malabargold wrote:Not a fan of comparing decent as the gold standard here.

You don't have to compare it to the gold standard. It is helpful however to remember what is lacking in this machine which is available at a much more reasonable price point elsewhere.

If you don't want to use full flow profiling or do low pre-infusion/blooming shots that's fine, but it's important to be aware that this machine is not able to do these type of shots. I was certainly anticipating it to be capable of everything the DE1 was capable of doing, particularly given the price point. It's a shame it doesn't compete at the same level.

The ability to shut off the flow and let the puck soak or "bloom" is a fairly powerful extraction tool and I would consider it a significant deficiency if a machine was incapable of it. A flow controlled e61 can do it easily.

HH wrote:I think we can agree to amicably disagree on which one looks nicer, however I am sure we can both agree that Synesso have taken almost every design cue from the DE1. It looks astonishingly similar.

My apologies, you were asking why would one buy ES1 over DE. I explained my reasoning...

There's a lot of different machines out there, and people can choose from different budgets, the feature sets they need, repairability/longevity aspects and finally, aesthetics. It's easy to overlook the aesthetics, but realistically, pair it with a good grinder and the results will be great in good hands.

PPapa wrote:It looks hundred times better than a Decent.

Huh? One box with a cylinder at the front and a flat screen at the top looks that much better than another?

I believe Lelit has a tray component that elevates one's scale and cup. Should be something one could purchase aftermarket.

Very nice machine and looks amazing! Good to see Synesso brings this type of machine to the home market. The ES.1 is such a big step up compared to a Decent and has all of the option you need for a good extraction. This is now my dream machine.

erik82 wrote: The ES.1 is such a big step up compared to a Decent

I'm not sure if you're being serious here or not Erik, as sarcasm doesn't always come through well on forums. If you're being serious, can you explain why you think it's better? It can't do flow profiling at low levels, can't do blooming shots, doesn't have proper manual control of flow or pressure, is limited in the profiles it can follow, is hugely expensive etc etc. There must be some integral part of this that makes it 'good' that I'm missing aside from that it's got 'Synesso' on the side of it?