Gaggia Cadorna Barista Plus Automatic Beran to Cup Coffee Machine, Espresso and Cappuccino Maker with Professional Steam Wand

Makes a decent espresso, but the panarello makes awful hot milk (no texture, just hot milk). Does get blocked up with calcium pretty regularly, so have to descale. Product looks great, but when you look behind the curtains it is all plastic, so not really sure about its long term durability.

The following comments are for the Gaggia Cadorna Barista Plus and Importika's customer service, 2 month after initial purchase. My opinion of both is very positive.The Barista Plus, delievers a great cup of coffee with what seems to be an infinate number of coffee strengths within the five coffee drink types (expresso, espresso lungo, ristretto, coffee, and Americano). Compared to drip, k-cup, and French press, there is no comparision, the cup of coffee from the Barista Plus is far superior (even when using cheap beans).The machine worked flawlessly for ca. 1.5 months until a power outage. After the outage, the Barista Plus no longer turned on. I called Gaggia's importer, Importika, customer service to see what could be done to get the machine to turn on. After describing the problem and the characteristics, neither customer service or technical support at Importika had seen the symptoms before. Solution - send the Barista Plus back to Importika, who will send a replacement. Simple easy solution! Excellent customer service!This is when we realized that within the 1.5 months of using the origianl Barista Plus, we had become hooked on the coffee delievered from the Barista Plus! Now we would have to switch back to the old options, the horror!If you are wondering if the Barista Plus is worth the amount? We wondered this too. For us, no question, the investment in a great cup of coffee was money well spent.One word of caution. Having lived in Europe, All-In-One coffee makers and espresso machines are very common there. These machines with the grinder and high pressure are complex. Expect break downs with any all-in-one or expresso machines, even with the high end, $10,000 machines.For the Barista Plus, it appears that later in the life, it will be fairly easy to fix as the major componets are independant. Thus, components, such as the grinders, can be removed as a unique unit and replaced.

Update: Machine has broken (requiring repair) twice in 18 months.First the grinder unit broke, but I was able to replace it with help from the seller who was gracious enough to send me a part. (I'm glad I'm technical so I could replace it myself.) A few months later, I'm getting an error code 14 and the machine doesn't consume heating power, which indicates either a broken thermostat or a broken boiler. I'm not sure I even want to investigate repairing this machine now, since this next repair will be out of warranty and likely more involved than I could accomplish on my own. It's a shame, because this machine was otherwise nice. I just can't recommend it given how unreliable it has been for me.Initial Review is preserved below:The machine works great. Your quality of coffee will largely depend on your choice of beans, and, like most superautomatics, you won't be able to dial-in your shots to achieve the mythical perfect shot. For a guy like me, who needs reasonably yummy coffee/espresso with minimal hassle and mess in the morning, this thing is perfect.A few nitpicks:- You can program it to pull sequential shots of espresso, but you cannot program it to do double americanos. Us Americans, with our big cups, might find it annoying to wait around for the machine to finish a single americano serving and then press the button again to fill your cup to the top.- The steam wand is very annoying to use to froth milk. The wand is controlled by a menu option/button. Select the steam option to start, then press a different button to stop. This would be fine, except that the machine automatically purges the steam as soon as you stop delivering steam. Normally you'd steam your milk, pause steam for a moment to remove your pitcher (to avoid nasty scalding milk splatters), then turn on the steam again for a moment to purge/clean the wand. If you want to do that with this machine, you must wait for it to run through an entire heatup cycle again since it purges steam out of the side of the unit the moment you shut it off.- The bean hopper at the top of the unit has no gasket or any other type of seal. The plastic lid simply rests lightly on top of the hopper. This means my entire kitchen smells like coffee even when the unit is off! It also means beans don't last as long in the hopper since they aren't protected from air circulation. I fixed this by adding a thin rubber band around the edge of the hopper, creating a gentle seal around the unit.- As is usual for units like this without actively heated warming trays, the warming tray is useless for your cups.General advice that applies to all/most superautomatic machines:- Cleaning is important, do not neglect regularly rinsing off the brew-group. It's much less irritating to do this than trying to fix a stuck or nasty machine.- Oily beans will cause a buildup of residue in the hopper, preventing the beans from sliding down into the grinder. Get in the habit of regularly wiping away the oils in the hopper, or select beans that are not very oily. (Oily beans appear shiny, dull beans are the ones that won't leave as much residue behind.)- Don't wait until the drip-tray is completely full before emptying it, or you'll be spilling nasty coffee wastewater all over your counters/floors.

I bought a Gaggia Cardona Plus Machine last month, on Amazon from the Whole Latte Love seller, I already received my machine 1 week ago in my country and it brought a split internal plastic part that does not allow the machine to work anymore that spills the hot water below.I need please go to the use of the guarantee of this new equipment. Because it is seen that the part that is broken must be damaged from the factory

Great product. Reliable. Consistent. Easy to use and maintain. Definitely have to brew on more intense settings as it tends to be on the weaker side. Overall, definitely recommend if what you want is a machine that gives you great espresso with minimal fuss. We drink espressos and americanos almost exclusively, so haven’t used the steam wand much.

I was quite excited to purchase this machine. My Nespresso machine is dying after many years of faithful service and I wanted something that could compare to it - fast and easy to use. This machine is easy to use, but does seem to take some tuning. No one really talks about how you need to pull at least 12-20 shots to "tune the machine" (not sure what they even mean by that). But I never got anything but watery, tea-like shots out of it. I did talk to the support team and, to be fair, their support team are great. I do believe that if the machine is working well, you may get great results. I seem to just have been unlucky and did not, so the machine is going back.