The higher pressure in the Prima means that you have more dry steam that can be applied, but there will be a quicker drop as the boiler is smaller. The question becomes how much milk drinks your steaming because the initial pressure will be high, with the drop off more disproportioned than a machine with a larger boiler.baldheadracing wrote:The GS/3 AV is priced close to 20% higher ... I'm not saying that you get what you pay for, but the two aren't directly competing. List prices:As for boiler size, I don't think that brew boiler is a big issue in these machines as they all feed the brew boiler through an HX in the steam boiler (IIRC). The GS/3 has a saturated group so the boiler has to be bigger (more or less).
- Linea Mini: $5400
- Prima One: $5990
- GS/3 AV: $7100
Steam boiler - I'm not up on all this new technology; all I know is steam is not a concern at all once you get to a 5+ litre boiler (at 110v 15 amp) like a Nuova Simonelli Appia or an Elektra T1. However, that's a lot of water to get up to steam in a home application. Myself, I can't make milk drinks fast enough to outpace my 800 watt Elektra home machines (30sec steam, one minute recovery).
The other variables are the steam tips that can slow the pressure release, improving steam recovery for the machine. I would like to see how the Prima compares to the GS3 in steam performance because the commercial eagle one unit has a significantly larger steam boiler than the single group on the commercial eagle one.
I agree the application differs, but they do market the unit for small restaurants, so some analysis had to go into how it performs multiple drinks.
