- VERDICT
The DeLonghi Rivelia is an excellent fully automatic coffee machine that delivers consistently high quality brews to suit your taste at the press of a button. If you like cafe quality coffee without all the work, then this is the machine for you.
We love our coffee – we meet people to drink coffee together – it’s a big part of our lives. But what about if you can make café quality coffee at home? With the new DeLonghi Rivelia you can do just that – at the press of a button.
DeLonghi has been at this a while and they already make some excellent coffee machines.
We already own the La Specialista Prestigio – a manual coffee machine which grinds the beans, brews the coffee and has a steam wand to texture the milk.
We use it every day and it’s fun to make a coffee in much the same way a barista in a café would – manually.
The new DeLonghi Rivelia is the opposite – it’s fully automatic from bean to cup – and all you need to do is press a button.
Everything else is done for you right down to producing velvety frothed milk and mixing in nicely brewed coffee.
The unit is sleek and has a small footprint when you consider what it can do.
And it is all controlled through the intuitive 3.5-inch colour touch screen that steps you through every stage from initial set up to setting profiles and learning what you like and when you like it.
But despite it being a completely automatic machine, there are still several ways it can be adapted to suit your taste.
Setting up is surprisingly simple with the machine taking you step by step to get everything set up, the water tank filled and the coffee beans in the hopper.
It’s really easy to follow the steps via the display.
One of the best things about the Rivelia is your choice of drinks with 16 customizable recipes at your fingertips and the ability to create up to four personal profiles.
The machine remembers the coffee that you prefer and can make it for you every single time.
Another great new feature is the ability to switch between different coffee beans thanks to two interchangeable hoppers.
Traditionally whenever you fill your hopper with beans you’re stuck with that selection until they run out and you refill it with something different.
But with the Rivelia you can have two different types of beans in two different hoppers and easily switch them out depending on what you’re in the mood for.
The machine can also suggest things like the optimal grind, dose and temperature to suit the different coffee beans being used.
And the milk attachment works brilliantly and always produces fluffy, frothy milk.
There are settings on the milk attachment for the level of froth you prefer.
When we made our lattes, milk was always the first ingredient followed by the coffee.
There is also a cleaning feature on the milk container to ensure the hygiene of the system.
What we did when there was still milk left in the container, we detached this small unit from the machine and stored it in the fridge for the next coffee.
The Rivelia is good at making the coffee but what about the clean up?
Every time you turn off the machine it goes through a self-cleaning process which requires you to have a cup to catch any water.
The machine also reminds you to clean out the hopper which is where the ground coffee is disposed of after each cup.
The only thing we didn’t like was how often it suggested to clean the hopper despite the fact would only made two or three cups of coffee – I guess the machine is a clean freak.
And the clean up is not much more work than a pod-based machine.
Instead of tossing pods into the bin you’re just cleaning out the ground coffee from the hopper.
Yes, a pod machine gives you a choice of different coffee with each pod but we are more a pick and stick and the two varieties that were available with the Rivelia was more than enough to satisfy our taste.
The DeLonghi Rivelia is priced at $1,799 but coffee lovers would see this as an investment.
If you can make cafe quality coffee at home, you are going to be spending a lot less money buying it.
For us it meant our morning coffee was waiting for us at home rather than having to head out in the morning or after a workout to buy one.
If you drink a lot of coffee, there will be a lot of savings on how much money you’re going to spend so the machine will pay itself off in a year or two.
VERDICT
The DeLonghi Rivelia is an excellent fully automatic coffee machine that delivers consistently high quality brews to suit your taste at the press of a button. If you like cafe quality coffee without all the work, then this is the machine for you.
