De’Longhi Dedica Duo review: A whimsical pastel ‘50s espresso machine with one major flaw

The De’Longhi Dedica Duo is certainly one of the prettiest espresso machines I’ve ever seen. I tested the gorgeous green pastel style, but it’s also available in baby pink. It looks like a mixture between a Smeg and a Breville Bambino Plus, if that’s your thing.

Looks alone aren’t enough to make it one of the best espresso machines on the market, though. It’s got to make excellent coffee too, doesn’t it? The Dedica Duo kinda makes excellent coffee. It’s definitely good enough (and easy enough to use) to impress beginners, but I’m not sure coffee nerds would appreciate the pressurized portafilters.

Even so, there’s a whole load of features on the Dedica Duo. I’ll discuss everything in full in this De’Longhi Dedica Duo review.

De'Longhi Dedica Duo review: Cheat sheet

• Who is it for? Pastel fans and cold brew addicts who also want an espresso machine
• What does it do well? The cold brew actually tastes lovely, and it comes with a weighty tamper and milk jug
• What are its weaknesses? I’m not too sure why it’s $299 — the same price as the Breville Bambino and $150 pricier than the De’Longhi Stilosa
• Anything else to know? The Dedica Duo does have a USP, though: cold brew and espresso in one

De'Longhi Dedica Duo review: Specs

De'Longhi Dedica Duo review: Price & availability

The De’Longhi Dedica Duo is one of the most affordable espresso machines on the market. In the U.S., it’s just $299 from Amazon, and in the U.K., it’s £279 from John Lewis.

Even though this price is relatively low for an espresso machine, I do think De’Longhi shot itself in the foot a little by making the Dedica Duo the same price as the Breville Bambino. Why? Well, the Breville Bambino is a better machine. There’s little wiggle room there, as you might as well get a better machine for the same cost, right?

In the U.K., the Dedica Duo is £20 cheaper than the Bambino, which puts the De’Longhi in a much better position to go head-to-head with the Breville. For starters, the Bambino comes with single-walled portafilters, and the Dedica Duo does not.

If the Dedica Duo was just $20 cheaper in the U.S., then I would say it’s perfectly priced as a more affordable Bambino. The Dedica Duo performs better than Casabrews machines (think the CM5418, $139, and the 3700 Essential, $129), but the Bambino pips it to the post.

It’s not just Breville that outpriced the Dedica Duo: De’Longhi’s own budget machine, the De'Longhi Stilosa, is just $149 and performs around the same as the Dedica Duo. The only difference is that the Dedica Duo has a cold brew setting and the Stilosa does not, so the Dedica Duo wins there. Even so, I’m not sure this one feature works hard enough to justify an extra $150 price tag.

De'Longhi Dedica Duo review: Design

The most striking feature of the Dedica Duo is its design. I tested the pastel green version, but it also comes in silver, pink, and white. I love the green version; it looks so cute and pretty on the kitchen countertop. If you’re the kind of person who loves Smeg gear but it’s a little too pricey, the Dedica Duo will almost certainly please you.

One of my favorite aspects of the design is the accessories. Sometimes, budget machines come with flimsy accessories — or no accessories at all — but that’s not the case with the Dedica Duo. The tamper is lovely and weighty, and the milk jug has an angled spout that makes pouring latte art easier.

Although I’m sure everyone will appreciate high-quality accessories, the Dedica Duo has a… divisive design feature too. There are no buttons on the front of the machine: the shot, cold brew, and steam settings are all controlled via a touchscreen on top of the machine. I’m not a huge fan of how this looks, but that could just be me.

The touchscreen works just like buttons, though. You have to press one of the icons to activate cold brew, single shot, double shots, and steam. Steam takes about ten seconds to preheat, and I found it easy to switch between steam and shots — no purging the machine like on some budget Casabrews models.

Sometimes the machine asks you to purge the steam wand by flashing the ‘steam’ icon, but this only happened a couple of times during testing.

