Delonghi Lattissima Pro Review


de'longhi lattissima pro single serve espresso machine review

Reviewed by: Jennifer

Rating: 4.4 Stars

Review Updated: 9/22/19

Love espresso but not the labor of it? Well, this De’Longhi Lattissima Pro could very well be your dream machine. This single-serve gourmet beverage machine has six beverage settings but each one can be customized to take your experience further.

It has beautiful modern/Italian design styling with stainless steel finish to ensure an eye-catching appearance in your home environment. As a premium single serve espresso machine, it is made to work exclusively with the brand Nespresso gourmet coffee capsules.

Now it’s time for you to find out all about the very machine that won the Plus X Award for Best Product of 2014…as you read this review you’ll see what made it deserving of such 🙂

 

 

Full Name/Model No

De’Longhi America EN750MB Nespresso Lattissima Pro Machine

Dimensions

Both Amazon’s sale page and the manufacturer’s site maintain the same dimensions listed below:

Measurements: 10.8″ (length) x 7.6″ (width) x 13″ (height), Weight: 12.6 lbs

That’s pretty sturdy – people have said this is no lightweight 🙂

I didn’t see dimensions for the milk container. Or the power cord. The clearance, however, from dispensing area to base is about 5 and 3/4″, if the foldup tray is not in place. If the tray is in place, your clearance drops to about 3.5″, so pretty much ideal for shorter cups, but not tumblers.

What’s Included?

In addition to the unit itself, you will also receive a sampler of Nespresso capsules. milk tank and welcome guide booklet. You also receive a water hardness test strip – it’s reminiscent of those test strips made for fish aquariums. Its purpose is to give a more accurate descaling treatment depending on the measure of your water hardness. First company I’ve ever seen do something like this before.

Nespresso products are always top notch – one area I see for improvement would be the manuals – they always come across as cumbersome to read, mainly due to English and French being right on top of each other. Just my two cents anyway. The videos, on the other hand, are great, and I highly recommend viewing any of them to see certain procedures in action.

Nespresso has a 2-year warranty on the Lattissima Pro, which is comparable to other models that maintain on average a one year warranty.

Features

This is a machine made for creating gourmet hot coffee beverages such as lattes, lungos, etc., using the Nespresso capsule delivery system, which is also the same capsule system used with the Nespresso Pixie.Premium construction with a 19-bar pressure pump as per industry standard, the Lattissima Pro also has the following unique features:

  • Six customizable beverage settings
  • Auto Shutoff that you can change settings for
  • Customizable settings via the  LCD touchscreen
  • Detachable water reservoir (can be refilled either way)
  • Detachable milk frothing container that can be stored
  • Internal holding bin that used coffee capsules automatically drop into after use
  • Tray grill that flips down for shorter cups when needed, common in espressos or demitasse cups

Love the recycling bag concept…Did you know Nespresso will give these to you, free of charge, and they will hold up to 100 used capsules? Later on you have the privilege of dropping them off at the nearest UPS.

Buttons and Controls

To manage all of your brews, the touchscreen and the buttons surrounding it will On the control panel are six preprogrammed beverage settings: Ristretto, Espresso, Lungo, Cappuccino, Latte, hot milk, and hot water. The control panel (located atop the unit) is intuitive in its function with one-touch operation and all six settings are fully customizable.

The six setting icons, when pushed, prompt the window to display the respective type of beverage – from there you can make adjustments like increasing or reducing size. The little gear shift icon right in the middle will allow you to go to the menu to make and save drink size settings, language preferred, etc. via the arrow keys. When you make a selection on the panel it will blink and continue to do so while the drink is under construction.

The power button sits just behind the control panel – when this is pushed the unit will begin preheating. The hot water selection is on the middle of the control panel…yes you can also make full use of the Lattissima Pro when it comes to just dispensing water.

Programming and Settings

All of the options to customize and program the Lattissima Pro are excellent – It’s a slam dunk – you can change the language, auto-shutoff , options for descaling…I could go on and on but I think you get the idea. For now, I’ll focus the most on the options that are distinctive. Your user booklet goes into detail on how to use all these and more:

Water hardness – Regardless of whether your water supply is soft, hard, or somewhere in the middle, you can tailor the descale prompt that will be in sync with your water type by using the included test strip. Just follow the prompts given on the touchscreen and boom – you’ll be all set!

Auto shutoff – By default, it will turn off in about 9 minutes, but you can prolong that if needed and choose a different length of time to go off.

Volume adjustment – I know you’re going to LOVE this one…Moving on to that issue of what do you do if/when you have a little bit bigger cup that you want to squeeze more coffee goodness into – You CAN hit the brew button again to get two brews in one, but the thing people are wanting to know about is   are you able to change the volume settings? Absolutely (but within reason.)

