philips product videos.
Art JArt J –
At 16 months, unit continues to work dependably again I would say 90% of time. Other 10% implies give it a cleaning and its back in action. Based on another solid month of good service raising from 3 star to 4 star for dependability and use. Coffee taste was always a 4 star review.While the Latte-Go does froth milk decently, we have switched to using this for our milk froth and reserve the Philips to making espresso’s and coffee only. The device shown below really takes frothing to another Starbucks like level and its much less finicky than using the Philips. See my review on this product below. Been using this now for like 7 months. Between these 2 machines very happy with our coffee drinks now.Maestri House Milk Frother, Variable Temp and Froth Thickness Frother and Steamer, 21OZ/600ML Smart Touch Control Milk Warmer, Dishwasher Safe, Memory Function for Latte Cappuccino, Hot ChocolateStripping out some older review content due to space allowances…….————————–14 month update. What a difference a month makes! At 13 I was completely ready to write this machine off. I was exhausted with its constant maintenance and cleaning needs and very iffy results that it would work properly even after that time consuming maintenance. It was 50/50 at best that the machine might work properly. For this entire 14th month, I would say 90% of the time this machine works without any issue. The rest of the time, some basic normal cleaning and light greasing of the o-rings corrects whatever the issue is and it’s off and working again. The only thing I can think of timing wise which fits into this complete turn around in the machines behavior is that I completely disassembled the brew group to its entirety (watch you tube video), deep cleaned and scrubbed each piece and then regreased brew group and o-rings with a new grade of of safe silicone grease (Haynes Silicone Grease, Food Grade Sanitary Lubricant). I was using the Philips brand grease previously. Since then coffee making is a bliss again. I still don’t really believe the turn around, but seeing is believing! Raising my total review back to 3 stars based on latest performance. I need some further protracted good performance history for upgrading its score beyond this. We will see. Leaving earlier review(s) down below for contrast and explanation of previous issues and reviews.———This is my 13 month product review of the Philips EP3241 Latte Go automatic coffee maker.Below all the plus signs down below is my original 1 year review. Between there and here is my 13 month update. Also had to trim some of my previous 1 year review text to fit the 20,000 char posting limit…Taste of coffee from this maker still rates a 4 star review. When the machine *works* its makes a very good cup of joe. The bad new is that it doesn’t always work. In fact, it seems to be taking an increasing amount of work from me to keep this beast going. I like to putz with stuff *to a degree* but I don’t think most buyers will be appreciative of the effort that this thing takes to keep the caffeine fix going. Dropping my overall review from 3 stars to 2 stars because of never ending and increasing maintenance/cleaning overhead. I’ve had the brew group get stuck in the unit twice in this past month. Fixing required another YouTube video search (search for “stuck brew group”) and some significant disassembly to not force break removing the brew group from that stuck position. Its not terribly difficult to do once you learn this latest trick and nothing was broke or broken in the fixing process but its a pain, that simple. Shouldn’t have to put this much effort into getting a cup of coffee every day. In good conscience, I can no longer recommend this unit from an overall operational standpoint. It’s good coffee that hasn’t changed – but the cost in labor is getting to be really irritating. Worst of all I have to admit that my wife’s assessment of this expensive purchase is turning out to be correct, “its a bit of a lemon”. So swallowing a bit of crow along with my joe….not fun, and it was almost $800 bucks+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++This is my first “fully automatic*” coffee machine, all of my other coffee making methods previous to this machine consisted of the following: Stove top and electric peculators, instant coffee, coffee presses, drip coffee makers (very low end to very high end in price), poured over coffee making processes. I have many great memories of really good cups of coffee from all of these methods, but in terms of day in and day out coffee making and consistently getting a really good cup of coffee, I really like this Latte Go machine. The other methods were much more touch and go and fleeting in those really good cups of coffee, this machine is pretty much all of the time.So my grade of this coffee maker in terms of consistently producing a very good cup of coffee is like 4 out 5 stars – in my stage of present coffee snobbery. I think my wife would agree with this grade which regards the aspect of “taste” in this review. I am sure there are better coffee makers out there, like anything there always is, but I’m sure pricing on those machines which might yield those 5 stars is completely outrageous – the cost of this machine was close enough to that for me. I’m very happy with the purchase from this point of view, it makes really good coffee in my opinion.What most of this review will be about though, is where I’m not quite so happy with this machine, with that being its daily maintenance. This is what drives my final product grade down from a 4 to a 3. For this machine to be “fully automatic” it does require a considerable amount of daily “manual” intervention, i.e. cleaning, so one could really argue the fully automatic selling feature of this machine. When it works, it works great, when it doesn’t it just needs cleaning – its just really that simple with this machine. This aspect of this specific machine is where I think many people may find this purchase potentially off putting. If you don’t have an issue with being hands on with this machine from a daily cleaning perspective to get that great cup of coffee, then you will be okay. If you can’t or don’t have the desire for that sort of commitment and willingness to experience this “pain in the butt” factor, then I don’t think then that this machine would be for you. This isn’t your drip coffee maker which your probably used to. My experience with this machine is that it absolutely needs almost daily fussing with in the cleaning department for it to work properly. I am typically willing to make that expenditure in time and effort to achieve that great cup of coffee from this machine. I will be absolutely honest here though, there have been mornings where I have really wanted to punt this machine to the curb. Its at times very frustrating, especially in the early morning when all you want is that first cup of wonderful coffee to drink and to fully wake up, only to find that this machine is having another one of its hiccups…I will bring something up at this point which may be a large influencing factor with my direct experiences with this machine. We make and drink a lot of coffee every day in our house. I drink the non-milk based drinks from this machine, the Americano’s and the regular coffees. My wife drinks the frothed drinks from this machine, the Lattes mostly and sometimes the Cappuccino’s. I probably use the machine a minimum of 7 times a day for my drinks, all of which are doubles, and my wife a minimum of 5 drinks a day. These are minimums, so we use our machine a great deal each day. This may greatly influence the degree of issues and problems we experience and which then revolve around the cleaning aspect of this machine, so please keep this in mind as you read.Cleaning, my reality with the machine. There are basically 2 issues I which I experience with this machine.1) More water going into the drip tray vs the actual coffee drink, than what is desired and normal. This is by far the worst issue with this machine.2) Milk frothing of the machine not working properly.These 2 items above constitute 99.9% of my issues with this machine. Item #1 is fixed by cleaning. Item #2 is fixed by cleaning/using different milk/and messing with the heat settings of the machine.Fixing Issue #1. More water going into drip tray vs the coffee drink than what is desired and normal.Remove the brew group and give it a thorough rinse out in the sink. Wipe out where the brew group sits within the machine with paper toweling to get rid of any grounds and general gunk buildup. My tip here is to use a flashlight (I use a very nerdy led headlamp but excellent for this purpose) and to peer into the cavity where the brew group sits and look for gunk that way. You will be amazed and possibly grossed out by how much gunk collects within that cavity in all of the nooks and crannies. Its black plastic (by design I’m guessing) and very dark in there, so without the light your going to overlook a bunch of gunk. So use the light and give it a good cleaning. It will help resolve issues and improve coffee taste. When I rinse the brew group, I fill the sink with hot soapy water and let the brew group soak in it for a while. After that sitting period , I then agitate the brew group in the water by hand. I like this because it does a general deep cleaning of the brew group and does a good job of removing oils. I have found that just performing general under the faucet rinse outs to be less effective. One mistake I was consistently making, which may have aggravated some of my issues with this machine, is over lubricating it. I was touching up the lubrication of the brew group almost every time I rinsed the brew group out. Your only supposed to do the greasing about every 500 cups, in general. That period of times seems a bit long to me, so I would just say lubricate it when you think it really needs it – bad squeaking noises, the brew group visibly moving a bit hard as you manually exercise it through its full range of motion when you have it removed from the unit for its rinse out, etc. The point is that I was overdoing it. It doesn’t need to be anywhere near the frequency I was performing it at. Possibly because I was over greasing, I at one point had to completely dissemble the brew group because it had reached a point where it was just so gunked up by grease, fine grounds and the combined mixture produced by those two items, where the unit was still moving hard even though I had just performed my deep rinse process on it. Grease and finely ground coffee dust creates a thick sludgy gunky mess in the brew group. No matter how often I rinsed the brew unit out, I was just getting tons of water in the drip tray vs the actual drink. So I found some videos on YouTube which demonstrated a complete disassembly of the brew group unit, just search brew group disassembly for those videos. I disassembled my unit, with the confidence gained from watching those videos, and then gave my brew group a super thorough clean out with a stiff nylon dish brush and a long soaking in a sink filled with hot water and Dawn dish-washing soap. I then re-assembled it after lightly re-greasing the moving parts again. This resolved the issue of over greasing and just having that constant amount of water bypassing the drinks and going into the drip tray. I had to do this once in my 12 months of use about 7 months into my ownership, again most likely self induced rather than a defect in the unit. A bit scary to do as a new replacement brew group is like $80 after just having plunked down $700-$800 for this purchase of this coffee maker in the first place, but totally doable after watching those disassembly several videos from several sources as reference. You will need a Torxs #10 bit, and a small flat bladed screwdriver to act as as pry bar, and a good shot of whiskey for resolve :). Don’t use power tools. The brew group screws, those screw directly into soft plastic and you will strip them out if you don’t tighten the screws by hand and use a gun or something like that. After having done it once, I would call this process no big deal, just time consuming. I could see myself having to perform this process again even despite cutting back o my re-greasing of the brew group. I am hi-lighting this mistake on my part to bring attention to the fact that you can take apart the brew group and recondition it if the need arises. You don’t need to spend $80.Another thing which I just “very recently” ran across in my almost daily battle of too much water into the drip tray is something you want to pay attention to as it greatly reduces the severity and frequency of that irritating issue. If you look at my second attached photo you will see a picture of the water outlet valve which sits inside the cavity where the brew group slides into. Those 2 red O-rings on that water outlet valve, keep a **light** film of grease on those rings (all red O-rings which you see in the unit for that matter). Greasing those O-rings creates a much stronger and easier seal in my unit, which does not dry out over night. Hence I have much less occurrence of water bypassing the drink and ending up in the drip tray. I think this is my top tip to remember! Perform the light greasing of those rings with your finger tip is my suggestion.This leads me to resolving issue number #2. Issues with milk frothing. You will know when you have this problem when you see large air bubbles in your milk froth instead of tiny little ones. The large air bubbles result in less loft and volume of the milk froth and result in flat tasting drinks. It will be very apparent when you experience this issue. The vast majority of the time the solution to this issue is thecleanliness of the Latte-go cup. There is a milk channel in this cup located in the area of the cup where it hooks into the machine where steam comes out and where it ends, where the frothed milk eventually comes out of the cup when you use it. This channel will get clogged with dried up milk enzymes. This occurs when you let milk sit in the Latte-go cup or store milk in the Latte-go cup in the fridge and don’t empty it out and rinse it out quickly under the sink after each use. To fix it, same as the brew group. Fill the sink with hot soapy water and let the cup soak. Agitate the cup by hand in the water after it has soaked and things have softened up. If that doesn’t correct the issue, I resort to making a fake Latte in the machine. Use water in the Latte-go cup instead of milk. Set the machine to use coffee grounds instead of beans, and don’t put any ground coffee into the ground coffee receptacle. Your fooling the machine to make a Latte without any milk or coffee. You just want the water and steam to pass through the Latte-go cup to dislodge those dried up milk enzymes. It this method doesn’t work, I have also made a water and Rinza cleaning agent mixture in the Latte-go cup, again replacing milk in the cup with this mixture, and again no coffee grounds. Run this cleaning agent through a fake Latte process and that should clean out the channel. So same as previous method but also using Rinza cleaning agent along with the water. Rinza is especially made to clean milk enzymes in coffee making equipment, buy it on Amazon.If cleaning the Latte-go cup does not correct you milk froth issues, look to your milk. Our experience with producing milk froth in this machine has always been with whole milk only, we have not tried or used other milks, so I can only say that I have experienced this issue with whole milk, but I’m sure it will apply to other milks perhaps at other degrees. If you are getting large air bubbles in your milk froth and the Latte-go cup channel is clean, then its your milk. BUY NEW MILK. This is the shortcut to prevent just ripping your hair out. Just BUY NEW MILK. I have had 2 instances so far where my frothing issues have been directly caused by milk which I believe was not fresh enough or had some other defect which I could not analyze. Just switching to new milk from another source corrected the issue immediately.I also had one occurrence in the past where I had frothing issues. Cleaning the Latte-go cup did not solve it. I think I tried replacing the milk in the Latte-go cup several times but it may have been from the same carton of milk, I am no longer sure. In that one instance of time, I reduced the coffee maker brewing temperature from its hottest 3 dot setting to its medium 2 dot setting (read the manual), and in that case it corrected the milk frothing issue immediately as well. In hindsight, I think that was most likely also caused by the milk and not the heat setting of the unit overall. Just throwing this out there as something which I did run across, but while the heat setting corrected the issue, I think now looking back with further experience, that the issue was really just the milk. I think reducing the temperature just sort of put a chemical reaction sort of band aid on some milk which just possibly wasn’t fresh enough – that’s my guess.Just very recently had another frothing issue, large air bubbles. We had bought 2 half gallon cartons of whole organic milk with exact same expiration date at exact same time at exact same store, Aldies, which is where we buy 90% of our milk – all of the time. For whatever reason, the one half gallon was causing us frothing issues with large air bubbles. Switching to the second half gallon immediately cleared up the issue. Visually, I could see no difference between the 2 milks. So good example of just trying different milk instead of going to other cleaning extremes to try to correct the frothing issue.Descaling the coffee maker. I don’t know if I am correct here and/or potentially harming my machine or not but here goes. About once a month, I deep clean my entire machine using Rinza agent and water instead of buying a Philips specific descaling solution. I have done this for 11 months now. I own the Rinza cleaning agent, I don’t own the Philips descaling solution, so I am making use of what I have which is cheaper and on hand. I remove the water filter from the water tank. I fill the tank with a solution made up of 3 ounces of Rinza agent to remaining parts of cold water. The tank is filled with this solution. I then make several styles of drink using the machine and this solution without its water filter. I select ground coffee and like with the Latte-go cleaning process, I simply neglect to put ground coffee into the unit tricking the coffee maker to make a drink without actually using coffee. I make drinks using this method until all of the solution is used up. Both frothy and non-frothy drinks. Then I rinse out the water container in the unit and just refill it with 100% water as usual, still with no filter in place. And I run that through the coffee maker, again making a wide variety of drinks minus the coffee. This rinses all traces of the Rinza solution out of the machine. I then replace the water filter back into the tank and I’m back in normal coffee making business. So far this has worked very well for me, no issues. Try this or not for yourself, just putting it out.Final words of advice. Search you-tube for videos relating to brew group cleaning and maintenance. Much better and informative then the official Philips product videos.
A. G. Biggs –
Overall this is a very nice espresso machine; easy to use and makes great coffee, so it’s hard to complain. But a couple thoughts:1. It could use a touch screeen interface. It’s not just that the buttons are hard to press, as some have pointed out. But for a machine that can do practically anything, the limiting factor is how hard it is to TELL it to do anything. A touch screen with more options would address that. For instance, I like a large capacinno with two shots, but I have to wait and do that in two stages. Or I like to steam milk to make my son’s hot chocolate in the morning; I can’t program just steamed milk, so I have to first, tell the machine I’m making a capacinno using ground coffee; then wait while the milk is steamed, then hit the stop button before it starts making the coffee. Or to custom adjust the size of drinks, I have to turn the machine off, then hit various buttons. A touch screen would make things easy that currently aren’t easy, and the point of a super-automatic is easy.2. The milk container is too small. I know they don’t want it to be overwhelming, but I have to refill it between making coffees for me and my wife. A larger container, maybe as an aftermarket add-on, would make sense.3. You’ll empty and fill it more than you’d think. The water capacity is generous, but the 3200 uses a lot of water for cleaning. There are two and a half of us in our household and I have to refill every day. The same goes with the waste tub for grounds; in theory it can hold a lot, but in practice the signal goes off when it’s about half full. Because of this, I’m not sure how well the 3200 would work for a small office.Still, this is a very nice espresso machine. Just some caveats and ideas for improvement.
A. G. Biggs –
Overall this is a very nice espresso machine; easy to use and makes great coffee, so it’s hard to complain. But a couple thoughts:1. It could use a touch screeen interface. It’s not just that the buttons are hard to press, as some have pointed out. But for a machine that can do practically anything, the limiting factor is how hard it is to TELL it to do anything. A touch screen with more options would address that. For instance, I like a large capacinno with two shots, but I have to wait and do that in two stages. Or I like to steam milk to make my son’s hot chocolate in the morning; I can’t program just steamed milk, so I have to first, tell the machine I’m making a capacinno using ground coffee; then wait while the milk is steamed, then hit the stop button before it starts making the coffee. Or to custom adjust the size of drinks, I have to turn the machine off, then hit various buttons. A touch screen would make things easy that currently aren’t easy, and the point of a super-automatic is easy.2. The milk container is too small. I know they don’t want it to be overwhelming, but I have to refill it between making coffees for me and my wife. A larger container, maybe as an aftermarket add-on, would make sense.3. You’ll empty and fill it more than you’d think. The water capacity is generous, but the 3200 uses a lot of water for cleaning. There are two and a half of us in our household and I have to refill every day. The same goes with the waste tub for grounds; in theory it can hold a lot, but in practice the signal goes off when it’s about half full. Because of this, I’m not sure how well the 3200 would work for a small office.Still, this is a very nice espresso machine. Just some caveats and ideas for improvement.
Jessica –
I am not a coffee snob. But I just couldn’t stand the Keurig cups. I loved lattes, but didn’t like having to froth milk. For that reason I refused when my family begged for an espresso machine. Then I researched. First – the milk container. OMG – this thing is the best. I clean it once every few days, but can just store the milk in it in the fridge between cups. It makes pretty good foam. Definitely better than that little frothing wand on most. It is just so convenient. Second – the choices. Each of us has a different preference in our coffee. Here we get it all. We customize with double shots, strength of brew, etc. But the point is that with a touch of a few buttons we get custom coffee. Third – size. It takes up about the same amount of counterspace as a 10 cup machine. Maybe a little more. But it was definitely smaller than I was expecting. Fourth – ease of cleaning. You just pull a tray and dump the grounds (in a separate little container) and water. It tells you when it needs to be emptied. This is easier to clean than an actual coffee maker because there is no carafe to scrub. Fifth – the water capacity. Coming from a small keurig, this is my son’s favorite part. You fill it and forget it for a few days. There are four of us who drink coffee regularly. So the size of the water container is great.Cons – like others have said, it is not quiet. It doesn’t bother me much. But I have raised two boys who are now teens, have two cats and two dogs, and am not used to a quiet house. I have an air compressor for an airbrush and it sounds like the compressor sounds from outside the house. Really just soothing background noise for me at this point. Price. It is a kitchen appliance. In order in my house of use is the fridge, the dishwasher, this machine, the microwave, the oven, and the rice cooker (we cook rice every day). If you can accept that you are paying for an appliance and not just a little coffee maker, it will sit easier. As it is, I was really hesitant. My family has convinced me it was worth the purchase. Just pull off that sticker shock and the pain subsides quickly.
Chris R –
Came from a Nespresso Vertuo machine to this. I like that I can make various coffee drinks. I mostly make regular coffee but have the option of a capuccino when I want it. Great Prime Day deal last October. Some things to note:1. Is it loud? Yes it makes noise. It grinds coffee beans and all, but it doesn’t run very long, so it becomes “normal” after a few times.2. Does it use water? Yeah, some people mention it uses a lot and leaves a lot in the drip tray. If you are making anything that uses the Lattego milk function, it will use more water as it uses steam (that comes from water) to froth up the milk. The extra water is a by-product of the steam. When I make regular coffee there is very little water in the tray. Still wish the water capacity was bigger. I find myself drinking more coffee now cause I like the coffee I get from the machine.3. Is it hot enough? Yeah….when it exits the machine it is around 196 degrees. I placed a thermometer in the coffee stream coming out of the machine (at the highest temp setting). The National Coffee Association recommends 195-205 degrees as the Optimal temp for extraction. Going straight into a cooler vessel (mug/glass whatever) it won’t stay hot forever, plus it won’t make like 12 oz cups like a K-Cup machine does, so it will cool faster. I like to add half and half to my coffee. With this machine I learned to heat my half and half in the microwave before it brews into the cup. Not really a pain just something different I am used to. Still wish it went to 205 degrees, just a little extra would be great.4. I use the coffee function and use the top settings for water amount and get the right size for my mug. I run it twice for a travel mug.5. It makes a pretty decent coffee, strong enough. I left it at the grind setting it came with. I remember when I tried the coffee at a Williams Sonoma store, I asked the demo person what setting they had it at, and the sample coffee was good.6. Keep the drip tray and grounds catcher container empty. I let the grounds stack up and the machine wouldn’t brew. My fault. Just empty and continue. I cancelled a brew mid stream when I realized the grinder was making a different sound (out of beans, my fault). It wouldn’t do anything after I paused, so I unplugged it and plugged it back in and it was fine.7. Clean the unit as described in the manual or watch the Philips video on YouTube. Nothing crazy hard, just let it dry for the rest of the day. I find the sliding channels for the water container build up some coffee grounds, I just wipe it down with a damp paper towel. I did one descale recently, again, follow the directions and it’s fine. Also ran one of the oil remover tablets as well. These machines cost money so take care of it.8. Break in period, follow it. I admit it was a bit more than I would have liked. Bought some cheap beans to run through the break in. A bit of a negative.9. Enjoy exploring the choice of whole bean coffee out there. I’m finally settling into a few that I can find easily and close by.10. I like to add flavored syrups etc to the milk in the container before I brew. Really mixes the flavor in well. And easy hot water rinse for the milk container afterwards. Careful removing the clear container from the base, I broke mine the first time, as I didn’t push the tab down to remove the clear container.11. Machine looks nice in the kitchen. If you want the extra Wow go for one of the models with the LCD screen.Overall a good machine that requires a learning curve. It may be too much for some to want to learn or bother with the cleaning, break in period etc. But if you want a coffee adventure this machine will provide it. No complaints, no issues for me.Update: being away from home a while and I had my first coffee from this machine in a few weeks….I missed it. The coffee this morning was so much more flavorful. Lavazza Classico Beans are fantastic for the coffee function.
Chris R –
Came from a Nespresso Vertuo machine to this. I like that I can make various coffee drinks. I mostly make regular coffee but have the option of a capuccino when I want it. Great Prime Day deal last October. Some things to note:1. Is it loud? Yes it makes noise. It grinds coffee beans and all, but it doesn’t run very long, so it becomes “normal” after a few times.2. Does it use water? Yeah, some people mention it uses a lot and leaves a lot in the drip tray. If you are making anything that uses the Lattego milk function, it will use more water as it uses steam (that comes from water) to froth up the milk. The extra water is a by-product of the steam. When I make regular coffee there is very little water in the tray. Still wish the water capacity was bigger. I find myself drinking more coffee now cause I like the coffee I get from the machine.3. Is it hot enough? Yeah….when it exits the machine it is around 196 degrees. I placed a thermometer in the coffee stream coming out of the machine (at the highest temp setting). The National Coffee Association recommends 195-205 degrees as the Optimal temp for extraction. Going straight into a cooler vessel (mug/glass whatever) it won’t stay hot forever, plus it won’t make like 12 oz cups like a K-Cup machine does, so it will cool faster. I like to add half and half to my coffee. With this machine I learned to heat my half and half in the microwave before it brews into the cup. Not really a pain just something different I am used to. Still wish it went to 205 degrees, just a little extra would be great.4. I use the coffee function and use the top settings for water amount and get the right size for my mug. I run it twice for a travel mug.5. It makes a pretty decent coffee, strong enough. I left it at the grind setting it came with. I remember when I tried the coffee at a Williams Sonoma store, I asked the demo person what setting they had it at, and the sample coffee was good.6. Keep the drip tray and grounds catcher container empty. I let the grounds stack up and the machine wouldn’t brew. My fault. Just empty and continue. I cancelled a brew mid stream when I realized the grinder was making a different sound (out of beans, my fault). It wouldn’t do anything after I paused, so I unplugged it and plugged it back in and it was fine.7. Clean the unit as described in the manual or watch the Philips video on YouTube. Nothing crazy hard, just let it dry for the rest of the day. I find the sliding channels for the water container build up some coffee grounds, I just wipe it down with a damp paper towel. I did one descale recently, again, follow the directions and it’s fine. Also ran one of the oil remover tablets as well. These machines cost money so take care of it.8. Break in period, follow it. I admit it was a bit more than I would have liked. Bought some cheap beans to run through the break in. A bit of a negative.9. Enjoy exploring the choice of whole bean coffee out there. I’m finally settling into a few that I can find easily and close by.10. I like to add flavored syrups etc to the milk in the container before I brew. Really mixes the flavor in well. And easy hot water rinse for the milk container afterwards. Careful removing the clear container from the base, I broke mine the first time, as I didn’t push the tab down to remove the clear container.11. Machine looks nice in the kitchen. If you want the extra Wow go for one of the models with the LCD screen.Overall a good machine that requires a learning curve. It may be too much for some to want to learn or bother with the cleaning, break in period etc. But if you want a coffee adventure this machine will provide it. No complaints, no issues for me.Update: being away from home a while and I had my first coffee from this machine in a few weeks….I missed it. The coffee this morning was so much more flavorful. Lavazza Classico Beans are fantastic for the coffee function.
Patrick L. Vogt –
We purchased this machine because we valued having access to great quality espresso with maximum convenience. If you are looking for complete control of your coffee, this isn’t the machine for you. At the same time, unless you enjoy/tolerate futzing with grind settings, pre-heating and clean-up rituals, this machine strikes the perfect balance. You get consistent, very good quality drinks from the machine with maximum convenience. It takes care of grinding, tamping, brewing, frothing, and dumping all in one cohesive package. Are you going to be able to make latte art with the foam? No. But in exchange you don’t have to mess with a steam wand that you need to clean. Everything is integrated and works, time and time again.One downside is the increased coffee consumption because it’s just too easy to go to the machine and brew yourself some great tasting espresso. But I like to think of that as a testament how much we enjoy the machine.I find the machine excels in all available drinks: espresso, Americano, “Coffee”, Cappuccino, and Latte Machiato. My favorites are the Americano and Latte Machiato. Each drink setting allows you to configure the aromatic, espresso, and milk froth amounts. These settings each have three levels, and they are unique to each drink. The settings are remembered so you don’t need to manually program the machine each time.Milk frothing is done through a two-piece system that forces steam into the milk, up a tube, and out into your coffee without the need of a steam wand. Hot water can be dispensed out of a separate outlet, which is great for tea. The machine takes care of the warm up and shut down procedures (prewarming the group head by pushing hot water through it for some time on initial start). Maintenance is important– you must remove the mechanism and rinse it with water once a week, and clean the inside from coffee grounds, but this only takes a few minutes.We have found the included filter does a very good job filtering out impurities that exist in most municipal water systems.Overall, very happy with the machine and would recommend to anyone.
Patrick L. Vogt –
We purchased this machine because we valued having access to great quality espresso with maximum convenience. If you are looking for complete control of your coffee, this isn’t the machine for you. At the same time, unless you enjoy/tolerate futzing with grind settings, pre-heating and clean-up rituals, this machine strikes the perfect balance. You get consistent, very good quality drinks from the machine with maximum convenience. It takes care of grinding, tamping, brewing, frothing, and dumping all in one cohesive package. Are you going to be able to make latte art with the foam? No. But in exchange you don’t have to mess with a steam wand that you need to clean. Everything is integrated and works, time and time again.One downside is the increased coffee consumption because it’s just too easy to go to the machine and brew yourself some great tasting espresso. But I like to think of that as a testament how much we enjoy the machine.I find the machine excels in all available drinks: espresso, Americano, “Coffee”, Cappuccino, and Latte Machiato. My favorites are the Americano and Latte Machiato. Each drink setting allows you to configure the aromatic, espresso, and milk froth amounts. These settings each have three levels, and they are unique to each drink. The settings are remembered so you don’t need to manually program the machine each time.Milk frothing is done through a two-piece system that forces steam into the milk, up a tube, and out into your coffee without the need of a steam wand. Hot water can be dispensed out of a separate outlet, which is great for tea. The machine takes care of the warm up and shut down procedures (prewarming the group head by pushing hot water through it for some time on initial start). Maintenance is important– you must remove the mechanism and rinse it with water once a week, and clean the inside from coffee grounds, but this only takes a few minutes.We have found the included filter does a very good job filtering out impurities that exist in most municipal water systems.Overall, very happy with the machine and would recommend to anyone.
CircusMama –
It has been about 3 and a half months with this espresso machine now. I am over the moon with this machine! I was looking for an automatic espresso machine that went straight from bean to cup as the various pods I was previously using were starting to get expensive since I have switched to drinking espresso almost exclusively. This machine is just what I was looking for. It makes a good espresso and a decent latte/macchiato. I use all of the brew and drink settings on the highest/largest volume settings because I make my drinks with the equivalent of 4 shots at a time. This machine works very quickly and it doesn’t take me long to make a coffee shop quality drink in the mornings as I am trying to get out the door. My only drawbacks for this machine are the capacity of the water tank and this model’s inability to dispense milk without espresso. The capacity isn’t a big deal because I understand the value of fresh water in the machine but now that my husband has jumped on my bandwagon and started using the hot water to make tea, it runs out often between the two of us. I know prior to purchasing that this model did not have the ability to dispense milk by itself, so that was not a deal breaker considering I have a stand alone milk frother of another brand and the feature was not worth the money for an upgrade.Overall, this machine has been a hit in my household and with visitors that have tried it! I don’t foresee myself wanting a different machine until this one breaks down!
