Gaggia Babila RI9700/64 espresso Machine, Stainless Steel, Medium

This super-automatic is a worthwhile quality-of-life upgrade for me. I previously had a Breville Barista Expresso Machine where I had to pull the expresso shots and froth the milk myself. It ended up sitting idle most days because I got too busy/lazy to manually make my expresso drinks and clean up. By contrast, this super-automatic makes it very easy to make a good expresso drink with - almost - just the press of a button.Expresso quality - 5 stars. Better than I could make myself on the Breville, and IMO better than Charbucks. I use Lavazza Gran Espresso beans.Cappucino quality - 4.5 stars. Nice separation of layers of steamed milk, expresso, and milk foam. The quality is consistent and the drink is nice and hot in the first few minutes. There is still room for improvement. The steamed milk could be hotter, so that the drink overall stays hot longer, and the milk foam on top could be finer (less airy) in texture.Maintenance - 4 stars - very low but almost daily upkeep. (1) Every three drinks or so, the outer and inner drip trays will need to be emptied and rinsed. (2) The milk carafe will need to be washed and refilled every three or four milk-based drinks. (3) The water reservoir will need to be refilled every four or five drinks. These are all simple and quick tasks, but it seems that one thing or another needs to be done almost every other drink. Still, very easy and quick compared to the Breville - and certainly compared to driving out to a cafe. (4) Weekly or biweekly (depending on how many drinks you make) the brew group needs to be taken out, rinsed thoroughly, and air dried, and traces of coffee grounds inside the chamber where the brew group sits need to be brushed out. Again, not complicated or difficult. I have not had my machine long enough to descale, but it doesn't sound bad either.Bottom line - the super convenience and good quality of expresso drinks at home with (almost) the push of a button and simple (almost daily) upkeep make this machine easy to recommend even for the premium price. Besides, it will likely pay for itself over time given the daily savings in $4-$5 cafe drinks, not to mention the drive and wait times. 4.5 stars (rounded up to 5)UPDATE: I've run this machine for nearly a year now, making 2-3 cups of cappuccino a day. All the above pluses and minuses still apply. I've done one descaling, which was simple and took about half an hour. Overall, this low-maintenance machine has consistently produced pretty good expresso in the unbeatable convenience of my home. It's more than paid for itself in the money and time saved, not to mention in the enjoyment of the expresso drinks themselves. I still highly recommend it.

Flavor's not too bad, milk carafe fussy but workable, dregs and water containers small so have to empty often. So that adds up to maybe a 6 or 7 out of 10.The showstopper: SAECO bought Gaggia and then Philips bought SAECO. Philips makes its money by buying industry quality products, then cutting costs. After 8 months the top door hinge on my Babila broke. No reason, nothing forced, they just do that - search on web and you'll see lots of cases. They even have a video of how to replace the hinge. When I asked for a replacement, there were two options: 1) ship machine back (my nickel) and they'd send it back when fixed (I think but am not certain customer pays for return shipping also). 2. They will ship you the part and you install. I'm reasonably handy, so option 2.WAIT, not so fast: it's out of stock for 6-8 weeks. (You remember the part about having to empty dregs often? That requires opening the door.) Oh, and be sure to call our 800 number to give them your credit card to pay $10.59 for shipping. Wait, what? Machine broke, it's under warranty, I'm doing the repair and now I have to pay for shipping the out-of-stock part when it arrives? Yep!Isn't there any way to get the part faster? Sure, go to this other website and they have it in stock. Turns out to be $25.95 and the same old $10.59 for shipping. At that point I'm a bit suspicious and check; sure enough the "other site" turns out to be a retail parts outlet also owned by Philips! So part is out of stock if it's a warranty issue but not if they can make $26 for someone who needs the part.I went through just this sort of rigamarole when they were forced to recall their CPAP machines (took 2.5 years to get a replacement).Philips has some good products, but they are the sleaziest bunch around.There was no reason for the hinge to break, nothing forced, nothing loose that was binding; it just broke, and it's obviously a common problem. Design flaw?Buy a different machine: Jura if you care enough about coffee to spend the money and don't mind sending it off every couple of years for cleaning. Otherwise DeLonghi, but check models if you want to be sure to have two boilers. A friend has a Dinamica Plus with only one boiler which he says works fine if you make the coffee first, then froth the milk. I'm skeptical how long that machine would take to cool off enough for more coffee.--UPDATE 8/7/2024I have finally received the hinge and installed it. My experience:- I was charged $10.59 for postage. It was supposed to be $10.95 but they transposed the numbers. When I got the package the postage was $5.15. So they charged more than 2 x their cost for postage. Explained by "$10.95 is a flat rate we charge for shipping all parts." "A policy we can't change or waive."- replacing the hinge took about an hour given having to learn the process (they do provide a good video) which involves a lot of tabs to remove and then to slot back in as well as about 25 screws, mostly torx 10 but some phillips on the hinge itself. Not a big deal.- But then I got the hinge out and discovered that one side was corroded solid; no wonder it broke. Crappy metal as well. Ask yourself if you would want to own a machine whose door hinge broke 9 months into ownership because it was corroded. BTW, the hinges are not on a side exposed to water or other liquid.- To my way of thinking this may have once been a decent machine with good quality control. Then Philips bought it and in their usual way probably started cutting corners to increase profit and ruined it.---Bottom Line: if you buy this machine you'll get some decent coffee at least for a while, but if anything goes wrong you'll be in the category of the hobo seeking a handout in Waldorf ballroom.

We replaced the Jura F8, which we had for just over 2 years, with this machine. The Jura E8 is the equivalent machine today. The Jura made wonderful coffee and espresso, but milk drinks were not hot enough and a pain to get working. This machine makes awesome everything. I love, love, love the steam wand. Super easy to use and gets the milk as hot as I want it. But for the days we have guests and I don’t want to stand at the counter foaming milk, we just pop in the carafe and voila. There are so many adjustments you can make and we found the right ones for the coffee we like. My only gripe about it is that when customizing drinks in the menu, liquid amounts of coffee and milk aren’t in any unit of measurement. It’s just a bar that you can move up or down (see pic). Even if I just knew that a full bar equals a certain amount, that would be helpful. Regardless, we have had the machine for a couple of weeks and we love it.Update: We have had this for months now and we still LOVE it. We highly recommend the Italian brand Lavazza beans here on Amazon. We live in a metro area and can get them overnight so it isn’t a big deal to have them shipped. You get them in two pound bags and there are a variety of flavors. You can get VERY good espresso beans that are not oily, and therefore very suitable for any super automatic. And less expensive per Lund than the coffee shop!

we loved this machine, great coffee, good options to program and the milk foamer is easy to use, there are however some issues - firstly the drip pan fills up really fast with water even if there are only a couple of pucks in the hopper. Second in our case the top hinge broke during emptying and we had to return it after only two months. We would however buy a similar machine.