Sage - The Bambino - Compact Coffee Machine with Automatic Milk Frother, Brushed Stainless Steel

The media could not be loaded. The Bambino is a great option if you don’t want to spend £400 plus on a coffee machine. It comes with a 54mm portafilter, 4 portafilter baskets (for single and double shots, two of which are double walled - for pre grind “fine” beans so that the double wall delayes flow and creates froth), a milk jug and and a standard plastic tamper.Let’s start with the advantages:The coffee comes out very well, you can make a coffee shop like cup in a matter of seconds as long as you buy quality coffee and make sure to use a 18g dosage and compact it correctly.Its stainless steel design is beautiful and as opposed to the other machines that Sage offers - it doesn’t take much space.The issues:The settings are basic. 1/2 cups, milk froth and water through the milk froth. No more no less.While this is an advantage to some, it looks like the Bambino Plus has more features and a better frother , but then you enter a £350 range machine so you might as well look for more expensive options.The portafilter is basic, you will want to upgrade it to something slicker with a double nozzle, so that’s another £35-50 depends on the brand you buy.All in all very happy, does the job for what I need it to do. Would recommend unless you are an obsessive person in which case you will start thinking about the features you don’t have. This is a minimal machine that does professional grade coffee. Good for a small kitchen and for coffee lovers. No more no less.

We bought our bambino through a shop last November.The coffee is great, with a little tweaking. Took a while to adjust our burr grinder to the right setting, as you'd expect. At least as good as Starbucks or similar.We followed the maintenance instructions using the correct product.When it stopped working two months ago, the shop offered to replace for free or that Sage's excellent customer service team can help.I chose the customer service team and raised a ticket.They literally reply once a week with generic instructions. I followed their troubleshooting and bought £15 of descaler, despite having done the same myself after some youtube videos.What should have been a half hour conversation has taken two months, and they've finally instructed a repair company to collect it tomorrow.So, it's a great product. But if it breaks you might be scuppered. Make sure you can return it to where you bought it from instead, and maybe take out an extended shop warranty.