In general, the Dedica Duo is really pretty, with an impressive range of colors and a lovely ‘50s style. However, I do have a few qualms.

The drip tray is really annoying. It’s not annoying enough to be in my ‘Cons’ list, but, still, it’s annoying, and it made me annoyed. The drip tray doesn’t slide out, like every other espresso machine I’ve ever used. You have to hook your fingers under the metal tray and pull it out from above, but then the metal tray detaches from the plastic underneath and it is all just very tedious.

I burned my fingers on hot water and hot metal a number of times before finally realizing how to remove the drip tray, and even afterwards it was just as annoying. So please heed my warning. Or, I could just be being dramatic. Stranger things have happened.

De'Longhi Dedica Duo review: Espresso

The Dedica Duo not only makes traditional espresso: it can also make cold brew. I’ll mostly discuss normal espresso here, but I did make a few cold brews with the Dedica Duo and I was pleasantly surprised.

The flavor was juicy and tart, just what you’d expect from cold brew. While it only made about 150ml with one double shot of coffee, this was really concentrated and would have served maybe even two people with milk and ice added.

I’ll start off with my usual whinge about dual-walled portafilters. Unfortunately, the Dedica Duo only comes with dual-walled (pressurized) portafilter baskets, which pressurize espresso during extraction and basically obliterates all delicate flavor notes. While I’d recommend pressurized baskets for use with pre-ground coffee, you also shouldn’t be using pre-ground coffee as it tastes terrible.

These pressurized portafilters have a silicone ring inside that you need to remove to clean the portafilter, but I found this quite easy to do after the initial headache.

The Dedica Duo uses 51mm portafilters, but wasn’t compatible with my 51mm Casabrews bottomless portafilter; water just spurted out of the sides. I’d recommend upgrading this machine with a De’Longhi-compatible 51mm bottomless portafilter if you’re serious about getting the best coffee possible from this machine, though.

With the provided dual-walled portafilters, I got some good espresso, but not great espresso. The colleagues who drank these coffees said they tasted lovely, but I wasn’t a huge fan of the flavor personally. I thought it was a little muted and plain, which was a shame as I was using Ethiopian beans with notes of blueberry pie and butter.

Here’s a photo of an espresso shot made on the Dedica Duo.

For dual-walled portafilters, the crema isn’t too aerated. The shot was bitter and intense, but still had a decent amount of juiciness at the back of my palate. As far as dual-walled portafilters go, this isn’t the worst shot I’ve ever pulled using one. I would still recommend getting a third-party bottomless portafilter, though. You can get one on Amazon for $29.

De'Longhi Dedica Duo review: Milk

The Dedica Duo has a budget-machine-standard steam wand, which is unfortunately not the compliment I wish it was. As the Dedica Duo’s steam wand has just one hole, and a weird lack of pressure, it’s quite tricky to get barista-quality latte art.

For a $299 machine, though, this isn’t an anomaly. This is what I expect when I see a price tag under $400 or so.

The steam wand takes about five seconds to heat up when you switch from espresso to steam, which is quicker than Casabrews 3700 Essential and CM5418. The steam pressure itself is quite unreliable, though: it spurts out one pulse of strong steam, then slowly fades, then another pulse of pressure about eight seconds later. I noticed the steam wand followed this structure quite reliably during testing.

Anyway, as I said, this is par for the course for a budget machine. You won’t be winning the Latte Art Olympics with this machine, but it’s also capable of making pretty-ish drinks that’ll satisfy your inner home barista (unless that inner home barista is perfectionist, like mine).

Here’s a photo of a latte I made on the Dedica Duo. The milk took one minute and fifteen seconds to heat to about 65°C / 150°F, which is around the same time as a Breville Bambino or Bambino Plus.

As you can see, there are a few uneven bubbles in the milk, but in general, this quality is acceptable for the majority of coffee drinkers. I’d say this is what you’d get from a chain coffee shop rather than a specialty coffee shop, but I suppose that’s not the end of the world.