CircusMama –
It has been about 3 and a half months with this espresso machine now. I am over the moon with this machine! I was looking for an automatic espresso machine that went straight from bean to cup as the various pods I was previously using were starting to get expensive since I have switched to drinking espresso almost exclusively. This machine is just what I was looking for. It makes a good espresso and a decent latte/macchiato. I use all of the brew and drink settings on the highest/largest volume settings because I make my drinks with the equivalent of 4 shots at a time. This machine works very quickly and it doesn’t take me long to make a coffee shop quality drink in the mornings as I am trying to get out the door. My only drawbacks for this machine are the capacity of the water tank and this model’s inability to dispense milk without espresso. The capacity isn’t a big deal because I understand the value of fresh water in the machine but now that my husband has jumped on my bandwagon and started using the hot water to make tea, it runs out often between the two of us. I know prior to purchasing that this model did not have the ability to dispense milk by itself, so that was not a deal breaker considering I have a stand alone milk frother of another brand and the feature was not worth the money for an upgrade.Overall, this machine has been a hit in my household and with visitors that have tried it! I don’t foresee myself wanting a different machine until this one breaks down!
Nancy –
This is so easy to learn to use and put the beans in and oh my goodness the coffee is as good as Starbucks.
Nancy –
This is so easy to learn to use and put the beans in and oh my goodness the coffee is as good as Starbucks.
Anna –
It makes good coffee… I like that it steams and froths milk… but there are two flaws.. so far… 1. It doesn’t detect or notify you when the beans are low or empty, you will just be surprised that ur coffee is like water; 2nd, it seems like it is not getting most out of the beans coz need to maximize the amount of beans to have strong coffee, and I noticed, as others have noticed, the waste grounds are wet and not compact, they are loose which means it was not pressed enough. I was using a Tchibo machine prior to this one, and the grounds that come out of the Tchibo machine is really dry and formed! Though Tchibo makes bitter tasting coffee compared to this one, using the same batch of beans. We have also been consuming more whole beans faster… either the machine eats up more beans to produce the same strength, OR we are consuming more… 😁 So far I’m still liking it, but still observing if I will keep or return. I hope I would have enough reason to keep it coz I like the convenience of a fully automatic coffee machine.
Anna –
It makes good coffee… I like that it steams and froths milk… but there are two flaws.. so far… 1. It doesn’t detect or notify you when the beans are low or empty, you will just be surprised that ur coffee is like water; 2nd, it seems like it is not getting most out of the beans coz need to maximize the amount of beans to have strong coffee, and I noticed, as others have noticed, the waste grounds are wet and not compact, they are loose which means it was not pressed enough. I was using a Tchibo machine prior to this one, and the grounds that come out of the Tchibo machine is really dry and formed! Though Tchibo makes bitter tasting coffee compared to this one, using the same batch of beans. We have also been consuming more whole beans faster… either the machine eats up more beans to produce the same strength, OR we are consuming more… 😁 So far I’m still liking it, but still observing if I will keep or return. I hope I would have enough reason to keep it coz I like the convenience of a fully automatic coffee machine.
renzo gamarra –
I’ve only been drinking coffee for 13yrs. Started when I was 30. I have been waiting for a machine like this one for a long time and it was a bday gift from my wife. We love it. I make about 3 cups a day and she makes 2 cups a day. In that time the only thing I’ve had to do is change the water filter. And today I have had my first failure. Some gaskets have worn out and I’m not getting much water at all coming out of the nozzle. It is ending up in the bottom tray. I’ll report back to see if this fix will get it going again. I’m a harsh critic when it comes to brands and I’m very impressed with this machine. My wife bought it when it was $1k, it’s gone down to under $700 now. Crazy!
renzo gamarra –
I’ve only been drinking coffee for 13yrs. Started when I was 30. I have been waiting for a machine like this one for a long time and it was a bday gift from my wife. We love it. I make about 3 cups a day and she makes 2 cups a day. In that time the only thing I’ve had to do is change the water filter. And today I have had my first failure. Some gaskets have worn out and I’m not getting much water at all coming out of the nozzle. It is ending up in the bottom tray. I’ll report back to see if this fix will get it going again. I’m a harsh critic when it comes to brands and I’m very impressed with this machine. My wife bought it when it was $1k, it’s gone down to under $700 now. Crazy!
JB! –
We picked this up on a Prime Day deal. It works great. This was our first super-automatic maker. I’m a fan of straight espresso and the shots are delicious and perfectly made every time. The crema on the espresso is nice as well. The temperature is just right and the time to heat up is very quick.My wife likes capuccino and the milk frother works well. It is fairly easy to use, no difficult settings to figure out.Most of the parts can go in the dishwasher.My only complaints are very minor:It does a rinse cycle before and after use. So if you set your cup on the tray and then turn it on, it will put some hot rinse water in it . Not a big deal as you can just dump it out. But also if you leave your cup on the tray too long, it will eventually auto-shut down and run its rinse cycle again, putting hot rinse water into your coffee. Fortunately you have a long time to pull your cup before it shuts down so that’s not a big issue.The other minor complaint I have is that it doesn’t actually detect if the grinder is empty. I went to make a coffee a couple days ago and it went through the whole cycle but only gave me hot water. I realized the hopper was empty so I added beans, dumped out the cup and ran it again.Overall this machine is worth the money and it makes a very good cup of coffee. It is very convenient and the features are well thought out.
JB! –
We picked this up on a Prime Day deal. It works great. This was our first super-automatic maker. I’m a fan of straight espresso and the shots are delicious and perfectly made every time. The crema on the espresso is nice as well. The temperature is just right and the time to heat up is very quick.My wife likes capuccino and the milk frother works well. It is fairly easy to use, no difficult settings to figure out.Most of the parts can go in the dishwasher.My only complaints are very minor:It does a rinse cycle before and after use. So if you set your cup on the tray and then turn it on, it will put some hot rinse water in it . Not a big deal as you can just dump it out. But also if you leave your cup on the tray too long, it will eventually auto-shut down and run its rinse cycle again, putting hot rinse water into your coffee. Fortunately you have a long time to pull your cup before it shuts down so that’s not a big issue.The other minor complaint I have is that it doesn’t actually detect if the grinder is empty. I went to make a coffee a couple days ago and it went through the whole cycle but only gave me hot water. I realized the hopper was empty so I added beans, dumped out the cup and ran it again.Overall this machine is worth the money and it makes a very good cup of coffee. It is very convenient and the features are well thought out.
David Becker –
My wife and I bought this machine about 2 years ago, and it has held up nicely over time. It’s proven to be a simple, reliable alternative to going out to buy coffees and lattes from coffee shops, which is perfect since we work from home pretty much all the time. We’ve got 3 adults in our house and on average drink 5-6 total cups per day, and we so far haven’t run into any major problems.One issue I had at first was that the coffee wasn’t as strong as I was used to (I tend to like it pretty strong), but it’s still good coffee. You can make drinks stronger by adjusting how fine the grounds are with a little knob in the bean compartment at top, but I didn’t start messing with this until very recently. You can only adjust in small increments while the grinder is active to avoid damaging it.This machine is good for guests who want to make and customize their own individual drinks, though there is a small learning curve for first-time users. Once they know how to use it, they often comment how cool it is, and some have said they’d like to get one too (if it weren’t so expensive).Maintenance is fairly simple: You have to change the water filter every few months, rinse the easily removable “brew group” every week or two, and apply grease to it every couple months. The only problem I had was reinstalling the brew group for the first time (there’s a little yellow switch on the side that needs to be in the right position). There was also one time we didn’t change the water filter while the replacement light was flashing (it gave us plenty of notice; we just procrastinated too much), so we had to buy a special descaling fluid to clean it out before we could use it again.Yes, the machine can get loud, but I haven’t met a coffee grinder or latte maker that was quiet. This machine’s noise level seems pretty standard to me.There are a few little tricks to using and maintaining the machine so that you can get the most out of it, but so do most machines like this. Overall, I’d say it’s very easy to use and makes good drinks. The price is a bit high, and you also have to consider the added costs of buying whole-bean coffee and replacement water filters. But convenience like this often comes at a price, right? I would say it was worth it for us.
David Becker –
My wife and I bought this machine about 2 years ago, and it has held up nicely over time. It’s proven to be a simple, reliable alternative to going out to buy coffees and lattes from coffee shops, which is perfect since we work from home pretty much all the time. We’ve got 3 adults in our house and on average drink 5-6 total cups per day, and we so far haven’t run into any major problems.One issue I had at first was that the coffee wasn’t as strong as I was used to (I tend to like it pretty strong), but it’s still good coffee. You can make drinks stronger by adjusting how fine the grounds are with a little knob in the bean compartment at top, but I didn’t start messing with this until very recently. You can only adjust in small increments while the grinder is active to avoid damaging it.This machine is good for guests who want to make and customize their own individual drinks, though there is a small learning curve for first-time users. Once they know how to use it, they often comment how cool it is, and some have said they’d like to get one too (if it weren’t so expensive).Maintenance is fairly simple: You have to change the water filter every few months, rinse the easily removable “brew group” every week or two, and apply grease to it every couple months. The only problem I had was reinstalling the brew group for the first time (there’s a little yellow switch on the side that needs to be in the right position). There was also one time we didn’t change the water filter while the replacement light was flashing (it gave us plenty of notice; we just procrastinated too much), so we had to buy a special descaling fluid to clean it out before we could use it again.Yes, the machine can get loud, but I haven’t met a coffee grinder or latte maker that was quiet. This machine’s noise level seems pretty standard to me.There are a few little tricks to using and maintaining the machine so that you can get the most out of it, but so do most machines like this. Overall, I’d say it’s very easy to use and makes good drinks. The price is a bit high, and you also have to consider the added costs of buying whole-bean coffee and replacement water filters. But convenience like this often comes at a price, right? I would say it was worth it for us.
G –
I’ve had quite a few espresso machines. This one is very easy to use, and the quality of the taste of the different functions is right on the money, and I can customize it to what I like overall pleased with this product.
G –
I’ve had quite a few espresso machines. This one is very easy to use, and the quality of the taste of the different functions is right on the money, and I can customize it to what I like overall pleased with this product.
em33 –
I have had this machine for a few years now and it’s still going strong. It gets used often and the convenience of it is fantastic. I also have a semi-auto machine with a separate grinder but this machine has taken over the spot. Making a few milk drinks within minutes and easy cleanup wins the cake! Is the espresso as good as the semi auto, no but if you will be using it for milk type drinks it’s fantastic. The auto milk frother works really well too. The regular coffee setting is not great and it won’t replace your drip machine or pour-overs if you want a regular cup of coffee but if you want an espresso type drink like a latte or cappuccino, it’s delicious. I just with there was a way to make even larger cups. You can do a custom setting but it seems like it still maxes out at less then I would like. I did get mine on Prime day a few years ago, so the price was great for this machine and it’s held up with just some simple rinsing of the brew head every couple weeks. Maintenence is super simple.
em33 –
I have had this machine for a few years now and it’s still going strong. It gets used often and the convenience of it is fantastic. I also have a semi-auto machine with a separate grinder but this machine has taken over the spot. Making a few milk drinks within minutes and easy cleanup wins the cake! Is the espresso as good as the semi auto, no but if you will be using it for milk type drinks it’s fantastic. The auto milk frother works really well too. The regular coffee setting is not great and it won’t replace your drip machine or pour-overs if you want a regular cup of coffee but if you want an espresso type drink like a latte or cappuccino, it’s delicious. I just with there was a way to make even larger cups. You can do a custom setting but it seems like it still maxes out at less then I would like. I did get mine on Prime day a few years ago, so the price was great for this machine and it’s held up with just some simple rinsing of the brew head every couple weeks. Maintenence is super simple.
Sheujade –
We love this coffee machine. Very easy to use and makes good coffee. The only complaint we have is that the coffee is not very hot. We have turned up the heat all the way and it still is not very hot. Disappointing.Other than that, makes a great cup of joe.
OreoMoreoOreoMoreo –
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The quest for the perfect cup of coffee ends with the Philips 3200 Series Fully Automatic Espresso Machine – LatteGo Milk Frother. This exceptional coffee machine is a game-changer, combining cutting-edge technology with exquisite design to deliver an unparalleled coffee experience. From its user-friendly interface to the outstanding quality of the beverages it creates, this espresso machine is truly a coffee lover’s dream come true.Design and Build Quality:The Philips 3200 Series is a marvel of engineering and design. Its sleek and modern appearance adds a touch of elegance to any kitchen countertop. Crafted with precision and attention to detail, the machine feels sturdy and durable, promising years of use. The compact footprint ensures it won’t take up much space, making it ideal for both small and large kitchens. The thoughtfully placed buttons and intuitive display make navigating through the various options a breeze, even for those new to automatic espresso machines.LatteGo Milk Frother:One of the standout features of this espresso machine is the LatteGo milk frother. It revolutionizes the way milk-based beverages are prepared, delivering silky smooth froth in seconds. Unlike traditional frothers that require manual intervention, the LatteGo frother is fully automatic. With just a touch of a button, you can effortlessly create perfectly textured milk for lattes, cappuccinos, or any other milk-based drinks. The frother is also remarkably easy to clean, thanks to its detachable components that can be rinsed under water or placed in the dishwasher.Brewing Performance:The brewing performance of the Philips 3200 Series is truly outstanding. Equipped with a powerful 15-bar pump and a high-quality ceramic grinder, it consistently produces exceptional espresso with rich crema and intense flavor. The adjustable grinder allows you to customize the fineness of the coffee beans, ensuring optimal extraction for every cup. The machine offers a variety of beverage options, including espresso, lungo, cappuccino, and latte, all easily customizable to suit your preferences.User-Friendly Interface:Philips has placed a strong emphasis on user-friendliness with the 3200 Series. The intuitive interface and clear LCD display guide you through the entire brewing process, making it a seamless and hassle-free experience. The machine offers multiple customizable settings, including coffee strength, temperature, and milk froth level, allowing you to tailor each cup to your liking. Whether you’re a coffee connoisseur or a novice, this machine provides a level of control and convenience that is unmatched.Hygiene and Maintenance:Keeping the espresso machine clean is essential for maintaining optimal performance and flavor. Philips has made this task effortless with its innovative design. The machine features an automatic cleaning cycle that rinses the brewing unit after each use, preventing any residual flavors from affecting subsequent cups. Additionally, the LatteGo milk frother is designed to be hygienic and easy to clean, ensuring that no milk residue accumulates over time. The machine also provides reminders for descaling and other maintenance tasks, simplifying the upkeep process.Final Verdict:The Philips 3200 Series Fully Automatic Espresso Machine – LatteGo Milk Frother is a true standout in the world of coffee machines. Its sleek design, exceptional brewing performance, and user-friendly interface make it a top choice for coffee enthusiasts. The LatteGo milk frother is a game-changer, elevating milk-based beverages to a whole new level. With its versatile customization options, this machine caters to the unique preferences of every individual. If you’re looking to enhance your coffee experience and enjoy barista-quality beverages from the comfort of your own home, the Philips
OreoMoreoOreoMoreo –
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The quest for the perfect cup of coffee ends with the Philips 3200 Series Fully Automatic Espresso Machine – LatteGo Milk Frother. This exceptional coffee machine is a game-changer, combining cutting-edge technology with exquisite design to deliver an unparalleled coffee experience. From its user-friendly interface to the outstanding quality of the beverages it creates, this espresso machine is truly a coffee lover’s dream come true.Design and Build Quality:The Philips 3200 Series is a marvel of engineering and design. Its sleek and modern appearance adds a touch of elegance to any kitchen countertop. Crafted with precision and attention to detail, the machine feels sturdy and durable, promising years of use. The compact footprint ensures it won’t take up much space, making it ideal for both small and large kitchens. The thoughtfully placed buttons and intuitive display make navigating through the various options a breeze, even for those new to automatic espresso machines.LatteGo Milk Frother:One of the standout features of this espresso machine is the LatteGo milk frother. It revolutionizes the way milk-based beverages are prepared, delivering silky smooth froth in seconds. Unlike traditional frothers that require manual intervention, the LatteGo frother is fully automatic. With just a touch of a button, you can effortlessly create perfectly textured milk for lattes, cappuccinos, or any other milk-based drinks. The frother is also remarkably easy to clean, thanks to its detachable components that can be rinsed under water or placed in the dishwasher.Brewing Performance:The brewing performance of the Philips 3200 Series is truly outstanding. Equipped with a powerful 15-bar pump and a high-quality ceramic grinder, it consistently produces exceptional espresso with rich crema and intense flavor. The adjustable grinder allows you to customize the fineness of the coffee beans, ensuring optimal extraction for every cup. The machine offers a variety of beverage options, including espresso, lungo, cappuccino, and latte, all easily customizable to suit your preferences.User-Friendly Interface:Philips has placed a strong emphasis on user-friendliness with the 3200 Series. The intuitive interface and clear LCD display guide you through the entire brewing process, making it a seamless and hassle-free experience. The machine offers multiple customizable settings, including coffee strength, temperature, and milk froth level, allowing you to tailor each cup to your liking. Whether you’re a coffee connoisseur or a novice, this machine provides a level of control and convenience that is unmatched.Hygiene and Maintenance:Keeping the espresso machine clean is essential for maintaining optimal performance and flavor. Philips has made this task effortless with its innovative design. The machine features an automatic cleaning cycle that rinses the brewing unit after each use, preventing any residual flavors from affecting subsequent cups. Additionally, the LatteGo milk frother is designed to be hygienic and easy to clean, ensuring that no milk residue accumulates over time. The machine also provides reminders for descaling and other maintenance tasks, simplifying the upkeep process.Final Verdict:The Philips 3200 Series Fully Automatic Espresso Machine – LatteGo Milk Frother is a true standout in the world of coffee machines. Its sleek design, exceptional brewing performance, and user-friendly interface make it a top choice for coffee enthusiasts. The LatteGo milk frother is a game-changer, elevating milk-based beverages to a whole new level. With its versatile customization options, this machine caters to the unique preferences of every individual. If you’re looking to enhance your coffee experience and enjoy barista-quality beverages from the comfort of your own home, the Philips
C. L. –
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Bought this machine during prime days and got a really good price on it. As a coffee lover I have tried many many different machines in my life. I’ll have to say this one is my favorite. It is very simple to use, and makes a consistently good product every time. The video is a Latte being made but I also use it for Americano, Coffee and espresso. I have been extremely happy with all of them. The machine does require regular maintenance and care to keep it at peak performance l. but it’s pretty simple and easy to do.overall I would ra this machine a 10 of 10. I’ll update this review after a few months of using it if there are any problems.
C. L. –
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Bought this machine during prime days and got a really good price on it. As a coffee lover I have tried many many different machines in my life. I’ll have to say this one is my favorite. It is very simple to use, and makes a consistently good product every time. The video is a Latte being made but I also use it for Americano, Coffee and espresso. I have been extremely happy with all of them. The machine does require regular maintenance and care to keep it at peak performance l. but it’s pretty simple and easy to do.overall I would ra this machine a 10 of 10. I’ll update this review after a few months of using it if there are any problems.
JARED B POOLJARED B POOL –
As a coffee novice who loves lattes and espressos, the Philips Latte Go coffee maker has been a game-changer for me. No more juggling multiple tools – this all-in-one machine delivers delicious beverages quickly and effortlessly.While there was a slight learning curve to master all the options and cleaning processes, the overall experience has been delightful. It’s become a hit with my guests too; they unanimously prefer the fresh ground coffee it produces over my old drip coffee maker.If you’re looking for a convenient and versatile solution for enjoying cafe-quality beverages at home, the Philips Latte Go is definitely worth considering. Cheers to hassle-free coffee enjoyment!
JARED B POOLJARED B POOL –
As a coffee novice who loves lattes and espressos, the Philips Latte Go coffee maker has been a game-changer for me. No more juggling multiple tools – this all-in-one machine delivers delicious beverages quickly and effortlessly.While there was a slight learning curve to master all the options and cleaning processes, the overall experience has been delightful. It’s become a hit with my guests too; they unanimously prefer the fresh ground coffee it produces over my old drip coffee maker.If you’re looking for a convenient and versatile solution for enjoying cafe-quality beverages at home, the Philips Latte Go is definitely worth considering. Cheers to hassle-free coffee enjoyment!
mrs.z –
Ok I picked this up in the “used” Amazon warehouse section for about 40% off so I’m not complaining! It’s making my latte great, and it does a good job. Upgrading from a nespresso machine, I can taste the coffee much better! (I did own a Breville Barista before but wanted more of a grab and go machine) Some suggestions: the “ground coffee” function is NOT great as I tried it this morning when I ran out of coffee beans. I’m assuming you’re buying this machine to have the bean grinder as the main way to do things, but I was shoveling ground coffee down that spout with mixed results (often because the controls do take a little getting used to).The milk function doesn’t let you pick the amount of milk and you can’t do steamed milk by itself (you could trick the machine by making a latte and then hitting stop before the coffee was added). What really would work is just offering an alternate steam wand to use instead of just the latte cup.You can take off the milk cup and get hot water though the spout which my kids like for hot chocolate.
mrs.z –
Ok I picked this up in the “used” Amazon warehouse section for about 40% off so I’m not complaining! It’s making my latte great, and it does a good job. Upgrading from a nespresso machine, I can taste the coffee much better! (I did own a Breville Barista before but wanted more of a grab and go machine) Some suggestions: the “ground coffee” function is NOT great as I tried it this morning when I ran out of coffee beans. I’m assuming you’re buying this machine to have the bean grinder as the main way to do things, but I was shoveling ground coffee down that spout with mixed results (often because the controls do take a little getting used to).The milk function doesn’t let you pick the amount of milk and you can’t do steamed milk by itself (you could trick the machine by making a latte and then hitting stop before the coffee was added). What really would work is just offering an alternate steam wand to use instead of just the latte cup.You can take off the milk cup and get hot water though the spout which my kids like for hot chocolate.
Colleen & Nate –
I have a macchiato w/ a shot of espresso and a splash of agave every morning! 🤤👌 Worth every penny!
Colleen & Nate –
I have a macchiato w/ a shot of espresso and a splash of agave every morning! 🤤👌 Worth every penny!
S. Robinson –
I purchased this machine in May, 2022, and thought I’d wait on submitting a review until there had been time enough to see whether it would make a reasonable return on investment. I’m pleased to share the fact that, for me, this was a great buy. My assessment is based upon the fact that 1) the machine has lasted 18 months and is still going strong; 2) it’s paid for itself several times over based upon the coffee consumption habits in my household; and 3) it makes a very good mocha or latte style coffee, easily as good or better than Starbucks, as far as I and my wife are concerned.More specifically, in terms of cost/benefit, I’ll share that in our household, we drink about three 16 oz mocha or latte style coffees per day, on average (excessive, I know). The cost of buying this much coffee at Starbucks or the local coffee stand would be approximately $25/day, including tip. The machine cost about $699 at time of purchase, and we’ve run, by this measure, about $13,500 worth of coffee through the thing. Sounds crazy, but $25 x 550 days does in fact equal a ridiculous amount of money spent on coffee.Plus, I think the frothing apparatus is ingenious: two pieces of plastic pressed together, which work quite well, certainly as well as a conventional wand frothing tool. Prior to buying the Phillips machine, we owned a Breville Oracle Touch Espresso Machine. The Breville is a large unit, fully automated, with all the bells and whistles. It costs about $3,000. We loved it for the two and a half years that it worked. Then it started leaking and we learned an important lesson about Breville products: you can’t get parts to fix Breville products locally. When I contacted Breville about the issue, I was told that I could pay them $500 and ship the machine back to them for repair (on my dime). They’d repair it, return it to me and provide a six month warranty. Yeah, I got a laugh out of warranty – real vote of confidence in their work. In any event, I decided to try the Phillips as a low-cost option and have really been pleased. Definitely an interesting compare and contrast with the Breville unit (which I do not recommend).The Phillips machine does have a few quirks, and there are a couple of changes to the unit I’d love to see. For example, the water supply is limited and therefore requires frequent refills. Similarly, the drip tray is fairly small and fills up pretty quickly. Also, the machine occasionally displays a warning that the drip tray needs dumping when, in fact, it does not. In these instances, I pull the tray out and wait for the warning to switch to the ‘no tray alert’ warning and then reinsert the tray. This said, the Phillips unit is easy to clean and maintain, and it’s relatively small and light.All in all, I highly recommend this product.
S. Robinson –
I purchased this machine in May, 2022, and thought I’d wait on submitting a review until there had been time enough to see whether it would make a reasonable return on investment. I’m pleased to share the fact that, for me, this was a great buy. My assessment is based upon the fact that 1) the machine has lasted 18 months and is still going strong; 2) it’s paid for itself several times over based upon the coffee consumption habits in my household; and 3) it makes a very good mocha or latte style coffee, easily as good or better than Starbucks, as far as I and my wife are concerned.More specifically, in terms of cost/benefit, I’ll share that in our household, we drink about three 16 oz mocha or latte style coffees per day, on average (excessive, I know). The cost of buying this much coffee at Starbucks or the local coffee stand would be approximately $25/day, including tip. The machine cost about $699 at time of purchase, and we’ve run, by this measure, about $13,500 worth of coffee through the thing. Sounds crazy, but $25 x 550 days does in fact equal a ridiculous amount of money spent on coffee.Plus, I think the frothing apparatus is ingenious: two pieces of plastic pressed together, which work quite well, certainly as well as a conventional wand frothing tool. Prior to buying the Phillips machine, we owned a Breville Oracle Touch Espresso Machine. The Breville is a large unit, fully automated, with all the bells and whistles. It costs about $3,000. We loved it for the two and a half years that it worked. Then it started leaking and we learned an important lesson about Breville products: you can’t get parts to fix Breville products locally. When I contacted Breville about the issue, I was told that I could pay them $500 and ship the machine back to them for repair (on my dime). They’d repair it, return it to me and provide a six month warranty. Yeah, I got a laugh out of warranty – real vote of confidence in their work. In any event, I decided to try the Phillips as a low-cost option and have really been pleased. Definitely an interesting compare and contrast with the Breville unit (which I do not recommend).The Phillips machine does have a few quirks, and there are a couple of changes to the unit I’d love to see. For example, the water supply is limited and therefore requires frequent refills. Similarly, the drip tray is fairly small and fills up pretty quickly. Also, the machine occasionally displays a warning that the drip tray needs dumping when, in fact, it does not. In these instances, I pull the tray out and wait for the warning to switch to the ‘no tray alert’ warning and then reinsert the tray. This said, the Phillips unit is easy to clean and maintain, and it’s relatively small and light.All in all, I highly recommend this product.
GK –
First and foremost, I would be remiss if I didn’t state this is an excellent coffee machine. I struggled between 4 and 5 stars because it’s a great machine, but ultimately, it has a few little nags that I would love to see fixed/improved in a future model. My pros list may seem much shorter than my cons list, but that’s only because there isn’t much to be said about the pros that haven’t already been said many times – it makes a great cup of coffee, with little work on my end, and cleans up easily afterward.What I like:* Extremely easy to clean. The brew unit, the milk frother, etc. All of it comes apart easily and can be quickly rinsed in the sink.* Makes a great cup of coffee with little work on my end.* Milk frother is very simple, easy to clean, and yet does a great job of frothing the milk.* Machine feels sturdy, high-quality, and I suspect it will last a long time. It has probably been used 3-5+ times daily for the past year and a half without any hiccups.Things I would like to see improved/changed. If these were implemented, I would sell my current machine and buy a new one.* Larger bean and water reservoir. There is a lot of wasted space on this machine if you open it up. The water reservoir is very narrow and doesn’t hold much water. The bean reservoir is just bad. More on that in my next point.* The bean reservoir. Whoever designed this part of the machine totally and completely missed the mark. It almost feels like an afterthought. It’s shallow and oddly shaped. It doesn’t hold many beans. The shape/design of it causes a lot of beans to get stuck between little plastic extrusions in the container. And worst of all, the beans do not naturally flow into the grinder and constantly require you to remove the lid and manually push the beans down. Just a bad design overall.* I either wish the large size made a larger cup of coffee, or I wish there was a custom button that would allow me to preset my own combination. For example, a custom button that would allow me to brew one large cup, and then one medium cup. I find one large single brew is not much coffee, but two fill my cup to the brim. So, I wind up doing 1 large one, waiting for it to finish, and then doing a medium one. Would be nice to be able to do this with one button press.* Brewing from pre-ground beans is annoying. I keep all of my decaf in ground form since the hopper can only accommodate one type of whole bean at a time. If I’m brewing multiple cups of decaf for guests, you have to long-hold the bean button each time. It’s minor but annoying. It’d be nice if there was just a button I could press one time and it would stay on pre-ground until I turned it off.Overall, it’s a fantastic machine. It was expensive and I have zero regrets. I use it every day, multiple times per day, and it has paid for itself in convenience and cost-savings from buying coffee many times over already.
