De’Longhi Magnifica Plus Review

Introduction

A mid-priced bean-to-cup coffee machine, the De’Longhi Magnifica Plus is designed to give you one-touch access to a wide range of drinks, with customisation available via profiles.

A bold, intuitive interface makes life easier in many ways, but this machine is a bit needy. It flags up low water when plenty is left and sometimes struggles to pour a cup of coffee, depending on the beans.

Design and features

• Bold, simple interface
• Pours milk automatically
• Clever slide-out water tank

The De’Longhi Magnifica Plus is quite compact (240x440x360), so it doesn’t take up much counter space. It also has some neat features that let you place this coffee machine where, perhaps, others won’t fit.

The main thing is that the 1.9-litre water tank slides out of the front, so you don’t need to turn the coffee machine around when refilling it. This tank takes a water filter, which is worth using and replacing regularly to improve the flavour of coffee.

My only minor issue is that the De’Longhi Magnifica Plus warned me that the water tank needed refilling, when there was clearly enough water left to fill a mug. I get that it would be annoying for the water to run out before a drink has finished, but the water detection seems a bit too simplistic for me.

Most of the coffee machine’s maintenance can be done from the front, too, with the drip-dray and used coffee puck pin accessible from the front. That makes day-to-day maintenance of this coffee machine really easy.

The only time you will need to get to the side is to remove the brew unit for cleaning. When the coffee machine is turned off, this slides out of the side, just behind the water tank.

There’s a bean hopper on top, which will take a standard bag of coffee, plus a chute for adding pre-ground coffee, if you want to use this. I wouldn’t, as unless you have control over the fineness of the grind, you won’t get very good results.

The De’Longhi Magnifica Plus is all about ease of use. When you first turn it on, it asks how many people are in the house so you can create a profile for each of them (well, up to four people). Each profile houses a person’s preference as to intensity and cup size.

The LCD houses the drink options, which include espresso and double espresso, iced coffee, Americano, long, coffee and doppio+.

Milk options are also available, with a carafe provided in the box, which clips on to the front of the machine in place of the hot water spout.

Milk drinks include flat white, cappuccino, espresso macchiato, latte macchiato, cappuccino, cappuccino+ and hot milk.

Each setting can be overridden for just one drink or saved as the default for a profile. Tapping any drink starts the machine going, and the screen shows any additional information that you might need, such as the right setting for the milk carafe.

With a sliding spout that takes cups up to 140mm tall, you can quickly make pretty much any drink in pretty much any size cup.

For the most part, the De’Longhi Magnifica Plus is entirely automatic, but you do have to adjust the grind setting manually. I started with some very dark roasted beans, but the De’Longhi Magnifica Plus struggled to grind them on any setting, and kept telling me that I’d run out of beans and needed to refill the hopper.

A lighter roast fixed this, but on the first attempt, I set too fine a grind, and the coffee didn’t pour. Going for a coarser grind fixed this issue for me.

Maintenance is easy, as the coffee machine rinses automatically, and requests a cleaning cycle for the milk carafe. The LCD will also tell you when it’s time for other maintenance jobs, such as descaling, and will show you how to perform them.

Coffee quality

• Good shot of espresso
• Ice coffee is made

After adjusting the grind setting and using my Colombian Fair Trade beans (fairly lightly roasted), I got the De’Longhi Magnifica Plus to pour a decent shot of espresso. The crema was a little lighter than I’d like, but it had good consistency, and it stayed intact for a few minutes.

The temperature was spot-on at 68°C, too. Taste was good, with some of the citrus flavours and bold acidity coming through, but there wasn’t quite the same depth of flavour as you can get from a good manual machine, such as the De’Longhi La Specialista Opera.

I also tried the iced coffee option, which had the machine suggest how many ice cubes to put in the cup. Rather than using cold water, the De’Longhi Magnifica Plus uses hot water to pour the coffee directly over ice.

I’m not a massive fan of cold coffee made this way, as it tends to taste like a cup of coffee that has gone cold. And, this type of drink can be poured from any machine.

I prefer the cold-brew option of the La Specialista Opera or Ninja Luxe Cafe Premiere Series.

Milk quality

• Neat, automated milk frothing
• Compact, micro foam

Using the milk option, I got very good results from my flat white. With this drink, the De’Longhi Magnifica Plus poured tightly packed milk and then added espresso into it.

You don’t get the option for latte art or a more attractive-looking cup of coffee, as you do from a machine that steams milk in a jug, but the overall taste was very good, and there’s very little effort involved in making the drink.

Should you buy it?

FAQs