I have that one at home. Paid around $20k or so back in 2021.
It’s a rather basic model - but it does the job reasonably well, I think: Press a button and a coffee comes out. Milk foam is also fine - but no option to adjust the amount of milk.
I usually make Americano with milk, i.e. one part hot water, then add an espresso then some cold milk.
One thing do be aware about is cleaning: You can take out the brewing group and rinse it under water. And you should do that frequently (maybe around once per week) - otherwise, the inside of the machine will start getting moldy.
So what you save in preparation time, you’ll spend in cleaning time…
I bought an Aeropress recently while I was in Vietnam/Thailand for a few months and couldn’t always use my moka pot.
Overhyped IMO. It’s fine for using in hotel rooms while traveling, but nothing special. I don’t really understand why some people act like it’s a whole new coffee-drinking experience and fuss over different techniques like it’s something complicated.
The Aeropress isn’t anything complicated. That’s part of the beauty of it. It was also the first real device people could brew decent coffee with while traveling, and it allowed people to control almost every variable for coffee brewing. Don’t forget it’s 20 years old now. It created a whole new understanding of brewed coffee for people at home that was previously unattainable before it came out. A lot of what we do now came from people experimenting with that device. It also makes really good iced coffee with no hassle.
Yep, aeropress rocks for a quick, pretty good, low hassle one cup coffee.
For home espresso, most of the cheaper machines don’t get great reviews and the automatics get pretty lousy reviews by people who care about good coffee (generally say they’re too watery), but are probably fine if you’re not a coffee snob. The Brevilles and Gaggias seem to be the primary recommended options when spending less than $1k USD (we went breville not so automatic).
The hype with aeropress is you can get a really, really good coffee out of it, and different techniques will give you different tasting coffees if you’re willing to play with it. That said, without playing, and taking just a min or two with boiling water, chances are you’ll get a cup of coffee that just about any coffee drinker thinks is reasonably good (assuming good beans of course), much more so the case than something like a French press or Moka pot where many might not like the bit of sediment or oiliness that’s more likely to be present. And, of course, for those who do like to play around, playing around is part of the hype too.