GK –
First and foremost, I would be remiss if I didn’t state this is an excellent coffee machine. I struggled between 4 and 5 stars because it’s a great machine, but ultimately, it has a few little nags that I would love to see fixed/improved in a future model. My pros list may seem much shorter than my cons list, but that’s only because there isn’t much to be said about the pros that haven’t already been said many times – it makes a great cup of coffee, with little work on my end, and cleans up easily afterward.What I like:* Extremely easy to clean. The brew unit, the milk frother, etc. All of it comes apart easily and can be quickly rinsed in the sink.* Makes a great cup of coffee with little work on my end.* Milk frother is very simple, easy to clean, and yet does a great job of frothing the milk.* Machine feels sturdy, high-quality, and I suspect it will last a long time. It has probably been used 3-5+ times daily for the past year and a half without any hiccups.Things I would like to see improved/changed. If these were implemented, I would sell my current machine and buy a new one.* Larger bean and water reservoir. There is a lot of wasted space on this machine if you open it up. The water reservoir is very narrow and doesn’t hold much water. The bean reservoir is just bad. More on that in my next point.* The bean reservoir. Whoever designed this part of the machine totally and completely missed the mark. It almost feels like an afterthought. It’s shallow and oddly shaped. It doesn’t hold many beans. The shape/design of it causes a lot of beans to get stuck between little plastic extrusions in the container. And worst of all, the beans do not naturally flow into the grinder and constantly require you to remove the lid and manually push the beans down. Just a bad design overall.* I either wish the large size made a larger cup of coffee, or I wish there was a custom button that would allow me to preset my own combination. For example, a custom button that would allow me to brew one large cup, and then one medium cup. I find one large single brew is not much coffee, but two fill my cup to the brim. So, I wind up doing 1 large one, waiting for it to finish, and then doing a medium one. Would be nice to be able to do this with one button press.* Brewing from pre-ground beans is annoying. I keep all of my decaf in ground form since the hopper can only accommodate one type of whole bean at a time. If I’m brewing multiple cups of decaf for guests, you have to long-hold the bean button each time. It’s minor but annoying. It’d be nice if there was just a button I could press one time and it would stay on pre-ground until I turned it off.Overall, it’s a fantastic machine. It was expensive and I have zero regrets. I use it every day, multiple times per day, and it has paid for itself in convenience and cost-savings from buying coffee many times over already.
Lee Elam –
I bought this coffee robot roughly a year and a half ago and I have used it nearly everyday since. I love this machine so much!Pros:Self containedGood size bean hopperAwesome coffee productionLarge grounds bin and water collectionCons:Very LoudSmaller water tank than expectedCheap plastic milk frotherDifficult to cleanI love this machine overall. It really makes an awesome cup of coffee, espresso, or latte. The machine has held up very well using regular tap water and has not broken down. I highly recommend this coffee robot to anyone wanting to get out of a drip coffee maker and get into a really good entry coffee robot.
Lee Elam –
I bought this coffee robot roughly a year and a half ago and I have used it nearly everyday since. I love this machine so much!Pros:Self containedGood size bean hopperAwesome coffee productionLarge grounds bin and water collectionCons:Very LoudSmaller water tank than expectedCheap plastic milk frotherDifficult to cleanI love this machine overall. It really makes an awesome cup of coffee, espresso, or latte. The machine has held up very well using regular tap water and has not broken down. I highly recommend this coffee robot to anyone wanting to get out of a drip coffee maker and get into a really good entry coffee robot.
Mom of 5 –
We’ve had this for about a month now, but it’s been a month of lockdown and between us and our 3 teenagers it’s probably made 400 cups of coffee/espresso/latte/cappuccino–no exaggeration, I used a calculator. There’s a reason we decided to take the plunge and invest in a pricey machine like this. We went from a $130 espresso machine with a manual foamer & a Ninja drip coffee maker side by side to this guy. So I feel pretty secure in writing up some initial evaluations on this.The positives:-What pushed us over the edge on choosing this one after 3 solid days of research was the milk foaming system. No tubes for the milk to travel through means no where for it to sit and get gross. Also, once a week or so you can open the whole thing up and really clean it all out–get rid of any and all built up grounds (not that there have been many at all). You’re also supposed to lubricate the pump once every 2 months I believe (my husband has that in his calendar).Many of those pieces are dishwasher safe–the milk container, the overflow and puck trash bin pieces. Love that. It feels very clean.-It felt a little overwhelming at first, but it’s actually very simple to use. Really–our 8 year old makes our coffee for us happily. “Make mommy a latte please? 2 coffee and 2 foam, thanks”. And our younger girls love making just foamed milk to add to tea, once we showed them the workaround for that.-Obviously, the coffee. It makes a mean latte, my cup of choice. The espresso is good, the standard cup of coffee is good, the cappuccino is yummy. You have three options for “aroma” level, coffee level, and foam level–so quite a bit of personalization–on the milk + coffee drinks.Somewhere in a neutral area here related to that I have to comment on the coffee beans–many commented that you can NOT use oily beans and this is absolutely true. They will have trouble scootching down the hopper. And oily beans are not good beans anyway 🙂 So if you’re investing in an $800 machine, do yourself a favor and don’t buy oily ::coughstarbuckscough:: beans that won’t work (and won’t taste great). We’ve tried 5 different types of beans so far, some really good, some just good, some fair. We love trying different types and will keep going until we find *the one* for this machine. So I won’t put that in the “cons” list.The cons:-The buttons–particularly the power button–are a little difficult to push. You have to get them in *just* the right spot for it to turn on. A touch annoying, particularly before that first cup of coffee…ironic. There was a few times I had that scared OH NO IT’S BROKEN moment before I found the sweet spot.-The lid for the milk container basically just rests lightly on the top of the milk container. No hinge or no rubber lip to keep it secure. It gets knocked off onto the kitchen tile floor about once a day (since you have to take it out of the fridge every time you want to make a cup). It’s thin plastic and basically a matter of time before it gets busted. It definitely seems like for the price paid it should have been hinged or more securely seated on there.-The machine runs water out at the start and before automatically shutting off. It’s a decent amount, so we keep a mug sitting there now to catch the water. The drip tray does hold quite a bit of water, but by the time it triggers the shut off to tell you that it needs to be emptied it’s VERY full and you’re playing quite the balancing game getting it to the sink without spilling any. So: don’t turn on the machine and put your mug under–wait for the “trash water” to eject first, then put your mug under. Then when you’re done, put the “trash water” mug back under to catch the clean up water.That’s all I’ve got at the moment. Maybe month 2 will change my views, but I think the “cons” are pretty minor and all in all we’re pretty dang happy with our investment.
Mom of 5 –
We’ve had this for about a month now, but it’s been a month of lockdown and between us and our 3 teenagers it’s probably made 400 cups of coffee/espresso/latte/cappuccino–no exaggeration, I used a calculator. There’s a reason we decided to take the plunge and invest in a pricey machine like this. We went from a $130 espresso machine with a manual foamer & a Ninja drip coffee maker side by side to this guy. So I feel pretty secure in writing up some initial evaluations on this.The positives:-What pushed us over the edge on choosing this one after 3 solid days of research was the milk foaming system. No tubes for the milk to travel through means no where for it to sit and get gross. Also, once a week or so you can open the whole thing up and really clean it all out–get rid of any and all built up grounds (not that there have been many at all). You’re also supposed to lubricate the pump once every 2 months I believe (my husband has that in his calendar).Many of those pieces are dishwasher safe–the milk container, the overflow and puck trash bin pieces. Love that. It feels very clean.-It felt a little overwhelming at first, but it’s actually very simple to use. Really–our 8 year old makes our coffee for us happily. “Make mommy a latte please? 2 coffee and 2 foam, thanks”. And our younger girls love making just foamed milk to add to tea, once we showed them the workaround for that.-Obviously, the coffee. It makes a mean latte, my cup of choice. The espresso is good, the standard cup of coffee is good, the cappuccino is yummy. You have three options for “aroma” level, coffee level, and foam level–so quite a bit of personalization–on the milk + coffee drinks.Somewhere in a neutral area here related to that I have to comment on the coffee beans–many commented that you can NOT use oily beans and this is absolutely true. They will have trouble scootching down the hopper. And oily beans are not good beans anyway 🙂 So if you’re investing in an $800 machine, do yourself a favor and don’t buy oily ::coughstarbuckscough:: beans that won’t work (and won’t taste great). We’ve tried 5 different types of beans so far, some really good, some just good, some fair. We love trying different types and will keep going until we find *the one* for this machine. So I won’t put that in the “cons” list.The cons:-The buttons–particularly the power button–are a little difficult to push. You have to get them in *just* the right spot for it to turn on. A touch annoying, particularly before that first cup of coffee…ironic. There was a few times I had that scared OH NO IT’S BROKEN moment before I found the sweet spot.-The lid for the milk container basically just rests lightly on the top of the milk container. No hinge or no rubber lip to keep it secure. It gets knocked off onto the kitchen tile floor about once a day (since you have to take it out of the fridge every time you want to make a cup). It’s thin plastic and basically a matter of time before it gets busted. It definitely seems like for the price paid it should have been hinged or more securely seated on there.-The machine runs water out at the start and before automatically shutting off. It’s a decent amount, so we keep a mug sitting there now to catch the water. The drip tray does hold quite a bit of water, but by the time it triggers the shut off to tell you that it needs to be emptied it’s VERY full and you’re playing quite the balancing game getting it to the sink without spilling any. So: don’t turn on the machine and put your mug under–wait for the “trash water” to eject first, then put your mug under. Then when you’re done, put the “trash water” mug back under to catch the clean up water.That’s all I’ve got at the moment. Maybe month 2 will change my views, but I think the “cons” are pretty minor and all in all we’re pretty dang happy with our investment.
BuzzCut –
My goal in buying this was to improve my morning coffee from our current $200 machine but not have to get involved in a ton more work in prep and clean-up. I want the best brew without jumping through hoops – I don’t want to have to learn how to become a barista and spend >$5,000 on a complex machine to enjoy my morning coffee.This Philips 3200 machine seems to walk the line perfectly – the coffee it makes tastes significantly better than my old machine plus it has the benefit of less work.Once set up (see below) the machine makes a very good latte in four steps:-1) Fill the milk container2) Press Power3) Press Latte4) Press GoI am not a coffee connoisseur but I do appreciate a coffee at a decent cafe and this system gets very close.The drawbacks are the amount of work required to set the machine up initially – the packaging alone was like a Russian doll with 4 boxes and then initialization required reading the manual several times to ensure I didn’t miss a step. Prepping the Aqua Clean water purifier, setting the configuration screens, the need to run several cups through before getting a drinkable cup and the Latte Go instructions were rather vague (tip: it hangs loosely in the correct spot versus the “click” it describes) – expect to waste lots of milk and coffee before it starts to produce its magic.BUT once it’s set up (temperature, water hardness, grind, quantities etc) it is then a simple process to get your morning coffee – it grinds and delivers great coffee without a ton of work or clean-up – for lattes you just need to rinse the milk container afterwards.I haven’t had the machine long enough to see how much ongoing maintenance it requires but for now the return on investment seems totally worthwhile.
BuzzCut –
My goal in buying this was to improve my morning coffee from our current $200 machine but not have to get involved in a ton more work in prep and clean-up. I want the best brew without jumping through hoops – I don’t want to have to learn how to become a barista and spend >$5,000 on a complex machine to enjoy my morning coffee.This Philips 3200 machine seems to walk the line perfectly – the coffee it makes tastes significantly better than my old machine plus it has the benefit of less work.Once set up (see below) the machine makes a very good latte in four steps:-1) Fill the milk container2) Press Power3) Press Latte4) Press GoI am not a coffee connoisseur but I do appreciate a coffee at a decent cafe and this system gets very close.The drawbacks are the amount of work required to set the machine up initially – the packaging alone was like a Russian doll with 4 boxes and then initialization required reading the manual several times to ensure I didn’t miss a step. Prepping the Aqua Clean water purifier, setting the configuration screens, the need to run several cups through before getting a drinkable cup and the Latte Go instructions were rather vague (tip: it hangs loosely in the correct spot versus the “click” it describes) – expect to waste lots of milk and coffee before it starts to produce its magic.BUT once it’s set up (temperature, water hardness, grind, quantities etc) it is then a simple process to get your morning coffee – it grinds and delivers great coffee without a ton of work or clean-up – for lattes you just need to rinse the milk container afterwards.I haven’t had the machine long enough to see how much ongoing maintenance it requires but for now the return on investment seems totally worthwhile.
Jack –
So I ordered the EP3241/54 about a month ago. Finally got it set up and running and have been using it about one week.The setup and instructions are very bad. I muddled my way thru with one or two videos.After setting up the machine, it works great and very easy. We discuss our drinks now by saying how many bean, water and milk lights. lol Like we say, “I like a 3,3,2 cappuccino”.After turning the machine on (it turns off on its own after a while) it runs a short water cycle. It’s a bit of a waste of water but I assume there is a reason for this.The grinding is loud. Very loud.So far we have only used medium roast beans and a couple of preground coffees. We plan to try an Italian roast bean next and see if it is too oily for the system to work properly.So far so good. I will report again in a month.8 month update. Machine is still working as new. I do clean it about every two weeks. That review from the person that had mold is just stupid, CLEAN YOUR MACHINE YOU DIRTY!I love my one button Americanos. The Italian roast worked fine in the machine. However, we discovered Italian roast is trash and tastes like burnt garbage. We are using an Amazon medium roast right now. I think a dark roast would be better.The machine still gets an A, just keep it clean.
Jack –
So I ordered the EP3241/54 about a month ago. Finally got it set up and running and have been using it about one week.The setup and instructions are very bad. I muddled my way thru with one or two videos.After setting up the machine, it works great and very easy. We discuss our drinks now by saying how many bean, water and milk lights. lol Like we say, “I like a 3,3,2 cappuccino”.After turning the machine on (it turns off on its own after a while) it runs a short water cycle. It’s a bit of a waste of water but I assume there is a reason for this.The grinding is loud. Very loud.So far we have only used medium roast beans and a couple of preground coffees. We plan to try an Italian roast bean next and see if it is too oily for the system to work properly.So far so good. I will report again in a month.8 month update. Machine is still working as new. I do clean it about every two weeks. That review from the person that had mold is just stupid, CLEAN YOUR MACHINE YOU DIRTY!I love my one button Americanos. The Italian roast worked fine in the machine. However, we discovered Italian roast is trash and tastes like burnt garbage. We are using an Amazon medium roast right now. I think a dark roast would be better.The machine still gets an A, just keep it clean.
Hoarder –
Purchased this as a big splurge for our household for Christmas (randomly happened upon it being 30% off sometime in November so I added the 4 year warranty onto it and still saved a ton!). Purchased the Latte Go version (w/Americano setting). Packing was clever and nothing was missing or broken. It looks gorgeous on the counter. We replaced 2 machines with it and it saves so much space. We’ve been playing around with it for a few weeks. We have used every setting so far, w/ground beans and whole beans. Some things that I have noticed.-Right out of the gate we adjusted to the max temp. It’s not lava hot like we usually prefer but it’s def hotter than the standard initial setting.-We were having trouble getting the right grind size so we actually went into W-S store and asked an associate to demo their machine for us. The coffee they brewed was perfect, so they let me take the top off and take a pic of their grind setting so I could replicate it at home. The little indicator that shows you which grind size you have selected is a little nub on the inside wall of the area where the beans go, and the dial next to the little nub has settings 1 – 12. Their setting was 6. I changed ours and everything has been great since. I don’t know if this is how it comes out of the box since I had already changed ours. (Note, you’re not supposed to adjust it unless it’s actively grinding, according to the book, and you have to press down and turn. I didn’t know this and got a few extra clicks out of mine prob when I shouldn’t have attempted. Thought I broke it tbh but it’s been working fine. Just be careful!)-Def invest in good beans. We’ve tried light, med, and dark espresso roast whole beans. We love flavored coffee but light brew flavored whole bean coffees just don’t have much flavor at all when brewed out of this machine. The taste is improved w/flavored pre-ground beans in the bypass chute for some reason. W-S recommended Illy whole bean Classico medium roast, so we got a can (readily avail at groceries, Target, etc) and we are really enjoying it (we are solid black coffee drinkers but these med roast beans w/flavored frothed creamer on top is such a nice treat). I think what we may do is keep these Illy beans in the top and by our normal flavored pre-ground stuff to use in the bypass chut.-Speaking of ground beans, the bypass has been really hit or miss for me but it seems to work most of the time by loading the grounds in BEFORE pressing any setting buttons at all. The scoop size is perfect, you don’t need to overfill it or pour more in or they will just be wasted down in the beans collection bin. Keep the little door flap open to help the chute dry out, steam does get in there when you brew and the grounds can stick inside.-(Also something that I found interesting. We were using a reusable k-cup in our old Keurig and I used the Philips scoop and filled it to compare the ground beans amount. One scoop filled the reusable k-cup to the top. So I find it interesting that I could brew a whole 16oz cup of coffee with the same amount of grounds in the keurig but in this machine anything over 6 is like water….? Prob has to do w/the pressure or something but i’m no coffee-scientist so we’ll move on. lol)-The beans collection bin, yes it will always have some water in it. Our pucks started to be formed more solidly after week 2, but water will get in there anyway because of the rinse cycle. The empty light will turn on after a certain number of brews, not when it’s actually full. And since it’s not actually full you don’t really have to empty it, you can just pull the drawer out all the way and push it back in again and the light will reset.-We were able to adjust the Espresso 1x setting to 2 oz without losing any flavor.-Coffee 1x setting is preset to brew 6 oz. I tried to increase it and it maxed out at 8 oz but the coffee was basically cloudy water. Bumped it back down to 6 oz. We’ve given up on trying to increase the fluid volume on any other types of brews because it seems that where it is preset at max gives the best flavor. Just keep re-pressing the brews until your cup is as full as you want.-Max cup height that will fit on the tray is 6 1/4″. (We have 2 stainless tumblers that fit perfectly and hold 16 oz, we just brew multiple times to fill them as high as we want).-Latte go is great when I figured out the higher you fill it up, the thicker/frothier the product gets. I like a super thick whip but initially was trying not to waste milk so I was only filling it to the bottom line. It was just coming out steamed and was splattering everywhere. We’ve frothed organic 2% milk and Chobani dairy flavored creamer (whole strength and cut with half 2% milk, if that makes sense) and both work great.-Hot water is dispensed from the little nub where the Latte Go attaches, and it seems to dispense about 10 oz (altho I haven’t measured specifically). I drink hot lemon water every am and it comes out piping hot. I love that it’s pure clean water too and doesn’t have coffee residue in it like it did coming out of the keurig.-The unit cleans itself every time it turns off and every time you turn it on. Not much water comes out each time but we like to keep a cup underneath so we don’t have to empty the tray as often.-I have been cleaning the machine weekly, by pulling the whole brew group out and rinsing it under water but what i’m surprised the most by is how much grounds is still everywhere inside the machine (prob from my failed attempts at using the ground coffee bypass chute lol) I really have to get in there and try to get all of the grounds out which is a pain. There are so many little crevices that the grounds find to hide in. I wish the unit would have come w/a little brush to help swipe them out.Overall, we are pleased! It’s def more work than we expected to get the beverages where we want them but I expected that. It’s so fun to have the variety and save the counter space. I will update my review as I notice more things or if any issues arise but so far we really love it!
Hoarder –
Purchased this as a big splurge for our household for Christmas (randomly happened upon it being 30% off sometime in November so I added the 4 year warranty onto it and still saved a ton!). Purchased the Latte Go version (w/Americano setting). Packing was clever and nothing was missing or broken. It looks gorgeous on the counter. We replaced 2 machines with it and it saves so much space. We’ve been playing around with it for a few weeks. We have used every setting so far, w/ground beans and whole beans. Some things that I have noticed.-Right out of the gate we adjusted to the max temp. It’s not lava hot like we usually prefer but it’s def hotter than the standard initial setting.-We were having trouble getting the right grind size so we actually went into W-S store and asked an associate to demo their machine for us. The coffee they brewed was perfect, so they let me take the top off and take a pic of their grind setting so I could replicate it at home. The little indicator that shows you which grind size you have selected is a little nub on the inside wall of the area where the beans go, and the dial next to the little nub has settings 1 – 12. Their setting was 6. I changed ours and everything has been great since. I don’t know if this is how it comes out of the box since I had already changed ours. (Note, you’re not supposed to adjust it unless it’s actively grinding, according to the book, and you have to press down and turn. I didn’t know this and got a few extra clicks out of mine prob when I shouldn’t have attempted. Thought I broke it tbh but it’s been working fine. Just be careful!)-Def invest in good beans. We’ve tried light, med, and dark espresso roast whole beans. We love flavored coffee but light brew flavored whole bean coffees just don’t have much flavor at all when brewed out of this machine. The taste is improved w/flavored pre-ground beans in the bypass chute for some reason. W-S recommended Illy whole bean Classico medium roast, so we got a can (readily avail at groceries, Target, etc) and we are really enjoying it (we are solid black coffee drinkers but these med roast beans w/flavored frothed creamer on top is such a nice treat). I think what we may do is keep these Illy beans in the top and by our normal flavored pre-ground stuff to use in the bypass chut.-Speaking of ground beans, the bypass has been really hit or miss for me but it seems to work most of the time by loading the grounds in BEFORE pressing any setting buttons at all. The scoop size is perfect, you don’t need to overfill it or pour more in or they will just be wasted down in the beans collection bin. Keep the little door flap open to help the chute dry out, steam does get in there when you brew and the grounds can stick inside.-(Also something that I found interesting. We were using a reusable k-cup in our old Keurig and I used the Philips scoop and filled it to compare the ground beans amount. One scoop filled the reusable k-cup to the top. So I find it interesting that I could brew a whole 16oz cup of coffee with the same amount of grounds in the keurig but in this machine anything over 6 is like water….? Prob has to do w/the pressure or something but i’m no coffee-scientist so we’ll move on. lol)-The beans collection bin, yes it will always have some water in it. Our pucks started to be formed more solidly after week 2, but water will get in there anyway because of the rinse cycle. The empty light will turn on after a certain number of brews, not when it’s actually full. And since it’s not actually full you don’t really have to empty it, you can just pull the drawer out all the way and push it back in again and the light will reset.-We were able to adjust the Espresso 1x setting to 2 oz without losing any flavor.-Coffee 1x setting is preset to brew 6 oz. I tried to increase it and it maxed out at 8 oz but the coffee was basically cloudy water. Bumped it back down to 6 oz. We’ve given up on trying to increase the fluid volume on any other types of brews because it seems that where it is preset at max gives the best flavor. Just keep re-pressing the brews until your cup is as full as you want.-Max cup height that will fit on the tray is 6 1/4″. (We have 2 stainless tumblers that fit perfectly and hold 16 oz, we just brew multiple times to fill them as high as we want).-Latte go is great when I figured out the higher you fill it up, the thicker/frothier the product gets. I like a super thick whip but initially was trying not to waste milk so I was only filling it to the bottom line. It was just coming out steamed and was splattering everywhere. We’ve frothed organic 2% milk and Chobani dairy flavored creamer (whole strength and cut with half 2% milk, if that makes sense) and both work great.-Hot water is dispensed from the little nub where the Latte Go attaches, and it seems to dispense about 10 oz (altho I haven’t measured specifically). I drink hot lemon water every am and it comes out piping hot. I love that it’s pure clean water too and doesn’t have coffee residue in it like it did coming out of the keurig.-The unit cleans itself every time it turns off and every time you turn it on. Not much water comes out each time but we like to keep a cup underneath so we don’t have to empty the tray as often.-I have been cleaning the machine weekly, by pulling the whole brew group out and rinsing it under water but what i’m surprised the most by is how much grounds is still everywhere inside the machine (prob from my failed attempts at using the ground coffee bypass chute lol) I really have to get in there and try to get all of the grounds out which is a pain. There are so many little crevices that the grounds find to hide in. I wish the unit would have come w/a little brush to help swipe them out.Overall, we are pleased! It’s def more work than we expected to get the beverages where we want them but I expected that. It’s so fun to have the variety and save the counter space. I will update my review as I notice more things or if any issues arise but so far we really love it!
DjW –
Having a Jura at home and now being somewhat of a Coffee Snob, I knew I wanted to find a machine that offered not just a good coffee from whole beans but also options of expresso and a couple of milk based coffees. This not only delivers great tasting coffee, but provides thick frothy milk and the coffee is HOT (better than my Jura). The only think I did not like about it was it would shut off way too quickly for my liking but then after taking the time to look at the info. pamphlet in the packaging, found easy instructions to change this setting. The coffee tases great, I love the cappuccino and can even use hot water for cups of tea. Only gripe and reason for four stars due to the fact that some water seems to get into the used coffee grounds container and its messy and have to rinse ever time instead of being able to just tip out the used coffee groups. Not sure if this is a fault on our machine, will have to make a call to follow up on this.
DjW –
Having a Jura at home and now being somewhat of a Coffee Snob, I knew I wanted to find a machine that offered not just a good coffee from whole beans but also options of expresso and a couple of milk based coffees. This not only delivers great tasting coffee, but provides thick frothy milk and the coffee is HOT (better than my Jura). The only think I did not like about it was it would shut off way too quickly for my liking but then after taking the time to look at the info. pamphlet in the packaging, found easy instructions to change this setting. The coffee tases great, I love the cappuccino and can even use hot water for cups of tea. Only gripe and reason for four stars due to the fact that some water seems to get into the used coffee grounds container and its messy and have to rinse ever time instead of being able to just tip out the used coffee groups. Not sure if this is a fault on our machine, will have to make a call to follow up on this.
Mrs.Bailey –
We have used this machine every morning now for about 60 days. Makes great cappuccinos and macchiatos – froths the milk beautifully. We have only two complaints. First is the coffee bean hopper. I assume to save space so it fits under counter, they have made a somewhat flat space to pour the beans. There is not enough incline on the bottom for the beans to slide down to go to the grinder. For this reason, you have to take off the lid and move them into place with your hand every few cups of coffee. Second, if you want to make a cup using ground coffee, you can only put in one scoop of coffee and make one small cup at a time. This is kind of a pain as I don’t personally know anyone that only drinks a single cup of coffee that small.That being said- my daughter, friend, and mother all have “fancy” espresso/coffee machines. I think this one makes the best tasting coffee with the least amount of effort of all of them.
Mrs.Bailey –
We have used this machine every morning now for about 60 days. Makes great cappuccinos and macchiatos – froths the milk beautifully. We have only two complaints. First is the coffee bean hopper. I assume to save space so it fits under counter, they have made a somewhat flat space to pour the beans. There is not enough incline on the bottom for the beans to slide down to go to the grinder. For this reason, you have to take off the lid and move them into place with your hand every few cups of coffee. Second, if you want to make a cup using ground coffee, you can only put in one scoop of coffee and make one small cup at a time. This is kind of a pain as I don’t personally know anyone that only drinks a single cup of coffee that small.That being said- my daughter, friend, and mother all have “fancy” espresso/coffee machines. I think this one makes the best tasting coffee with the least amount of effort of all of them.
Steven –
I make my own ice lattes and this espresso machine is a must, there was no point getting new Philips difference is just the digital screen it does the same job. This coffee machine is the best I no longer purchase Latte Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks I now saved over $600 dollars from not buying coffee at the stores or drive thru, it’s all done at home.I learn how to make ice lattee caramel, bought whipped cream and some Tori caramel sauce and bam! Fresh coffee every morning on my way to work. Family loves it everyone can enjoy their own individual different coffee settings.The machine allow whole bean coffee which is the best in my opinion and it also accept ground coffee has a tiny door on top to add it. Water temperature is perfect nice and hot and the grinder is excellent. Water filter is great!Not to mention Philips offered me 5 years warranty bumper to bumper free no down payment.Great machine you will love it, give it a shot takeSome time to learn how to use it day by day you’ll become pro.
Steven –
I make my own ice lattes and this espresso machine is a must, there was no point getting new Philips difference is just the digital screen it does the same job. This coffee machine is the best I no longer purchase Latte Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks I now saved over $600 dollars from not buying coffee at the stores or drive thru, it’s all done at home.I learn how to make ice lattee caramel, bought whipped cream and some Tori caramel sauce and bam! Fresh coffee every morning on my way to work. Family loves it everyone can enjoy their own individual different coffee settings.The machine allow whole bean coffee which is the best in my opinion and it also accept ground coffee has a tiny door on top to add it. Water temperature is perfect nice and hot and the grinder is excellent. Water filter is great!Not to mention Philips offered me 5 years warranty bumper to bumper free no down payment.Great machine you will love it, give it a shot takeSome time to learn how to use it day by day you’ll become pro.
