I have purchased this coffee maker because I tasted the coffee it makes at a friends party. It was awesome. My friend had his machine for a few weeks and was very excited about it. This is a good looking machine, easy to fall in love with. I immediately went to purchase one. That's when my problems started. and by the way, so did my friend's. If you don't want to read any further, the summary is DO NOT SPEND YOUR MONEY ON THIS MACHINE!!!
Pros: When it works, it makes wonderful coffee
Cons: you need about 10 minutes to read this and let it sink
1. Usability after a few weeks of use it stopped working. The first problem with this machine is its usability specifically, feedback to problems. It has a very capricious operation and the feedback it provides whenever a problem occurs is illegible. It is capricious because, it complains when (a) the water tank is half empty. When it complains you cannot make a decision to override it in other words, when the red light goes on because your water tank is half empty, you cannot continue making coffee until you fill it up again. It takes 2-3 lattes to empty half the water tank in other words, if you have several people for coffee, you can keep yourself busy filling the water tank, forget about polite conversations; (b) after 2-3 lattes you are also forced to dispose off of the used coffee, as it doesn't let you make your own decision, even though the disposal container takes a third of the volume of the machine and has plenty capacity to store 30 times more.
2. Reliability I have this coffee maker for less than three months. It has been in repair 2 times, for a total of over a month. The first time I had to send it for repair after only three weeks of use, when the red light stayed on, no matter what I did. Customer service determined that the machine was faulty and asked me to send it for repair. It came back after 14 days with a note that they found nothing wrong with it! Miraculously it now worked, yet, while the red light problem went away, there was another, new problem. Now when I made espresso, the steam hose was dripping concurrently and profusely, emptying the water tank even faster then it already did under normal conditions. Called customer service again. They diagnosed it as a potential problem with an O-ring and asked me to send the machine for repair again, this time to their center in Ohio. I sent the machine for the second repair on November 14th, and I still don't have it back as of this writing (Dec 9, 2009) you do the math!!! AND YES, THEY HAD TO REPLACE ALL THE O-RINGS IN THE MACHINE, SO PLEASE TAKE A PITY ON YOUR MACHINE AND TRY NOT TO USE YOURS EXCESSIVELY, MAYBE A CUP A WEEK OR SO...
3. Customer Service this is the worst customer service money can buy. It is not that the reps are not nice they are very nice and courteous. However, they are completely ineffective, dis-empowered to make any decisions (everything goes to a supervisor, her manager, and so on). When you're on the phone with the customer service rep, (which they have one of, judging by the wait time of 30 minutes on the average, and the fact that you get the same one every time) it may take 3-4 "waiting in between" times for him to go ask the supervisor how to answer my question or what to do with my request. And it goes on and on. By the way don't call during lunch as you will get a voice prompt politely asking you to call back as the company is out to lunch literally! And yes, if you thought you can get a status of repair on your coffee machine you paid so much for, forget about it. They have no ability to tell you anything except that "its on the workbench" or its not on the workbench... If they promise to call you back to let you know what's going on, because now it has been three weeks and you have called them multiple times, sent them multiple mail messages, etc., don't hold your breath they won't get back to you, guaranteed. And guess what, having gone through all this, they won't send your machine overnight. If you have an issue with this, here is the reply you will get (I got this earlier today):
"I'm sorry that you feel that way. You should have been told that our turnaround right now is roughly 2 weeks. As I stated before, we are the main warranty center for THE ENTIRE UNITED STATES. THIS IS THE HOLIDAY SEASON. WE ASK OUR CUSTOMER TO BE PATIENT WITH US DURING THIS EXTREMELY BUSY SEASON. We ship standard ground. Anything other than standard ground must be paid for by the customer." It reminds me of the movie "My Cousin Vinny", when the whole store got the flu... The "roughly 2 weeks" she quotes has been 4 weeks now, so "roughly" goes a long way with Saeco. It also shows you how busy they are with repair the more they sell, the more they are swamped with faulty coffee machines.