Go back to factory default settings (self-explanatory) and the Help or Maintenance settings…when you need a little troubleshooting.

All the settings in one place..up close

Water, milk, and coffee volumes can all be adjusted, provided that they are within a certain threshold of acceptance. – I did find one page in the manual that does provide the in’s and out’s along with recommended settings, as well as a warning not to do so “beyond 150 ml, as it could create an overheating risk for the next brew unless you let it (the unit) cool down for five minutes”. I did get the impression that the manufacturer kind of wants you to err on the side of less and refrain from changing the factory defaults as little as possible, as it could affect the quality.

Sorry but temperature adjustment is not an option – at first I thought there might have been, but I did not come across any setting for that whatsoever. To improve your chances of getting a hotter beverage, the best step is to do a capsule-less hot water cycle, in which residual heat and steam will “prime” the cup for round 2…or take measures to warm up your own cup, however that may be.

Drip Tray

The tray is a grill-design, foldup or down style,  located on the left side of the unit, and will allow you to switch between short and medium-height cups. It’s unique in that it’s got the capsule holding bin attached; it slides in place evenly with the bin out of sight. I say “medium” as I mentioned earlier in the “Dimensions” subsection, it’s probably not going to work well with cups that are 6″ in height or more.

No workarounds that I could see; if you wanted to use the hot water dispensing side on the right you’d have more room – but just for “other” products like tea or soup.

The tray can be pushed up out of the way for the larger cups, as you can see here,  and pushed into place to permit a shorter cup, which is good to prevent a “splash zone” while dispensing is taking place.

 Reservoir

The unit includes a detachable water reservoir which is tricky to see except at the back view. It is flat and rectangular shaped; and I felt quite elegant and slim compared to some of the more gawky ones you see on other models. Built into the top is a lever that doubles as a handle which makes it easy to lift up and out.

The reservoir holds 44 oz of water which is moderately sized and would be enough for an average of 5 drinks at at an 8 oz setting before refilling but I believe that it is designed this way intentionally to compensate for the fact that milk is the other “biggie” ingredient since it is a machine designed for espresso drinks.

Hot Water Spout

In addition to the milk frother there is a water spout that attaches to the same spot as that of the milk container. It also has the neat bonus of stowing away entirely in a small side compartment to the left of the machine when not in use. The spot on the machine that it attaches and detaches from has a little bitty sliding “door” that you push back to snap it in place or take it out. (The side compartment also opens and closes this way too.)

This attachment is perfect for those occasions when you might like to take a breather from “gourmet” anything and just heat up some water for a nice hot cocoa, noodle soup, tea, etc. And to boot it extends down or up as close to the cup/container as you need to, ensuring a splash-free experience. Better yet, this attachment also doubles as a descaling tool (more about that shortly…)

Milk Container

The milk holder (below) has lots in store – it’s made up of five interconnecting parts: an adjustment knob for creating and controlling froth, a clear inner aspiration tube, a connector, and the spigot for dispensing the milk. All of these parts can be disassembled and hand washed or can go in the dishwasher top rack.

The container itself will hold up to 16 oz. Flip the spout down and you can store your unused milk in the fridge for easy retrieval later . The milk container’s dial settings include an auto-clean function you can set. Best of all you have the option to experiment with many milk flow additions at the touch of the dial.

      

Be sure to be on top of your cleaning duties so you don’t end up with milk clog problems later. I’d just be sure to put the attachment parts into the basket thingy that you put silverware in when you load the dishwasher 😊 I think one guy lost his control knob when it fell out and it melted, unfortunately.

Milk Frother

You’re in the driver’s seat as far as determining just the right amount of froth or foam you need. At the far left is the “thinnest” setting (or the least amount of foam)  all the way to the right (for the thickest or most foam.) The little icons respectively, the Cappuccino and Machiatto, match those on the touchscreen.

So feel free to experiment as much as you’d like, the more you use it, the easier it will get to find the best setting. After you have claimed your beverage switch the dial setting to “Clean” and the container purges excess residue, which takes about 15 seconds (at which time you’d want to place an empty container on the drip tray to catch the runoff.)

delonghi lattissima pro reviewLattissima Pro Consumer Reviews and Ratings

Upon closer inspection for what bumped up the high ratings and led to well-deserved good reviews for the Lattissima Pro, I examined some common patterns: the biggest parameter was the intuitive nature of the unit’s control panel.

Another great observation from customers is the option of different milk choices to use inside the container, to suit their dietary needs or personal tastes. If something like this is important to you you should feel right at home knowing the frother can handle it well.

Customers often spoke of how they enjoy the fact that “the machine tells them what to do next” be it descaling, adding water, etc. Heck, the drip tray has a red light that will get the user’s attention whenever it needs to be emptied (such as in the case of the runoff from the milk container’s auto-clean step.)