Zebra man –
Several comments have been made before. It is noisy. Yes it is. It shuts itself off fairly quickly. Yes, I have been nurturing a good latte and listened to the machine going through its self-cleaning cycle/automatic shutdown. Wish there were an adjustment for that.The instruction book. This machine is of European design. It has a European instruction manual. It seems that almost all European companies write their instruction manuals in their local language, then hire someone local who has had a few months of English training. Boy, it is a challenge to figure out what they are saying. An example: There is an adjustment for “aroma”. Aroma? How does one adjust the smell of coffee? I finally figured out that they were talking about flavor strength.The manual is printed on such thin paper that I had two pages stuck together, and could not tell what had happened. Finally, I started checking page numbers (they start at 10) and discovered the missing illustrations.Getting past that, there is this other matter of the machine’s intelligence. Not kidding. The manual warns that the machine has its own “learning curve”. It was several months before it finally settled down and became mostly consistent. It still occasionally will pour significantly more frothed milk on a second cup than it did on the first cup.So, is it a good machine? Absolutely. This is my third super-automatic, and the first one that I did not write off as a big expensive mistake. Again, it is European. We Americans like much hotter coffee drinks that those guys on the other side of the Atlantic. When we go to a coffee kiosk, or many other such vendors, we get our drink in paper cups to go. And even with the little cardboard insulator band that comes with it, we can hardly hold the hot cup. No such problem with any machine from Europe. Many of them lock out further steaming at 170 degrees. No problem if you have a microwave along with you. Thirty seconds on high, and we are good to go.I have been home-making lattes since 1973, and I quit using those shiny frothing cups right away, I want to froth in the glass or ceramic mug I am going to drink from, so that when I use it, it will not be pouring a hot drink into a cold cup and have a tepid drink.I am keeping the Philips automatic. I like it. I just wish that the Europeans who describe a cappuccino as a “lukewarm drink with a little foam on top” would start serving the Americans who buy their products a little better.Oh, and if you get one (you probably won’t be sorry) be sure and fill the milk chamber when it is hanging ON the machine. It is wide at the top and narrow at the bottom, and will tip over at the slightest bump, spilling milk all over the place.
Zebra man –
Several comments have been made before. It is noisy. Yes it is. It shuts itself off fairly quickly. Yes, I have been nurturing a good latte and listened to the machine going through its self-cleaning cycle/automatic shutdown. Wish there were an adjustment for that.The instruction book. This machine is of European design. It has a European instruction manual. It seems that almost all European companies write their instruction manuals in their local language, then hire someone local who has had a few months of English training. Boy, it is a challenge to figure out what they are saying. An example: There is an adjustment for “aroma”. Aroma? How does one adjust the smell of coffee? I finally figured out that they were talking about flavor strength.The manual is printed on such thin paper that I had two pages stuck together, and could not tell what had happened. Finally, I started checking page numbers (they start at 10) and discovered the missing illustrations.Getting past that, there is this other matter of the machine’s intelligence. Not kidding. The manual warns that the machine has its own “learning curve”. It was several months before it finally settled down and became mostly consistent. It still occasionally will pour significantly more frothed milk on a second cup than it did on the first cup.So, is it a good machine? Absolutely. This is my third super-automatic, and the first one that I did not write off as a big expensive mistake. Again, it is European. We Americans like much hotter coffee drinks that those guys on the other side of the Atlantic. When we go to a coffee kiosk, or many other such vendors, we get our drink in paper cups to go. And even with the little cardboard insulator band that comes with it, we can hardly hold the hot cup. No such problem with any machine from Europe. Many of them lock out further steaming at 170 degrees. No problem if you have a microwave along with you. Thirty seconds on high, and we are good to go.I have been home-making lattes since 1973, and I quit using those shiny frothing cups right away, I want to froth in the glass or ceramic mug I am going to drink from, so that when I use it, it will not be pouring a hot drink into a cold cup and have a tepid drink.I am keeping the Philips automatic. I like it. I just wish that the Europeans who describe a cappuccino as a “lukewarm drink with a little foam on top” would start serving the Americans who buy their products a little better.Oh, and if you get one (you probably won’t be sorry) be sure and fill the milk chamber when it is hanging ON the machine. It is wide at the top and narrow at the bottom, and will tip over at the slightest bump, spilling milk all over the place.
Jordan –
We have had our machine for almost 2 years. We use it all the time! It makes great espresso. For anyone who wants something simple and no fuss espresso , this machine is for you. I am disappointed in the support through Philips. Our machine isn’t dispensing espresso anymore and they are saying we have to mail ours in and wait 4-6weeks for them to fix it. We paid $800 for it and it’s within the 2 year warranty. Why are they not sending us a new one? The support person I spoke to refused to transfer me to a supervisor, he told me there was nothing that could be done. If it wasn’t for this situation I would give 5 stars. Rude customer service when you pay that much for a coffee machine is not okay. I have always cleaned it, descaled and changed the filter according to manual.
Jordan –
We have had our machine for almost 2 years. We use it all the time! It makes great espresso. For anyone who wants something simple and no fuss espresso , this machine is for you. I am disappointed in the support through Philips. Our machine isn’t dispensing espresso anymore and they are saying we have to mail ours in and wait 4-6weeks for them to fix it. We paid $800 for it and it’s within the 2 year warranty. Why are they not sending us a new one? The support person I spoke to refused to transfer me to a supervisor, he told me there was nothing that could be done. If it wasn’t for this situation I would give 5 stars. Rude customer service when you pay that much for a coffee machine is not okay. I have always cleaned it, descaled and changed the filter according to manual.
mark manning –
Makes a great cup of coffee and allows for a great deal of control over how it brews. Only down side is that it pumps water prior to brewing in order to eject any air in the system and then again later to self clean after a brew. I keep a cup under the spout to catch all this so i dont overflow the drip tray.Some people have complained that you need to push the buttons too hard to get it to work and this shows a ham-fisted lack of understanding. You dont push the buttons hard, you push LONG. You can use a feather touch and it will work if you hold there just a little longer!Beware, the hot water does not come out of the same spout as when brewing coffee, it comes out of the milk spout (minor annoyance)… i keep forgetting this lol reduced by one star: One of the MAJOR reasons I refuse to ever buy a kurig coffee machine is because they become science experiments within a very short time and they are IMPOSSIBLE to clean properly. This machine LITERALLY shits all over its own insides, i keep a drip cup under it so when it flushes it does not fill up the tray. By the end of the day the tray is full of sludge anyway and there are coffee grounds all over the inside not just in the bin.If you own one of these you will need to remove the mechanism and spray wash the entire insides at least twice a week if you dont want you coffee to start tasting like yesterdays unwashed socks.
mark manning –
Makes a great cup of coffee and allows for a great deal of control over how it brews. Only down side is that it pumps water prior to brewing in order to eject any air in the system and then again later to self clean after a brew. I keep a cup under the spout to catch all this so i dont overflow the drip tray.Some people have complained that you need to push the buttons too hard to get it to work and this shows a ham-fisted lack of understanding. You dont push the buttons hard, you push LONG. You can use a feather touch and it will work if you hold there just a little longer!Beware, the hot water does not come out of the same spout as when brewing coffee, it comes out of the milk spout (minor annoyance)… i keep forgetting this lol reduced by one star: One of the MAJOR reasons I refuse to ever buy a kurig coffee machine is because they become science experiments within a very short time and they are IMPOSSIBLE to clean properly. This machine LITERALLY shits all over its own insides, i keep a drip cup under it so when it flushes it does not fill up the tray. By the end of the day the tray is full of sludge anyway and there are coffee grounds all over the inside not just in the bin.If you own one of these you will need to remove the mechanism and spray wash the entire insides at least twice a week if you dont want you coffee to start tasting like yesterdays unwashed socks.
Penny Birky –
I am very happy with my espresso maker. Once I got the hang of it, it has been very very easy to use, and it makes delicious coffee!
Penny Birky –
I am very happy with my espresso maker. Once I got the hang of it, it has been very very easy to use, and it makes delicious coffee!
Chris R –
Came from a Nespresso Vertuo machine to this. I like that I can make various coffee drinks. I mostly make regular coffee but have the option of a capuccino when I want it. Great Prime Day deal last October. Some things to note:1. Is it loud? Yes it makes noise. It grinds coffee beans and all, but it doesn’t run very long, so it becomes “normal” after a few times.2. Does it use water? Yeah, some people mention it uses a lot and leaves a lot in the drip tray. If you are making anything that uses the Lattego milk function, it will use more water as it uses steam (that comes from water) to froth up the milk. The extra water is a by-product of the steam. When I make regular coffee there is very little water in the tray. Still wish the water capacity was bigger. I find myself drinking more coffee now cause I like the coffee I get from the machine.3. Is it hot enough? Yeah….when it exits the machine it is around 196 degrees. I placed a thermometer in the coffee stream coming out of the machine (at the highest temp setting). The National Coffee Association recommends 195-205 degrees as the Optimal temp for extraction. Going straight into a cooler vessel (mug/glass whatever) it won’t stay hot forever, plus it won’t make like 12 oz cups like a K-Cup machine does, so it will cool faster. I like to add half and half to my coffee. With this machine I learned to heat my half and half in the microwave before it brews into the cup. Not really a pain just something different I am used to. Still wish it went to 205 degrees, just a little extra would be great.4. I use the coffee function and use the top settings for water amount and get the right size for my mug. I run it twice for a travel mug.5. It makes a pretty decent coffee, strong enough. I left it at the grind setting it came with. I remember when I tried the coffee at a Williams Sonoma store, I asked the demo person what setting they had it at, and the sample coffee was good.6. Keep the drip tray and grounds catcher container empty. I let the grounds stack up and the machine wouldn’t brew. My fault. Just empty and continue. I cancelled a brew mid stream when I realized the grinder was making a different sound (out of beans, my fault). It wouldn’t do anything after I paused, so I unplugged it and plugged it back in and it was fine.7. Clean the unit as described in the manual or watch the Philips video on YouTube. Nothing crazy hard, just let it dry for the rest of the day. I find the sliding channels for the water container build up some coffee grounds, I just wipe it down with a damp paper towel. I did one descale recently, again, follow the directions and it’s fine. Also ran one of the oil remover tablets as well. These machines cost money so take care of it.8. Break in period, follow it. I admit it was a bit more than I would have liked. Bought some cheap beans to run through the break in. A bit of a negative.9. Enjoy exploring the choice of whole bean coffee out there. I’m finally settling into a few that I can find easily and close by.10. I like to add flavored syrups etc to the milk in the container before I brew. Really mixes the flavor in well. And easy hot water rinse for the milk container afterwards. Careful removing the clear container from the base, I broke mine the first time, as I didn’t push the tab down to remove the clear container.11. Machine looks nice in the kitchen. If you want the extra Wow go for one of the models with the LCD screen.Overall a good machine that requires a learning curve. It may be too much for some to want to learn or bother with the cleaning, break in period etc. But if you want a coffee adventure this machine will provide it. No complaints, no issues for me.Update: being away from home a while and I had my first coffee from this machine in a few weeks….I missed it. The coffee this morning was so much more flavorful. Lavazza Classico Beans are fantastic for the coffee function.
Chris R –
Came from a Nespresso Vertuo machine to this. I like that I can make various coffee drinks. I mostly make regular coffee but have the option of a capuccino when I want it. Great Prime Day deal last October. Some things to note:1. Is it loud? Yes it makes noise. It grinds coffee beans and all, but it doesn’t run very long, so it becomes “normal” after a few times.2. Does it use water? Yeah, some people mention it uses a lot and leaves a lot in the drip tray. If you are making anything that uses the Lattego milk function, it will use more water as it uses steam (that comes from water) to froth up the milk. The extra water is a by-product of the steam. When I make regular coffee there is very little water in the tray. Still wish the water capacity was bigger. I find myself drinking more coffee now cause I like the coffee I get from the machine.3. Is it hot enough? Yeah….when it exits the machine it is around 196 degrees. I placed a thermometer in the coffee stream coming out of the machine (at the highest temp setting). The National Coffee Association recommends 195-205 degrees as the Optimal temp for extraction. Going straight into a cooler vessel (mug/glass whatever) it won’t stay hot forever, plus it won’t make like 12 oz cups like a K-Cup machine does, so it will cool faster. I like to add half and half to my coffee. With this machine I learned to heat my half and half in the microwave before it brews into the cup. Not really a pain just something different I am used to. Still wish it went to 205 degrees, just a little extra would be great.4. I use the coffee function and use the top settings for water amount and get the right size for my mug. I run it twice for a travel mug.5. It makes a pretty decent coffee, strong enough. I left it at the grind setting it came with. I remember when I tried the coffee at a Williams Sonoma store, I asked the demo person what setting they had it at, and the sample coffee was good.6. Keep the drip tray and grounds catcher container empty. I let the grounds stack up and the machine wouldn’t brew. My fault. Just empty and continue. I cancelled a brew mid stream when I realized the grinder was making a different sound (out of beans, my fault). It wouldn’t do anything after I paused, so I unplugged it and plugged it back in and it was fine.7. Clean the unit as described in the manual or watch the Philips video on YouTube. Nothing crazy hard, just let it dry for the rest of the day. I find the sliding channels for the water container build up some coffee grounds, I just wipe it down with a damp paper towel. I did one descale recently, again, follow the directions and it’s fine. Also ran one of the oil remover tablets as well. These machines cost money so take care of it.8. Break in period, follow it. I admit it was a bit more than I would have liked. Bought some cheap beans to run through the break in. A bit of a negative.9. Enjoy exploring the choice of whole bean coffee out there. I’m finally settling into a few that I can find easily and close by.10. I like to add flavored syrups etc to the milk in the container before I brew. Really mixes the flavor in well. And easy hot water rinse for the milk container afterwards. Careful removing the clear container from the base, I broke mine the first time, as I didn’t push the tab down to remove the clear container.11. Machine looks nice in the kitchen. If you want the extra Wow go for one of the models with the LCD screen.Overall a good machine that requires a learning curve. It may be too much for some to want to learn or bother with the cleaning, break in period etc. But if you want a coffee adventure this machine will provide it. No complaints, no issues for me.Update: being away from home a while and I had my first coffee from this machine in a few weeks….I missed it. The coffee this morning was so much more flavorful. Lavazza Classico Beans are fantastic for the coffee function.
Charlotte –
This is my go to now for all things coffee. My Keurig feels neglected. I love that the hot water comes from a different source so that it’s not coming out with coffee residue. The Go Latte cup is super easy to clean and one of the main reasons I bought this model. The only down side is that I now drink more coffee, because I am loving the fresh ground coffee each time I make a cup. There are really good instructions on YouTube on how to get this machine started the right way. Glad I followed those steps. I love that I don’t have to press the coffee. I kept the manufacturer’s settings as others recommended and I am good with that. The crema from a cup of coffee is beautiful. It’s a little loud when coffee is grinding or making coffee but it doesn’t bother me because the noise doesn’t take long. I’m sensitive to noise so this says a lot. I love making cappuccinos as it gives me enough foam. I’ve had it for over two months and so far so good.
Charlotte –
This is my go to now for all things coffee. My Keurig feels neglected. I love that the hot water comes from a different source so that it’s not coming out with coffee residue. The Go Latte cup is super easy to clean and one of the main reasons I bought this model. The only down side is that I now drink more coffee, because I am loving the fresh ground coffee each time I make a cup. There are really good instructions on YouTube on how to get this machine started the right way. Glad I followed those steps. I love that I don’t have to press the coffee. I kept the manufacturer’s settings as others recommended and I am good with that. The crema from a cup of coffee is beautiful. It’s a little loud when coffee is grinding or making coffee but it doesn’t bother me because the noise doesn’t take long. I’m sensitive to noise so this says a lot. I love making cappuccinos as it gives me enough foam. I’ve had it for over two months and so far so good.
Steve –
So far its been a good coffee machine.It is a little noisy, but its worth it. It makes a perfect cappuccino.
Steve –
So far its been a good coffee machine.It is a little noisy, but its worth it. It makes a perfect cappuccino.
Dan –
The machine works well overall and in reality I love it for the drinks it makes. The coffee and espresso are pretty good with good beans. Just don’t use oily or dark roast (which I had loved in other methods). I pushed it one time and ended up with burnt cigarette tasting coffee for a month. I flushed every other day with the oil removing tabs to work it out, but it honestly still took a month of this before I felt it was gone. Don’t risk it! I now can’t stand many dark roasts after that experience as all I can tast is the burnt cigarette flavors, especially in French Roast, ugh.The LatteGo system is the awesome to not worry about cleaning tubing or storing milk. The chrome shroud on the spout of the latte go carafe shouldn’t be there though as it creates a seam where you can’t clean and have to kind of scrape out with your fingernail after fair use.There are tons of moving parts in this machine, so eventually something will break and need to be fixed. Parts for the machine are fairly reasonable overall. The brew group is probably the most likely thing to need and is around 70 bucks. I just discovered two pinhole leaks on the boot that connects the hot water tube to heating element. The part is fair enough to buy and in reality it has seen really heavy use for three years, so I don’t have too many ill feelings about this aspect.The thing that has me really unhappy though is some lackluster engineering on the circuit board and forethought on the dry compartment. I’m an engineer, though not an electrical engineer, but still it is obvious. I accidently blew the fuse, my fault, thought I had unplugged the machine again after a test with it opened up to troubleshoot the leak. So I located the fuse and find it is soldered to the board. In fact a second is soldered elsewhere. This is cheap and uncalled for in a machine that costs $800. It should have a fuse holder that can quickly swap without requiring significant soldering work.There are some other aspects I have found in the process that I find to be problematic. The leak caused significant amounts of water to wet the electronics; while there is significant compartmentalization of the wet (brew) and dry sides, more care should be taken for the remainder of the water circuit. There is way too much exposure to electrical with a leak in the wrong places. Pumps and heating element are located in the compartment with main control board and incoming AC terminals. Pressurized water circuit in with electronics is bad news as I found. Spraying fine mist water which allowed it to carry through the entire compartment. They shrouded the electrical motor and gears that rotates the brew group, but nothing else really. The reality is that most of these machines are probably this way though, but still not an excuse to not have developed this further. It is a definitive electrical hazard. For this reason, do not ignore signs of an internal leak. There are drain holes to allow water to escape this compartment; so if you find water on your countertop, do not ignore it and investigate before continued use.If weren’t for these concerns, I’d give it 5 stars. I do love what it can do and has made me despise the poor quality of drinks I get when I’m away from the house. But these glaring issues deserve a knock to the overall rating.
Dan –
The machine works well overall and in reality I love it for the drinks it makes. The coffee and espresso are pretty good with good beans. Just don’t use oily or dark roast (which I had loved in other methods). I pushed it one time and ended up with burnt cigarette tasting coffee for a month. I flushed every other day with the oil removing tabs to work it out, but it honestly still took a month of this before I felt it was gone. Don’t risk it! I now can’t stand many dark roasts after that experience as all I can tast is the burnt cigarette flavors, especially in French Roast, ugh.The LatteGo system is the awesome to not worry about cleaning tubing or storing milk. The chrome shroud on the spout of the latte go carafe shouldn’t be there though as it creates a seam where you can’t clean and have to kind of scrape out with your fingernail after fair use.There are tons of moving parts in this machine, so eventually something will break and need to be fixed. Parts for the machine are fairly reasonable overall. The brew group is probably the most likely thing to need and is around 70 bucks. I just discovered two pinhole leaks on the boot that connects the hot water tube to heating element. The part is fair enough to buy and in reality it has seen really heavy use for three years, so I don’t have too many ill feelings about this aspect.The thing that has me really unhappy though is some lackluster engineering on the circuit board and forethought on the dry compartment. I’m an engineer, though not an electrical engineer, but still it is obvious. I accidently blew the fuse, my fault, thought I had unplugged the machine again after a test with it opened up to troubleshoot the leak. So I located the fuse and find it is soldered to the board. In fact a second is soldered elsewhere. This is cheap and uncalled for in a machine that costs $800. It should have a fuse holder that can quickly swap without requiring significant soldering work.There are some other aspects I have found in the process that I find to be problematic. The leak caused significant amounts of water to wet the electronics; while there is significant compartmentalization of the wet (brew) and dry sides, more care should be taken for the remainder of the water circuit. There is way too much exposure to electrical with a leak in the wrong places. Pumps and heating element are located in the compartment with main control board and incoming AC terminals. Pressurized water circuit in with electronics is bad news as I found. Spraying fine mist water which allowed it to carry through the entire compartment. They shrouded the electrical motor and gears that rotates the brew group, but nothing else really. The reality is that most of these machines are probably this way though, but still not an excuse to not have developed this further. It is a definitive electrical hazard. For this reason, do not ignore signs of an internal leak. There are drain holes to allow water to escape this compartment; so if you find water on your countertop, do not ignore it and investigate before continued use.If weren’t for these concerns, I’d give it 5 stars. I do love what it can do and has made me despise the poor quality of drinks I get when I’m away from the house. But these glaring issues deserve a knock to the overall rating.
Scott Buhrer –
I love the iced coffee. I add sugar-free Sweet Italian Creamer and I get a better tasting coffee beverage than any of the canned coffee drinks at a fraction of the calories and a fraction of the cost. My wife loves the espresso drinks.
Scott Buhrer –
I love the iced coffee. I add sugar-free Sweet Italian Creamer and I get a better tasting coffee beverage than any of the canned coffee drinks at a fraction of the calories and a fraction of the cost. My wife loves the espresso drinks.
Rasheeda Patterson –
I’m new to making my own coffee and cappuccino at home and this machine made it very easy. I did a lot of research and landed on this one. A little sad I did not know there is a version that does ice coffee as well. There’s a video that walks you through installation (hard to find) and how to use for first time that I found very helpful. I have played with a couple different settings. Only used coffee beans so far although I will say I wish there was more if a guide on what setting to use for grinder. Also my cappuccino 2x does not work so I’ve had to run it twice instead of just setting it to 2x. Not a big deal but kind of annoying for price point. Can also be a little loud. But overall love the ease of use for a beginner and taste great once you get your settings down
Rasheeda Patterson –
I’m new to making my own coffee and cappuccino at home and this machine made it very easy. I did a lot of research and landed on this one. A little sad I did not know there is a version that does ice coffee as well. There’s a video that walks you through installation (hard to find) and how to use for first time that I found very helpful. I have played with a couple different settings. Only used coffee beans so far although I will say I wish there was more if a guide on what setting to use for grinder. Also my cappuccino 2x does not work so I’ve had to run it twice instead of just setting it to 2x. Not a big deal but kind of annoying for price point. Can also be a little loud. But overall love the ease of use for a beginner and taste great once you get your settings down
mel laytner –
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update — 12/19-2019 –So I’ve used this now for a couple of months and, bottom line, am keeping the rating at four stars.I like the simplicity of the machine. It does what it does well and doesn’t pretend to be high end. Sure, I’d love to try a DeLonghi Eleta, but at nearly $2k, I can wait.–I’ve set the “flavor” at maximum and the grind setting to finest. I’ve had no need or desire to change these settings. Now that I’m using very good Italian coffee beans, the pucks are well formed and fairly firm. Still, the “drip time” is about eight seconds. According to an Italian espresso website, the ideal time is between 20-25 seconds for a single shot of espresso to be “pressed” into the cup. I invited a neighbor down for his opinion. He had lived in Italy for a number of years and now uses this massive brass and copper pull down device with a temperature gauge…a lovely piece of Italian art. As soon as he saw the Philips 3200 producing a single shot in about eight seconds, he wouldn’t even taste it (!!)…muttering how most Americans think Starbucks is what espresso should taste like, etc. Oh well…– I pretty much do either a 2x Americano or 2x coffee every morning, and a cappuccino every afternoon. Sometimes I use the separate dosing chute for ground decaf. As I add milk, I’ve adjusted the heat from the default medium to high. It is hot enough for me.–The 2x Americano, set on medium water amount, fills an 8 oz American coffee cup to the brim. If you want room for milk, a gentle touch on the “continue” button stops the water instantly. The 2x coffee, however, fills the cup less, leaving room for milk.–I wish there were a way to program the machine to make a double cappuccino. You can increase/decrease the coffee amount, the water amount, and the steamed milk, but you cannot make a true double. I’ve made a regular size with extra steamed milk and then added a separate shot. Works ok, but still…–The new Lattego milk system is super easy and convenient. But make sure you snap the two halves together well. A couple of times I didn’t and milk poured all over the counter.– I’ve cleaned out the machine every week or so. Usually takes five minutes, but once in a while, you find ground coffee in nukes and crannies and it takes longer.– Bottom line: so far, so good.——(original review below)As far as I can tell, I am the first to review Philips 3200 Series Fully Automatic Espresso Machine w/ LatteGo.I’ve had the device now for three weeks and have made every variety of drink offered. I hope to update this review as experience dictates.Bottom line: currently (10/2019) the lowest priced super-automatic makes good espresso and espresso milk based drinks, but there are trade-offs, compromises and concerns. Also, if you wish to make Latte, look elsewhere.Overview: The most novel part of this machine is its stupidly simple milk carafe. It comes in two parts that snap together. Pour in milk, select one of the two milk-based drinks and watch the machine create steamed milk and nice foam. When finished, the two parts come apart and are easily rinsed clean – no tubes, no straws, no complicated gizmos. I am praying that the plastic tabs that snap the two sections together won’t break off. That would be a real bummer.Background: I have been studying the super automatic market more obsessively than the frog did motor cars in the Wind and the Willow (if you don’t know that Disney classic, you’ve really missed out.) When I spotted this Phillips 3200 for $700, I was intrigued and saved it. The price increased to $799 the next day. A week or two later it dropped to $709 and I bought it. As of this writing in October 2019, it’s back up to $799 just about everywhere.Disclaimer: this is my first automatic espresso maker and I am not a coffee expert but a committed fan. That said, everyone who has tried the espresso, coffee, Americano, Cappuccino, and the Latte Macchiato agree they taste good and are hot enough at factory settings. I posted a video but suggest you search online for better ones from Seattle Coffee Gear and Phillips itself. (I’m not including links because I think Amazon frowns on YouTube attachments.)The machine makes espresso, coffee, and Americano in single or double sizes. To select a double size, tap the appropriate drink button so the red led moves from x1 to x2. It makes two milk-based drinks, Cappuccino and Latte Macchiato in one size only. You can choose from three factory settings for brew strength and water level for all five drinks, and three milk levels for the milk-based drinks. You can also adjust the maximum settings for water and milk – but only for x1 sizes. When making my morning Americano, I wanted a regular American-sized coffee mug, about 8-9 ounces. The x1 size was too short; the x2 size would have poured over the top had I not stopped it. It was surprising (and frustrating) to learn from customer service that you can only adjust the maximum levels of the x1 size. So now I have to keep an eye on it. There is also a way to raise the temperature. I found the default temperature plenty hot and have not played with this. I have no idea how many grams of coffee are ground or the amount of water and milk in CC or ounces are used.The water reservoir claims to hold 61 ounces. Well, on paper, maybe, and without the water filter installed. I measured six-and-a-bit 8-ounce cups – maybe 54 ounces. But the machine stops operating when the water drops below a certain level, maybe 20% from the bottom. Also, the machine uses about an ounce of water to self-clean when turned on, and a bit to self-clean when turned off. If all you drink are espresso and Cappucciano, this may be adequate. More water leaks from the inside of the machine to the drip tray, as per normal in these machines. So if you make regular coffee and Americano, especially x2 to fill a standard American mug (8-9 ounces), you’ll refill the water much more frequently than the 61-ounce spec suggests.The bean hopper claims to hold 11 ounces. I didn’t measure so I can’t confirm. It seemed at first that the beans were not sliding toward the grinder smoothly. But even as the hopper came close to empty, the beans were fed to the grinder. But best to keep an eye on it. There is also port into which you can put pre-ground coffee, like decaf. Use only one scoop. The scoop is included. I tried this twice with decaf and it seemed to work well.When you turn on the machine, the machine’s red led lights flash in sequence and the machine goes into a self-rinse, using about an espresso’s worth of hot water. I timed this process to 60 seconds. It takes perhaps another minute to make an espresso, somewhat longer for a milk-based drink but certainly not unreasonable.The machine turns itself off automatically after maybe 20 minutes or a half hour of no use. As mentioned above, it use a bit of water to self-clean the nozzle. There is no way to set a timer for auto turn on or turn off. You can place cups on top of the machine but it’s not really a cup warmer at all, just a ridged top.Having not had one of these contraptions before, I can’t comment on whether one minute is too long to heat up for the first use in the morning, or whether it is too noisy, relatively speaking. After the deafening racket from my old Nespresso grind and brew, this doesn’t seem bad at all. Others may disagree.I’ve cleaned it per weekly instructions now three times. Takes about five minutes to rinse everything.Overall Positives:– The drinks are strong and tasty. Good crema on espressos, good regular coffee and smooth Americanos. Nice foam and steam from the newly designed LatteGo container. Plenty hot (for everyone who has tried it).– The milk container/frother is stupidly simple and easy to clean, about five seconds under flowing tap water.–I’ve cleaned the brewing mechanism per instructions weekly three times so far. It takes maybe five minutes to do everything required. Simple.Overall negatives:– Am concerned the touch buttons will become increasingly problematic. They already are not very responsive.–Fit and finish of the trip tray and metal cover are poor. It doesn’t fit well into the channel.– Not so much a negative as a fact of life, the 1.7 liter water reservoir will need more frequent filling than you might expect.– I hope the tabs that snap the milk container together do not snap off. If they do, this review will become a 1-star.Why the 4 star rating? Because despite some shortcomings, for me the bottom line is the ease of use and taste of the coffee. Why not 5 stars? wish they had a latte button instead of the latte Macchiato, which is very similar to Cappuccino. Also, the fit and finish ain’t too great, I’m concerned about the plastic tabs on the milk container.
