Dear all,

I have been hiding silently in this forum for quite a while drinking my lattes from my saeco poemia + wega max 6.4 grinder.

I heard that typically poemia will die in 3-5 years, so I am currently preparing for the worst. I have thought on quite a few machines, but most of the popular ones in this forum are not available in my country, not even the silvia/gaggia for a starting machine. Import tax here is so high, so importing is not an option.

Basically I have searched most vendors in my country, and these are the choices I can make :
1) breville DB
2) NS Oscar
3) VBM domobar junior HX
4) alex duetto 2 db

Before this I always thought of NS Oscar as my first choice, but I am afraid that I will want to upgrade to the VBM in the future, so I might just skip the oscar to the vbm, huge difference in price though.

However, there is something in my mind, for me who drinks 1-2 cups of latte a day, is getting a domobar "Overkill" ? I do enjoy making art although it is a challenge doing that on the poemia, but I manage to get it every now and then.

What do you guys think ? VBM here is twice the price of an Oscar, is it worth the price tag?

Regards,
Me

If 1-2 lattes a day is all you are looking for, the Oscar should be perfectly up to the task: big boiler, lots of steam power, just not so big a reservoir and no hot water jet, so if you have a visitor asking you for an americano you have to use a kettle on the side.
The Domobar Jr. boiler seems smallish for a HX machine, but then again you can also steam on a Single Boiler machine with even less volume. It will probably be both fit for purpose and looking good, no overkill IMO. The BDB is a popular big bang for the buck, lots of features, but maybe a slow steamer for your purpose.
For your 1-2 lattes, the Duetto DB would probably come closest to the characterisation "overkill", but if you're having company this is probably one that you can pull shots on back to back to back and not outrun it, but of course that has a cost to it!

From my perspective, the BDB is an excellent machine for your needs since my coffee prep is very similar to yours. Of course, I'm prejudiced I have one. Depending on the size latte you enjoy the BDB is an adequate steamer for 4 to 6 ounces of milk in the order of 10 to 15 secs. Resetting the the steam temp to a higher than default steam temp will speed up the steaming, I tried it and found that I got too much microfoam that I couldn't incorporate into the milk and ended up with a cake of it on top of the milk even pounding the pitcher on the counter so I use the default setting.

The BDB and duetto are dual boiler machines whereas the Oscar and VBM are HX machines so there is the temp purge with them. I tried the temp purge on the BDB to warm the group but didn't see any difference. So, as in all things you make your choice and pays your money, Good Luck!!!

Hello,
I'm also an owner of a Saeco Poemia, of course in need of replacement (no longer tolerating the inconsistency between shots, lack of full flavours and the lack of the 3 way solenoid valve to do a simple backflush, which does affect in a big bad way the taste of the brew).

It would have helped if you would have posted the prices (in your country) for each machines that you consider.

However, taking into account the advice of the HB guru Dan Kehn, you can work with a Breville just fine, but after a while you will crave the level of forgiveness that the big boys will give you. And that includes the level of maintenance.
Let's face it, the Breville is just an upped-spec, upped-price Saeco, the way it is built (not as results in the cup, of course it's better), but after seeing the innards of the NS Oscar, the VBM Domobar and the Alex, you just understand how they works (for me, this would be important, if I would plan to have the machine for 10-20 years or why not, more...). So the service for those machines would be a so much straightforward affair.

If you can bypass the ugly plastic design of the NS Oscar, it seems that the results in the cup are impressive and the latte is also very good with the drawback of waiting for a couple of minutes, but the steam is very powerfull and dry.

Also, everybody who uses an HX machine told me that temp purge becomes second nature very quickly, so for a guy who manages to do Latte art from a Poemia!?! (hats off to you sir!) it really shouldn't be an issue.

I was really ready just about to to order an E61-HX machine (a very good deal, also), until I stumble on the complaints of the scaling issues of those machines (double boilers also), compared to our cheap SBDU-s, so now I'm kind of stuck!

However I bid you Good Luck on your quest!

DeGaulle wrote:If 1-2 lattes a day is all you are looking for, the Oscar should be perfectly up to the task: big boiler, lots of steam power, just not so big a reservoir and no hot water jet, so if you have a visitor asking you for an americano you have to use a kettle on the side.
The Domobar Jr. boiler seems smallish for a HX machine, but then again you can also steam on a Single Boiler machine with even less volume. It will probably be both fit for purpose and looking good, no overkill IMO. The BDB is a popular big bang for the buck, lots of features, but maybe a slow steamer for your purpose.
For your 1-2 lattes, the Duetto DB would probably come closest to the characterisation "overkill", but if you're having company this is probably one that you can pull shots on back to back to back and not outrun it, but of course that has a cost to it!

