GE Profile - Automatic Espresso Machine with 20 bars of pressure, Milk Frother, and Built-In Wi-Fi - Black

I truly dont like leaving negative reviews unless absolutely necessary and in this case it is. Initially we had the Café version of this machine and it was solid. It gave out after 18 months and we secided to replace with this GE Profile cousin. Awful machine. It took over an hour to connect to wifi. Then once that was finalized it never brewed a coffee to the specifications we set it at. Every selection even after setting it to the highest grind times and Finest grind was an awful cup. Please know that it will not work unless you set it up to wifi and control it on the app. You cannot change aettings on machine and that’s unfortunate. Its a nice looking machine but the final product is far from practical.

This fully automated coffee/milk coffee products maker is a great option in its price range. It offers ability to define the amount of coffee used per drink, from 8 to 12 grams (though you can do it through the app only). It allows you to customize the amount of water used per drink (manual and app). It comes with coffee drink three presets (espresso, Americano and My Brew). There is also a choice of getting a steam and hot water. The grind container can take the entire regular bag of coffee beans (7 oz). The grinder itself is adjustable and can grind from relative course to very fine grind. The bringing process is not too loud though people around will hear. The water container is relatively small, about 4 and 3/4 cups or about 1.2 liter. The water container must be taken out vertically, which basically eliminates putting the machine under the hanging kitchen cabinets. The waste basket is easily accessible and comes out in the front. The spout from which the coffee comes out is height adjustable and should work fine for most of the cups, big or small. The drip tray attaches itself to the coffee maker via two small magnets. It does serve its purpose relatively well, though I wish it would be somewhat larger. The steam wand can be turned to the side up to 45 degrees. You can take off both the outside metal part (the one that goes inside the milk) and the internal plastic part inside of it for cleaning. While for me it does not come off as easily as I would prefer, cleaning both parts is relatively easy. Finally the brewer is accessible from the left side if there is a need to clean it, it is easy to access and remove it for clean as it is easy to put it back in. About overall performance. The crema produced by this machine is quite decent for the price, maybe not as good as some other machines that sell for thousands of dollars. But it is decent and can last for a while, pretty dense. As I said before you can manually adjust the amount of water per drink by pressing the selection (for example espresso) for 2 seconds, then the symbol will start blinking and the coffee will be produced. While the coffee comes out once you decides that it got the right amount of liquid out you press the same button again to stop the coffee flow. The machine will then remember the amount of water used for all future drinks for the same button. There is one issue which I find both surprising and kinda annoying. My other Italian fully automated coffee maker always performs the self cleaning after the drink is completed, whether is it a black drink or milk based. This is not the case here. Once you finish making your drink, the machine will not clean itself. The steam wand that you inserted into milk will stay dirty with the milk residue. You have to take it off and clean it yourself manually and put it back on. But what happens instead is that every single time when you wake up the machine from hibernation to make a drink it will perform self cleaning of both the steam wand and the coffee spout by first heating the water and then pushing the steam and hot water through the wand and hot water through the spout. You have to make sure that the steam wand is facing down or the steam and hot water from the wand might go on your counter or the floor. The machine does not have a screen where messages would be displayed about the status of the coffee drink making process. Instead the top of the spout shows an LED light that displays different colors in a circle, like white, orange, red and blue. In addition these colors can rotate left or right and show different patterns. All these are communicating to you what’s going on like powering on, grinding, add water, brew in progress and so on. Personally I found it challenging to learn and then remember all those different combinations of colors and rotations. Thankfully some key important messages are also being displayed as needed on the top of the machine, including Add Beans, Empty Waste, Add Water, Descale, Check Brew Unit and Rinsing. The app itself is nothing special. It is not a dedicated device app but rather a general app for all Profile devices, like a stove or others. We have the Profile stove and the app for the stove is quite robust with many options. Unfortunately the app portion for this coffee maker is very basic, allowing you only to preset the amount of coffee used and select from 3 choices of water amount. What I used the app for was to set up the amount of coffee used per drink, which you do by changing the duration of the grind. I did not bother setting up the amount of water as those I could manually define myself on the machine to my linking, not being limited to three options only. Overall I am satisfied with this coffee maker. It does what it supposed to do, allows the basic flexibility if it comes to customizing your coffee drink. It is not too loud and crema quality is quite decent. I think while it has its quirks, it offers a great value for the money. One happy customer here.