Nespresso Vertuo Next Coffee and Espresso Maker by Breville, Navy

A flavorful coffee maker
I have owned more coffee makers than I can probably name. I have (or have had) a french press, an electric percolator, a stove top percolator, moka pot, pour over, Senseo, tassimo. Keurig, mr coffee drip, HB Flex Brew, and many off brand variants of some of the previously mentioned.I like coffee. I prefer darker and bold. But different roasts have their place. Some makers do better with some blends than others are able to do. Some of my methods are manual and others automatic. Lately, I tend more towards the automatic simply because of convenience and speed. No way I’m gonna stumble out of bed on a work day and mess with a moka pot. I want coffee and I want it immediately.So, have owned all these I do have favorites among the one cup variety. The Senseo was my first and it changed how I felt about coffee. It really did make great coffee and the pods(?) started out reasonably priced but then became outrageously expensive (probably not by what we’ve come to accept today but back then a $1+ each was like paying $5 for gas). Honestly, the one I remember liking the best was the tassimo. Really, nice cup. Very finicky cleaning issues though. I put it up when discs became too expensive, but fortunately about about a year later our local Clearance Outlet had packages for $2 each! I was able to buy 30 or more and use it until it died.I will say I like the Nespresso about as much. I already had the original line Nespresso. We bought the Plus version for my mother-in-law and I got to use it and liked it. I bought the Next because I thought it’s be easier to brew the 18oz and split it with my wife with less fuss. In hind sight I would have gone with the Plus. I like the motorized open and close and well the Carafe only has to choices. I tried on and don’t want to spend the money to try the other.OTOH, I love all the sampler pack. Awsome sinlge and double espressos all the way up to the “coffee” size.It does get expensive. To help with that I bought the silicone caps for refill. Our usual bean we buy and grind didn’t to so hot. I might have to go the final 2 clicks on the “fine” grind setting. But, Cafe Bustello is fabulous – almost a chocolate taste. I get plenty of crema. Actually, the Next makes so much crema we had to get bigger cups just to hold it. Your mileage will vary depending on your likes. I’ve only had it since Christmas so we haven’t been able to try different coffees and grinds yet. There isn’t much fuss with refilling your own pods. The most work is cutting off the old foil. I find those coffee scoops that open like tongs and have the funnel shaped top for pouring is exactly the right amount for a “coffee” size refill. Just pour it in and put the silicone cap on. No need to tamp or anything.Hope you enjoy yours as much as I do mine.

Makes good coffee, but I hate, hate, hate it.
I actually don’t drink coffee, my wife does. We bought this because it was supposed to be easy to use. We were at an Airbnb that had one (a different machine), and it made great coffee for her for a week.Then we bought this thing, thinking we’d have the same experience. Nope. At first, the coffee came out too strong – it was basically making espresso, which is fine, but you’re supposed to be able to make regular coffee as well. My wife heard that by pressing the button on top you could get different brew modes, and after experimenting found one she liked.Today I had to unplug it, and lost her settings. So I pulled out the manual, and I could not find a single paragraph talking about how to change the settings. I’ve pored over it and there’s nothing there, not a single word about setting it to different strengths.And the manual itself is a nightmare. It’s in 9 languages: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese(?), Chinese, some other version of Chinese(Cantonese?), Korean, Taiwanese(?), and Hebrew(?). If you’re not reading it in English (where the words are big and bold), then you will find every step you need to clean it, descale it, etc. is written in a tiny footnote font. It’s a big ugly mess that makes you turn multiple pages to go through a procedure (see sample photo). It’s also printed on the thinnest paper I could imagine – any thinner and it would rip apart when you turned a page.Why did I have to unplug it (as I mentioned earlier)? Because I was trying to descale it, following the manual’s instructions to a “T” and it wasn’t working. I thought perhaps it had gotten into a bad state, so thought I’d do an unplug/plug reset. But that didn’t help. Then I found a Nespresso video, that basically had the same instructions but I’d follow exactly and it didn’t work. Then I found a video someone else made, and what worked from her didn’t work for me, but I did see how it started blinking red after a certain step (where mine wasn’t at that step). Then through trial and error, I learned I needed to add an extra button push, which put it in a mode where the next button push did what the manual and videos said it was going to.This is how bad the manual is: Descaling step 5 is “Press and hold the button for 7 seconds”. If it had said “Press and hold the button for 7 seconds until the light starts blinking red”, I would have known this was the step that wasn’t working. (In reality, what worked was holding the button for 7 seconds (button stays white), then pressing and holding the button again, until it turned black, and keep holding it until it finally started blinking red. At that point, following the manual’s instructions led to a proper descaling.My wife said figuring out how to change the strength was a similar experience – there are different but very similar models out there that require different steps. But that’s our next step. When we find the secret code we should write it down in the manual…except I don’t think the manual’s pages would hold up to a pen or pencil’s touch.We’ll figure it out.

My Nespresso Virtuo Next is over a year old now and is still working perfect. I put distilled water in it to keep it clear of calcium from my well water. Smooth foamy coffee with a variety of flavors from Columbian to Mexican to flavored coffees. The best coffee maker on the market. Makes better coffee than earlier Nespresso models!

Makes too much noise!

The only complaint is that this machine is loud