I'll never spend $4 for a cup of coffee again!

Author's Rating:

Pros: Excellent coffee. Easy to use and cleanup.

Cons: Looks like a fax machine. Coffee just a few degrees cooler than I would prefer.

The Bottom Line: 
This is a very good machine at a good price. Given the money we were spending at coffee shops, it should pay for itself in no time.

Author's Review
My wife and I knew our daily trips to the coffee shop were expensive. After all, we enjoy our lattes and cappuccinos. Sometimes just the two of us would go, other times our daughter would join us, but very rarely did we manage to get out of there for less than ten bucks. One month, we decided to keep close track of our coffee expenditures and found that we had spent almost $220.00! A little math told us that, over the course of a year, we were spending over $2500 on our favorite morning beverages -- more than we typically spent on lunches.

That was when we decided it would be cheaper to simply invest in a decent espresso/cappuccino makers and make these drinks ourself at home.

We already had a Krups combination coffee maker that brewed the regular stuff on one side and espresso on the other but, honestly, it wasn't very good since it lacked a boiler and pump, the hallmarks of a true Italian espresso machine.

Our first foray into puchasing a consumer espresso machine, the DeLonghi BAR42, turned out to be a bust (see my other review here). I wouldn't recommend that model to anyone.

After looking around a little more, we found exactly the type of machine we wanted: a "super automatic". At the touch of a button these machines grind the beans, brew the coffee, and dispose of the grounds. Best of all, they start around $500. We settled on the Gaggia Syncrony, which consistently got good reviews, and found one refurbished for about $545 (much less than the average $900 street price).

I've owned this model for about two months now and I have to say that I'm very happy with it so far. Aside from being a little noisy when the grinder runs, it kicks out a great cup of joe in less than a minute (two minutes for drinks with steamed milk). Clean up couldn't be easier. Regular maintenance amounts to periodically refilling the water/bean receptacles, as well as dumping out the container that catches grounds. About once a week you have to open up a panel on the side, remove the brew unit, and rinse it under hot water. I also run the rinse cycle about once a month to clean out the internals.

The front panel controls are as easy as they come. Simply select the size drink you want and the Syncrony does the rest. The steam unit comes to temperature in less than a minute so you can quickly froth your milk before the coffee gets cold. One downside is that once you've used the steam unit, it takes some time for it to come back down to temperature for making coffee again. One way around this is to release some hot water until the "over temperature" indicator goes off.

All in all, this is a very good machine and we've found that it consistently makes better (and cheaper) coffee drinks than the college kids that work at the java joint down the street. Best of all, it should pay for itself in no time!