Breville makes our coffee grinder and tea maker of choice, and their Barista Express has been my daily espresso driver for quite a while. Now they’ve gone and made the best Nespresso machine.
We’ve seen standard Nespresso machines drop as low as $63 over on Kinja Deals, and they’re not even a category we keep particularly close track of. So what makes the Creatista worth $400?
Beyond Breville’s legendary design, build quality, and user interface improvements, what sets the Creatista apart is the milk steamer, which borrows almost everything from Breville’s $2500 Oracle Touch. The Oracle Touch is available tomorrow, and we’ll be checking it out as soon as possible.
The Creatista’s milk steamer marks the first time steaming milk has been as easy as making Nespresso, and pairing the two idiot-proof functions in one machine results is the easiest good espresso drinks to date.
Choose between a latte, cappuccino, macchiato, flat white, ristretto, or lungo using a dial and press start. The Creatista will brew your Nespresso shot, and then wait for you to hit start again to start streaming the milk. Pour both into a cup and you’re done. That’s it.
You can also make just Nespresso or just steamed milk, or customize the coffee volume, steam amount, and/or milk temperature of each drink. This is a layperson machine, so the meter representing temperature for example doesn’t actually list units. This will frustrate perfectionists and veterans, but then, those people will already own kitchen scales, measuring cups, and thermometers for calibration... or just Google the values.
What’s more, while standalone Nespresso machines may be far more affordable, standalone milk steamers mean another appliance to deal with and another purchase to make, and don’t hold a candle to the Creatista’s results.
The Creatista’s steam wand lives up to the Nespresso pedigree: the product it produces is great, and far better than you’d expect from an automatic machine that uses pods. If you love espresso as a drink but not as a hobby, you can’t go wrong with this.