DeLonghi La Specialista Touch Beats The ‘Touchscreen Coffee Maker’ Problem

If you are one of the millions of coffee-addicted shamblers that rise each morning to the blare of an alarm clock, driven only by the notion that your substance of choice is mere minutes away from delivering you fully into the waking world, you know how hard it can be to actually make that happen.

Since they added clocks to coffee makers in the 80s, coffee drinkers have been suffering through inscrutable systems that would often rob us of our ever-promised, rarely-delivered steaming hot fresh caffeine boost, brewed before we woke.

The advent of modern interfaces and touchscreens has done little to alleviate the frustration. In fact, I’d posit that the complete failure to properly simplify and standardize coffee machine operations is what gave rise to “well I suppose it is technically coffee” pod systems.

DeLonghi has tackled this problem and provided a system that’s easy to use, requires little to no instruction, and, most importantly, delivers delicious espresso-based beverages.

And the company uses a user-friendly touchscreen to do it.

DeLonghi La Specialista Touch

This all-in-one grinder, espresso maker, and milk frother is shockingly small, taking up about as much space as a standard coffee maker, roughly one square foot. But it packs a lot of heft, weighing in at 23lbs.

Crammed into that space is a burr grinder with 15 grind settings, an automatic dosing system where you can grind right into the dosing wand, a pump capable of 15 bars of pressure, an infuser that can heat to 194, 198, 201, or 205F, and a self-cleaning automatic frothing wand.

Along with the machine itself, you get a cornucopia of accessories including a single and double filter, tamping kit, hard water tester, and stainless steel milk jug (a knock box would’ve been nice but I suppose DeLonghi figures if you’re purchasing something this fancy you already have a solution).

And, yes, there’s a touchscreen integrated into the front of the unit.

That full-color 3.5-inch touchscreen is loaded with just 10 preset drink recipes, but they cover the full breadth of the coffee experience, from espresso to americanos (with plenty of hot and frothy milk drinks in-between). The machine is even equipped with DeLohghi’s cold extraction technology to give you a very tasty cold brew that won’t melt your ice.

Removing The Guesswork

DeLonghi’s user experience is carefully crafted (which you would expect for a $999 machine). Just make sure you do it in the morning, if possible. It walks you through the water testing process so that you can set your water’s hardness (this gives the Touch the information it needs to build a schedule for descaling). Then it has you add a bean profile and recommends a grind.

After you’ve loaded your first dose in the filter, the Touch continues its tutorial, guiding you through tamping and how to remove excess grounds. It uses this to adjust the amount of coffee it dispenses for your drink.

You’ll then load up the wand and brew your first cup of espresso! The La Specialista Touch keeps an eye on pressure and flow and determines if the grind is too fine or too loose, asking you to make adjustments (which are easily done via a lever by the bean hopper).

This might take a couple of tries before the machine is certain it can deliver consistent results…but don’t waste it! “Bad” pulls aren’t necessarily bad coffee, just not “DeLonghi standard.” (I had about three shots of espresso during the setup process).

I also tried the cold brew extraction, which takes quite a bit longer (a little under 5 minutes) but achieves an impressive extraction without being bitter or watery.

The automatic frothing wand is fantastic as well. The Touch has four milk temperatures and five built-in milk profiles, both dairy and plant. You can also set the wand to manual with a click so that you can take control. But for a someone like me who would love a cappuccino first thing in the morning but can’t corral my cognitive abilities to make said beverage, automatic mode is more than capable enough of creating perfect milk and froth.

If you do prefer to take things into your own hands, you can create up to 9 custom profiles based on the existing recipes. You can also save up to six bean profiles (though you’ll have to use up what’s loaded in the grinder, there’s no removable hopper).

The rear-facing water reservoir is a bit tricky to access and it’s hard to determine how much water is left, but it is removable for easy refilling.

But the star of the show is really the 3.5-inch touchscreen that guides you through your morning routine, from grinding to brewing. It’s by far the most accessible user interface I’ve encountered on a coffee machine of any sort and it does what it needs to do without fuss and more than a bit of polish. As much as I love the look of the Fellow Espresso Series 1, the click-wheel interface is very much style over utility (if it’s anything like the Aiden brewer). Sometimes, when it’s 6 AM and you’d rather be in bed, you need things broken down into easy-to-understand pictographs.

The La Specialista Touch is available on the DeLonghi site starting today for $999. It’ll be available on Amazon starting June 1.