Breville Coffee Machine Review

We received this machine for Christmas and thought I’d give my view about it.

The Breville had good features like washable filter, non-drip mechanism, auto shut off and timer. All sounds good for a simple coffee maker.

Breville Coffee Machine

My first experience of this coffee machine was not good. I knew it was purchased from Argos and the first one did not include any booklet or warranty papers. This was odd. We did not return it to Argos till we turned it on. The backlit display was constantly blinking with the LCD characters of the display. I tried a different socket to eliminate the power source problem as well as trying it in a different room in case it was on the same circuit but it still flickered. I thought I’d try it before returning it but as soon as I pressed the on/off button a clicking noise started. It was intermittent and only clicked as the display and back light on the display flickered. This was the final straw and took it back.

Argos happily took it back and gave us a new one. Got home and opened up the box and the signs were obvious the old one was used. This new one had the non stick tape holding down the lids, coffee scoop and all the booklets (as far as we know). After unboxing and plugging it in the display was flickering again. As this was the second unit I gave it the benefit of the doubt. I washed the jar, filters and scoop ready for drinking. I poured some water into the coffee maker and turned it on to let it run through once before doing it again with coffee in it (as instructed by the manual). The clicking came back. I ignored it and came back to find the clicking noise and the flashing back light had stopped once all the water had been boiled. After the first run the clicking and flickering light would only come back when it was brewing.

When the unit is on standby it has a tendency to flicker sometimes. It’s doesn’t always happen and as far as I can tell there is not pattern for it except when it’s brewing it will flicker.

It has a nice display with the time and is back lit but turns off automatically when it turns of the keep warm feature. This can be set from 2 hours to 5 hours in 1 hour increments.

Breville Coffee Machine Coffee Jug

The non drip is not the best but does the job. Every time I took out the coffee jar, which collects the boiled water which passes through the coffee beans and filter only lets one or two drips through before it stopped. It was advised in the manual not to take it out for too long whilst it’s still brewing.

For around a 4 cup amount of water (which only makes about 3 “normal” sized mugs) took less than 15 minutes to make.

Breville Coffee Machine Lights

I set the delay timer to come on ready for when I get back from work. I loaded the grounded coffee and water into the coffee maker so that it was ready to go. Once set the blue LED stayed constantly lit as well as a clock symbol appearing on the LCD display. The LED is very bright and may be too bright if it shone into the living room for example. When I got home I could hear the coffee machine brewing away. You can only set one timer at a time but you set it based on what time you want to put it on for. The downside is that the clock does not keep ticking when it’s unplugged not even if it was left without for a couple of minutes. This could be hassle for people who leave their coffee machine unplugged but then again the clock would only blink at 00:00 like a VCR when it’s turned on.

Breville Coffee Machine Filter and Funnel

The funnel, which the filter sits in must be seated when the funnel handle lifted up and then rotated down to the seated position before the lid of the coffee machine can be closed. This is a slight flaw because for the first few times I tried to close the lid but it would not close properly or the lid would close ajar at a slight angle. Looking at the mechanism it is all made out of plastic and could easily break if someone was to force the funnel in and close the lid.

A slight design flaw with the coffee jar was when your trying to get the last bit of coffee out the lid will open inadvertently. Whilst the design is good for opening the lid with the thumb tab near the handle, there is no lock to keep it shut when pouring.

I have not tried the Aroma feature yet but it claims to brew better coffee because it takes long to do it.

Overall it’s not a bad coffee machine but it does have things to deal with on a daily basis. I would say it was good value for when it was on the sale price but at retail it suffers too points to justify the price.

Sorry for the bad pictures

Breville Website

About Danny

I.T software professional always studying and applying the knowledge gained and one way of doing this is to blog. Danny also has participates in a part time project called Energy@Home [http://code.google.com/p/energyathome/] for monitoring energy usage on a premise. Dedicated to I.T since studying pure Information Technology since the age of 16, Danny Tsang working in the field that he has aimed for since leaving school. View all posts by Danny → This entry was posted in Houseware, Review. Bookmark the permalink.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.