mel laytner –
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update — 12/19-2019 –So I’ve used this now for a couple of months and, bottom line, am keeping the rating at four stars.I like the simplicity of the machine. It does what it does well and doesn’t pretend to be high end. Sure, I’d love to try a DeLonghi Eleta, but at nearly $2k, I can wait.–I’ve set the “flavor” at maximum and the grind setting to finest. I’ve had no need or desire to change these settings. Now that I’m using very good Italian coffee beans, the pucks are well formed and fairly firm. Still, the “drip time” is about eight seconds. According to an Italian espresso website, the ideal time is between 20-25 seconds for a single shot of espresso to be “pressed” into the cup. I invited a neighbor down for his opinion. He had lived in Italy for a number of years and now uses this massive brass and copper pull down device with a temperature gauge…a lovely piece of Italian art. As soon as he saw the Philips 3200 producing a single shot in about eight seconds, he wouldn’t even taste it (!!)…muttering how most Americans think Starbucks is what espresso should taste like, etc. Oh well…– I pretty much do either a 2x Americano or 2x coffee every morning, and a cappuccino every afternoon. Sometimes I use the separate dosing chute for ground decaf. As I add milk, I’ve adjusted the heat from the default medium to high. It is hot enough for me.–The 2x Americano, set on medium water amount, fills an 8 oz American coffee cup to the brim. If you want room for milk, a gentle touch on the “continue” button stops the water instantly. The 2x coffee, however, fills the cup less, leaving room for milk.–I wish there were a way to program the machine to make a double cappuccino. You can increase/decrease the coffee amount, the water amount, and the steamed milk, but you cannot make a true double. I’ve made a regular size with extra steamed milk and then added a separate shot. Works ok, but still…–The new Lattego milk system is super easy and convenient. But make sure you snap the two halves together well. A couple of times I didn’t and milk poured all over the counter.– I’ve cleaned out the machine every week or so. Usually takes five minutes, but once in a while, you find ground coffee in nukes and crannies and it takes longer.– Bottom line: so far, so good.——(original review below)As far as I can tell, I am the first to review Philips 3200 Series Fully Automatic Espresso Machine w/ LatteGo.I’ve had the device now for three weeks and have made every variety of drink offered. I hope to update this review as experience dictates.Bottom line: currently (10/2019) the lowest priced super-automatic makes good espresso and espresso milk based drinks, but there are trade-offs, compromises and concerns. Also, if you wish to make Latte, look elsewhere.Overview: The most novel part of this machine is its stupidly simple milk carafe. It comes in two parts that snap together. Pour in milk, select one of the two milk-based drinks and watch the machine create steamed milk and nice foam. When finished, the two parts come apart and are easily rinsed clean – no tubes, no straws, no complicated gizmos. I am praying that the plastic tabs that snap the two sections together won’t break off. That would be a real bummer.Background: I have been studying the super automatic market more obsessively than the frog did motor cars in the Wind and the Willow (if you don’t know that Disney classic, you’ve really missed out.) When I spotted this Phillips 3200 for $700, I was intrigued and saved it. The price increased to $799 the next day. A week or two later it dropped to $709 and I bought it. As of this writing in October 2019, it’s back up to $799 just about everywhere.Disclaimer: this is my first automatic espresso maker and I am not a coffee expert but a committed fan. That said, everyone who has tried the espresso, coffee, Americano, Cappuccino, and the Latte Macchiato agree they taste good and are hot enough at factory settings. I posted a video but suggest you search online for better ones from Seattle Coffee Gear and Phillips itself. (I’m not including links because I think Amazon frowns on YouTube attachments.)The machine makes espresso, coffee, and Americano in single or double sizes. To select a double size, tap the appropriate drink button so the red led moves from x1 to x2. It makes two milk-based drinks, Cappuccino and Latte Macchiato in one size only. You can choose from three factory settings for brew strength and water level for all five drinks, and three milk levels for the milk-based drinks. You can also adjust the maximum settings for water and milk – but only for x1 sizes. When making my morning Americano, I wanted a regular American-sized coffee mug, about 8-9 ounces. The x1 size was too short; the x2 size would have poured over the top had I not stopped it. It was surprising (and frustrating) to learn from customer service that you can only adjust the maximum levels of the x1 size. So now I have to keep an eye on it. There is also a way to raise the temperature. I found the default temperature plenty hot and have not played with this. I have no idea how many grams of coffee are ground or the amount of water and milk in CC or ounces are used.The water reservoir claims to hold 61 ounces. Well, on paper, maybe, and without the water filter installed. I measured six-and-a-bit 8-ounce cups – maybe 54 ounces. But the machine stops operating when the water drops below a certain level, maybe 20% from the bottom. Also, the machine uses about an ounce of water to self-clean when turned on, and a bit to self-clean when turned off. If all you drink are espresso and Cappucciano, this may be adequate. More water leaks from the inside of the machine to the drip tray, as per normal in these machines. So if you make regular coffee and Americano, especially x2 to fill a standard American mug (8-9 ounces), you’ll refill the water much more frequently than the 61-ounce spec suggests.The bean hopper claims to hold 11 ounces. I didn’t measure so I can’t confirm. It seemed at first that the beans were not sliding toward the grinder smoothly. But even as the hopper came close to empty, the beans were fed to the grinder. But best to keep an eye on it. There is also port into which you can put pre-ground coffee, like decaf. Use only one scoop. The scoop is included. I tried this twice with decaf and it seemed to work well.When you turn on the machine, the machine’s red led lights flash in sequence and the machine goes into a self-rinse, using about an espresso’s worth of hot water. I timed this process to 60 seconds. It takes perhaps another minute to make an espresso, somewhat longer for a milk-based drink but certainly not unreasonable.The machine turns itself off automatically after maybe 20 minutes or a half hour of no use. As mentioned above, it use a bit of water to self-clean the nozzle. There is no way to set a timer for auto turn on or turn off. You can place cups on top of the machine but it’s not really a cup warmer at all, just a ridged top.Having not had one of these contraptions before, I can’t comment on whether one minute is too long to heat up for the first use in the morning, or whether it is too noisy, relatively speaking. After the deafening racket from my old Nespresso grind and brew, this doesn’t seem bad at all. Others may disagree.I’ve cleaned it per weekly instructions now three times. Takes about five minutes to rinse everything.Overall Positives:– The drinks are strong and tasty. Good crema on espressos, good regular coffee and smooth Americanos. Nice foam and steam from the newly designed LatteGo container. Plenty hot (for everyone who has tried it).– The milk container/frother is stupidly simple and easy to clean, about five seconds under flowing tap water.–I’ve cleaned the brewing mechanism per instructions weekly three times so far. It takes maybe five minutes to do everything required. Simple.Overall negatives:– Am concerned the touch buttons will become increasingly problematic. They already are not very responsive.–Fit and finish of the trip tray and metal cover are poor. It doesn’t fit well into the channel.– Not so much a negative as a fact of life, the 1.7 liter water reservoir will need more frequent filling than you might expect.– I hope the tabs that snap the milk container together do not snap off. If they do, this review will become a 1-star.Why the 4 star rating? Because despite some shortcomings, for me the bottom line is the ease of use and taste of the coffee. Why not 5 stars? wish they had a latte button instead of the latte Macchiato, which is very similar to Cappuccino. Also, the fit and finish ain’t too great, I’m concerned about the plastic tabs on the milk container.
Ashdodi –
I’m updating this review because the machine failed after 10 months. The company cooperated and provided the authorization to return for repair. Apparently a board failed and it was not available, so they sent me a new machine. My only complaint is that this took over 2 months. I’m a big coffee drinker, so out of desperation, I purchased a second machine. It worries me that a there were no parts for a machine less than a year old and if it were out of warrantee I would have been out nearly $1000 for ten months of use. Also, the process took so long, I purchased a second machine. For this reason I down graded from 5 stars to 4 stars.I’ve been looking for a superautomatic coffee maker for several years. I read the reviews and it seems at that every machine has some issues; unreliable, coffee not hot enough or difficult machine to clean up. This machine came out recently and the reviews were very good, with about 90% total good and excellent, a very high rating. Of the people that did not like the machine, the criticisms were minor, for example a poor manual.Here are the pros; makes good coffee, has multiple settings for type of coffee and strength, easy to clean up, reliable, easy to add water and coffee, and fits under the counter in my condo’s galley kitchen.Here are the negatives: the manual is barely adequate, the design is low end with mostly plastic, and no color touch screen. The last two issues are mostly vanity and the low cost more than compensates for the inexpensive design.So over all, it’s a great machine for the cost. Assuming it is reliable, (which only time will tell), my rating is 5 star for the price. (see earlier comment for reason to downgrade to 4 stars).
Ashdodi –
I’m updating this review because the machine failed after 10 months. The company cooperated and provided the authorization to return for repair. Apparently a board failed and it was not available, so they sent me a new machine. My only complaint is that this took over 2 months. I’m a big coffee drinker, so out of desperation, I purchased a second machine. It worries me that a there were no parts for a machine less than a year old and if it were out of warrantee I would have been out nearly $1000 for ten months of use. Also, the process took so long, I purchased a second machine. For this reason I down graded from 5 stars to 4 stars.I’ve been looking for a superautomatic coffee maker for several years. I read the reviews and it seems at that every machine has some issues; unreliable, coffee not hot enough or difficult machine to clean up. This machine came out recently and the reviews were very good, with about 90% total good and excellent, a very high rating. Of the people that did not like the machine, the criticisms were minor, for example a poor manual.Here are the pros; makes good coffee, has multiple settings for type of coffee and strength, easy to clean up, reliable, easy to add water and coffee, and fits under the counter in my condo’s galley kitchen.Here are the negatives: the manual is barely adequate, the design is low end with mostly plastic, and no color touch screen. The last two issues are mostly vanity and the low cost more than compensates for the inexpensive design.So over all, it’s a great machine for the cost. Assuming it is reliable, (which only time will tell), my rating is 5 star for the price. (see earlier comment for reason to downgrade to 4 stars).
KHoward –
Is it an expensive machine for the common household, yes. Is it worth it, absolutely! Treat yourself.
KHoward –
Is it an expensive machine for the common household, yes. Is it worth it, absolutely! Treat yourself.
Sunny and Tony –
I purchased the Philips 3200 Lattego with an additional filter as part of Amazon Prime Day, so my review is directly tied to that discounted price.I find that this machine is really worth the money. It makes excellent espresso and latte macchiatos. That is a given, but how does it handle milk alternatives. I feel like there isn’t much comment on this, and I think it is worth discussing.Since realizing, after two decades of pain and suffering, that I am lactose intolerant, I switched from milk products to oat milk. I typically purchase Silk brand’s original oat milk, but I also buy their creamy version, and other brands of oat milk. This machine does a good job of heating and frothing the oat milk, however, because it is quite a bit thicker than milk, it uses less oat milk in the automated process. This doesn’t bother me too much, because I typically use the latte macchiato function twice in a row to fill my coffee mug. Yeah, it is a healthy amount of espresso in the drink, but that can be adjusted. It does work with oat milk, and I prefer it that way. I have not tried it with soy milk, almond milk (might be a good choice given how thin it is), cashew milk, or other milk alternatives.I recently also thought I would try lactose-free Horizon organic milk, and it works as a normal milk product would. It froths a lot more than the oat milk does, so be prepared for a lot of foam. It tastes a lot like an espresso drink you would have at any coffee shop, other than Starbucks. Even using Starbucks espresso beans, it comes out slightly less perfect than they can do, but over significant use, it surely pays for itself and it is still darn delicious.One tip to mention is that when using pre-ground beans, make sure to close the lid after you load in one scoop. Don’t overfill it and don’t load it too early. When wanting to use pre-ground coffee beans, make sure to power up the machine and let it do the cleaning cycle first, before loading in the grounds. My machine doesn’t seem to do the pre-ground stuff as well as I’d like, and it has to do with the process. I am not sure why, but it will sometimes take two or three tries to get the machine to make it correctly, but once it does the first time, you can repeat the process in the same power cycle without issue. Load one scoop of grounds, close the lid, choose the drink, let the machine work. When it is done and you can select a new drink, repeat the process of loading the grounds, closing the lid, then choosing the drink.I’m not entirely sure I would buy this machine at full price, but if you see it on sale, it is a great deal. I think the regular price of this one versus a higher end one from Philips is only $100 or so in difference, and the higher end models, 4300, 5400, etc., offer more options. That can be important for some. On sale, with the milk carafe, it is a bargain and worth it for the first super-automatic espresso machine. I think the price to consider picking it up if money is an issue is the $650 or so price point. Amazon Prime Day’s deal was less than. Highly recommended.Made in RomaniaUPDATE: I have been using this espresso maker for some time now, and I still think it is a great buy, especially on sale. Everything has held up great since purchase. I thought it might be good to leave some additional thoughts. First, the issue when using ground coffee seems to be less so. I have only experienced issues with it twice since my last review. Second, the one new negative thing I have found is that it can be a little noisy when in use. That doesn’t stop me from recommending it, but if you need something super quiet, this might not be the one you want. And finally, don’t forget to clean out the cavity where the used grounds fall out of. I never thought to clean it and one day my wife noticed some mold smell coming from that area and I had to stick my hand in and clean it out as best I could. I use it daily and I clean that part about once a month, and that seems to be good for me, but also note that I live in the dryest region in the United States, so we don’t really have humidity to make the problem worse. That’s all. I still highly recommend it, especially when on sale!
Sunny and Tony –
I purchased the Philips 3200 Lattego with an additional filter as part of Amazon Prime Day, so my review is directly tied to that discounted price.I find that this machine is really worth the money. It makes excellent espresso and latte macchiatos. That is a given, but how does it handle milk alternatives. I feel like there isn’t much comment on this, and I think it is worth discussing.Since realizing, after two decades of pain and suffering, that I am lactose intolerant, I switched from milk products to oat milk. I typically purchase Silk brand’s original oat milk, but I also buy their creamy version, and other brands of oat milk. This machine does a good job of heating and frothing the oat milk, however, because it is quite a bit thicker than milk, it uses less oat milk in the automated process. This doesn’t bother me too much, because I typically use the latte macchiato function twice in a row to fill my coffee mug. Yeah, it is a healthy amount of espresso in the drink, but that can be adjusted. It does work with oat milk, and I prefer it that way. I have not tried it with soy milk, almond milk (might be a good choice given how thin it is), cashew milk, or other milk alternatives.I recently also thought I would try lactose-free Horizon organic milk, and it works as a normal milk product would. It froths a lot more than the oat milk does, so be prepared for a lot of foam. It tastes a lot like an espresso drink you would have at any coffee shop, other than Starbucks. Even using Starbucks espresso beans, it comes out slightly less perfect than they can do, but over significant use, it surely pays for itself and it is still darn delicious.One tip to mention is that when using pre-ground beans, make sure to close the lid after you load in one scoop. Don’t overfill it and don’t load it too early. When wanting to use pre-ground coffee beans, make sure to power up the machine and let it do the cleaning cycle first, before loading in the grounds. My machine doesn’t seem to do the pre-ground stuff as well as I’d like, and it has to do with the process. I am not sure why, but it will sometimes take two or three tries to get the machine to make it correctly, but once it does the first time, you can repeat the process in the same power cycle without issue. Load one scoop of grounds, close the lid, choose the drink, let the machine work. When it is done and you can select a new drink, repeat the process of loading the grounds, closing the lid, then choosing the drink.I’m not entirely sure I would buy this machine at full price, but if you see it on sale, it is a great deal. I think the regular price of this one versus a higher end one from Philips is only $100 or so in difference, and the higher end models, 4300, 5400, etc., offer more options. That can be important for some. On sale, with the milk carafe, it is a bargain and worth it for the first super-automatic espresso machine. I think the price to consider picking it up if money is an issue is the $650 or so price point. Amazon Prime Day’s deal was less than. Highly recommended.Made in RomaniaUPDATE: I have been using this espresso maker for some time now, and I still think it is a great buy, especially on sale. Everything has held up great since purchase. I thought it might be good to leave some additional thoughts. First, the issue when using ground coffee seems to be less so. I have only experienced issues with it twice since my last review. Second, the one new negative thing I have found is that it can be a little noisy when in use. That doesn’t stop me from recommending it, but if you need something super quiet, this might not be the one you want. And finally, don’t forget to clean out the cavity where the used grounds fall out of. I never thought to clean it and one day my wife noticed some mold smell coming from that area and I had to stick my hand in and clean it out as best I could. I use it daily and I clean that part about once a month, and that seems to be good for me, but also note that I live in the dryest region in the United States, so we don’t really have humidity to make the problem worse. That’s all. I still highly recommend it, especially when on sale!
KT –
It is odd that you can’t click a button to make more heated or frothed milk. Similarly they don’t have an hot water button to just let out hot water. Also I don’t think you can change the settings from frothy milk to just steamed milk— only to modulate how much volume you get. It feels like the most popular drink at the coffee shop is a latte, which is the least well covered drink by this machine. It makes a very foamy version or else something more like a macchiato because the milk is so foamy. I like a little less foam and more just steamed milk and espresso.Another odd choice… why didn’t they make it so if you get the latte go you can also receive an attachment for a manual milk steamer? Weird you have to choose one or the other… seems like they could have designed a manual attachment that works on the LatteGo arm.Also it’s super weird how they made the lights and sequences work. It emits hot water before and after brewing and doesn’t have a light to indicate so it’s easy to forget at first and not have a cup under to catch the hot water cycles. It does this on turn off too like 15 minutes later.Seems they should have made some indicator lights for things like “warming up” and “rinsing nozzle” instead of just having all the lights flashing.Another thing to know is you have to wash the inner working parts weekly and the rest daily. You also have to oil the machine every 8 weeks or something.
KT –
It is odd that you can’t click a button to make more heated or frothed milk. Similarly they don’t have an hot water button to just let out hot water. Also I don’t think you can change the settings from frothy milk to just steamed milk— only to modulate how much volume you get. It feels like the most popular drink at the coffee shop is a latte, which is the least well covered drink by this machine. It makes a very foamy version or else something more like a macchiato because the milk is so foamy. I like a little less foam and more just steamed milk and espresso.Another odd choice… why didn’t they make it so if you get the latte go you can also receive an attachment for a manual milk steamer? Weird you have to choose one or the other… seems like they could have designed a manual attachment that works on the LatteGo arm.Also it’s super weird how they made the lights and sequences work. It emits hot water before and after brewing and doesn’t have a light to indicate so it’s easy to forget at first and not have a cup under to catch the hot water cycles. It does this on turn off too like 15 minutes later.Seems they should have made some indicator lights for things like “warming up” and “rinsing nozzle” instead of just having all the lights flashing.Another thing to know is you have to wash the inner working parts weekly and the rest daily. You also have to oil the machine every 8 weeks or something.
Justin BurthJustin Burth –
This product is very easy to use and maintain. I bought all of the cleaning and lubrication products before I read that it only has to be done like once a year based on how much coffee I drink. Otherwise all I need to do is a quick rinse each week. Love that it grinds the beans and pats it into the pucks and ejects the pucks automatically.
Justin BurthJustin Burth –
This product is very easy to use and maintain. I bought all of the cleaning and lubrication products before I read that it only has to be done like once a year based on how much coffee I drink. Otherwise all I need to do is a quick rinse each week. Love that it grinds the beans and pats it into the pucks and ejects the pucks automatically.
DM ReviewsDM Reviews –
*** Update 12/29/23 ***Positives- Automatic coffee grinder built into the machine.- Automatic milk frother.- Multiple drink options.- It does what it says it does and gives you a fresh cup of coffe.Negatives- Small portion sizes. The highest setting can be reprogrammed and give you a max of about a 12 oz cup.- It doesn’t get as hot as I would prefer. Highest setting is drinking temperature.- No foam only option, there is a workaround however.- The biggest issue is when using pre ground coffee if you do not select the correct setting by holding down the button the ground coffee will end up in the internal components of the machine and will need to be cleaned.- There’s a lot of plastic components.- Cost.*** Update 9/6/23 ***I have had this machine for a few months now. What I like most is how easy it is to use as an all in one machine. You can use whole bean or ground coffee and it will make espresso, coffee, americano, cappuccino, and lattes. I prefer fresh beans over pod coffee and it is a better experience overall than your typical keurig machine.The machine is quick to start up and makes coffee reasonably fast. Portions can be smaller than what you are used to but you can select to have two cups made in succession. It is relatively easy to clean and can be disassembled for rinsing. The only issue I have had so far is using ground coffee but forgetting to hold the button for it so it ends up grinding coffee and dumping the fresh grounds I put inside the machine. Usually the grounds get inside the unit which then has to be cleaned. There is no stand alone button for only using the milk frother.Now for the price is it worth it? This is really hard to judge, I think if you are somehow who is spending a lot of money at Starbucks then this machine is a good option for a quick morning cup of fresh coffee without too much cleanup. If you are relatively happy with pod coffee I would suggest going with a milk frother instead to enhance your drinks.*** Update 7/15/24 ***This machine still works as good as the first day I bought it. With proper maintenance, cleaning, descaling, and replacing filters it has held up very well. There are some stains and discoloration on the milk frother from timeworn use. But overall still happy with the quality of coffee this machine produces. The same positive and negative qualities still apply.
DM ReviewsDM Reviews –
*** Update 12/29/23 ***Positives- Automatic coffee grinder built into the machine.- Automatic milk frother.- Multiple drink options.- It does what it says it does and gives you a fresh cup of coffe.Negatives- Small portion sizes. The highest setting can be reprogrammed and give you a max of about a 12 oz cup.- It doesn’t get as hot as I would prefer. Highest setting is drinking temperature.- No foam only option, there is a workaround however.- The biggest issue is when using pre ground coffee if you do not select the correct setting by holding down the button the ground coffee will end up in the internal components of the machine and will need to be cleaned.- There’s a lot of plastic components.- Cost.*** Update 9/6/23 ***I have had this machine for a few months now. What I like most is how easy it is to use as an all in one machine. You can use whole bean or ground coffee and it will make espresso, coffee, americano, cappuccino, and lattes. I prefer fresh beans over pod coffee and it is a better experience overall than your typical keurig machine.The machine is quick to start up and makes coffee reasonably fast. Portions can be smaller than what you are used to but you can select to have two cups made in succession. It is relatively easy to clean and can be disassembled for rinsing. The only issue I have had so far is using ground coffee but forgetting to hold the button for it so it ends up grinding coffee and dumping the fresh grounds I put inside the machine. Usually the grounds get inside the unit which then has to be cleaned. There is no stand alone button for only using the milk frother.Now for the price is it worth it? This is really hard to judge, I think if you are somehow who is spending a lot of money at Starbucks then this machine is a good option for a quick morning cup of fresh coffee without too much cleanup. If you are relatively happy with pod coffee I would suggest going with a milk frother instead to enhance your drinks.*** Update 7/15/24 ***This machine still works as good as the first day I bought it. With proper maintenance, cleaning, descaling, and replacing filters it has held up very well. There are some stains and discoloration on the milk frother from timeworn use. But overall still happy with the quality of coffee this machine produces. The same positive and negative qualities still apply.
VR –
3 months since bought and ready to share first impressions. – Coffee quality is good comparing to what I’ve tried from different machines – on the level you’d expect from this price range. Froth is very good also. – Noise level (I assume that’s crucial for “first”-morning cup) is very good (good is low) – Time from power button to ready cup is also very good – Maintenance: adding water/beans is easy and convenient; cleaning tray is straight-forward and simple; washing brewing group (once a week) is fast and non-confusing; didn’t get to part with applying lube yetComplains: – power button (as well as all other buttons) doesn’t have “click” feeling so there is no tactile feedback and sometimes specifically power button doesn’t work from first (2nd, 3rd) press – it’s mildly confusing and a bit worrying (when/if will it stop working?). Don’t want to be alarmist on this as it still works – just something worth mentioning – water container a bit small (it says out-of-water halfway through filter when there’s about cup left) – milk container not conveniently sized – too small for two cups too big for one cup, though overall hook-up design is very good and proficient (also easy to wash)Will update in half a year. When I was doing research before buying I was specifically looking for reviews with long usage run so guess it’s my time to payback.
VR –
3 months since bought and ready to share first impressions. – Coffee quality is good comparing to what I’ve tried from different machines – on the level you’d expect from this price range. Froth is very good also. – Noise level (I assume that’s crucial for “first”-morning cup) is very good (good is low) – Time from power button to ready cup is also very good – Maintenance: adding water/beans is easy and convenient; cleaning tray is straight-forward and simple; washing brewing group (once a week) is fast and non-confusing; didn’t get to part with applying lube yetComplains: – power button (as well as all other buttons) doesn’t have “click” feeling so there is no tactile feedback and sometimes specifically power button doesn’t work from first (2nd, 3rd) press – it’s mildly confusing and a bit worrying (when/if will it stop working?). Don’t want to be alarmist on this as it still works – just something worth mentioning – water container a bit small (it says out-of-water halfway through filter when there’s about cup left) – milk container not conveniently sized – too small for two cups too big for one cup, though overall hook-up design is very good and proficient (also easy to wash)Will update in half a year. When I was doing research before buying I was specifically looking for reviews with long usage run so guess it’s my time to payback.
MS –
after further tuning, this device is excellent and by far the best quality I have had
MS –
after further tuning, this device is excellent and by far the best quality I have had
D. Lo –
I wanted a good cup of black coffee and hoped trading in my pod coffee maker for this PHILIPS 3200 Series Fully Automatic Espresso Machine would do the trick. I read the reviews, I compared other machines, and gave this one a try. It did not meet my expectations, but afer a month of use, I’m going to keep it.Cons:*Small water tank (I drink a lot of coffee, so I usually have to fill it at least once a day)*Water not hot enough (this is a huge issue with my partner who keeps asking how to adjust the temp. I’ve adjusted it to be as hot as it can go, and rest assured, you’ll never scald your tongue)*Buttons are vague at first and can feel overwhelming (after a month of use, they make more sense now)*Noisy (it’s loud but it doesn’t disturb the neigbors or anyone sleeping upstairs)*Bean capacity too small*Once you add beans, you’re stuck with that variety until they’re used up*The machine doesn’t alert you when the bean hopper is empty and whirs and whirs until you figure it out*The milk frother leaves at least an inch of liquid in the containerPros:*The milk frother is awesome! I almost didn’t opt for the LatteGo since I don’t normally have drinks that use milk. What a treat, though, and I definitely recommend splurging on the LatteGo if you’re on the fence*The bypass is a great feature to use preground coffee if you want to make a drink other than with the beans in the hopper*The drink selections are fun to play around with and gives plenty of options*No coffee pods!I really wanted to love this PHILIPS 3200 Series Fully Automatic Espresso Machine. In theory, it was the answer to my “good cup of black coffee” that I wasn’t getting with my pod coffee maker. After a month of use, I’ve achieved that good cup of black coffee and look forward to waking up in the morning to enjoy cup after cup! For the price, though, the cons definitely outweigh the pros. The machine requires a lot of maintenance (adding water, adding beans, emptying the hopper, etc.) and it’s not as user friendly as a pod machine. The coffee is superior to a pod machine’s though. If money isn’t an issue, I’d recommend this machine. Otherwise, I’d suggest looking at other options out there.
D. Lo –
I wanted a good cup of black coffee and hoped trading in my pod coffee maker for this PHILIPS 3200 Series Fully Automatic Espresso Machine would do the trick. I read the reviews, I compared other machines, and gave this one a try. It did not meet my expectations, but afer a month of use, I’m going to keep it.Cons:*Small water tank (I drink a lot of coffee, so I usually have to fill it at least once a day)*Water not hot enough (this is a huge issue with my partner who keeps asking how to adjust the temp. I’ve adjusted it to be as hot as it can go, and rest assured, you’ll never scald your tongue)*Buttons are vague at first and can feel overwhelming (after a month of use, they make more sense now)*Noisy (it’s loud but it doesn’t disturb the neigbors or anyone sleeping upstairs)*Bean capacity too small*Once you add beans, you’re stuck with that variety until they’re used up*The machine doesn’t alert you when the bean hopper is empty and whirs and whirs until you figure it out*The milk frother leaves at least an inch of liquid in the containerPros:*The milk frother is awesome! I almost didn’t opt for the LatteGo since I don’t normally have drinks that use milk. What a treat, though, and I definitely recommend splurging on the LatteGo if you’re on the fence*The bypass is a great feature to use preground coffee if you want to make a drink other than with the beans in the hopper*The drink selections are fun to play around with and gives plenty of options*No coffee pods!I really wanted to love this PHILIPS 3200 Series Fully Automatic Espresso Machine. In theory, it was the answer to my “good cup of black coffee” that I wasn’t getting with my pod coffee maker. After a month of use, I’ve achieved that good cup of black coffee and look forward to waking up in the morning to enjoy cup after cup! For the price, though, the cons definitely outweigh the pros. The machine requires a lot of maintenance (adding water, adding beans, emptying the hopper, etc.) and it’s not as user friendly as a pod machine. The coffee is superior to a pod machine’s though. If money isn’t an issue, I’d recommend this machine. Otherwise, I’d suggest looking at other options out there.
Jeffrey LeCureux –
Product was like new just like it said it would be. Very satisfied! I love the product!
Jeffrey LeCureux –
Product was like new just like it said it would be. Very satisfied! I love the product!
