frontpagephoinix | Staff posted Nov 26, 2025 06:01 AM
Item 1 of 2
Item 1 of 2
frontpagephoinix | Staff posted Nov 26, 2025 06:01 AM
Breville Barista Touch Impress Espresso Machine + 10% Back w/ Prime Visa Card
+ Free Shipping$1,000
$1,500
33% offAmazon
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Just go through the 1-star reviews on Amazon. It's an interesting read.
Regardless, I do get your point. Almost everything mass-produced will have some bad apples. And so, the bigger concern I have is this. Say, even if what you assume were true -- that all those people were making mistakes leading to machine failure. But then they would've only complained about reliability. But almost everyone made it a point of complaining about bad customer service. That's inexcusable. As a counter example -- when researching 3D printers I saw many people complained of reliability on a specific company's printers (not naming it to avoid thread being hijacked), but almost everyone praised their customer service; on how they went above and beyond and sent extra parts or whole machines. Of course, I have no personal experience of these machines. I don't have any agenda here (in fact I have had a Breville machine myself for 7 yrs or so). Just want to draw attention to a potential concern. Anyone contemplating this purchase should at least give these a read for awareness and decide for themselves if it's for them.
Edit - not sure why you say I'm worse than people "making mistakes". The whole point of this forum is to share opinions and knowledge about products. And I would think drawing attention to the product having 20% 1-star 20% reviews would be a net benefit to the community. You are welcome to post counter-opinions which you did lucidly. But a personal attack, saying "I'm worse!" was unwarranted.
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Our community has rated this post as helpful. If you agree, why not thank DragonflyPunch
Just go through the 1-star reviews on Amazon. It's an interesting read.
Just read the 1-star reviews on Amazon. It's an interesting read.
Our community has rated this post as helpful. If you agree, why not thank Gundown64
Go there and read for yourself. While you are there, pay attention to their stories of customer service. See how many people are complaining about how arduous a process it is to get a replacement while the product is in warranty. Various folks claiming that the company would insinuate that the customer is not cleaning the machine right, or using bad beans. People getting queried repeatedly whether they are using expired beans, the brand, the grind size, the roast type etc. And that too back and forth via email. Such stories reek of a company that's trying to find a way out of honoring the warranty by blaming the customer. If the machine breaks during warranty, it should take one phone call to get a replacement-- no questions asked.
And after reading those stories ask yourself whether you'll want to go through such an experience? If just the quality control was bad, or if just customer service was bad, one could still take a chance. But with both being this bad, why would you take a chance? There is no shortage of good machines at this price point.
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Our community has rated this post as helpful. If you agree, why not thank macdaddybj
I can't speak for the 20% reviewers that left a single star, but this machine needs a basic understanding of how to dial espressos in, even as the machine provides very good assisted guidance. A minimum level of user engagement is inescapable. Just because this is touch screen machine it can't be expected to perform as a super-automatic.
Just go through the 1-star reviews on Amazon. It's an interesting read.
I like that you base your opinion on what others say about them, even though if you read the reviews you will quickly figure out that many of the "problems" are from lack of understanding on the part of the consumer.
Of course everything mass produced will have a failure rate, but telling people to "stay away from this machine" is ridiculous. You're worse than the people leaving the 1 star reviews because they can't figure out how to properly use it because you don't even have any experience with the unit to begin with.
Edit: I found this post because I am buying two more of these for family members for christmas and I wanted to find the best price
Regardless, I do get your point. Almost everything mass-produced will have some bad apples. And so, the bigger concern I have is this. Say, even if what you assume were true -- that all those people were making mistakes leading to machine failure. But then they would've only complained about reliability. But almost everyone made it a point of complaining about bad customer service. That's inexcusable. As a counter example -- when researching 3D printers I saw many people complained of reliability on a specific company's printers (not naming it to avoid thread being hijacked), but almost everyone praised their customer service; on how they went above and beyond and sent extra parts or whole machines. Of course, I have no personal experience of these machines. I don't have any agenda here (in fact I have had a Breville machine myself for 7 yrs or so). Just want to draw attention to a potential concern. Anyone contemplating this purchase should at least give these a read for awareness and decide for themselves if it's for them.
Edit - not sure why you say I'm worse than people "making mistakes". The whole point of this forum is to share opinions and knowledge about products. And I would think drawing attention to the product having 20% 1-star 20% reviews would be a net benefit to the community. You are welcome to post counter-opinions which you did lucidly. But a personal attack, saying "I'm worse!" was unwarranted.
- One of the selling points is that the Touch Impress is supposed to make tamping easy but I very quickly stopped using the built-in tamper. The problem is that when you grind the beans, it will naturally mound in the middle, and there's no distribution involved, so when you tamp, you're inevitably going to get a denser center than edges. I got an aftermarket dosing funnel and a WDT tool and have much better results and can grind finer as a result.
- The built-in grinder is decent, as long as you're not trying light/ultra-light roasts. YMMV, of course, but my machine struggles with the ultralights. But if your daily driver is a medium-to-dark roast, I don't think you strictly need to get a better grinder.
- The auto-steaming milk feature we actually use quite often. I don't think it's great for latte art (it produces larger bubbles at the surface than I would like), but sometimes you don't want to deal with it and it's nice to have the hands-off feature. Steam wand seems powerful enough for home use, but it does take a good 20-30 seconds for smooth microfoam.
- This is not specific to the Touch Impress and I'm sure you can get better shots with non-Thermoblock machines, but having a machine that only needs ~3-4 seconds to heat up in the morning is a godsend. Sometimes I just don't want to have to remember to start it earlier (but you could of course run a machine on a smart plug).
Having had it for about a year now, I don't think I would have gotten a different machine, especially when it's not just me using it, but it's very possible that the average person who is willing to pick up the hobby will quickly outgrow it.Sign up for a Slickdeals account to remove this ad.
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