Thanks for your reply. I also do think that the Duetto is a little too much for a person who drinks 1-2 cups a day with no friends . I have thought of getting the BDB but I heard from some youtube video with the lady named Gale or something similar that the BDB requires me to send it back for descaling every 1-2 years. If that is so, then it would be a huge problem as there is no breville at my place, only retailers.

FirstBetta wrote:From my perspective, the BDB is an excellent machine for your needs since my coffee prep is very similar to yours. Of course, I'm prejudiced I have one. Depending on the size latte you enjoy the BDB is an adequate steamer for 4 to 6 ounces of milk in the order of 10 to 15 secs. Resetting the the steam temp to a higher than default steam temp will speed up the steaming, I tried it and found that I got too much microfoam that I couldn't incorporate into the milk and ended up with a cake of it on top of the milk even pounding the pitcher on the counter so I use the default setting.

The BDB and duetto are dual boiler machines whereas the Oscar and VBM are HX machines so there is the temp purge with them. I tried the temp purge on the BDB to warm the group but didn't see any difference. So, as in all things you make your choice and pays your money, Good Luck!!!

Thanks for your reply. BDB looks like a good bang for the buck to me, but why is it that it doesn't enjoy the popularity it should have in this forum? I heard that there are problems, but that could be solved with a warranty card I guess.

Cyproo wrote:Hello,
I'm also an owner of a Saeco Poemia, of course in need of replacement (no longer tolerating the inconsistency between shots, lack of full flavours and the lack of the 3 way solenoid valve to do a simple backflush, which does affect in a big bad way the taste of the brew).

It would have helped if you would have posted the prices (in your country) for each machines that you consider.

However, taking into account the advice of the HB guru Dan Kehn, you can work with a Breville just fine, but after a while you will crave the level of forgiveness that the big boys will give you. And that includes the level of maintenance.
Let's face it, the Breville is just an upped-spec, upped-price Saeco, the way it is built (not as results in the cup, of course it's better), but after seeing the innards of the NS Oscar, the VBM Domobar and the Alex, you just understand how they works (for me, this would be important, if I would plan to have the machine for 10-20 years or why not, more...). So the service for those machines would be a so much straightforward affair.

If you can bypass the ugly plastic design of the NS Oscar, it seems that the results in the cup are impressive and the latte is also very good with the drawback of waiting for a couple of minutes, but the steam is very powerfull and dry.

Also, everybody who uses an HX machine told me that temp purge becomes second nature very quickly, so for a guy who manages to do Latte art from a Poemia!?! (hats off to you sir!) it really shouldn't be an issue.

I was really ready just about to to order an E61-HX machine (a very good deal, also), until I stumble on the complaints of the scaling issues of those machines (double boilers also), compared to our cheap SBDU-s, so now I'm kind of stuck!

However I bid you Good Luck on your quest!

The prices in my country are :
1) silvia - RM 3750
2) oscar - (it was RM 3500 before), now i guess it should be RM 4k+
3) BDB - RM 6k
4) VBM Domobar - 7-8k
5) Alex Duetto - above 8k

note, a normal person's salary is 2-3k here. So even a silvia is more than a month's worth of salary.

Seems like all of the replies here is leaning towards the BDB, maybe I could go and do more research in it.

If you are careful and use properly filtered and softened water, you won't have to worry about descaling.

There's no point in considering the Oscar anymore now that NS has started shipping the Oscar II. The price difference between the two machines is only about 100€ at least here in Europe (at elektros.it for example).
http://www.nuovasimonelli.it/images/sto ... ochure.pdf

Is BDB really RM6k? If that's the case I would spend 1k extra and go for the VBM. Otherwise, make sure you get the BES920 variant which is the latest version and is user-descalable. But you don't need to descale anyway with Malaysia's soft water.

Oscar is a bargain when it was 3.5k. But when I had it, it was a machine hard to love. Ugly+ lack of vac valve +uncertainty in flushing+ lousy stock steam tip. But it certainly makes acceptable coffee.

Breville will be more consistent and easier to use than the Oscar, and have more bells and whistles, aka features. The only shortcoming is the doubt surrounding its longevity due to the extra components. If you can get extended warranty, by all mean go for it.