EmyEmy –
I’m a huge coffee lover, and I recently purchased the Philips 3200 Series Fully Automatic Espresso Machine. I’ve been using it for a few weeks now, and I’m really impressed with its performance and ease of use.This machine makes delicious coffee drinks, from strong espresso to creamy lattes. The built-in grinder ensures fresh grounds for every cup, and the adjustable settings allow you to customize the strength and flavor to your liking. I was particularly impressed with the quality of the espresso – it’s bold and flavorful, without any bitterness.The Philips 3200 is incredibly user-friendly. The intuitive touchscreen interface makes it easy to select your desired drink and adjust the settings. The machine also does a great job of automatically cleaning itself, which saves me a lot of time and effort.
EmyEmy –
I’m a huge coffee lover, and I recently purchased the Philips 3200 Series Fully Automatic Espresso Machine. I’ve been using it for a few weeks now, and I’m really impressed with its performance and ease of use.This machine makes delicious coffee drinks, from strong espresso to creamy lattes. The built-in grinder ensures fresh grounds for every cup, and the adjustable settings allow you to customize the strength and flavor to your liking. I was particularly impressed with the quality of the espresso – it’s bold and flavorful, without any bitterness.The Philips 3200 is incredibly user-friendly. The intuitive touchscreen interface makes it easy to select your desired drink and adjust the settings. The machine also does a great job of automatically cleaning itself, which saves me a lot of time and effort.
Erin –
I am returning this item because the Latte setting creates way too much milk foam, even more than a cappuccino should have. I have adjusted the settings, and played with adding various amounts of milk, but have yet to create a latte I was happy with. Otherwise, the machine seems well made, easy to use, and does brew a nice espresso. Too bad the main drink setting I planned to use just does not do what I’m looking for from an almost seven hundred dollar machine. I plan to look at the Breville machines which may cost a bit more, but are exceptional quality.
Erin –
I am returning this item because the Latte setting creates way too much milk foam, even more than a cappuccino should have. I have adjusted the settings, and played with adding various amounts of milk, but have yet to create a latte I was happy with. Otherwise, the machine seems well made, easy to use, and does brew a nice espresso. Too bad the main drink setting I planned to use just does not do what I’m looking for from an almost seven hundred dollar machine. I plan to look at the Breville machines which may cost a bit more, but are exceptional quality.
Heli B. –
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We liked this coffee machine but we had permanently problems with the water tank. The most if time the systems shoed us a problem with the tank. We checked the contacts, cleaned this also again and again and the tank was full. But the system shows very often „empty water tank‘. That‘s ultimately the reason why we returned the machine. 🙁
Heli B. –
The media could not be loaded.
We liked this coffee machine but we had permanently problems with the water tank. The most if time the systems shoed us a problem with the tank. We checked the contacts, cleaned this also again and again and the tank was full. But the system shows very often „empty water tank‘. That‘s ultimately the reason why we returned the machine. 🙁
Art JArt J –
At 16 months, unit continues to work dependably again I would say 90% of time. Other 10% implies give it a cleaning and its back in action. Based on another solid month of good service raising from 3 star to 4 star for dependability and use. Coffee taste was always a 4 star review.While the Latte-Go does froth milk decently, we have switched to using this for our milk froth and reserve the Philips to making espresso’s and coffee only. The device shown below really takes frothing to another Starbucks like level and its much less finicky than using the Philips. See my review on this product below. Been using this now for like 7 months. Between these 2 machines very happy with our coffee drinks now.Maestri House Milk Frother, Variable Temp and Froth Thickness Frother and Steamer, 21OZ/600ML Smart Touch Control Milk Warmer, Dishwasher Safe, Memory Function for Latte Cappuccino, Hot ChocolateStripping out some older review content due to space allowances…….————————–14 month update. What a difference a month makes! At 13 I was completely ready to write this machine off. I was exhausted with its constant maintenance and cleaning needs and very iffy results that it would work properly even after that time consuming maintenance. It was 50/50 at best that the machine might work properly. For this entire 14th month, I would say 90% of the time this machine works without any issue. The rest of the time, some basic normal cleaning and light greasing of the o-rings corrects whatever the issue is and it’s off and working again. The only thing I can think of timing wise which fits into this complete turn around in the machines behavior is that I completely disassembled the brew group to its entirety (watch you tube video), deep cleaned and scrubbed each piece and then regreased brew group and o-rings with a new grade of of safe silicone grease (Haynes Silicone Grease, Food Grade Sanitary Lubricant). I was using the Philips brand grease previously. Since then coffee making is a bliss again. I still don’t really believe the turn around, but seeing is believing! Raising my total review back to 3 stars based on latest performance. I need some further protracted good performance history for upgrading its score beyond this. We will see. Leaving earlier review(s) down below for contrast and explanation of previous issues and reviews.———This is my 13 month product review of the Philips EP3241 Latte Go automatic coffee maker.Below all the plus signs down below is my original 1 year review. Between there and here is my 13 month update. Also had to trim some of my previous 1 year review text to fit the 20,000 char posting limit…Taste of coffee from this maker still rates a 4 star review. When the machine *works* its makes a very good cup of joe. The bad new is that it doesn’t always work. In fact, it seems to be taking an increasing amount of work from me to keep this beast going. I like to putz with stuff *to a degree* but I don’t think most buyers will be appreciative of the effort that this thing takes to keep the caffeine fix going. Dropping my overall review from 3 stars to 2 stars because of never ending and increasing maintenance/cleaning overhead. I’ve had the brew group get stuck in the unit twice in this past month. Fixing required another YouTube video search (search for “stuck brew group”) and some significant disassembly to not force break removing the brew group from that stuck position. Its not terribly difficult to do once you learn this latest trick and nothing was broke or broken in the fixing process but its a pain, that simple. Shouldn’t have to put this much effort into getting a cup of coffee every day. In good conscience, I can no longer recommend this unit from an overall operational standpoint. It’s good coffee that hasn’t changed – but the cost in labor is getting to be really irritating. Worst of all I have to admit that my wife’s assessment of this expensive purchase is turning out to be correct, “its a bit of a lemon”. So swallowing a bit of crow along with my joe….not fun, and it was almost $800 bucks+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++This is my first “fully automatic*” coffee machine, all of my other coffee making methods previous to this machine consisted of the following: Stove top and electric peculators, instant coffee, coffee presses, drip coffee makers (very low end to very high end in price), poured over coffee making processes. I have many great memories of really good cups of coffee from all of these methods, but in terms of day in and day out coffee making and consistently getting a really good cup of coffee, I really like this Latte Go machine. The other methods were much more touch and go and fleeting in those really good cups of coffee, this machine is pretty much all of the time.So my grade of this coffee maker in terms of consistently producing a very good cup of coffee is like 4 out 5 stars – in my stage of present coffee snobbery. I think my wife would agree with this grade which regards the aspect of “taste” in this review. I am sure there are better coffee makers out there, like anything there always is, but I’m sure pricing on those machines which might yield those 5 stars is completely outrageous – the cost of this machine was close enough to that for me. I’m very happy with the purchase from this point of view, it makes really good coffee in my opinion.What most of this review will be about though, is where I’m not quite so happy with this machine, with that being its daily maintenance. This is what drives my final product grade down from a 4 to a 3. For this machine to be “fully automatic” it does require a considerable amount of daily “manual” intervention, i.e. cleaning, so one could really argue the fully automatic selling feature of this machine. When it works, it works great, when it doesn’t it just needs cleaning – its just really that simple with this machine. This aspect of this specific machine is where I think many people may find this purchase potentially off putting. If you don’t have an issue with being hands on with this machine from a daily cleaning perspective to get that great cup of coffee, then you will be okay. If you can’t or don’t have the desire for that sort of commitment and willingness to experience this “pain in the butt” factor, then I don’t think then that this machine would be for you. This isn’t your drip coffee maker which your probably used to. My experience with this machine is that it absolutely needs almost daily fussing with in the cleaning department for it to work properly. I am typically willing to make that expenditure in time and effort to achieve that great cup of coffee from this machine. I will be absolutely honest here though, there have been mornings where I have really wanted to punt this machine to the curb. Its at times very frustrating, especially in the early morning when all you want is that first cup of wonderful coffee to drink and to fully wake up, only to find that this machine is having another one of its hiccups…I will bring something up at this point which may be a large influencing factor with my direct experiences with this machine. We make and drink a lot of coffee every day in our house. I drink the non-milk based drinks from this machine, the Americano’s and the regular coffees. My wife drinks the frothed drinks from this machine, the Lattes mostly and sometimes the Cappuccino’s. I probably use the machine a minimum of 7 times a day for my drinks, all of which are doubles, and my wife a minimum of 5 drinks a day. These are minimums, so we use our machine a great deal each day. This may greatly influence the degree of issues and problems we experience and which then revolve around the cleaning aspect of this machine, so please keep this in mind as you read.Cleaning, my reality with the machine. There are basically 2 issues I which I experience with this machine.1) More water going into the drip tray vs the actual coffee drink, than what is desired and normal. This is by far the worst issue with this machine.2) Milk frothing of the machine not working properly.These 2 items above constitute 99.9% of my issues with this machine. Item #1 is fixed by cleaning. Item #2 is fixed by cleaning/using different milk/and messing with the heat settings of the machine.Fixing Issue #1. More water going into drip tray vs the coffee drink than what is desired and normal.Remove the brew group and give it a thorough rinse out in the sink. Wipe out where the brew group sits within the machine with paper toweling to get rid of any grounds and general gunk buildup. My tip here is to use a flashlight (I use a very nerdy led headlamp but excellent for this purpose) and to peer into the cavity where the brew group sits and look for gunk that way. You will be amazed and possibly grossed out by how much gunk collects within that cavity in all of the nooks and crannies. Its black plastic (by design I’m guessing) and very dark in there, so without the light your going to overlook a bunch of gunk. So use the light and give it a good cleaning. It will help resolve issues and improve coffee taste. When I rinse the brew group, I fill the sink with hot soapy water and let the brew group soak in it for a while. After that sitting period , I then agitate the brew group in the water by hand. I like this because it does a general deep cleaning of the brew group and does a good job of removing oils. I have found that just performing general under the faucet rinse outs to be less effective. One mistake I was consistently making, which may have aggravated some of my issues with this machine, is over lubricating it. I was touching up the lubrication of the brew group almost every time I rinsed the brew group out. Your only supposed to do the greasing about every 500 cups, in general. That period of times seems a bit long to me, so I would just say lubricate it when you think it really needs it – bad squeaking noises, the brew group visibly moving a bit hard as you manually exercise it through its full range of motion when you have it removed from the unit for its rinse out, etc. The point is that I was overdoing it. It doesn’t need to be anywhere near the frequency I was performing it at. Possibly because I was over greasing, I at one point had to completely dissemble the brew group because it had reached a point where it was just so gunked up by grease, fine grounds and the combined mixture produced by those two items, where the unit was still moving hard even though I had just performed my deep rinse process on it. Grease and finely ground coffee dust creates a thick sludgy gunky mess in the brew group. No matter how often I rinsed the brew unit out, I was just getting tons of water in the drip tray vs the actual drink. So I found some videos on YouTube which demonstrated a complete disassembly of the brew group unit, just search brew group disassembly for those videos. I disassembled my unit, with the confidence gained from watching those videos, and then gave my brew group a super thorough clean out with a stiff nylon dish brush and a long soaking in a sink filled with hot water and Dawn dish-washing soap. I then re-assembled it after lightly re-greasing the moving parts again. This resolved the issue of over greasing and just having that constant amount of water bypassing the drinks and going into the drip tray. I had to do this once in my 12 months of use about 7 months into my ownership, again most likely self induced rather than a defect in the unit. A bit scary to do as a new replacement brew group is like $80 after just having plunked down $700-$800 for this purchase of this coffee maker in the first place, but totally doable after watching those disassembly several videos from several sources as reference. You will need a Torxs #10 bit, and a small flat bladed screwdriver to act as as pry bar, and a good shot of whiskey for resolve :). Don’t use power tools. The brew group screws, those screw directly into soft plastic and you will strip them out if you don’t tighten the screws by hand and use a gun or something like that. After having done it once, I would call this process no big deal, just time consuming. I could see myself having to perform this process again even despite cutting back o my re-greasing of the brew group. I am hi-lighting this mistake on my part to bring attention to the fact that you can take apart the brew group and recondition it if the need arises. You don’t need to spend $80.Another thing which I just “very recently” ran across in my almost daily battle of too much water into the drip tray is something you want to pay attention to as it greatly reduces the severity and frequency of that irritating issue. If you look at my second attached photo you will see a picture of the water outlet valve which sits inside the cavity where the brew group slides into. Those 2 red O-rings on that water outlet valve, keep a **light** film of grease on those rings (all red O-rings which you see in the unit for that matter). Greasing those O-rings creates a much stronger and easier seal in my unit, which does not dry out over night. Hence I have much less occurrence of water bypassing the drink and ending up in the drip tray. I think this is my top tip to remember! Perform the light greasing of those rings with your finger tip is my suggestion.This leads me to resolving issue number #2. Issues with milk frothing. You will know when you have this problem when you see large air bubbles in your milk froth instead of tiny little ones. The large air bubbles result in less loft and volume of the milk froth and result in flat tasting drinks. It will be very apparent when you experience this issue. The vast majority of the time the solution to this issue is thecleanliness of the Latte-go cup. There is a milk channel in this cup located in the area of the cup where it hooks into the machine where steam comes out and where it ends, where the frothed milk eventually comes out of the cup when you use it. This channel will get clogged with dried up milk enzymes. This occurs when you let milk sit in the Latte-go cup or store milk in the Latte-go cup in the fridge and don’t empty it out and rinse it out quickly under the sink after each use. To fix it, same as the brew group. Fill the sink with hot soapy water and let the cup soak. Agitate the cup by hand in the water after it has soaked and things have softened up. If that doesn’t correct the issue, I resort to making a fake Latte in the machine. Use water in the Latte-go cup instead of milk. Set the machine to use coffee grounds instead of beans, and don’t put any ground coffee into the ground coffee receptacle. Your fooling the machine to make a Latte without any milk or coffee. You just want the water and steam to pass through the Latte-go cup to dislodge those dried up milk enzymes. It this method doesn’t work, I have also made a water and Rinza cleaning agent mixture in the Latte-go cup, again replacing milk in the cup with this mixture, and again no coffee grounds. Run this cleaning agent through a fake Latte process and that should clean out the channel. So same as previous method but also using Rinza cleaning agent along with the water. Rinza is especially made to clean milk enzymes in coffee making equipment, buy it on Amazon.If cleaning the Latte-go cup does not correct you milk froth issues, look to your milk. Our experience with producing milk froth in this machine has always been with whole milk only, we have not tried or used other milks, so I can only say that I have experienced this issue with whole milk, but I’m sure it will apply to other milks perhaps at other degrees. If you are getting large air bubbles in your milk froth and the Latte-go cup channel is clean, then its your milk. BUY NEW MILK. This is the shortcut to prevent just ripping your hair out. Just BUY NEW MILK. I have had 2 instances so far where my frothing issues have been directly caused by milk which I believe was not fresh enough or had some other defect which I could not analyze. Just switching to new milk from another source corrected the issue immediately.I also had one occurrence in the past where I had frothing issues. Cleaning the Latte-go cup did not solve it. I think I tried replacing the milk in the Latte-go cup several times but it may have been from the same carton of milk, I am no longer sure. In that one instance of time, I reduced the coffee maker brewing temperature from its hottest 3 dot setting to its medium 2 dot setting (read the manual), and in that case it corrected the milk frothing issue immediately as well. In hindsight, I think that was most likely also caused by the milk and not the heat setting of the unit overall. Just throwing this out there as something which I did run across, but while the heat setting corrected the issue, I think now looking back with further experience, that the issue was really just the milk. I think reducing the temperature just sort of put a chemical reaction sort of band aid on some milk which just possibly wasn’t fresh enough – that’s my guess.Just very recently had another frothing issue, large air bubbles. We had bought 2 half gallon cartons of whole organic milk with exact same expiration date at exact same time at exact same store, Aldies, which is where we buy 90% of our milk – all of the time. For whatever reason, the one half gallon was causing us frothing issues with large air bubbles. Switching to the second half gallon immediately cleared up the issue. Visually, I could see no difference between the 2 milks. So good example of just trying different milk instead of going to other cleaning extremes to try to correct the frothing issue.Descaling the coffee maker. I don’t know if I am correct here and/or potentially harming my machine or not but here goes. About once a month, I deep clean my entire machine using Rinza agent and water instead of buying a Philips specific descaling solution. I have done this for 11 months now. I own the Rinza cleaning agent, I don’t own the Philips descaling solution, so I am making use of what I have which is cheaper and on hand. I remove the water filter from the water tank. I fill the tank with a solution made up of 3 ounces of Rinza agent to remaining parts of cold water. The tank is filled with this solution. I then make several styles of drink using the machine and this solution without its water filter. I select ground coffee and like with the Latte-go cleaning process, I simply neglect to put ground coffee into the unit tricking the coffee maker to make a drink without actually using coffee. I make drinks using this method until all of the solution is used up. Both frothy and non-frothy drinks. Then I rinse out the water container in the unit and just refill it with 100% water as usual, still with no filter in place. And I run that through the coffee maker, again making a wide variety of drinks minus the coffee. This rinses all traces of the Rinza solution out of the machine. I then replace the water filter back into the tank and I’m back in normal coffee making business. So far this has worked very well for me, no issues. Try this or not for yourself, just putting it out.Final words of advice. Search you-tube for videos relating to brew group cleaning and maintenance. Much better and informative then the official Philips product videos.
Art JArt J –
At 16 months, unit continues to work dependably again I would say 90% of time. Other 10% implies give it a cleaning and its back in action. Based on another solid month of good service raising from 3 star to 4 star for dependability and use. Coffee taste was always a 4 star review.While the Latte-Go does froth milk decently, we have switched to using this for our milk froth and reserve the Philips to making espresso’s and coffee only. The device shown below really takes frothing to another Starbucks like level and its much less finicky than using the Philips. See my review on this product below. Been using this now for like 7 months. Between these 2 machines very happy with our coffee drinks now.Maestri House Milk Frother, Variable Temp and Froth Thickness Frother and Steamer, 21OZ/600ML Smart Touch Control Milk Warmer, Dishwasher Safe, Memory Function for Latte Cappuccino, Hot ChocolateStripping out some older review content due to space allowances…….————————–14 month update. What a difference a month makes! At 13 I was completely ready to write this machine off. I was exhausted with its constant maintenance and cleaning needs and very iffy results that it would work properly even after that time consuming maintenance. It was 50/50 at best that the machine might work properly. For this entire 14th month, I would say 90% of the time this machine works without any issue. The rest of the time, some basic normal cleaning and light greasing of the o-rings corrects whatever the issue is and it’s off and working again. The only thing I can think of timing wise which fits into this complete turn around in the machines behavior is that I completely disassembled the brew group to its entirety (watch you tube video), deep cleaned and scrubbed each piece and then regreased brew group and o-rings with a new grade of of safe silicone grease (Haynes Silicone Grease, Food Grade Sanitary Lubricant). I was using the Philips brand grease previously. Since then coffee making is a bliss again. I still don’t really believe the turn around, but seeing is believing! Raising my total review back to 3 stars based on latest performance. I need some further protracted good performance history for upgrading its score beyond this. We will see. Leaving earlier review(s) down below for contrast and explanation of previous issues and reviews.———This is my 13 month product review of the Philips EP3241 Latte Go automatic coffee maker.Below all the plus signs down below is my original 1 year review. Between there and here is my 13 month update. Also had to trim some of my previous 1 year review text to fit the 20,000 char posting limit…Taste of coffee from this maker still rates a 4 star review. When the machine *works* its makes a very good cup of joe. The bad new is that it doesn’t always work. In fact, it seems to be taking an increasing amount of work from me to keep this beast going. I like to putz with stuff *to a degree* but I don’t think most buyers will be appreciative of the effort that this thing takes to keep the caffeine fix going. Dropping my overall review from 3 stars to 2 stars because of never ending and increasing maintenance/cleaning overhead. I’ve had the brew group get stuck in the unit twice in this past month. Fixing required another YouTube video search (search for “stuck brew group”) and some significant disassembly to not force break removing the brew group from that stuck position. Its not terribly difficult to do once you learn this latest trick and nothing was broke or broken in the fixing process but its a pain, that simple. Shouldn’t have to put this much effort into getting a cup of coffee every day. In good conscience, I can no longer recommend this unit from an overall operational standpoint. It’s good coffee that hasn’t changed – but the cost in labor is getting to be really irritating. Worst of all I have to admit that my wife’s assessment of this expensive purchase is turning out to be correct, “its a bit of a lemon”. So swallowing a bit of crow along with my joe….not fun, and it was almost $800 bucks+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++This is my first “fully automatic*” coffee machine, all of my other coffee making methods previous to this machine consisted of the following: Stove top and electric peculators, instant coffee, coffee presses, drip coffee makers (very low end to very high end in price), poured over coffee making processes. I have many great memories of really good cups of coffee from all of these methods, but in terms of day in and day out coffee making and consistently getting a really good cup of coffee, I really like this Latte Go machine. The other methods were much more touch and go and fleeting in those really good cups of coffee, this machine is pretty much all of the time.So my grade of this coffee maker in terms of consistently producing a very good cup of coffee is like 4 out 5 stars – in my stage of present coffee snobbery. I think my wife would agree with this grade which regards the aspect of “taste” in this review. I am sure there are better coffee makers out there, like anything there always is, but I’m sure pricing on those machines which might yield those 5 stars is completely outrageous – the cost of this machine was close enough to that for me. I’m very happy with the purchase from this point of view, it makes really good coffee in my opinion.What most of this review will be about though, is where I’m not quite so happy with this machine, with that being its daily maintenance. This is what drives my final product grade down from a 4 to a 3. For this machine to be “fully automatic” it does require a considerable amount of daily “manual” intervention, i.e. cleaning, so one could really argue the fully automatic selling feature of this machine. When it works, it works great, when it doesn’t it just needs cleaning – its just really that simple with this machine. This aspect of this specific machine is where I think many people may find this purchase potentially off putting. If you don’t have an issue with being hands on with this machine from a daily cleaning perspective to get that great cup of coffee, then you will be okay. If you can’t or don’t have the desire for that sort of commitment and willingness to experience this “pain in the butt” factor, then I don’t think then that this machine would be for you. This isn’t your drip coffee maker which your probably used to. My experience with this machine is that it absolutely needs almost daily fussing with in the cleaning department for it to work properly. I am typically willing to make that expenditure in time and effort to achieve that great cup of coffee from this machine. I will be absolutely honest here though, there have been mornings where I have really wanted to punt this machine to the curb. Its at times very frustrating, especially in the early morning when all you want is that first cup of wonderful coffee to drink and to fully wake up, only to find that this machine is having another one of its hiccups…I will bring something up at this point which may be a large influencing factor with my direct experiences with this machine. We make and drink a lot of coffee every day in our house. I drink the non-milk based drinks from this machine, the Americano’s and the regular coffees. My wife drinks the frothed drinks from this machine, the Lattes mostly and sometimes the Cappuccino’s. I probably use the machine a minimum of 7 times a day for my drinks, all of which are doubles, and my wife a minimum of 5 drinks a day. These are minimums, so we use our machine a great deal each day. This may greatly influence the degree of issues and problems we experience and which then revolve around the cleaning aspect of this machine, so please keep this in mind as you read.Cleaning, my reality with the machine. There are basically 2 issues I which I experience with this machine.1) More water going into the drip tray vs the actual coffee drink, than what is desired and normal. This is by far the worst issue with this machine.2) Milk frothing of the machine not working properly.These 2 items above constitute 99.9% of my issues with this machine. Item #1 is fixed by cleaning. Item #2 is fixed by cleaning/using different milk/and messing with the heat settings of the machine.Fixing Issue #1. More water going into drip tray vs the coffee drink than what is desired and normal.Remove the brew group and give it a thorough rinse out in the sink. Wipe out where the brew group sits within the machine with paper toweling to get rid of any grounds and general gunk buildup. My tip here is to use a flashlight (I use a very nerdy led headlamp but excellent for this purpose) and to peer into the cavity where the brew group sits and look for gunk that way. You will be amazed and possibly grossed out by how much gunk collects within that cavity in all of the nooks and crannies. Its black plastic (by design I’m guessing) and very dark in there, so without the light your going to overlook a bunch of gunk. So use the light and give it a good cleaning. It will help resolve issues and improve coffee taste. When I rinse the brew group, I fill the sink with hot soapy water and let the brew group soak in it for a while. After that sitting period , I then agitate the brew group in the water by hand. I like this because it does a general deep cleaning of the brew group and does a good job of removing oils. I have found that just performing general under the faucet rinse outs to be less effective. One mistake I was consistently making, which may have aggravated some of my issues with this machine, is over lubricating it. I was touching up the lubrication of the brew group almost every time I rinsed the brew group out. Your only supposed to do the greasing about every 500 cups, in general. That period of times seems a bit long to me, so I would just say lubricate it when you think it really needs it – bad squeaking noises, the brew group visibly moving a bit hard as you manually exercise it through its full range of motion when you have it removed from the unit for its rinse out, etc. The point is that I was overdoing it. It doesn’t need to be anywhere near the frequency I was performing it at. Possibly because I was over greasing, I at one point had to completely dissemble the brew group because it had reached a point where it was just so gunked up by grease, fine grounds and the combined mixture produced by those two items, where the unit was still moving hard even though I had just performed my deep rinse process on it. Grease and finely ground coffee dust creates a thick sludgy gunky mess in the brew group. No matter how often I rinsed the brew unit out, I was just getting tons of water in the drip tray vs the actual drink. So I found some videos on YouTube which demonstrated a complete disassembly of the brew group unit, just search brew group disassembly for those videos. I disassembled my unit, with the confidence gained from watching those videos, and then gave my brew group a super thorough clean out with a stiff nylon dish brush and a long soaking in a sink filled with hot water and Dawn dish-washing soap. I then re-assembled it after lightly re-greasing the moving parts again. This resolved the issue of over greasing and just having that constant amount of water bypassing the drinks and going into the drip tray. I had to do this once in my 12 months of use about 7 months into my ownership, again most likely self induced rather than a defect in the unit. A bit scary to do as a new replacement brew group is like $80 after just having plunked down $700-$800 for this purchase of this coffee maker in the first place, but totally doable after watching those disassembly several videos from several sources as reference. You will need a Torxs #10 bit, and a small flat bladed screwdriver to act as as pry bar, and a good shot of whiskey for resolve :). Don’t use power tools. The brew group screws, those screw directly into soft plastic and you will strip them out if you don’t tighten the screws by hand and use a gun or something like that. After having done it once, I would call this process no big deal, just time consuming. I could see myself having to perform this process again even despite cutting back o my re-greasing of the brew group. I am hi-lighting this mistake on my part to bring attention to the fact that you can take apart the brew group and recondition it if the need arises. You don’t need to spend $80.Another thing which I just “very recently” ran across in my almost daily battle of too much water into the drip tray is something you want to pay attention to as it greatly reduces the severity and frequency of that irritating issue. If you look at my second attached photo you will see a picture of the water outlet valve which sits inside the cavity where the brew group slides into. Those 2 red O-rings on that water outlet valve, keep a **light** film of grease on those rings (all red O-rings which you see in the unit for that matter). Greasing those O-rings creates a much stronger and easier seal in my unit, which does not dry out over night. Hence I have much less occurrence of water bypassing the drink and ending up in the drip tray. I think this is my top tip to remember! Perform the light greasing of those rings with your finger tip is my suggestion.This leads me to resolving issue number #2. Issues with milk frothing. You will know when you have this problem when you see large air bubbles in your milk froth instead of tiny little ones. The large air bubbles result in less loft and volume of the milk froth and result in flat tasting drinks. It will be very apparent when you experience this issue. The vast majority of the time the solution to this issue is thecleanliness of the Latte-go cup. There is a milk channel in this cup located in the area of the cup where it hooks into the machine where steam comes out and where it ends, where the frothed milk eventually comes out of the cup when you use it. This channel will get clogged with dried up milk enzymes. This occurs when you let milk sit in the Latte-go cup or store milk in the Latte-go cup in the fridge and don’t empty it out and rinse it out quickly under the sink after each use. To fix it, same as the brew group. Fill the sink with hot soapy water and let the cup soak. Agitate the cup by hand in the water after it has soaked and things have softened up. If that doesn’t correct the issue, I resort to making a fake Latte in the machine. Use water in the Latte-go cup instead of milk. Set the machine to use coffee grounds instead of beans, and don’t put any ground coffee into the ground coffee receptacle. Your fooling the machine to make a Latte without any milk or coffee. You just want the water and steam to pass through the Latte-go cup to dislodge those dried up milk enzymes. It this method doesn’t work, I have also made a water and Rinza cleaning agent mixture in the Latte-go cup, again replacing milk in the cup with this mixture, and again no coffee grounds. Run this cleaning agent through a fake Latte process and that should clean out the channel. So same as previous method but also using Rinza cleaning agent along with the water. Rinza is especially made to clean milk enzymes in coffee making equipment, buy it on Amazon.If cleaning the Latte-go cup does not correct you milk froth issues, look to your milk. Our experience with producing milk froth in this machine has always been with whole milk only, we have not tried or used other milks, so I can only say that I have experienced this issue with whole milk, but I’m sure it will apply to other milks perhaps at other degrees. If you are getting large air bubbles in your milk froth and the Latte-go cup channel is clean, then its your milk. BUY NEW MILK. This is the shortcut to prevent just ripping your hair out. Just BUY NEW MILK. I have had 2 instances so far where my frothing issues have been directly caused by milk which I believe was not fresh enough or had some other defect which I could not analyze. Just switching to new milk from another source corrected the issue immediately.I also had one occurrence in the past where I had frothing issues. Cleaning the Latte-go cup did not solve it. I think I tried replacing the milk in the Latte-go cup several times but it may have been from the same carton of milk, I am no longer sure. In that one instance of time, I reduced the coffee maker brewing temperature from its hottest 3 dot setting to its medium 2 dot setting (read the manual), and in that case it corrected the milk frothing issue immediately as well. In hindsight, I think that was most likely also caused by the milk and not the heat setting of the unit overall. Just throwing this out there as something which I did run across, but while the heat setting corrected the issue, I think now looking back with further experience, that the issue was really just the milk. I think reducing the temperature just sort of put a chemical reaction sort of band aid on some milk which just possibly wasn’t fresh enough – that’s my guess.Just very recently had another frothing issue, large air bubbles. We had bought 2 half gallon cartons of whole organic milk with exact same expiration date at exact same time at exact same store, Aldies, which is where we buy 90% of our milk – all of the time. For whatever reason, the one half gallon was causing us frothing issues with large air bubbles. Switching to the second half gallon immediately cleared up the issue. Visually, I could see no difference between the 2 milks. So good example of just trying different milk instead of going to other cleaning extremes to try to correct the frothing issue.Descaling the coffee maker. I don’t know if I am correct here and/or potentially harming my machine or not but here goes. About once a month, I deep clean my entire machine using Rinza agent and water instead of buying a Philips specific descaling solution. I have done this for 11 months now. I own the Rinza cleaning agent, I don’t own the Philips descaling solution, so I am making use of what I have which is cheaper and on hand. I remove the water filter from the water tank. I fill the tank with a solution made up of 3 ounces of Rinza agent to remaining parts of cold water. The tank is filled with this solution. I then make several styles of drink using the machine and this solution without its water filter. I select ground coffee and like with the Latte-go cleaning process, I simply neglect to put ground coffee into the unit tricking the coffee maker to make a drink without actually using coffee. I make drinks using this method until all of the solution is used up. Both frothy and non-frothy drinks. Then I rinse out the water container in the unit and just refill it with 100% water as usual, still with no filter in place. And I run that through the coffee maker, again making a wide variety of drinks minus the coffee. This rinses all traces of the Rinza solution out of the machine. I then replace the water filter back into the tank and I’m back in normal coffee making business. So far this has worked very well for me, no issues. Try this or not for yourself, just putting it out.Final words of advice. Search you-tube for videos relating to brew group cleaning and maintenance. Much better and informative then the official Philips product videos.
