I spent a month testing the De'Longhi La Specialista Touch, and it's an instant classic

There's a growing trend of assisted automatic espresso machines and I, for one, am here for it. These machines allow you to go through the motions of crafting the perfect espresso from scratch, but use smart controls and guided features to give you a helping hand. In other words, they make you feel like a barista, even if you've got zero training. What's not to love?

The latest addition to this new genre is the De'Longhi La Specialista Touch. I spent a month testing it, and it's almost everything I could want in a coffee maker.

Retailing for £699 in the U.K., where I'm based, there's no denying this machine is a better deal for European readers than in the U.S., where it costs $999. But even while it's less competitively placed for American markets, it's still the sort of machine I'd recommend investing in. In fact, if I didn't have a constant conveyor belt of machines to test in my kitchen, it's definitely the sort of machine I'd buy for my small kitchen.

Here's how it performed when I used it to make hot, iced, and milk-based drinks for a full month.

De'Longhi La Specialista Touch: Specs

De'Longhi La Specialista Touch: Price & availability

At £699 in the U.K., where I'm based, the La Specialista Touch is far from an affordable option, but it's very competitively priced. It will cost you around the same as Ninja's Luxe Café coffee maker, which, while a fantastic machine, doesn't put up much of a fight in the looks department. Plus, there's coffee pedigree to consider, which De'Longhi has in spades.

In the U.S., it's a $999 machine, putting it on par with the Breville Touch Impress. This model offers a lot of the same features and the same great aesthetics but can't beat the $599 Ninja Luxe Café on price.

De'Longhi La Specialista Touch review: Design

I'm a huge fan of how this machine is designed. For one, the La Specialista Touch is unusually petite. My main complaint about De'Longhi's La Specialista Maestro is that it was just too big for my kitchen, but the De'Longhi La Specialista Touch packs a lot of the same smart features in a much more compact frame, and adds a 3.5-inch intuitive touchscreen.

There's something for everyone with this touchscreen. If you want to get granular, you can look at the brewing temperature and pre-infusion settings with just a few scrolls. For most people, you'll be using it to scroll through pre-set drinks and choose your preferred beverage.

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Once you've selected your drink, you use the touchscreen to get the process going. It starts your grind, brew and milk controls, allowing you to toggle with extra dosing or manual steaming if you so wish. The screen is responsive and easy to use, and I also enjoyed the manual On/Off button and manual grinder controls on the top of the machine.

De'Longhi La Specialista Touch review: Performance

Grinder

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Like Ninja's Luxe Café, it doesn't feature an in-built tamping arm but instead offers guided tamping. This allows you to add a mess-free funnel onto your portafilter to capture every coffee ground, and then use a tamper which indicates the ideal level for your coffee. You can then report all of this back to your machine, which will adjust the grinding settings for next time.

This machine is highly interactive. Using De'Longhi's "Bean Adapt" tech, it can walk you through your initial setup to get its grinding and brewing settings aligned with your choice of beans. It makes things accessible by using the color of your beans to ascertain the roast level, and asks you to report on the tamping level to help it land on the ideal volume dose for your beans.

And best of all, you can save this bean profile if you want to switch it up with a different bag, which I often do. Toggling between beans is very straightforward, and the machine will remind you of the ideal grind setting each time.

The machine uses a connical burr grinder with 15 settings. I found this perfectly adequate for getting a good extraction from the different beans I used, but it's worth noting that rivals such as the Breville Barista Touch Impress offer 30 settings.

Espresso

I got some great espresso from this machine. The beans I was using in these shots were a dark-roasted, budget brand robusta, which typically won't lead to as lively or aromatic an extraction. Despite this, I was pretty happy with the deep and nutty flavors I achieved from the La Specialista Touch.

When I switched to my go-to Lost Sheep Coffee Get To The Hopper blend, I was able to hit the lovely toffee and chocolate notes I grativate towards for long black coffees.

The machine also has a hot water dispenser which points directly into your mug when it's placed under the portafilter, meaning it automatically tops up your espresso when you opt for an Americano, which I often do.

