De'Longhi Traditional Espresso Machine with Steamer for Milk based beverages, 220V, Medium, Black (ECP35.31)

Excellent machine for expresso and Cappuccino. Foaming the milk was very easy and coffee brew tasted fantastic.

Easy to operate, Value for money

Product is decent. You can pull cafe quality espresso shots with zero barista training. You just need to watch a few YouTube vids and you're set. Excellent Crema on the espresso. And the steamer works great to provide a silky frothed milk. This is all you want to know at a quick glance. Below I'm gonna address a few nagging issues The manual is not very helpful. It comes in a variety of languages and is least helpful in understanding how to use the machine. The machine itself is quite light and plasticy and keeps moving everytime I put in the porta- filter and remove it. It could have had rubber suction cups that hold on to the kitchen counter. Especially because putting in the porta-filter is quite difficult as it's really tight and need a bit of elbow grease. It comes with two baskets, one for single and double shot espressos... The single shot basket holds exactly one scoop and not a gram more... Likewise with the double shot basket. If you put even slightly less than a single scoop in the single scoop baskket, you won't be able to tamp it and if you put slightly more coffee powder than a single scoop, then again you won't tbe able to tamp it. Same with the double scoop basket. Why this is important is that YOU CANT AFFORD TO LOSE THE DAMN SCOOP. The baskets are pressurised and tightly fit into the porta-filter and takes some effort to remove the basket. On the flip side when you try to tap the porta filter to remove the coffee puck after you're done, the whole basket comes out with the puck It's terrible user experience. At least give one of those plastic latches to hold the basket in and just get the puck out. C'mon delonghi... You need half a brain to figure that out.. Half way through the espresso, the green light goes off indicating that the water needs heating, which means half way through the espresso, not so hot water is going through the powder? Not sure how this is possible. I need to do some more testing on it. I suspect that since this is a not so expensive variant, it has a small thermoblock which heats a small amount of water which is barely enough for a single shot. I need to test it more to confirm it. This machine is imported and comes with the UK plug pin. They also send you an Indian plug pin which you'll have to change. This changing involves cutting the cable. But here's the sad part: the UK plug that comes with the machine has a glass fuse to protect the machine from surges, but the Indian plug they provide is a 10 rs base quality plug. Fixing that is definitely not safe for your machine. So I'm forced to use a travel adapter. Again this is terrible job by the distributors. The least you could do is have it ready to use when you unpack the product. Poor user experience again Also when I got the machine from Amazon, the package and the machine was damaged. I had to have it replaced. Typical Cloudtail shenanigans. It's been happening quite often where Cloudtail sends you defective equipment to see if you're smart enough to return it. The first one I got was clearly used by another customer and returned. Overall I'm happy with the product, but I'm not happy how it's sold in India... Poor sales and distribution and I'm not sure how good the service is... The servicing in india is managed by Lavazza. Will have to wait and see how much they suck. Day 2 update: All of a sudden the machine starts giving trouble. Always end up with a soupy puck or the puck sticks to the group head. Tried troubleshooting in many ways with no respite. Tried purging the machine before removing the porta filter... Nothing. Tried using different size grind... Nothing. Tried smaller quantity than recommend... Nothing. After much fiddling around, I decided to call Lavazza who's responsible for post sales service of this product. But there is no one at their end to receive the call. After all due diligence, i decidws to return the machine. I had high hopes for Delonghi but looks like it's a very fragile product that needs to be sparingly used. Overall summary: if you're from India, I don't recommend buying this product. It has zero post sales service. Also notice that all good reviews are from UK buyers and all poor reviews from Indian buyers. So don't look at the rating and buy it.

I bought this product from Amazon. Ever since then I am trying to get this product to work. The Orient Repair Service wants warranty card which is supposed to come with the machine. There is non supplied. Now I have a defective product which does not work. De Longhi does not have any service centre in India in place to help its customers.