ChardoChardo –
UPDATE – January 2023:I’ve had the machine for well over 6 months now and can make a few additional observations, plus clear up some misconceptions from other reviews.Coffee Strength – it call comes down to what you are used to. I’ve read 1-star reviews from those who say it is too strong, and others that say it is too weak. In comparison to a K-cup, it is much stronger. In comparison to a traditional espresso machine, it is much weaker.Coffee Grind – I highly recommend a 3-4 grind setting (or finer). I would not wait 30-days before changing the grinder setting (that’s crazy in my mind)Coffee Choice – do NOT use oily beans. Highly recommend fresh medium roast beans. It is also an Espresso machine, not a coffee machine, so don’t expect the ability to choose different coffees (like a k-cup) or to make 16-oz coffees. You technically could, but you’d need to make 2-4 coffees to get that level of volume.Now to be fair, while it is super convenient, it is not going to give a quality of espresso similar to a semi-automatic or manual machine. It will likely be much more consistent, but consistently ‘average’ vs. what you can get from a machine like a Breville Barista Touch/Pro/Express (or other semi-automatic). Ideally, you get a 2:1 ratio of coffee in about 25-35 seconds. That is, 18g of ground coffee should yield 36g of espresso in 25-35 seconds on my Breville. On the Philips, it’s 10-14g of ground coffee yielding 30-40g of coffee in about 15 seconds. Clearly, that will result in a less than ideal espresso. I wish there was a way to slow down the extraction like some superautomatics.Reliability – no issues so far. Simple weekly cleaning (rinsing and lubrication of the brew group) per the instructions is all that is needed.————-I’ve wanted a good espresso machine for a long time and I have experimented with many before this Philips 3200 (and then later traded in to get a 5400 with more features including ability to make double shots for all drinks).First, I tried the manual – definitely cheaper, but also more of a hassle with lots of bad shots, some great shots and a bit of mess each time. Not for me.I also tried Nespresso and for work, it does a great job as there is no clean up (provided you are not using the milk frother). But it is not cheap – machines are $300-$700 (or more) and the coffee is 70-85-cents each, meaning a double shot latte is pushing $2+ milk, which can add up over time.So – I looked into fully automatic machines and for the longest time I have wanted one, but they are VERY pricey (many are $2k+) and also require extensive maintenance / cleaning.I mean, Jura, which makes some great machines, suggests that after each milk drink, you run a rinse & cleaning cycle. This is a bit excessive, but certainly at least once a day you need to do it and it involves getting a tablet, some water, running the hose through the solution… no thank you.This Philips is a game changer in that regard. The milk jug is stand-alone meaning there is no ‘hose’ that the milk runs through, and it doesn’t go into the machine at all. It is all managed via the frothing jug, which comes apart in two (well, three parts including the lid) making it super easy to rinse off. That’s it.In terms of making good coffee, I followed some videos online that suggested adjusting the grind right away to 3 or 4 and it made a world of difference. Immediately the pucks became much less soupy and more solid.In terms of the touch screen, it is pretty basic, but in all honesty, for what you are wanting to make, it does a great job. You can customize the espresso strength, ml, and shots and also adjust how much milk you want.I can’t speak to longevity yet, but so far, it is doing great and I’m loving this machine more than I even thought I would.
ChardoChardo –
UPDATE – January 2023:I’ve had the machine for well over 6 months now and can make a few additional observations, plus clear up some misconceptions from other reviews.Coffee Strength – it call comes down to what you are used to. I’ve read 1-star reviews from those who say it is too strong, and others that say it is too weak. In comparison to a K-cup, it is much stronger. In comparison to a traditional espresso machine, it is much weaker.Coffee Grind – I highly recommend a 3-4 grind setting (or finer). I would not wait 30-days before changing the grinder setting (that’s crazy in my mind)Coffee Choice – do NOT use oily beans. Highly recommend fresh medium roast beans. It is also an Espresso machine, not a coffee machine, so don’t expect the ability to choose different coffees (like a k-cup) or to make 16-oz coffees. You technically could, but you’d need to make 2-4 coffees to get that level of volume.Now to be fair, while it is super convenient, it is not going to give a quality of espresso similar to a semi-automatic or manual machine. It will likely be much more consistent, but consistently ‘average’ vs. what you can get from a machine like a Breville Barista Touch/Pro/Express (or other semi-automatic). Ideally, you get a 2:1 ratio of coffee in about 25-35 seconds. That is, 18g of ground coffee should yield 36g of espresso in 25-35 seconds on my Breville. On the Philips, it’s 10-14g of ground coffee yielding 30-40g of coffee in about 15 seconds. Clearly, that will result in a less than ideal espresso. I wish there was a way to slow down the extraction like some superautomatics.Reliability – no issues so far. Simple weekly cleaning (rinsing and lubrication of the brew group) per the instructions is all that is needed.————-I’ve wanted a good espresso machine for a long time and I have experimented with many before this Philips 3200 (and then later traded in to get a 5400 with more features including ability to make double shots for all drinks).First, I tried the manual – definitely cheaper, but also more of a hassle with lots of bad shots, some great shots and a bit of mess each time. Not for me.I also tried Nespresso and for work, it does a great job as there is no clean up (provided you are not using the milk frother). But it is not cheap – machines are $300-$700 (or more) and the coffee is 70-85-cents each, meaning a double shot latte is pushing $2+ milk, which can add up over time.So – I looked into fully automatic machines and for the longest time I have wanted one, but they are VERY pricey (many are $2k+) and also require extensive maintenance / cleaning.I mean, Jura, which makes some great machines, suggests that after each milk drink, you run a rinse & cleaning cycle. This is a bit excessive, but certainly at least once a day you need to do it and it involves getting a tablet, some water, running the hose through the solution… no thank you.This Philips is a game changer in that regard. The milk jug is stand-alone meaning there is no ‘hose’ that the milk runs through, and it doesn’t go into the machine at all. It is all managed via the frothing jug, which comes apart in two (well, three parts including the lid) making it super easy to rinse off. That’s it.In terms of making good coffee, I followed some videos online that suggested adjusting the grind right away to 3 or 4 and it made a world of difference. Immediately the pucks became much less soupy and more solid.In terms of the touch screen, it is pretty basic, but in all honesty, for what you are wanting to make, it does a great job. You can customize the espresso strength, ml, and shots and also adjust how much milk you want.I can’t speak to longevity yet, but so far, it is doing great and I’m loving this machine more than I even thought I would.
Dan Ibeling –
I’ve had this machine now for 5 weeks, and am very impressed. First order of business: read the manual! A few settings (e.g temperature) are only alterable with the machine off, following specific instructions. And CLEAN THE BREW UNIT. A few recent negative reviews are the results of the owners neglecting to provide routine cleaning. A few tips:-The first few espresso shots will be watery disasters. This is expected.-I set the grind setting to 4 and have left it there. You can only move the grind setting while the machine is grinding.-Always rinse the glass with hot water prior to making a drink. The machine heats up very quickly (less than1 minute) and produces hot water near 180 degrees. After another 15 minutes, that will be closer to 190. However, pouring an espresso into a cold glass, you’ll see temperatures drop to ~130.-Pre-ground coffee doesn’t work as well, with weaker coffee. Stick to whole beans-The amounts dispensed for the “coffee” setting is 4, 6, 8 ounces. The max strength, 4 ounce coffee is my personal favorite.-Keep an eye out for Amazon Warehouse deals. I purchased this for a significant savings via Amazon Warehouse, and the unit appeared to be new with no signs of prior use.-Register the product on Philips. I was offered a free extended warranty. Haven’t had the need to use it, however.All in all, go for it!
Dan Ibeling –
I’ve had this machine now for 5 weeks, and am very impressed. First order of business: read the manual! A few settings (e.g temperature) are only alterable with the machine off, following specific instructions. And CLEAN THE BREW UNIT. A few recent negative reviews are the results of the owners neglecting to provide routine cleaning. A few tips:-The first few espresso shots will be watery disasters. This is expected.-I set the grind setting to 4 and have left it there. You can only move the grind setting while the machine is grinding.-Always rinse the glass with hot water prior to making a drink. The machine heats up very quickly (less than1 minute) and produces hot water near 180 degrees. After another 15 minutes, that will be closer to 190. However, pouring an espresso into a cold glass, you’ll see temperatures drop to ~130.-Pre-ground coffee doesn’t work as well, with weaker coffee. Stick to whole beans-The amounts dispensed for the “coffee” setting is 4, 6, 8 ounces. The max strength, 4 ounce coffee is my personal favorite.-Keep an eye out for Amazon Warehouse deals. I purchased this for a significant savings via Amazon Warehouse, and the unit appeared to be new with no signs of prior use.-Register the product on Philips. I was offered a free extended warranty. Haven’t had the need to use it, however.All in all, go for it!
JLF –
Im a pretty simple guy and was happy with the Ninja coffee maker. I truley try to make my wife happy by buying her what she wants (not working) and she really was convinced that latte and espresso drinking was her new thing. I bought this Phillips device because I read that tbe cleaning was easy (no “tubes” to worry about), had a cermaic coffee grinding head which is durable, a milk frother** that automaticlly integrates the milk foam into the pre-selected coffee drinks that require it and had a fairly small lhysical footprint and a relativley small price tag. I love it. The wife js back to just makibg the standard cup of coffee, which is a pre-select option, but I am a daily lattee fiend with an occasional plain espresso shot. The Ninja had a milk frother but it didnt integrate the froth into the coffee drink like the Phillips one does and the froth wasnt warmed up (unless you warmed the milk on you own). I also love how I/we can broaden the coffee choice by purchasing whole beans and all you do is dump the beans iinto the hopper and your done. The machibe also truley makes espresso correctly by compressing the coffee grounds into a “puck” while pushibg coffee through. Beinf able to make lattes. Americanos and machiatos so easily has made me a daily fan of these drinks.BIGGEST CONS – for this model you cant just froth milk which to me is crazy. The volume of coffee the machine produces for just a normal cup of coffee is small so I have to choose the “two cup” coffee setting and then run it again for a “single” cup. You can easily adjust the volume of eater, intensity of coffee and amount of froth from the preset amounts but the machine should revert back to the preselects after the drink is made. This would make snense because you may make an odd adjustment for many reasons and then forget what the preselects were.Thanks
JLF –
Im a pretty simple guy and was happy with the Ninja coffee maker. I truley try to make my wife happy by buying her what she wants (not working) and she really was convinced that latte and espresso drinking was her new thing. I bought this Phillips device because I read that tbe cleaning was easy (no “tubes” to worry about), had a cermaic coffee grinding head which is durable, a milk frother** that automaticlly integrates the milk foam into the pre-selected coffee drinks that require it and had a fairly small lhysical footprint and a relativley small price tag. I love it. The wife js back to just makibg the standard cup of coffee, which is a pre-select option, but I am a daily lattee fiend with an occasional plain espresso shot. The Ninja had a milk frother but it didnt integrate the froth into the coffee drink like the Phillips one does and the froth wasnt warmed up (unless you warmed the milk on you own). I also love how I/we can broaden the coffee choice by purchasing whole beans and all you do is dump the beans iinto the hopper and your done. The machibe also truley makes espresso correctly by compressing the coffee grounds into a “puck” while pushibg coffee through. Beinf able to make lattes. Americanos and machiatos so easily has made me a daily fan of these drinks.BIGGEST CONS – for this model you cant just froth milk which to me is crazy. The volume of coffee the machine produces for just a normal cup of coffee is small so I have to choose the “two cup” coffee setting and then run it again for a “single” cup. You can easily adjust the volume of eater, intensity of coffee and amount of froth from the preset amounts but the machine should revert back to the preselects after the drink is made. This would make snense because you may make an odd adjustment for many reasons and then forget what the preselects were.Thanks
D. Duong –
Love this machine. Have only had it a few weeks, but we are highly satisfied after replacing our Keurig and Nespresso machines for this one. I’m glad to get out of the pods and using fresh coffee beans. Love the customization and how easy this machine is to maintain. It has self cleaning, which uses up water so you end up having to fill the tank more than you’d think, but that is a fair trade off. Couple points to keep in mind if you are considering this machine: – Your first several cups will be watered down and undrinkable. The pucks will be a soggy mess. Do not get alarmed and rest assured this is just temporary as the machine gets broken in. – I found the coffee a little weak for my liking so I adjusted the grinder to level 4 and it’s much tastier now (perhaps some of that is the machine also dialing in a better cup as it’s still breaking in). – You can program the quantity of the Large size for any of the drinks. – The manual doesn’t tell you the drink sizes, but a couple of the more Helpful reviews tell you the size for every combo (thank you!) – For purists, the milk is always dispensed first. Doesn’t matter to me, but could be a concern for others. – The temperature isn’t very hot, even at the highest setting. This is more of a concern for the milk based drinks. – You can’t make a double of the milk based drinks like you can for espresso/coffee/americano. I end up adding in a single shot of expresso if I need a little extra jolt, which is not a terrible inconvenience, but is an additional step.
D. Duong –
Love this machine. Have only had it a few weeks, but we are highly satisfied after replacing our Keurig and Nespresso machines for this one. I’m glad to get out of the pods and using fresh coffee beans. Love the customization and how easy this machine is to maintain. It has self cleaning, which uses up water so you end up having to fill the tank more than you’d think, but that is a fair trade off. Couple points to keep in mind if you are considering this machine: – Your first several cups will be watered down and undrinkable. The pucks will be a soggy mess. Do not get alarmed and rest assured this is just temporary as the machine gets broken in. – I found the coffee a little weak for my liking so I adjusted the grinder to level 4 and it’s much tastier now (perhaps some of that is the machine also dialing in a better cup as it’s still breaking in). – You can program the quantity of the Large size for any of the drinks. – The manual doesn’t tell you the drink sizes, but a couple of the more Helpful reviews tell you the size for every combo (thank you!) – For purists, the milk is always dispensed first. Doesn’t matter to me, but could be a concern for others. – The temperature isn’t very hot, even at the highest setting. This is more of a concern for the milk based drinks. – You can’t make a double of the milk based drinks like you can for espresso/coffee/americano. I end up adding in a single shot of expresso if I need a little extra jolt, which is not a terrible inconvenience, but is an additional step.
Sunny and Tony –
I purchased the Philips 3200 Lattego with an additional filter as part of Amazon Prime Day, so my review is directly tied to that discounted price.I find that this machine is really worth the money. It makes excellent espresso and latte macchiatos. That is a given, but how does it handle milk alternatives. I feel like there isn’t much comment on this, and I think it is worth discussing.Since realizing, after two decades of pain and suffering, that I am lactose intolerant, I switched from milk products to oat milk. I typically purchase Silk brand’s original oat milk, but I also buy their creamy version, and other brands of oat milk. This machine does a good job of heating and frothing the oat milk, however, because it is quite a bit thicker than milk, it uses less oat milk in the automated process. This doesn’t bother me too much, because I typically use the latte macchiato function twice in a row to fill my coffee mug. Yeah, it is a healthy amount of espresso in the drink, but that can be adjusted. It does work with oat milk, and I prefer it that way. I have not tried it with soy milk, almond milk (might be a good choice given how thin it is), cashew milk, or other milk alternatives.I recently also thought I would try lactose-free Horizon organic milk, and it works as a normal milk product would. It froths a lot more than the oat milk does, so be prepared for a lot of foam. It tastes a lot like an espresso drink you would have at any coffee shop, other than Starbucks. Even using Starbucks espresso beans, it comes out slightly less perfect than they can do, but over significant use, it surely pays for itself and it is still darn delicious.One tip to mention is that when using pre-ground beans, make sure to close the lid after you load in one scoop. Don’t overfill it and don’t load it too early. When wanting to use pre-ground coffee beans, make sure to power up the machine and let it do the cleaning cycle first, before loading in the grounds. My machine doesn’t seem to do the pre-ground stuff as well as I’d like, and it has to do with the process. I am not sure why, but it will sometimes take two or three tries to get the machine to make it correctly, but once it does the first time, you can repeat the process in the same power cycle without issue. Load one scoop of grounds, close the lid, choose the drink, let the machine work. When it is done and you can select a new drink, repeat the process of loading the grounds, closing the lid, then choosing the drink.I’m not entirely sure I would buy this machine at full price, but if you see it on sale, it is a great deal. I think the regular price of this one versus a higher end one from Philips is only $100 or so in difference, and the higher end models, 4300, 5400, etc., offer more options. That can be important for some. On sale, with the milk carafe, it is a bargain and worth it for the first super-automatic espresso machine. I think the price to consider picking it up if money is an issue is the $650 or so price point. Amazon Prime Day’s deal was less than. Highly recommended.Made in RomaniaUPDATE: I have been using this espresso maker for some time now, and I still think it is a great buy, especially on sale. Everything has held up great since purchase. I thought it might be good to leave some additional thoughts. First, the issue when using ground coffee seems to be less so. I have only experienced issues with it twice since my last review. Second, the one new negative thing I have found is that it can be a little noisy when in use. That doesn’t stop me from recommending it, but if you need something super quiet, this might not be the one you want. And finally, don’t forget to clean out the cavity where the used grounds fall out of. I never thought to clean it and one day my wife noticed some mold smell coming from that area and I had to stick my hand in and clean it out as best I could. I use it daily and I clean that part about once a month, and that seems to be good for me, but also note that I live in the dryest region in the United States, so we don’t really have humidity to make the problem worse. That’s all. I still highly recommend it, especially when on sale!
Sunny and Tony –
I purchased the Philips 3200 Lattego with an additional filter as part of Amazon Prime Day, so my review is directly tied to that discounted price.I find that this machine is really worth the money. It makes excellent espresso and latte macchiatos. That is a given, but how does it handle milk alternatives. I feel like there isn’t much comment on this, and I think it is worth discussing.Since realizing, after two decades of pain and suffering, that I am lactose intolerant, I switched from milk products to oat milk. I typically purchase Silk brand’s original oat milk, but I also buy their creamy version, and other brands of oat milk. This machine does a good job of heating and frothing the oat milk, however, because it is quite a bit thicker than milk, it uses less oat milk in the automated process. This doesn’t bother me too much, because I typically use the latte macchiato function twice in a row to fill my coffee mug. Yeah, it is a healthy amount of espresso in the drink, but that can be adjusted. It does work with oat milk, and I prefer it that way. I have not tried it with soy milk, almond milk (might be a good choice given how thin it is), cashew milk, or other milk alternatives.I recently also thought I would try lactose-free Horizon organic milk, and it works as a normal milk product would. It froths a lot more than the oat milk does, so be prepared for a lot of foam. It tastes a lot like an espresso drink you would have at any coffee shop, other than Starbucks. Even using Starbucks espresso beans, it comes out slightly less perfect than they can do, but over significant use, it surely pays for itself and it is still darn delicious.One tip to mention is that when using pre-ground beans, make sure to close the lid after you load in one scoop. Don’t overfill it and don’t load it too early. When wanting to use pre-ground coffee beans, make sure to power up the machine and let it do the cleaning cycle first, before loading in the grounds. My machine doesn’t seem to do the pre-ground stuff as well as I’d like, and it has to do with the process. I am not sure why, but it will sometimes take two or three tries to get the machine to make it correctly, but once it does the first time, you can repeat the process in the same power cycle without issue. Load one scoop of grounds, close the lid, choose the drink, let the machine work. When it is done and you can select a new drink, repeat the process of loading the grounds, closing the lid, then choosing the drink.I’m not entirely sure I would buy this machine at full price, but if you see it on sale, it is a great deal. I think the regular price of this one versus a higher end one from Philips is only $100 or so in difference, and the higher end models, 4300, 5400, etc., offer more options. That can be important for some. On sale, with the milk carafe, it is a bargain and worth it for the first super-automatic espresso machine. I think the price to consider picking it up if money is an issue is the $650 or so price point. Amazon Prime Day’s deal was less than. Highly recommended.Made in RomaniaUPDATE: I have been using this espresso maker for some time now, and I still think it is a great buy, especially on sale. Everything has held up great since purchase. I thought it might be good to leave some additional thoughts. First, the issue when using ground coffee seems to be less so. I have only experienced issues with it twice since my last review. Second, the one new negative thing I have found is that it can be a little noisy when in use. That doesn’t stop me from recommending it, but if you need something super quiet, this might not be the one you want. And finally, don’t forget to clean out the cavity where the used grounds fall out of. I never thought to clean it and one day my wife noticed some mold smell coming from that area and I had to stick my hand in and clean it out as best I could. I use it daily and I clean that part about once a month, and that seems to be good for me, but also note that I live in the dryest region in the United States, so we don’t really have humidity to make the problem worse. That’s all. I still highly recommend it, especially when on sale!
K F. –
I purchased the Espresso machine in May of 2022. I use it multiple times every day. I have had to de-scale it once. I have never had a problem with it. So I can honestly say it is built to last and it is something that I enjoy using every day. I would recommend it in a heartbeat.
K F. –
I purchased the Espresso machine in May of 2022. I use it multiple times every day. I have had to de-scale it once. I have never had a problem with it. So I can honestly say it is built to last and it is something that I enjoy using every day. I would recommend it in a heartbeat.
TL;DR w/Tariq –
TL;DR – One of the easiest to clean machines, great quality coffee, but only get it if you don’t mind microwaving your cup in advance and then drinking your coffee really fast, because it does not come out hot enough.I bought this for an amazing deal on Prime Day, but returned it after 2 weeks. We were finding we could gulp down the cup immediately, as it just wasn’t really hot.So in searching around on the topic, if you go on YouTube and search for “Philips 3200 LatteGo & Iced Coffee Machine Review With a Coffee Expert!” on a channel called “ECS Coffee”, a Phillips representative states temp was a key thing they addressed, and that you should see the following temperatures:Low 90C – 194FMed 93C – 199FHigh 95C – 203FRunning a number of tests and measuring right from the spout, the hottest I saw was 185F. I just thought I got a defective product and wanted to exchange, but Amazon would only offer a return. However I later found that if you search the Amazon Q&A for this product, someone else also measured it at 185F as well.That’s just simply not hot enough for coffee.If it weren’t for that, the product is perfect. When you’re researching super automatics, very rarely will these YouTube reviews go into the cleaning process, which is a MAJOR consideration. What’s amazing about the 3200 LatteGo (and related) is the cleaning is ridiculously easy, when plenty of videos on YouTube with how to do it.If I also heat up my coffee mug to a very hot state, it’s reasonable. But if you’re spending hundreds of dollars on something, heating water is basic, so I expect that to work.
TL;DR w/Tariq –
TL;DR – One of the easiest to clean machines, great quality coffee, but only get it if you don’t mind microwaving your cup in advance and then drinking your coffee really fast, because it does not come out hot enough.I bought this for an amazing deal on Prime Day, but returned it after 2 weeks. We were finding we could gulp down the cup immediately, as it just wasn’t really hot.So in searching around on the topic, if you go on YouTube and search for “Philips 3200 LatteGo & Iced Coffee Machine Review With a Coffee Expert!” on a channel called “ECS Coffee”, a Phillips representative states temp was a key thing they addressed, and that you should see the following temperatures:Low 90C – 194FMed 93C – 199FHigh 95C – 203FRunning a number of tests and measuring right from the spout, the hottest I saw was 185F. I just thought I got a defective product and wanted to exchange, but Amazon would only offer a return. However I later found that if you search the Amazon Q&A for this product, someone else also measured it at 185F as well.That’s just simply not hot enough for coffee.If it weren’t for that, the product is perfect. When you’re researching super automatics, very rarely will these YouTube reviews go into the cleaning process, which is a MAJOR consideration. What’s amazing about the 3200 LatteGo (and related) is the cleaning is ridiculously easy, when plenty of videos on YouTube with how to do it.If I also heat up my coffee mug to a very hot state, it’s reasonable. But if you’re spending hundreds of dollars on something, heating water is basic, so I expect that to work.
David Becker –
My wife and I bought this machine about 2 years ago, and it has held up nicely over time. It’s proven to be a simple, reliable alternative to going out to buy coffees and lattes from coffee shops, which is perfect since we work from home pretty much all the time. We’ve got 3 adults in our house and on average drink 5-6 total cups per day, and we so far haven’t run into any major problems.One issue I had at first was that the coffee wasn’t as strong as I was used to (I tend to like it pretty strong), but it’s still good coffee. You can make drinks stronger by adjusting how fine the grounds are with a little knob in the bean compartment at top, but I didn’t start messing with this until very recently. You can only adjust in small increments while the grinder is active to avoid damaging it.This machine is good for guests who want to make and customize their own individual drinks, though there is a small learning curve for first-time users. Once they know how to use it, they often comment how cool it is, and some have said they’d like to get one too (if it weren’t so expensive).Maintenance is fairly simple: You have to change the water filter every few months, rinse the easily removable “brew group” every week or two, and apply grease to it every couple months. The only problem I had was reinstalling the brew group for the first time (there’s a little yellow switch on the side that needs to be in the right position). There was also one time we didn’t change the water filter while the replacement light was flashing (it gave us plenty of notice; we just procrastinated too much), so we had to buy a special descaling fluid to clean it out before we could use it again.Yes, the machine can get loud, but I haven’t met a coffee grinder or latte maker that was quiet. This machine’s noise level seems pretty standard to me.There are a few little tricks to using and maintaining the machine so that you can get the most out of it, but so do most machines like this. Overall, I’d say it’s very easy to use and makes good drinks. The price is a bit high, and you also have to consider the added costs of buying whole-bean coffee and replacement water filters. But convenience like this often comes at a price, right? I would say it was worth it for us.
David Becker –
My wife and I bought this machine about 2 years ago, and it has held up nicely over time. It’s proven to be a simple, reliable alternative to going out to buy coffees and lattes from coffee shops, which is perfect since we work from home pretty much all the time. We’ve got 3 adults in our house and on average drink 5-6 total cups per day, and we so far haven’t run into any major problems.One issue I had at first was that the coffee wasn’t as strong as I was used to (I tend to like it pretty strong), but it’s still good coffee. You can make drinks stronger by adjusting how fine the grounds are with a little knob in the bean compartment at top, but I didn’t start messing with this until very recently. You can only adjust in small increments while the grinder is active to avoid damaging it.This machine is good for guests who want to make and customize their own individual drinks, though there is a small learning curve for first-time users. Once they know how to use it, they often comment how cool it is, and some have said they’d like to get one too (if it weren’t so expensive).Maintenance is fairly simple: You have to change the water filter every few months, rinse the easily removable “brew group” every week or two, and apply grease to it every couple months. The only problem I had was reinstalling the brew group for the first time (there’s a little yellow switch on the side that needs to be in the right position). There was also one time we didn’t change the water filter while the replacement light was flashing (it gave us plenty of notice; we just procrastinated too much), so we had to buy a special descaling fluid to clean it out before we could use it again.Yes, the machine can get loud, but I haven’t met a coffee grinder or latte maker that was quiet. This machine’s noise level seems pretty standard to me.There are a few little tricks to using and maintaining the machine so that you can get the most out of it, but so do most machines like this. Overall, I’d say it’s very easy to use and makes good drinks. The price is a bit high, and you also have to consider the added costs of buying whole-bean coffee and replacement water filters. But convenience like this often comes at a price, right? I would say it was worth it for us.
