The beginning of the year always brings with it the intent of taking on new projects. One that's been simmering for the last few years are revamping the site's Reviews. The existing reviews are exceedingly detailed and were exceedingly time consuming to research and write; to keep the reviews fresh(er), I'd like to develop a more streamlined review process and format that lends itself to much faster publication (e.g., 12 per year).

I'm proposing a "snapshot" review format that captures the key criteria visitors/members need to make an informed buying decision. This streamlined format would be used for most of the site's future reviews and a subset of the existing reviews would be republished. Ideally the format would be no more than one page.

I bounced the idea off a few of the most active sponsors and they liked it. Here's some of the equipment they proposed intermixed with my own suggestions:

Entry-level
Gaggia New Baby / Gaggia Classic
Ascaso Steel Uno Professional
Rancilio Silvia

Prosumer
Quickmill Silvano
Breville Dual Boiler
Elektra Microcasa a Leva

Semi-commercial
Quickmill Andrea Premium
ECM Germany Barista
Rocket Espresso R58 / Giotto Evoluzione
Londinium I
Quickmill Achille
Izzo Alex Duetto 3.0
Expobar Brewtus iV
Vibiemme DoubleDomo
Quickmill QM67

Commercial
La Spaziale S1 Dream / Vivaldi II
La Marzocco GS/3 Paddle

The sections of the quick review format might be:

• Introduction (1-2 paragraphs opening commentary)
• First Impressions (2-3 paragraphs on initial usage, ergonomics)
• Performance (2-4 paragraphs on espresso/steam capabilities and forgiveness factor)
• Recommendations (1 paragraph describing the buyer it's best suited for)
• Conclusion (1-2 paragraphs on pros/cons)

So, total length of 7-11 paragraphs. Should be one page with 2-3 photos plus no more than 1-2 tables, right? For those who cannot get enough details, the review research would be documented as usual in blog-style in the Bench forum.

Comments? Suggestions?

Wow! - I'm sorta surprised.

There is a "boatload" of Rocket espresso machine owners and Londinium I owners participating in the forums and perhaps one of the Rockets and the Londinium I should be added.

There are indeed a lot of Rocket models! The R58 (dual boiler) and Giotto Evoluzione are good representative models. The list wasn't meant to be exhaustive, but I agree the Londinium I is notably absent from the list. My excuse is that Reiss mentioned they're selling quite well and loaning one for a review would be problematic. A good problem for a vendor to have, no doubt!

A lot of work went into the current site reviews; it's my hope that a streamlined format will enable us to keep them representative of the most popular models visitors/members consider in their buying decisions.

My only concern would be streamlining them too much in an effort to "catch up" as it were. After the first year would it be necessary or even possible to continue a 12 per year pace year 2 and 3 and 4 etc.? Are there really 12 new prosumer to single group commercial machines actually hitting the market every year? Maybe there are and will be.

One thing that has always impressed me about HB has been the thorough comprehensiveness of the reviews. I do hope they don't become too diluted.

miKe mcKoffee wrote:One thing that has always impressed me about HB has been the thorough comprehensiveness of the reviews. I do hope they don't become too diluted.

I hear ya! On the other hand, when I wrote a review for WIRED magazine with the help of a professional copyeditor, I discovered a newfound respect for brevity. Although I barely recognized the writing as my own, I agree the final product was much crisper than the original text. I'd like to combine some of that brevity with just a tad more gritty detail (the final WIRED article word count was a third of my initial submission ). That doesn't mean reviews will skimp on the research side, since we benefit from the experience of having done previous equipment shakedowns.

HB wrote:I hear ya! On the other hand, when I wrote a review for WIRED magazine with the help of a professional copyeditor, I discovered a newfound respect for brevity. Although I barely recognized the writing as my own, I agree the final product was much crisper than the original text. I'd like to combine some of that brevity with just a tad more gritty detail (the final WIRED article word count was a third of my initial submission ). That doesn't mean reviews will skimp on the research side, since we benefit from the experience of having done previous equipment shakedowns.

I won't disagree some of the current reviews tend towards the verbose.

Despite being verbose, I loved them long and detailed and found the details very informative.

If the issue here is the readers attention span, readability, editorial concerns and the like, I would say keep it as is. Your audience for the reviews here on HB are not comparable to the audience of Wired magazine, where espresso machines is less than 1% of their concerns.

But if the issue is the work load required, and availability of capable reviewers with the required skills, time, tools and experience to perform them, then yes, a one page summary to help in buying decision is much better than a prohibitively work-intense effort that results in few, if any reviews.

One way to work around this, and accomplish as much as possible is a three layer approach.

1. A very brief outline/matrix that requires no reviewers, just current user input, where everyone on HB who owns a specific model is welcome to fill a yes/no/na list of the common featurs that define a machine. (Price, number of boilers, boiler capacity, machine type: lever, pump, E61, DB; steaming method, volumetric or semi-auto, has PID, pump type, tank or plumbed in, generic or proprietary common parts, voltage and power versions, tank access, gauges, digital display, warranty, weight, dimensions and so on). It can get fancy and provide a "compare" tool between machines, or just a selection of class and/or price range to avoid displaying a huge matrix of all machines.

2. A brief review as in OP, single page, essential facts and first impressions.

3. In depth reviews, after getting out a brief review, whenever time and availability of reviewers allows, dig deeper and provide a review in the same style of past reviews.

I think it's a good idea to have concise reviews. When one is buying a new espresso machine, or anything expensive, it's nice to be able to read through summaries of the pros and cons of each contender in the budget range in order to narrow the search. As a detail person, I love in-depth reviews, but it can take a lot of time and mental effort to wade through, say, a dozen of them looking for the desired features or limitations, and sometimes that process can make one's head spin. Also, shorter reviews would likely mean we'd have more reviews. The current set of reviews on HB is great, but it's a pretty limited selection and some are pretty old.

All that said, whenever possible a more comprehensive version of the review should be made available. Dan suggested this could be done in the Bench section, but I'd rather see it in article form, as it is now. Once the buyer has narrowed the choice to two or three machines, that sort of detail will be invaluable.

Also, as someone pointed out recently, there is an enormous amount of information about coffee and espresso equipment on this site, but it's not always easy to find. I know it would be a ton of work, but some sort of Wiki or topic-oriented list would be invaluable. For example, there must be dozens of threads about various GS/3 topics, but there's no way to get a complete list of the topics (e.g., paddle vs volumetric, stream capacity, changing o-rings in the MP, etc., etc.) Maybe we could start a volunteer effort to produce such lists for each of the major products? This would be a great adjunct to the equipment reviews.

Finally, I wonder if there's some way to help readers weed through the many long threads that contain extremely useful information, but also contain a lot of tangential or useless comments. It would be great if there was room in the header of each post for a little star or icon indicating that something important is contained in the post. It would take considerable effort on an editor's part to flag those posts, but boy would it be of great service to the membership!

Oh, and lest I forget, we need more grinder reviews, too.

How about reviewing the QuickMill Achille instead of the Andrea? It and the Londinium occupy a bit of a niche right now.

ECM Germany does not make their own machines in Germany. They've outsourced that to Italy. Bezzera to be precise. And it seems ECM had a row with Bezzera, since the Bezzera Mitica is remarkably similar to the Mechanika, but roughly 600 euros cheaper.
http://www.xphoto.de/mit5.jpg <-- Bezzera Mitica boiler
http://up.picr.de/595351.jpg <-- ECM Mechanika boiler.
All bends in all pipes are exactly the same. Every location on the boilers are exactly the same.