PHILIPS Fully Automatic Espresso Machine with Frother

Had it 6 months and other than the cleaning, it was fabulous. The manual that comes with it is pretty worthless. A lot of info is missing from it and they tell you to watch videos on youtube. I tried and they are awful. It turns out they have subtle differences between their products and the video makes it difficult to understand what to do because it is not the identical product to mine! Cleaning the brewer is a nightmare and has to be done weekly. No matter how many times I rinsed it, there was still coffee grinds hidden that would become visible as I rotated the brewer. Well, after 6 months of lovely coffee, suddenly the coffee became very weak and the grinder sounded odd. I contacted Philips (which was not easy to find the tel #!). The lady was very nice and asked about the coffee I was using. I told her it was always fresh as I roast my own coffee beans. She asked if the beans were dark and shiny, and I said yes. She told me that is a problem as the oil could cause a problem in the brewer. She has shipped me some pills to apparently get rid of oil buildup. Nowhere in the manual did I see that dark, oily coffee beans should not be used on this product. Because coffee is a HUGE thing in our family, I decided to start looking for a replacement brewer to keep on hand in case we have guests and the brewer goes bad (again). No luck. The manual does not give a part #. The Philips website does not give a part #. Google was no help either. The only brewers I found were Saeco and no clue which brewer is the right one! Sent an email back to Philips asking, and still waiting for a response. On their website when I searched to buy the brewer from them for this machine, nothing showed up as an option! If you cannot buy another brewer when the brewer goes bad, then that would mean the machine is worthless and I would have wasted $600. Not happy. If they are able to tell me what brewer is available to be bought for this machine, I will write and updated review.

Update. Philips customer service was wonderful and problem fixed. It is essential to clean brewer weekly and let it dry. They sent me link to order another brewer so I use one for a week and then clean it and swap it out immediately with the other. The brewer was very reasonably priced so it was worth buying.

Another update: same problems started up again. Reached out to customer service and was told I needed to send poof of purchase (again) and that if the machine was out if warranty I would be charged for repair. The same problem started again 4months after getting it back from the 3rd repair! No question there is a design problem with this machine as the inside plastic tubes I think disintegrate causing water to leak inside the machine. They replaced all the broken parts in January 2023 and starting in May it became clear they were going downhill again.

When reading reviews, a lot of people respond after making one ir two cups of coffee. Back then I gave this product a 5 start rating. But due to all the issues since ai bought it I have dripped it down to a 1 start rating 😢

I have had this automatic espresso machine for almost 3 years now. I use it every day, making 3-5 espressos per day. I could not be happier with it! I liked it so much I bought one to keep at the cabin.

When I got the new one, I tested it to see how it compared to the ~3 year old one and was a little disappointed at first. I ran 15 cups or so of espresso through it to see how it performed. It was not nearly as strong and the discarded coffee grounds came out more like soup. My old one comes out in hard pucks and makes great coffee. I compared the two settings and the new one had the grinder setting in the middle, where the old one was on 2 (nearly the finest grind). I set the new one to the same grind setting and temperature setting (hottest) and it works great! I could not be happier with the ease of use everyday with this.

I also use RO water exclusively, and have never had to descale the machine; it still works great after nearly 3 years! I only do the standard cleaning of the brew unit every 4 months or so, and it is still running strong.

I bought the Philips 3221/44, without the LatteGo feature because I don’t like milk in my coffee. Also I’m a bit noise sensitive and the LatteGo has been compared in some reviews to the sound of an airplane taking off. I previously owned a pricey built-in Miele coffee machine that came with our house. The Miele worked fine for about ten years before becoming increasingly cantankerous with age (like many of us). It was a marvel of 2000s technology that would have felt right at home on the International Space Station, except it was probably too heavy to ever reach orbit. It cost almost as much to fix as I paid for the new Philips.

The 3221 appears functionally identical to the Miele except in a smaller, lighter, and much cheaper box. I shall call it ‘Mini-Miele.’ Mini-Miele has a similar brewing unit, which is called a “brew group” even though there’s only one of them. Mini-Miele also makes similar noises. According to my iPhone it puts out around 60 dB while brewing and 70 dB while grinding. The former is a steady 60-Hz electric hum, whereas the latter sounds more like a racoon trapped in a recycling bin. Overall noise levels are somewhere between normal conversation and a vacuum cleaner. Not bad really. The Miele also made a series of loud “thunks” that Mini-Miele thankfully does not reproduce.

The Miele was made primarily of steel and lots of it; Mini-Miele is all plastic with pseudo-chrome trim. Sounds cheap I know but this seems to be the norm for most such machines, including some in the $2000-range. Materials, fit, and finish are all on par with a new Toyota, which is to say quite good. The control buttons worked easily once I overcame the desire to press them. It just takes a light touch. The buttons are logical and marked both with text and little pictures, helpful in case I forget how to read English. The water container is smaller than in the Miele but adequate, and features a cute little water softener/filter that lives inside. It has to be replaced at some interval but you don’t have to call the Culligan Man.

On startup, Mini-Miele entertains with a robotic dance of flashing lights, groaning sounds, and waterworks. Once it settles down from that (about one minute) it’s really easy to operate. It does doubles if you want, but with a caveat: you have to wait for the grinding and brewing routine to complete itself twice. A double Americano takes about two and a half minutes. The first cups from Mini-Miele tasted, well…bad actually. Like coffee laced with aspirin. The machine apparently makes its own adjustments during this time, but not enough to help. What did help was using different beans and adjusting the grind a few clicks finer. The coffee tastes much better now, quite similar to what the 5x more expensive Miele could produce during its prime. Not on par with a good café in Florence, but good enough to avoid driving to the local Starbucks.

Cleanup of Mini-Miele supposedly requires only a weekly rinse of the brew unit. Apparently nobody told the coffee grounds however, which may be found freely sprinkled about the machine’s interior. Still, it’s easier to clean than the Miele due to fewer dark corners and crevasses. A quick wipe of the interior surfaces gets the job done. The Miele did have a larger used coffee bin, which meant less frequent emptying but also more mold. True espresso afficionados inspect the used ‘pucks’ the way a big-game hunter might inspect scat, in their search for the perfect ‘pull.’ Mini-Miele’s droppings appear drier and more puck-shaped than the Miele, which I think is a good thing.

I’m still in the honeymoon phase with Mini-Miele but am optimistic about its future. It produces push-button coffee at a fraction of the cost of the showier but often troublesome Miele, with no noticeable difference in taste. I don’t yet know about its long term durability, but so far Mini-Miele looks like a winner.

We’ve had this coffee machine about a month so far, we upgraded from a Nespresso machine, the cost was hard to justify until I worked out how much I’d been spending on pods for my Nespresso then I realized that I was probably spending between $900-$1000 per year on those!
This machine is a great size, fits under my kitchen counter with enough space to refill the bean hopper, the coffee is AMAZING I cannot believe how much better it tastes, so smooth and enjoyable.
There are a couple of cons worth mentioning , the water Reservoir, puck box and overflow tray are quite small and all require emptying often, My biggest comment however is that the machine automatically turns itself off (powers off) after about 30mins it does a wash through the system and does the same wash through when it’s started, I wish it stayed on for longer because it does take a few minutes before it’s ready to brew and this can be time consuming if you just want to make a quick cup of coffee on your way out the door, even if it had a setting to stay on longer if you wanted it to would be handy, but even with these small issues I am absolutely thrilled with the machine and highly recommend the purchase of it!