First look: Bosch Espresso 800 series

My family and I joke that the best coffee makers are the fancy ones you find in car dealership waiting rooms. They often offer the largest selection on a visual menu display screen, are foolproof for the average person, work quickly, and make excellent coffee drinks.

And that’s what I’ve been thinking about since I started testing Bosch’s new 800 Series fully automatic espresso machine this week. It’s designed to make coffee, espresso, cappuccino, latte, café con leche, flat white and more at the touch of a button. And it fits on our kitchen counter without rubbing against the cabinets above – much better than many other machines we’ve tried.

Hannah Kühner, head of Consumer Products Region North America at Bosch, says the machine “offers coffee lovers maximum flavor with minimal effort, while offering the quality and innovation that Bosch is known for.” I agree. For the most part.

The slick-looking machine combines a ceramic coffee grinder, a smart water pump, a water heater that optimizes brewing temperatures, and a high-tech brewing unit. You can even set the flavor of your brew to mild, balanced, or pronounced—without adjusting the coffee strength. The Double Cup feature lets you brew two cups at once, though I didn’t try this feature. Nor did I connect the machine to the app via the internal Wi-Fi. I simply used the 5-inch touchscreen to choose what I wanted from the 30 or so drink options on the menu. Ironically, the hardest part of my experience was turning the machine on. Literally every morning, I had to press the power button five or six times before it would work. There’s also a built-in milk system that simplifies frothing and heats the milk. Since neither my wife nor I drink milk, we didn’t try this feature.

I absolutely loved the espresso she made me every morning with 19 bars of pump pressure. You can also adjust the size of the shot. I switched between the single and double shot option and they were consistently great. I also adjusted the grind in the grinder and could taste the difference. My wife drinks a plain cup of coffee every day. Without telling her, I varied the flavor and strength each day to see if she mentioned anything. And surprisingly, she did. When I switched to an extra strong cup with a pronounced flavor, she immediately said it didn’t taste nearly as good as the day before. So these options definitely work.

As with most machines of this type, the Bosch machine rinses every time you turn it on and off, so I quickly remembered to put an empty cup under the spout. Otherwise, the water just falls into the drain below, which is fine, but then needs to be emptied more often. One thing I found odd – and maybe I had a setting turned off – but the machine didn’t warn me when it was out of coffee beans. It just kept trying to grind beans and then essentially dripped hot water into the cup.

Speaking of water, this machine has a huge 2.4-liter water tank for a stand-alone machine—a great thing because you don’t have to refill it as often as many other machines. That’s 81 ounces. That means I could make 40 2-ounce espressos before I’d have to refill it. Mind you, refilling it is a simple process, but why do it if you don’t have to?

I was pleased to use Bosch’s automatic push-button method for my testing period, as I’ve been using more manual methods of coffee preparation lately. It’s fast and fairly quiet – perfect for lazy mornings – and costs $2,300.