Hoarder –
Purchased this as a big splurge for our household for Christmas (randomly happened upon it being 30% off sometime in November so I added the 4 year warranty onto it and still saved a ton!). Purchased the Latte Go version (w/Americano setting). Packing was clever and nothing was missing or broken. It looks gorgeous on the counter. We replaced 2 machines with it and it saves so much space. We’ve been playing around with it for a few weeks. We have used every setting so far, w/ground beans and whole beans. Some things that I have noticed.-Right out of the gate we adjusted to the max temp. It’s not lava hot like we usually prefer but it’s def hotter than the standard initial setting.-We were having trouble getting the right grind size so we actually went into W-S store and asked an associate to demo their machine for us. The coffee they brewed was perfect, so they let me take the top off and take a pic of their grind setting so I could replicate it at home. The little indicator that shows you which grind size you have selected is a little nub on the inside wall of the area where the beans go, and the dial next to the little nub has settings 1 – 12. Their setting was 6. I changed ours and everything has been great since. I don’t know if this is how it comes out of the box since I had already changed ours. (Note, you’re not supposed to adjust it unless it’s actively grinding, according to the book, and you have to press down and turn. I didn’t know this and got a few extra clicks out of mine prob when I shouldn’t have attempted. Thought I broke it tbh but it’s been working fine. Just be careful!)-Def invest in good beans. We’ve tried light, med, and dark espresso roast whole beans. We love flavored coffee but light brew flavored whole bean coffees just don’t have much flavor at all when brewed out of this machine. The taste is improved w/flavored pre-ground beans in the bypass chute for some reason. W-S recommended Illy whole bean Classico medium roast, so we got a can (readily avail at groceries, Target, etc) and we are really enjoying it (we are solid black coffee drinkers but these med roast beans w/flavored frothed creamer on top is such a nice treat). I think what we may do is keep these Illy beans in the top and by our normal flavored pre-ground stuff to use in the bypass chut.-Speaking of ground beans, the bypass has been really hit or miss for me but it seems to work most of the time by loading the grounds in BEFORE pressing any setting buttons at all. The scoop size is perfect, you don’t need to overfill it or pour more in or they will just be wasted down in the beans collection bin. Keep the little door flap open to help the chute dry out, steam does get in there when you brew and the grounds can stick inside.-(Also something that I found interesting. We were using a reusable k-cup in our old Keurig and I used the Philips scoop and filled it to compare the ground beans amount. One scoop filled the reusable k-cup to the top. So I find it interesting that I could brew a whole 16oz cup of coffee with the same amount of grounds in the keurig but in this machine anything over 6 is like water….? Prob has to do w/the pressure or something but i’m no coffee-scientist so we’ll move on. lol)-The beans collection bin, yes it will always have some water in it. Our pucks started to be formed more solidly after week 2, but water will get in there anyway because of the rinse cycle. The empty light will turn on after a certain number of brews, not when it’s actually full. And since it’s not actually full you don’t really have to empty it, you can just pull the drawer out all the way and push it back in again and the light will reset.-We were able to adjust the Espresso 1x setting to 2 oz without losing any flavor.-Coffee 1x setting is preset to brew 6 oz. I tried to increase it and it maxed out at 8 oz but the coffee was basically cloudy water. Bumped it back down to 6 oz. We’ve given up on trying to increase the fluid volume on any other types of brews because it seems that where it is preset at max gives the best flavor. Just keep re-pressing the brews until your cup is as full as you want.-Max cup height that will fit on the tray is 6 1/4″. (We have 2 stainless tumblers that fit perfectly and hold 16 oz, we just brew multiple times to fill them as high as we want).-Latte go is great when I figured out the higher you fill it up, the thicker/frothier the product gets. I like a super thick whip but initially was trying not to waste milk so I was only filling it to the bottom line. It was just coming out steamed and was splattering everywhere. We’ve frothed organic 2% milk and Chobani dairy flavored creamer (whole strength and cut with half 2% milk, if that makes sense) and both work great.-Hot water is dispensed from the little nub where the Latte Go attaches, and it seems to dispense about 10 oz (altho I haven’t measured specifically). I drink hot lemon water every am and it comes out piping hot. I love that it’s pure clean water too and doesn’t have coffee residue in it like it did coming out of the keurig.-The unit cleans itself every time it turns off and every time you turn it on. Not much water comes out each time but we like to keep a cup underneath so we don’t have to empty the tray as often.-I have been cleaning the machine weekly, by pulling the whole brew group out and rinsing it under water but what i’m surprised the most by is how much grounds is still everywhere inside the machine (prob from my failed attempts at using the ground coffee bypass chute lol) I really have to get in there and try to get all of the grounds out which is a pain. There are so many little crevices that the grounds find to hide in. I wish the unit would have come w/a little brush to help swipe them out.Overall, we are pleased! It’s def more work than we expected to get the beverages where we want them but I expected that. It’s so fun to have the variety and save the counter space. I will update my review as I notice more things or if any issues arise but so far we really love it!
Hoarder –
Purchased this as a big splurge for our household for Christmas (randomly happened upon it being 30% off sometime in November so I added the 4 year warranty onto it and still saved a ton!). Purchased the Latte Go version (w/Americano setting). Packing was clever and nothing was missing or broken. It looks gorgeous on the counter. We replaced 2 machines with it and it saves so much space. We’ve been playing around with it for a few weeks. We have used every setting so far, w/ground beans and whole beans. Some things that I have noticed.-Right out of the gate we adjusted to the max temp. It’s not lava hot like we usually prefer but it’s def hotter than the standard initial setting.-We were having trouble getting the right grind size so we actually went into W-S store and asked an associate to demo their machine for us. The coffee they brewed was perfect, so they let me take the top off and take a pic of their grind setting so I could replicate it at home. The little indicator that shows you which grind size you have selected is a little nub on the inside wall of the area where the beans go, and the dial next to the little nub has settings 1 – 12. Their setting was 6. I changed ours and everything has been great since. I don’t know if this is how it comes out of the box since I had already changed ours. (Note, you’re not supposed to adjust it unless it’s actively grinding, according to the book, and you have to press down and turn. I didn’t know this and got a few extra clicks out of mine prob when I shouldn’t have attempted. Thought I broke it tbh but it’s been working fine. Just be careful!)-Def invest in good beans. We’ve tried light, med, and dark espresso roast whole beans. We love flavored coffee but light brew flavored whole bean coffees just don’t have much flavor at all when brewed out of this machine. The taste is improved w/flavored pre-ground beans in the bypass chute for some reason. W-S recommended Illy whole bean Classico medium roast, so we got a can (readily avail at groceries, Target, etc) and we are really enjoying it (we are solid black coffee drinkers but these med roast beans w/flavored frothed creamer on top is such a nice treat). I think what we may do is keep these Illy beans in the top and by our normal flavored pre-ground stuff to use in the bypass chut.-Speaking of ground beans, the bypass has been really hit or miss for me but it seems to work most of the time by loading the grounds in BEFORE pressing any setting buttons at all. The scoop size is perfect, you don’t need to overfill it or pour more in or they will just be wasted down in the beans collection bin. Keep the little door flap open to help the chute dry out, steam does get in there when you brew and the grounds can stick inside.-(Also something that I found interesting. We were using a reusable k-cup in our old Keurig and I used the Philips scoop and filled it to compare the ground beans amount. One scoop filled the reusable k-cup to the top. So I find it interesting that I could brew a whole 16oz cup of coffee with the same amount of grounds in the keurig but in this machine anything over 6 is like water….? Prob has to do w/the pressure or something but i’m no coffee-scientist so we’ll move on. lol)-The beans collection bin, yes it will always have some water in it. Our pucks started to be formed more solidly after week 2, but water will get in there anyway because of the rinse cycle. The empty light will turn on after a certain number of brews, not when it’s actually full. And since it’s not actually full you don’t really have to empty it, you can just pull the drawer out all the way and push it back in again and the light will reset.-We were able to adjust the Espresso 1x setting to 2 oz without losing any flavor.-Coffee 1x setting is preset to brew 6 oz. I tried to increase it and it maxed out at 8 oz but the coffee was basically cloudy water. Bumped it back down to 6 oz. We’ve given up on trying to increase the fluid volume on any other types of brews because it seems that where it is preset at max gives the best flavor. Just keep re-pressing the brews until your cup is as full as you want.-Max cup height that will fit on the tray is 6 1/4″. (We have 2 stainless tumblers that fit perfectly and hold 16 oz, we just brew multiple times to fill them as high as we want).-Latte go is great when I figured out the higher you fill it up, the thicker/frothier the product gets. I like a super thick whip but initially was trying not to waste milk so I was only filling it to the bottom line. It was just coming out steamed and was splattering everywhere. We’ve frothed organic 2% milk and Chobani dairy flavored creamer (whole strength and cut with half 2% milk, if that makes sense) and both work great.-Hot water is dispensed from the little nub where the Latte Go attaches, and it seems to dispense about 10 oz (altho I haven’t measured specifically). I drink hot lemon water every am and it comes out piping hot. I love that it’s pure clean water too and doesn’t have coffee residue in it like it did coming out of the keurig.-The unit cleans itself every time it turns off and every time you turn it on. Not much water comes out each time but we like to keep a cup underneath so we don’t have to empty the tray as often.-I have been cleaning the machine weekly, by pulling the whole brew group out and rinsing it under water but what i’m surprised the most by is how much grounds is still everywhere inside the machine (prob from my failed attempts at using the ground coffee bypass chute lol) I really have to get in there and try to get all of the grounds out which is a pain. There are so many little crevices that the grounds find to hide in. I wish the unit would have come w/a little brush to help swipe them out.Overall, we are pleased! It’s def more work than we expected to get the beverages where we want them but I expected that. It’s so fun to have the variety and save the counter space. I will update my review as I notice more things or if any issues arise but so far we really love it!
smithie –
I got this based on SCG’s view (Gail). For the past 10 years (after my Capresso died – loved that machine!), I have had to make do with french press (never made an espresso out of anything but a Capresso, so no skills on the manual or semi-auto front). I work from home (even without Covid) and I hate the process of having to clean up the French press, trying to get all the grounds out with all that liquid still in the bottom, all the prep etc which takes up valuable time. I hate how you have to nuke the second and third cups. I also missed the taste of a good coffee. So I watched a few SCG videos (Gail’s to be exact). I hemmed and hawed over Xelsis vs Miele 6350 and then saw this. It seemed the only difference was slight (in terms of programmability mainly, and the extent to which that might change the drink) but otherwise not drink quality. To be clear, I don’t know what a Xelsis or Miele drink tastes like. I was going based on the review.In terms of ease of use and such, this machine is pretty good. Much less trouble than I remember my Capresso being. Nice filter etc. and size compared to my old Capresso which was bigger. The brew unit (new to me, since Capresso’s don’t have a way for you to remove, you have to instead run a special cleaning cycle on those) I found difficult to deal with. You’re supposed to rinse weekly in hot water, but I found the whole thing to be very greasy with lubricant and it was difficult to get that grease off my hands afterward, so I found that to be a bit offputting. Not sure if it is the same with other models and makes that have similar removable brew units so I cannot comment. The milk thing is nice (I have no tube experience to compare to), but still you have to get into a couple nooks and crannies on the outside and work the niches inside to clean, unless you decide to clean right then and there between cups (as opposed to at the end of the morning).Where things go south on this is taste. While I love Gail at SCG’s review style/demeanor, ultimately I think it steered me to the wrong choice of product because she was not willing to really compare taste of machines. It is important to make this distinction again: I am no barista. Never made an espresso or latte in my life. I don’t frequent coffee houses much (as I am rural), so my reference point is not a daily or even weekly latte at some awesome coffee house or restaurant. But I do remember my Capresso from circa 2003-2010. And it was awesome, at around $900 and change. And even random lattes around here seem better tastewise, even though not all seem to come from genuine espresso machines. Given I had been subsisting on mediocre French press (and not even painstakingly measuring coffee by the grams or paying attention to water temperature or bloom (that’s all new to me during my research), I would have thought this Lattego would be a huge step up, giving me some on-demand drinks albeit with some manual programming (vs latest Xelsis or Miele 6350), but overall better than my french press (and better drink options too). But even though I cannot realistically expect it to compare to the “awesome”-est lattes, etc., given the price point, I still cannot get over the taste. And I have tried every setting, grind settings, dose, etc. that this machine has to offer. The lattes and cappuccinos I think were better than the coffee but not great. The coffee was just not very tasty at all (I tried a variety of beans as well) and usually tasted burnt.The Jura/Capresso taste (and that of umpteen random lattes from area coffee places in rural Western Mass) is firmly ingrained in my memory, and maybe I should go there, or maybe I should learn some barista skills and do it old school. All I know is, if you are like me at all, and have some level of palate distinction (7 on a scale of 10) short of a true barista (who is probably 10 on a scale of 10 – you know who you are), you’re still not going to find that this cuts it or earns its $700 or so price tag. Better either to spend $1600-2K on something else, or else just try your hand learning old school or semi-automatic or try a Moka pot, or continue on with French press or whatever else you are doing (and play around with temperature and grind and all the things that I am just learning), unless it truly is all about minimal expenditure in exchange for automation and not much more. If you just truly do not care that much (3 on a scale of 10 on coffee pickiness), then by all means this machine will make things very easy for you.
smithie –
I got this based on SCG’s view (Gail). For the past 10 years (after my Capresso died – loved that machine!), I have had to make do with french press (never made an espresso out of anything but a Capresso, so no skills on the manual or semi-auto front). I work from home (even without Covid) and I hate the process of having to clean up the French press, trying to get all the grounds out with all that liquid still in the bottom, all the prep etc which takes up valuable time. I hate how you have to nuke the second and third cups. I also missed the taste of a good coffee. So I watched a few SCG videos (Gail’s to be exact). I hemmed and hawed over Xelsis vs Miele 6350 and then saw this. It seemed the only difference was slight (in terms of programmability mainly, and the extent to which that might change the drink) but otherwise not drink quality. To be clear, I don’t know what a Xelsis or Miele drink tastes like. I was going based on the review.In terms of ease of use and such, this machine is pretty good. Much less trouble than I remember my Capresso being. Nice filter etc. and size compared to my old Capresso which was bigger. The brew unit (new to me, since Capresso’s don’t have a way for you to remove, you have to instead run a special cleaning cycle on those) I found difficult to deal with. You’re supposed to rinse weekly in hot water, but I found the whole thing to be very greasy with lubricant and it was difficult to get that grease off my hands afterward, so I found that to be a bit offputting. Not sure if it is the same with other models and makes that have similar removable brew units so I cannot comment. The milk thing is nice (I have no tube experience to compare to), but still you have to get into a couple nooks and crannies on the outside and work the niches inside to clean, unless you decide to clean right then and there between cups (as opposed to at the end of the morning).Where things go south on this is taste. While I love Gail at SCG’s review style/demeanor, ultimately I think it steered me to the wrong choice of product because she was not willing to really compare taste of machines. It is important to make this distinction again: I am no barista. Never made an espresso or latte in my life. I don’t frequent coffee houses much (as I am rural), so my reference point is not a daily or even weekly latte at some awesome coffee house or restaurant. But I do remember my Capresso from circa 2003-2010. And it was awesome, at around $900 and change. And even random lattes around here seem better tastewise, even though not all seem to come from genuine espresso machines. Given I had been subsisting on mediocre French press (and not even painstakingly measuring coffee by the grams or paying attention to water temperature or bloom (that’s all new to me during my research), I would have thought this Lattego would be a huge step up, giving me some on-demand drinks albeit with some manual programming (vs latest Xelsis or Miele 6350), but overall better than my french press (and better drink options too). But even though I cannot realistically expect it to compare to the “awesome”-est lattes, etc., given the price point, I still cannot get over the taste. And I have tried every setting, grind settings, dose, etc. that this machine has to offer. The lattes and cappuccinos I think were better than the coffee but not great. The coffee was just not very tasty at all (I tried a variety of beans as well) and usually tasted burnt.The Jura/Capresso taste (and that of umpteen random lattes from area coffee places in rural Western Mass) is firmly ingrained in my memory, and maybe I should go there, or maybe I should learn some barista skills and do it old school. All I know is, if you are like me at all, and have some level of palate distinction (7 on a scale of 10) short of a true barista (who is probably 10 on a scale of 10 – you know who you are), you’re still not going to find that this cuts it or earns its $700 or so price tag. Better either to spend $1600-2K on something else, or else just try your hand learning old school or semi-automatic or try a Moka pot, or continue on with French press or whatever else you are doing (and play around with temperature and grind and all the things that I am just learning), unless it truly is all about minimal expenditure in exchange for automation and not much more. If you just truly do not care that much (3 on a scale of 10 on coffee pickiness), then by all means this machine will make things very easy for you.
Marvin –
I depend on coffee everyday and I wanted to get an expresso machine without spending thousands of dollars, and I have mix reviews on other product and decided to go with Phillips. It’s a good starting expresso machine, you don’t have to ground the beans, it does it for you and I love. The only down side is that it’s not hot enough for me, the coffee comes out warm even when I use my Yeti cup.
Marvin –
I depend on coffee everyday and I wanted to get an expresso machine without spending thousands of dollars, and I have mix reviews on other product and decided to go with Phillips. It’s a good starting expresso machine, you don’t have to ground the beans, it does it for you and I love. The only down side is that it’s not hot enough for me, the coffee comes out warm even when I use my Yeti cup.
Tim_B –
As many others have said, this unit is very loud when grinding and even when heating/pumping water but I knew that going in.My biggest gripe is the design of the coffee bean ‘hopper’ which is on the top of the unit. If you look at photos you should notice there is a small depression in the middle and two knobs on the middle/back left.After a few cups, the beans no longer cover the hole to the grinder. This results in beans getting stuck behind those two knobs and you having to manually push them around towards the front left where the hole for the grinder is located. In our case, I do this each and every day. Yes it only takes a few seconds but still – it should not be necessary on something that costs this much.Another minor complaint / wish list item is the size of the water container. This unit uses approx 1 oz at startup and shutdown for cleaning (2 oz total). After approx 6 cups of coffee (depending on your settings), the water needs to be refilled. Again, just a few moments so not a huge deal but it would be nice if they offered a larger water container for those that make 6+ cups a day.Those few minor whines aside, it is a good unit and makes good coffee products. The method used to steam / heat milk is very clever and easy to use. However pay attention to the latch on the bottom of the milk container, because if the container is not totally clean and seated properly, it will leak milk.
Tim_B –
As many others have said, this unit is very loud when grinding and even when heating/pumping water but I knew that going in.My biggest gripe is the design of the coffee bean ‘hopper’ which is on the top of the unit. If you look at photos you should notice there is a small depression in the middle and two knobs on the middle/back left.After a few cups, the beans no longer cover the hole to the grinder. This results in beans getting stuck behind those two knobs and you having to manually push them around towards the front left where the hole for the grinder is located. In our case, I do this each and every day. Yes it only takes a few seconds but still – it should not be necessary on something that costs this much.Another minor complaint / wish list item is the size of the water container. This unit uses approx 1 oz at startup and shutdown for cleaning (2 oz total). After approx 6 cups of coffee (depending on your settings), the water needs to be refilled. Again, just a few moments so not a huge deal but it would be nice if they offered a larger water container for those that make 6+ cups a day.Those few minor whines aside, it is a good unit and makes good coffee products. The method used to steam / heat milk is very clever and easy to use. However pay attention to the latch on the bottom of the milk container, because if the container is not totally clean and seated properly, it will leak milk.
Dave G –
I really like how convenient this unit is to use. The biggest issue I had was finding whole beans to grind. Seems like stores sell mostly ground coffee. It brews quickly and you get the feeling that you have walked in to a high-end car dealership or one of the airline club lounges. I’m glad I bought this Philips machine.
Dave G –
I really like how convenient this unit is to use. The biggest issue I had was finding whole beans to grind. Seems like stores sell mostly ground coffee. It brews quickly and you get the feeling that you have walked in to a high-end car dealership or one of the airline club lounges. I’m glad I bought this Philips machine.
erininla –
This machine makes some great drinks for the price point and we use it a lot. But there are some frustrating design flaws that I seriously don’t get and have to work around every day. In therapy. Let’s focus on the negative, that’s why you’re reading this, right? Let’s go.1. It powers off on its own which is great for saving energy (sigh) but not when you need energy! (Caffeine. Get it?) It takes a while to cycle on and power back up. This is when I practice my eye rolls.2. The milk container thingy’s spout isn’t adjustable and points almost in front of your cup and at your body, so you need to make sure the cup is sitting on the edge directly under it or it’s foam over, baby. Are we awake enough to manage this daily? Sometimes we are, sometimes we’re not.3. The machine cleans itself before brewing, draining gross water. If you’re not paying attention and have your coffee cup sitting there already, it will mix with your upcoming beverage, watering it down, and making you repeatedly feel like an idiot because you will never learn. I have adapted by simply adding a double shot of espresso to your bilgewater.4. This sucker is LOUD. Pray your sleeping child or grumpy spouse on a Zoom call is beyond earshot somewhere next door. Again, imagine all of this happening before you’ve had coffee.5. Whoever wrote the manual presumes we have a Ph.D. in engineering. Give us a YouTube video and please just stop.6. Do I have to say something nice? OK fine. I like the little bobber in the catch tray letting me know that I need to empty it when it’s full of cleanout water. Which it rarely is, because it’s in my coffee. And yeah, the drinks otherwise taste great. Four stars. Satisfied?
erininla –
This machine makes some great drinks for the price point and we use it a lot. But there are some frustrating design flaws that I seriously don’t get and have to work around every day. In therapy. Let’s focus on the negative, that’s why you’re reading this, right? Let’s go.1. It powers off on its own which is great for saving energy (sigh) but not when you need energy! (Caffeine. Get it?) It takes a while to cycle on and power back up. This is when I practice my eye rolls.2. The milk container thingy’s spout isn’t adjustable and points almost in front of your cup and at your body, so you need to make sure the cup is sitting on the edge directly under it or it’s foam over, baby. Are we awake enough to manage this daily? Sometimes we are, sometimes we’re not.3. The machine cleans itself before brewing, draining gross water. If you’re not paying attention and have your coffee cup sitting there already, it will mix with your upcoming beverage, watering it down, and making you repeatedly feel like an idiot because you will never learn. I have adapted by simply adding a double shot of espresso to your bilgewater.4. This sucker is LOUD. Pray your sleeping child or grumpy spouse on a Zoom call is beyond earshot somewhere next door. Again, imagine all of this happening before you’ve had coffee.5. Whoever wrote the manual presumes we have a Ph.D. in engineering. Give us a YouTube video and please just stop.6. Do I have to say something nice? OK fine. I like the little bobber in the catch tray letting me know that I need to empty it when it’s full of cleanout water. Which it rarely is, because it’s in my coffee. And yeah, the drinks otherwise taste great. Four stars. Satisfied?
fulla –
It’s funny how I went from deciding to return it, to not only keeping it but LOVING it. The reason I wanted to return it is because after setting it up and making my first cappuccino I was shocked at horrible it tasted! It tasted like watered down coffee.I thought maybe I did something wrong. So, I experimented a lot with the coffee strength settings…1 dot, 2 dots, 3 dots…same horrible tasting coffee. I also experimented with water quantity (I think they call it the drink quantity button)…I tried 1, 2 and 3 dots. Still the same horrible taste.At this point I decided to return it. My husband suggested we keep it for a week and see if there’s anything else we can do…maybe change the type of coffee or something.The next day while reading reviews on this machine I came across a tip…change the coffee grinder setting. I decided to try it, but I didn’t expect it to make that big of a difference…WRONG. It made all the difference. After setting the grinder to 4, I can’t believe how good the coffee that comes out of this machine! We’ve had it now for a week and my husband and I can’t imagine life without it.Here are the settings for my cappuccino : Coffee grinder 4, coffee strength 2 dots, water 1 dot, milk 2 dots…I know this is frowned upon but I like to stir it before I drink it.Here are the things I absolutely love about this machine:1- It does everything… grind coffee, brew coffee, froth milk and self-clean. if you’ve never owned an automatic machine, like me, you will be blown away.2- You can get an amazing coffee with a click of a button (once you program your favorite drink)3- Cleaning the milk container is a breeze.Things I saw people complaining about:1. It uses up a lot of water.This is true… however considering it self-cleans and I only have to worry about cleaning once a week, I don’t mind it.2. Weekly and monthly clean is too much.I would GLADLY do a quick weekly and monthly clean/maintenance if it means that on a daily basis all I need to do is click a button to have a cappuccino.Please bear in mind that my review is based on the fact that this is my first super automatic coffee machine.
fulla –
It’s funny how I went from deciding to return it, to not only keeping it but LOVING it. The reason I wanted to return it is because after setting it up and making my first cappuccino I was shocked at horrible it tasted! It tasted like watered down coffee.I thought maybe I did something wrong. So, I experimented a lot with the coffee strength settings…1 dot, 2 dots, 3 dots…same horrible tasting coffee. I also experimented with water quantity (I think they call it the drink quantity button)…I tried 1, 2 and 3 dots. Still the same horrible taste.At this point I decided to return it. My husband suggested we keep it for a week and see if there’s anything else we can do…maybe change the type of coffee or something.The next day while reading reviews on this machine I came across a tip…change the coffee grinder setting. I decided to try it, but I didn’t expect it to make that big of a difference…WRONG. It made all the difference. After setting the grinder to 4, I can’t believe how good the coffee that comes out of this machine! We’ve had it now for a week and my husband and I can’t imagine life without it.Here are the settings for my cappuccino : Coffee grinder 4, coffee strength 2 dots, water 1 dot, milk 2 dots…I know this is frowned upon but I like to stir it before I drink it.Here are the things I absolutely love about this machine:1- It does everything… grind coffee, brew coffee, froth milk and self-clean. if you’ve never owned an automatic machine, like me, you will be blown away.2- You can get an amazing coffee with a click of a button (once you program your favorite drink)3- Cleaning the milk container is a breeze.Things I saw people complaining about:1. It uses up a lot of water.This is true… however considering it self-cleans and I only have to worry about cleaning once a week, I don’t mind it.2. Weekly and monthly clean is too much.I would GLADLY do a quick weekly and monthly clean/maintenance if it means that on a daily basis all I need to do is click a button to have a cappuccino.Please bear in mind that my review is based on the fact that this is my first super automatic coffee machine.
Dana Betchek –
I love this machine. Once you get the set up down it’s very user friendly. The coffee tastes so fresh. I’ve mastered my drink at home and will be saving a lot of money by not going to the coffee shop.
Dana Betchek –
I love this machine. Once you get the set up down it’s very user friendly. The coffee tastes so fresh. I’ve mastered my drink at home and will be saving a lot of money by not going to the coffee shop.
bmwkathy –
My main Idea was not to go to Starbucks due to the prices and quality of their coffee. Well, the best decision I have ever made. This machine sometimes comes on sale, so I waited. I buy fairly expensive quality coffee cuz I mind what I put in my body. So the quality of the hot beverage is outstanding. the hot water is just enough to start consuming but not burn yourself. I make sure I follow the suggested guidelines for taking care of this awesome creation.
bmwkathy –
My main Idea was not to go to Starbucks due to the prices and quality of their coffee. Well, the best decision I have ever made. This machine sometimes comes on sale, so I waited. I buy fairly expensive quality coffee cuz I mind what I put in my body. So the quality of the hot beverage is outstanding. the hot water is just enough to start consuming but not burn yourself. I make sure I follow the suggested guidelines for taking care of this awesome creation.
Amazon Customer –
Great coffee! Love the coffee taste and the foam .
Amazon Customer –
Great coffee! Love the coffee taste and the foam .
Erika PhillipsErika Phillips –
We absolutely love this machine. We wanted to replace a machine that used plastic pods and it was the best decision we ever made! This machine was easy to set up and use. We love it. Mostly we make coffee with it and the coffee tastes so much better than pod coffee. Freshly ground coffee every cup, every morning is amazing! The fact we no longer waste so much plastic or drink out of plastic is amazing! And storing pods was such a hassle! This machine was exactly what we wanted. I read reviews on similar machines and decided on this one and so far we have no complaints.
Erika PhillipsErika Phillips –
We absolutely love this machine. We wanted to replace a machine that used plastic pods and it was the best decision we ever made! This machine was easy to set up and use. We love it. Mostly we make coffee with it and the coffee tastes so much better than pod coffee. Freshly ground coffee every cup, every morning is amazing! The fact we no longer waste so much plastic or drink out of plastic is amazing! And storing pods was such a hassle! This machine was exactly what we wanted. I read reviews on similar machines and decided on this one and so far we have no complaints.