5 Best Breville Espresso Machines, According to Testing

In the Good Housekeeping Institute Kitchen Appliances and Innovation Lab, we evaluate each espresso maker for ease of use, brew time, consistency, taste, temperature and noise level.

To find the best Breville espresso machines, we test many of Breville's most popular espresso models, vet user reviews and use our decades of espresso machine and kitchen appliance knowledge to understand what to look for when it comes to buying a Breville espresso machine.

✔️ Size: Consider how much space you have to allocate to your espresso maker. The majority of Breville espresso machines have similar dimensions, except for the compact Bambino line which is more suitable to smaller spaces.

✔️ Price: Breville espresso machines are priced according to their amount of features. The brand's most expensive model at $2,800, the Oracle Touch is not on this list, but it offers a grinder, a touchscreen and many automated features including an automatic frother. The least expensive is the Bambino, which doesn't have a grinder or any special features, giving it a price around $300. In between, you can find a broad range of options at varying price points.

✔️ Control interface: There are three types of control panels offered on Breville espresso machines: a simple button control interface, a LCD screen interface and a touchscreen interface.

• A simple button control interface is offered on three of our top picks. It's easy to navigate and keeps the price of the machine affordable.
• The LCD screen interface, featured on the Barista Pro, allows you to read the panel even in dimly lit spaces and helps you determine your perfect shot.
• A touchscreen interface, like on the Barista Touch Impress, delivers multiple presets and imagery so you can understand how much is being ground or how milk should be frothed. This is the control interface you'll find on the most expensive Breville machines.

✔️ Coffee grinder: Some Breville espresso machines are designed with built-in coffee grinders. They are convenient, reduce some mess and ensure you have freshly ground coffee beans each time you pull a shot. One downside is that built-in grinders are hard to fix if they break and often lead people to purchase an entirely new machine.

✔️ Milk frother: There are two types of milk frothers offered on Breville espresso machines: a manual milk frothing wand and an automatic milk frother wand. With the manual frothing wand, you can practice your latte art, but it does take some time to learn to froth milk properly. With the automatic milk frothing wand, you simply place your milk pitcher underneath the automatic frothing wand and, according to Breville, it creates "hands-free microfoam."

✔️ Tamp: To achieve a good and even espresso extraction, the ground coffee needs to be tamped down. Breville offers two styles of tamping on their machines. Our best overall pick features their new tamping innovation called "assisted tamping," which adds 22 pounds of impression to each dose, resulting in a perfectly even and consistent tamp. However, many of Breville's espresso machines utilize manual tamping, in which the consumer has to compress the puck of ground espresso by hand.

✔️ Pressure: The amount of pressure exerted upon coffee grounds is measured by BARs or barometric pressure. The pressure of the extraction should be strong enough to release the coffee's flavors, but not too strong that it over extracts, releasing bitter notes. In general, espresso machines have pumps that release between 7-19 BARs. All Breville machines on this list can exert up to 15 BARs, but for the optimal espresso extraction, you want to aim for 9 BARS. Many of the models on this list (except for the Bambino) have a pressure gauge on the control panel which shows the optimal espresso extraction range. If your espresso extraction doesn't fall between the optimal extraction, you either have to change the grind of the espresso beans, reduce the amount of coffee filled in the portafilter or tamp your portafilter with less pressure. Conveniently a lot of the models on this list help you obtain an ideal extraction at around 9 BARs each time with assisted tamping or intelligent dosing.

✔️ Heating system: In general, Breville espresso machines heat up faster than other brands we have tested. All of our top picks feature a thermacoil heating system that heats water quickly to 200°F. Though there are a few models that have dual-boilers that heat up even faster and allow you to pull a shot of espresso while frothing milk at the same time. Dual-boiler models tend to be more expensive and aren't as necessary, unless you're short on time or have a large latte-loving family.

Breville espresso machines are stylish, innovative and backed by a helpful customer support team (which we've also tested out).“They are consistently a top performer, and they are also thoughtful in the details, making their machines user-friendly," says analyst Jamie (Kim) Ueda who has tested many of the Breville espresso machines on this list. For all of these reasons, we believe that Breville is a great home espresso machine brand.

Keeping your Breville espresso machine clean inside and out will ensure that you pull a delicious tasting shot of espresso each time.

The clean descale light will illuminate on your Breville espresso machine whenever it needs to be descaled, but we recommend descaling your coffee maker every three months. If you're new to owning a Breville, the brand provides a lot of great content on their website, like how to descale your espresso machine.

There's other maintenance you should periodically be doing, including emptying and cleaning out the drip tray, cleaning the portafilter after each use and cleaning all removable parts so that leftover coffee doesn't build-up.

It's also a good practice to carefully wipe down the steam wand after every use with a wet dishcloth to prevent any milk residue from building up.

To ensure your built-in grinder stays in good condition and provides optimal grinding, you must clean and maintain your grinder as well. This video shows the proper way to clean a Breville grinder. After cleaning, if you find that your espresso beans are dry, full of static and are spraying out of your machine during grinding, we recommend, every so often, spritzing a few droplets of water on the beans within the hopper.

Eva Bleyer is the reviews analyst in the Good Housekeeping Institute Kitchen Appliances and Innovation Lab. She has tested a wide assortment of kitchen appliances and gear from gas ranges and microwaves to kitchen scales and blenders. She graduated from NYU with a bachelor of science in food studies, nutrition and public health and is a trained cook through the Natural Gourmet Institute. Eva has operated almost every Breville espresso machine on this list to pull shots of espresso for lattes, flat whites and Americanos. She especially appreciates the rich espresso crema that Breville espresso machines produce.

Jamie (Kim) Ueda's first job at Good Housekeeping Institute was testing a variety of consumer products, and one of her first tests was drip coffee makers. Since then, she has tested and written about many kitchen-related and cooking tools, in particular drip coffee and espresso makers as well as coffee accessories like coffee grinders. She has a passion for coffee and has completed rigorous coffee courses from the SCA (Specialty Coffee Association) in coffee brewing, barista skills and sensory tasting. She has Lab-tested nearly all of the models on this list.