The 6 Best Latte Machines for Automatic Espresso Drinks (2025)

But here are the caveats: coffee cup height clearance can be an issue for milk drinks, the pump is a little louder than some, it's slow to load, some parts feel a little flimsy or plasticky for a machine in this price range. Additionally, if you want an attached milk carafe, it will cost $300 to $500 more, depending on current offerings.

The difference between home espresso machines and the commercial workhorses used in busy third-wave stores still amounts to thousands of dollars, but that hasn't stopped both beloved brands and lazy upstarts from infiltrating the market with more affordable devices. Skip the trash and go up a level Casabrus 5700PRO (7/10, WIRED Review), which offers an unassuming look at the art of homemade espresso.

Instead of confusing newbies with a million settings and built-in tutorials, this machine's 12 x 11 x 16-inch tank makes it easy to operate with easily accessible controls for things like extraction temperature and dose volume, and built-in grinder runtime. This is a single-boiler machine rather than two-boiler, which means you can't froth milk for a latte at the same time as making a shot, but the texture of the frothed milk is perfectly pliable and lends itself to a basic leaf or rosette design.

The guides that hold the portafilter in place are too close to the grinder's outlet spout, and temperature control measures that consider absolute rather than relative values ​​would be a welcome improvement. But until Casabrews takes our feedback into account, it's still a solid device that's a great choice for anyone who's ready to never leave the house for a cappuccino again. —Pete Cottell

Photo: Tyler Shane

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WIRED

• Easy to use, with a great app that can warm up your car without even getting out of bed.
• Really good drip coffee
• The water tank on the facade is very beautiful.

TIRED

• A little buggy, like a lot of new technology.

The super-automatic Terra Kaffe is an expensive machine that has its faults, but given its simplicity and customizability, it's worth it, WIRED reviewer Tyler Shane wrote last year. She praised the convenience of the device, its simplicity, front water filter, trash tray and milk carafe, as well as the excellent app (available for iOS and Android), which offers simple controls and the ability to warm up the car without getting out of bed or in the bathroom.

Drinks like latte macchiato, drips and iced coffee can be customized to your liking, while the milk froth control lets you adjust the milk's texture from frothy to silky. For those who love real, authentic drip coffee, this is the Terra Kaffe's biggest advantage over our top-rated De'Longhi Rivelia and Ninja Cafe Luxe Premier automatic coffee machines: the TK-02 offers it. The drip coffee is also so good that Shayne removed the Chemex carafe from the counter.

Delonghi's Magnifica Start is a serious super-automatic machine with a conical burr grinder, four preset recipes at the touch of a button, and the ability to brew smooth and strong espresso, wrote WIRED reviewer Tyler Shane. Like other high-end De'Longhi devices at the moment, the milk frother really impresses, offering a truly luxurious frothed milk experience. Milk-based recipes at the touch of a button are Latte Macchiato and Cappuccino, while Espresso and Americano are espresso-based options. There is a compartment for ground beans and a hopper for whole beans. Finding the grind size requires a bit of trial and error, and it's not a particularly quiet machine, Shane says. But the Start is compact and efficient, and the price is much lower than our favorite automatic, the De'Longhi Rivelia. This makes Magnifica Start a safe investment.

Questions and answers

Photo: Jeffrey Van Camp.

Automation is the key here. We wanted to test machines that would make you a cup of coffee with just one touch, or as close to it as possible. So, all the products in this list are automatic and semi-automatic types. You fill them out and they do all the hard work—or at least most of it. Nothing here has a milk frother that does all the work on its own.

Particularly important were installation and cleaning, as well as durability. The whole purpose of such a device is to save time and energy and/or produce a better quality drink than would otherwise be possible, so we don't recommend products that don't make a delicious espresso. And save time.

Even if you don't make espresso, the first and best thing you can do to dramatically improve your morning coffee is to buy locally roasted beans. Add your city or region and “locally roasted coffee beans” to Google and you'll be glad you did. The reason your locally roasted coffee will taste better than anything you buy from a big roaster (like Starbucks, Illy, or Gevalia) is simple: good coffee starts to lose flavor the moment it's roasted. Take it fresh and you'll have a much better chance of producing high-quality espresso.

Want help finding the best roasters? To learn about some of our favorite mail-order brands whose beans are often roasted the same day or week they're mailed, check out our roundup Best Coffee Subscription Services.

I hate to break it to you, but ground coffee from a supermarket bag is almost always worse. Unless you see the roast date on the bag, you probably have no idea when the roaster actually roasted it. If the roaster is a French or Italian brand, chances are it was a few months ago. Coffee is best when it's fresh, ideally brewed within a week or two of roasting. And grinding the beans dramatically increases the rate of coffee decomposition. This affects more than just the taste of the coffee. This affects how well the coffee maker will push water through the beans, which can lead to blowouts or poor extraction.

If you haven't made espresso before and don't have access to a grinder, we recommend purchasing locally roasted beans. Just ask your local roaster for a fine grind (espresso). We've tried a variety of pre-ground espresso blends from popular companies like Lavazza, GevaliaAnd Cafe Bustelo. They were all very dark and very bitter, partly because they were all either imported or roasted in large batches and shipped all over the world. Pre-ground coffee will always be a little stale, and it's difficult to get a good cup of coffee that has started to go bad, which happens quickly after you grind it.