There's no doubt that the Pavoni needs a fine grind and will produce a vastly better cup with fresh beans (like any machine), but you can get pretty good hand grinders both new and refurbished now that are more than up to the job. And there are many good artisan roasters who ship fresh beans by air mail worldwide now, if you don't have any local ones.

The La Pavoni takes some learning. And then when you think you have understood it all, you will find you are still learning and things just keep improving... slowly.... but surely. It's a great journey.

They are also silent, longlasting and easy to service.

But the E61 design machines are also great and have a well-deserved following. If you need to make lots of cups in a row you may well prefer one.

There's no right answer. You just need to ask yourself how you feel.....

I personally could never go back to a pump machine.

I'm new here so take anything I say with a grain of salt, or two. I've had an 8c euro for a decade and used it daily. Once you learn the method (that took maybe 6-10 batches) and the grind (another week or two of experimenting) it made wonderful espresso. I never much cared for the frothed milk, so if it was not good at that I really don't care. I've owned several different designs from $150 to $600 with various pumps and heat exchangers but I swear by the old school manual levers. The biggest drawback of the LaPav from what I've heard is their inability to manage heat-sink, but unless you want more than a few ounces of liquid gold every few hours it really is not an issue. Pull a batch and you are good to go until it has had plenty of time to dissipate heat.

Regarding the grind, I use something approaching a Turkish level, definitely on the fine side and a light tamp.

Now I have to fix mine with refurb parts...it did last at least 3,500 and maybe 4,000 tanks full. Considering the price it is actually cheaper to run than the $200 units you can buy at the local bed-bath-and-beyond

Hi, I own a 24 years old or more Pavoni Pro, purchased used, nice design object, good espresso (after a very long learning curve). No doubt it can last forever, mine has been heavily used and I just had to disassemble, change gaskets and seals and clean it carefully.
Nevertheless due to temp instability and the wish to enjoy more predictable espresso I moved to a more foregiving e61 DB.
Think carefully before going lever because as you have been advised at the beginning of this thread you can really suffer months of awful taste espresso.
If you want any additional information just post in the forum or let me know.

You can do really well steaming small amounts of milk (enough for a cap) on the europiccola with the brooklynshot one hole tip. It produces some of my favourite caps ever in fact.