A common pattern was comparisons of the Lattissima Pro to its predecessor, the Lattissima Plus. Let’s be honest, you would be hard-pressed to find that many negative reviews of this baby no matter where you look!

There is some talk going back and forth on the temperature of the resulting beverages missing the mark on being “idealâ€. Averaging between 140 and 170 degrees (F) this is a purely subjective argument. When nothing less than true espresso drinks would do, the price was the least negative thing commented on. 

Ease of Use

I think you’ll have a pretty easy time with this unit. It’s sleek, it’s intuitive in function, and then there’s the matter of the  drip tray being simple to raise and lower to adjust for cup height , and then all those customization settings you can employ.

On operation speed – it works lightening fast! The average preheat time is about 25 seconds. The next step, obviously, is that of the milk frothing, which takes on average 15 seconds.The milk frothing step will be carried out first before the coffee portion.  At which point, you can see the layers form, and you can add your goodies, like flavored syrup or what have you.

On the control panel: the different selections are all LED illuminated when the power is on; the grill part is also illuminated too, which is nice. The 6-gram coffee pod product that is the bread and butter of the Lattissima Pro, the  capsule – is inserted at the top chamber sideways. You would lift the lever at the top left to insert a capsule into the chamber.

    

The underside of the lever reads “Designed For Nespresso Capsules” so no chance you may forget.

I’d recommend that you don’t get into the habit of leaving the used capsules in the bin all the time. ( it will accommodate up to 15 used capsules) They dry out, apparently, and interfere with some of the unit’s functioning.

Last thing you will come to appreciate is the neat cord keeper “grooves” on the bottom of the machine making it easy to keep cord slack under tight rein.

Descaling

The water hardness selector option makes descaling a breeze!

As long as you’ve done your homework that I mentioned earlier in the “Programming and Settings” section, the task of descaling your Lattissima Pro will be hassle-free. Say goodbye to misleading or premature “time to descale” prompts – if you’re fortunate enough to not have hard water, the system won’t bug you incessantly like some other coffee makers models do (Can I get an “AMEN”?)

As per the manual, you’re encouraged to avoid vinegar and use the proprietary brand of solution instead, but I think you could use any citric-acid based brand that is recommended for home based single-serve espresso makers and a lot of satisfied users backing it up.  The one other tool you’ll need to use is the descaling pipe that’s included and stowed away that I mentioned earlier.

Pros

The main positives:

  • Speedy operation time
  • Intuitive operation where the consumer is concerned
  • Multiple customization options make for a wide range of beverage choices
  • Attractive-looking overall design
  • Auto-clean function
  • Descaling is made easier with the water hardness setting option
  • The included milk container has great features too including flow control and a lid for easy storage in the refrigerator

Cons

These were the few negatives expressed:

  • Unit is a tad on the pricey side
  • You will have to purchase the Nespresso capsules exclusively for this unit (although there are a small number of capsule brands that are approved, but Nespresso is the preferred brand)
  • Depending on your locale the capsules may not be easy to locate (however online ordering can help resolve this )

Price

It’s a little pricey…However, I did find out that as I went back to do a periodic update, that the price has come down somewhat since I first started this review a couple of years ago. In fact, at the time of writing, it looks like you could get this baby for less than $500, which is awesome as that’s a drop of at least $200 since 2016! and you definitely get a lot of great features.

Furthermore regarding pricing… If you were wanting to hopefully, see if you can get an even better price by springing for the preowned model (providing it is in excellent or good condition) only thing with that is that one customer did and although the machine worked well, it was absent of the pod samplers and since the capsules are difficult to locate except online, s/he didn’t feel like it was much of an advantage.

The second thing to factor in being the coffee capsules, Retailers may vary and online purchase may be your best bet. Look for special pricing deals if you can to make it more worth your while.

The third price factor, the cleaning regimen – would involve descaling products. Unlike some of the Keurig products the use of white vinegar is not recommended. The manufacturer ‘s directions can be viewed in greater depth and it’s more sophisticated a procedure. As in many appliance procedures if any damage results it could void the warranty.At the time of this update it looks like you could get free shipping too; you can check to see if that’s the case:

Conclusion

I’d recommend this kind of unit mainly to someone who enjoys gourmet type drinks, as someone who just needs a “cup-o-joe” every now and then might find that this machine has more than they may need to be satisfied.

Espresso-making equipment is very sophisticated and should be handled with care. which is why it’s a good idea to pay close attention to cleaning, maintenance and storage advice.

All things considered, the work of grinding beans, tamping down grounds and steaming milk can seem like a lot of work but here is a machine that condenses all that labor.

If your favorite coffee is strictly “coffee”, this kind of product may seem extravagant to you. Now if you love espresso and related drinks this just might be the “thing” you’re hoping for!

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