Will update you when I get the machine back. Obviously I would have returned it to Amazon within the first 30 days, had I known what is in store for me. Now I have to keep it. But I am clearly done with Saeco no more buying their stuff. BTW if anyone knows if I have a different option, would love to learn about it.
Update 1/14/2010
And so it goes on and on. The long story from above ended up with Saeco replacing my first machine with a new one. Got back from my vacation few days ago and found a new machine awaiting to be finally enjoyed. My wife and I were very excited. Opened it up, read the documentation and watched the video and started setting it up. I won't burden you with details three days later the new machine doesn't work. Discovered that a selection knob (steam/hot water) is damaged. Sent Saeco support a couple of messages with the images of the broken part. No reply. Called Customer Service several times, waiting 20-40 minutes and ending up being disconnected. So here we are. I guess it's lawyer's time now.
We got this coffee maker for my husband, who likes to drink a lot of coffee and expend practically no effort to prepare it / clean up afterwards. He already knew drip machines were not for him clean up after every use... So he had switched to a French press and got to like the bold flavor but that ended up being too much work still. After that he was only drinking "Turkish coffee" (i.e. dump the grounds in a cup and pour water over them) that was about the right amount of effort but just didn't taste that great. Especially compared to his favorite "Americanos" at the neighborhood coffee shop.
SOO, when I saw this machine I knew we had to get it. We found it almost 50% off at an unnamed dept. store so I have absolutely no reason to justify an expensive purchase by writing a positive review :).
I would not say it's cheaply made at all. The parts where it matters most use high-quality materials. I don't care if my water tank is plastic it seems to be crack resistant all right.
The maintenance could not be easier it cleans itself by running a bit of water through the system before every use (so the coffee never tastes stale) and all you have to do is empty out the grounds drawer and rinse the "brew group" about every week. Very easy.
My husband can make his americanos just by a touch of a button the dispensing of extra water could not be easier. The switch to steam, just as easy. He loves the coffee and so did our guests all major coffee fans.
And here's my favorite part. I didn't even drink coffee before we got this thing but now I will actually make a super light latte now and then. What won me over? The high-pressured, super-effective milk frothing system and the option to reduce the amount and strength of the coffee you brew. I can't think of a better investment and I'm glad I listened to my coffee-fanatic sister about going for the proven Saeco brand.
Buy Saeco S-TG-ST Talea Giro Super Automatic Espresso Machine Now
Have been using this machine for a week now, and, most importantly, it makes outstanding coffee. I am not a coffee expert, but as a (now former) Starbucks regular, I can testify that I'd prefer coffee from this machine over Starbucks brew any day.
Other things on the good side:
easy to install and simple to operate
very fast, a great cup of coffee is always just a minute away
On the downside:
Although the design is ok, the execution is a bit on the cheap side (for what I'd expect at this price tag) with plastic body and controls not having a feel of precision mechanism
alarm indicators (too add water, add coffee, empty waste tank) are a bit cryptic and it takes an effort to figure out what this machine wants from you, maybe I'll get better at it with time.
Read Best Reviews of Saeco S-TG-ST Talea Giro Super Automatic Espresso Machine Here
The Talea Giro shows a lot of functional improvements over my 1997 Saeco machine. It makes better coffee, yet I don't believe it will be nearly as reliable and it is positively loaded with clumsy, annoying misfeatures. I'm somewhat disappointed. It is a machine to be endured rather than enjoyed.
I've been fussing with it for a few days and now have it making very good coffee. There is a lot of crema, which will easily float a teaspoon of sugar for five seconds. The coffee is much hotter than it was from the old machine. I make a couple two-shot cups in the morning and espresso at night, and both kinds of coffee are as good as restaurant espresso but not as good as the best hand-pulled shots.
As I said, there are several controls to twiddle. There are some that weren't present on my old machine, and you have to tweak them for some time before decent coffee starts coming out. You control the grind fineness, the water volume, the dose (amount of ground coffee per shot) and the back pressure on the filter. Once you get these lined up to your satisfaction, the shots come out at a reasonable pace regardless of the amount of water that's going to go through the 'puck' of compressed coffee grounds. Once set, these controls seem to stay set.
