DeLonghi Caffe Nabucco BCO70 Espresso Machine & Coffee Maker

I wanted an espresso machine so bad (I'm French, so coffee means a lot to me !) but it was a tough period financially.

I decided to check on Ebay and saw this baby. Looked cool and easily findable for around 40/50$ + shipping. My girlfriend at the time paid for it as my birthday gift.

I remember the first espresso I made, I was so happy. It delivered what it promised and espresso was good, so was the regular coffee. But after a year it started to be longer and longer to have the espresso in the cup, and finally by the time the cup was full... coffee was cold. Regular coffee was still doing a good job so I kept it, but after a few months the machine was loosing water on the kitchen counter.

I got the explanation by reading a few things. You have two types of espresso machine. This is the cheap type that only brings steam to the coffee, the real machine will pressurize the steam, 10/15 bars of pressure for a small unit to give you an idea.

So make sure there's a pump when you buy an espresso machine, and you can find a pump driven machine for the same price, and buy a small machine for regular coffee for like 15$ in any supermarket or walmart.

It's cheap, don't get fooled by the fact that it looks cool. It won't last long.