The De’Longhi Eletta Explore Espresso Machine has been on our counter for nine months, which works out to roughly 270 mornings of sending espresso “straight to the dome.” At $1,995.95 direct from De’Longhi (or $1,999 on Amazon), this is a real financial decision. It’s also one of the very few super-automatic espresso machines that has earned the price tag.
What makes the Eletta Explore different
Plenty of machines make hot espresso drinks. This one makes hot drinks, cold brew, and cold foam on demand, a combination almost nobody else is doing at any price. Beans go in the hopper, the grinder auto-adjusts to them, and the spent puck drops into a removable tray as a tidy little cow patty that goes straight into our compost. Take that, single-serve pods.
The color touchscreen tells you what to do in plain English, including counting out six De’Longhi-branded ice cubes for a cold latte macchiato. Is that necessary? No. Did we do it anyway? Obviously.
It also cleared our counter. Between espresso, drip-style coffee, cold brew, milk frothing, and a tea function with adjustable water temperature, the Eletta Explore replaced four appliances.
Living with it
Setup took minutes, and it ships with everything: hot and cold milk carafes, water spout, travel mug, ice cube tray, descaler, and a bag of beans. The drip tray pops up so a travel mug fits underneath, a small thing we now use constantly. The carafes come apart, go in the dishwasher, seal shut, and live in the fridge between drinks, so you’re not steaming milk into a nozzle you have to scrub. At around 50 dB from a foot away, it’s quiet enough that our cats don’t leave the room.
The companion app is the weakest part. It’ll power the machine on remotely, but you still have to be standing there with a cup, so the payoff is thin.
What we’d change
After every descaling, frothing gets genuinely funky for a day or two: sputtering, stalling, and requiring fiddling with the froth dial. It happens with De’Longhi’s own descaler and with the cheaper third-party stuff we usually buy, so it’s the machine, not the chemical. Also, the cold foam only works with skim or plant-based milk, the bean hopper is awkward to fill and hard to see into, and the “stainless” surfaces have picked up light discoloration in nine months.
Should you buy it?
If you want variety, convenience, and one machine that does everything, yes. If your idea of a good morning is tamping and dialing in a shot by hand, spend your $2,000 somewhere else. Here are some solid options as well as buying advice.
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