The machine is much busier than my old one. When you start it up, it rumbles and growls for a few seconds, then there is a cheesy flashing Christmas-light display no doubt meant to assure you there is something going on. After that, it spits a couple ounces of hot water into the drip tray and hums a bit more to itself. All this activity is conducted at a low sound volume, at least. When you push the "brew" button there are all kinds of whirrings and gurgles. The grinder is fairly quiet.
The machine's design is functionally OK it makes good coffee but it has enough usability problems to reduce an industrial engineer like me to helpless laughter. The exterior is not well made. It reminds me of a Fisher-Price doll house with lots of flaps and buttons to push, all somewhat misshapen and all made of plastic that's a little too thin to be worthy of a machine this expensive.
The machine is pretty much cylindrical and it rotates on its feet so you can easily spill your coffee when you turn it to one side or the other as you must, to accord with its cryptic signals, or when you try to push the power button without making a weird Vulcan death-grip pinch on it. The water tank is hidden behind a cheap-looking panel. It should be visible so you do not have to rely on the machine turning on its ! light (its way of saying "something is wrong") to know when to do something, perhaps refill it. On top is the bean hopper. The bean hopper is supposed to hold the beans and allow them to slide into the grinder that's located at its low point. My old machine had a round bean hopper with a conical bottom leading to the grinder a straightforward, silo-like device. The Talea Giro has a wide, shallow bean hopper with a nearly flat bottom so the beans stay perched in clumps instead of sliding into the grinder. You end up herding beans toward the grinder all the time and just so you don't get carried away and try this while the grinder is operating, the cover is now interlocked. However, you can see the beans that aren't going into the grinder. The hopper cover is clear. On my old machine the cover was opaque and that is the way it should be since coffee is degraded by light.
There's another interlock on the water tank door and yet another on the "dregs drawer" where the pre-heat water and the used coffee pucks are ejected. The machine tells you to dump the "dregs drawer" every fourteen shots, no matter whether you've just done it or not, and it won't proceed until you comply.
The half-bakery continues with a feature that was good in concept but was executed with malice aforethought. The drip tray moves up and down. This is wonderful if you have a tall morning coffee cup but short espresso cups. However, the entire mechanism is made of blow-molded cheap. It wobbles to help you spill your coffee when you turn the machine. The water-containing bit of the drip tray pulls off so you can dump it and when you do, you find that it's so light and flimsy that you wonder how it manages to hold a cup up without catastrophic failure. This is going to get broken, perhaps when it's bumped by a wandering kitten, and you need it because all the coffee you have spilled while turning the machine this way and that ends up in it.
I'm extremely unimpressed by the "BMW Designworks USA" effort at building coffee makers. These designers changed a machine that could have a straightforward way of operating into an expensive treasure hunt game, re-inventing things to make them needlessly complex, less useful and more annoying in the process, very much like recent BMW cars. I'm giving the machine three stars because the coffee quality is so good, but Saeco: give the industrial design job back to your old group. They built things that work and last, like my old Saeco machine.
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Great for about 3 months.
Then the steaming wand began to drip endlessly.
I have been trying to contact their support for a week now.
My total hold time has been well into the HOURS.
And I am on hold now as I write this review.
Would I buy this again...NO WAY!
Look for another product with better support.
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I don't even drink coffee, but I got a similar-looking one for my wife a couple of years ago looks the same except it doesn't have the black stripes around it. It's high-priced and I don't know why but it's stainless steel, not aluminum, takes a high polish, nice looking. But the main thing is, my wife loves it she has espresso twice a day, and for awhile she kept trying to use her Saeco machine, but it always needed expensive repairs and was kind of a hassle to use. For the last few months she's been using just this little pot, twice daily, it's fast and simple and works perfectly. There's no big production number required to get espresso into her system (that's good for me, too!). She can do without the crema, and she finds it makes as good or better espresso than she can buy anywhere. I could have gotten her a cheaper one that works just as well, probably, but this was a special gift so I didn't mind the extra cost. She loved that it's in MoMA. It's that kind of thing that makes a gift out of the ordinary.