With a little patience and practice, the Dedica Duo steam wand will be able to make decent drinks, but I think the overall pressure is too low for it to make excellent drinks.

I will also quickly mention that the metal casing of the steam wand is easily removable, which makes cleaning the wand a lot more straightforward.

De'Longhi Dedica Duo review: Storage & maintenance

At just 5.9 inches wide, the Dedica Duo is the ideal espresso machine for small spaces. It joins the ranks of other super-compact machines like the Bambino, Bambino Plus, Casabrews CM5418, 3700 Essential, and 5418 Pro.

The aforementioned De’Longhi Stilosa is 8 inches wide. While it’s much cheaper than the Dedica Duo, if you’re super tight on space, every inch counts. Heck, if you’re trying to fit an espresso machine between the microwave and a toaster, then 2 inches really could be a decent chunk of space.

So if you want a really compact espresso machine, it’s got to be one of the six I mentioned above.

Size aside, the De’Longhi Dedica Duo comes with a plethora of cleaning supplies. I love when manufacturers ship new machines with cleaning products as it makes me feel like the company actually cares about you taking care of the machine. Casabrews, for example, doesn’t ship any cleaning products with the sale of its espresso machines, and actively advises you against cleaning under their shower screens. Hmm.

As the Dedica Duo comes with descaling liquid, you should be set for a few months before you have to buy it separately, unless you live in a very hard water area.

And the cherry on top of the cake? The Dedica Duo has a lovely 2 year warranty, which should give you a nice peace of mind when getting to grips with using it. This is better than Casabrews’ one year warranty.

De'Longhi Dedica Duo review: How does it compare?

As I’ve touched on a few times in this review, De’Longhi has made a fatal error with the Dedica Duo. Perhaps fatal is too dramatic a word, but the long and short of it is this: I’m not entirely sure who the Dedica Duo is for.

If De’Longhi had no other budget espresso machines on its lineup, I’d say that the Dedica Duo is a great beginner-friendly model that is worthy of all compact kitchens. However, De’Longhi has many other budget espresso machines on its docket, some of which perform identically to the Dedica Duo for much less money.

Personally, I would skip the Dedica Duo and grab the $149 De’Longhi Stilosa instead. The Stilosa is a fantastic machine, with reliable espresso extraction and a surprisingly powerful steam wand. The only main difference between the Dedica Duo and the Stilosa is the former has cold brew extraction and looks prettier.

If you’re serious about saving $$$, then it’s got to be the Stilosa. Even though the Stilosa doesn’t come with a milk jug and a flimsy tamper (and the Dedica Duo comes with a lovely weighty tamper and great milk jug) these savings are still worth it overall.

Casabrews has made the same error as De’Longhi, by making two of its entry-level machines operate almost identically with different prices. As a result, I’d always recommend the cheaper option, because why wouldn’t you want to save as much money as possible?

If you want to save as much money as possible, I’d recommend you check out the $129 Casabrews 3700 Essential, which makes yummy coffee and has a surprisingly powerful steam wand for a head-scratchingly low price.

De'Longhi Dedica Duo review: Verdict

The Dedica Duo is a good espresso machine, especially at its $299 MSRP. On top of being a traditional compact espresso machine, it also has cold brew capabilities and comes in a range of pretty colors.

If you are an espresso lover who also needs cold brew stat, then the Dedica Duo is a great machine for you. However, if you’re primarily an espresso drinker and you’re not overly enamored by the cold brew feature, I think you should save $150 and get the De’Longhi Stilosa instead. The Stilosa performs the exact same way — granted it looks a little uglier — for much, much less money.

I always err on the side of “save as much money as possible” and, in this case, that means I’m recommending the Stilosa over the Dedica Duo. Unless you’re a cold brew addict, of course, then it’s the Dedica Duo or bust.