Cold brew

I'm a huge fan of cold brew, so I'm very happy to see more coffee brands adding it to their default settings. Of course, as with any cold brew from an espresso machine, it can't rival the authentic stuff. But seeing as it's not steeped for 24 hours and instead requires just a few minutes, that's fine with me.

Interestingly, you don't need to adjust your grind size to make cold brew with this machine. Most cold brew requires a much larger grind size, but the La Specialista Touch sticks to the same settings that you'd use in your espresso.

The brew took around four minutes in total, and left me with a light and fruity flavor. It was quite mild as a result of the low-heat, low-pressure extraction, so I preferred drinking it black. Note that this machine doesn't do cold espresso, so you'll need to use regular espresso for iced lattes.

Milk-based drinks

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The La Specialista Touch uses an automatic steam wand with an in-built temperature probe to steam milk for lattes and cappuccinos totally hands-free.

This is a big step up from machines that come with hot milk dispensers, which don't use steam to texturize the milk, and don't let you hand-pour to work on latte art.

The automatic settings are really strong, easily comparable to the likes of Breville machines. My milk did have quite a heavy top layer of milk, which is about right for a cappuccino, but the microfoam was consistently full of body and fine bubbles.

I was confident I could do a better job hand-steaming, but if you've not got five years of barista skills under your belt, it's a good alternative.

One of my few complaints with this machine is that the handy temperature probe on the steam wand does make it tricky to get a good vortex going when you're hand-steaming. But with that being said, I was still able to get something verging on latte art when I steamed by hand.

The steam wand is powerful and pre-heats quickly, and you can see the temperature of your milk rising in real time. This is quite useful for those who are prone to burning their milk. It's also useful for plant-based milks, which will burn at lower temperatures.

When you're done using the wand, you simply need to wipe it down and return it to its resting position using the dial at the side of the machine. It automatically purges to prevent blockage, which is a nice touch.

How does the De'Longhi La Specialista Touch compare?

It's worth comparing this new model to the De'Longhi La Specialista Maestro, which is De'Longhi's most souped-up espresso machine. The Maestro is big, brash, and also offers pretty good value for money. However, it lacks automatic milk steaming, instead offering a manual steam wand and a hot milk dispenser which doesn't quite offer the same charm. So in my book, the De'Longhi La Specialista Touch is a more practical and appealing offering, and an excellent evolution of the Specialista line.

Another great comparison would be the Ninja Luxe Café. This machine retails for $599 / £599, so it's a cheaper machine that still offers a lot of the same perks of the De'Longhi La Specialista Touch.

This includes cold brewing, automatic milk steaming, assisted tamping (without a tamping arm) and interactive controls. But it does lack both the charming design of De'Longhi's more traditional approach, and the interactive touch screen.

Personally, I'd buy the De'Longhi La Specialista Touch over the Ninja, but I'm based in Europe, where the pricing is much more comparable.

De'Longhi La Specialista Touch review: Verdict

There's not much to fault with the De'Longhi La Specialista Touch. It's intuitive, attractive, and will slot easily into even more compact kitchens. And while I struggle to call $999 / £699 affordable, it's priced very competitively in a market that's ripe with assisted automatic espresso machines to choose from.

I have two minor gripes. First, the temperature probe gets in the way of manual steaming, although it's something you can work around with a little practice. Second, while I enjoy the funnel to prevent mess and the tamping guide to ensure your settings are accurate, I'd always opt for a tamping arm if it's on offer, which it is with the likes of the Breville Barista Express Impress or Ninja's new Luxe Café Pro (which is next in line for a review from yours truly).

Perhaps my favorite thing about this machine is that it will work for any household. As a coffee enthusiast who's completed a qualification in barista skills, I don't want a machine to take away the fun of crafting coffee from home. And while the La Specialista Touch lends a helping hand, it doesn't feel restrictive if you want to take the reins and control your grinding, brewing, and milk steaming manually.

On the other end of the scale, it's also a smart choice for someone like my partner, who's much more interested in the finished result than the process. It makes good coffee easy, and will even do you the favor of steaming into your jug, so you can pretend you perfected that latte art yourself.

More from Tom's Guide

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• De'Longhi's new La Specialista Touch performs just like the Ninja Luxe Café, but looks so much better