Maestri House 150W Espresso Maker with 2-3 Min Fast Self-Heating, Portable Travel Espresso Coffee Machine with Small Tea Cup Also Holder for NS Capsule & Ground Coffee for Car Camping, RV, Hiking

So far very surprise with the quality of the espresso. Almost the same of my professional magnífica for Delonghi. I don’t used the coffee pads yet. I’m happy with the materials and the color green. I missing the bag to carry all the attachment when I going for a trip, it will be nice.

As a disclaimer at the top of things, I have only tested this espresso machine in the Nespresso pod mode. Notably, it does not include a tamp, so without a tamp of your own (At the same size as the Flair ecosystem, 45.5 mm, according to my measurements) you can't really use the espresso basket. Untamped coffee grounds are *not* a recipe for good espresso! That said, this is an all around excellent product for the price. I'll cut to the punch and skip the preamble. I brewed some coffee in it, and it didn't have the trademark acridity, bitterness, or overall unpleasantness of a poor espresso machine. For the price, that in and of itself is very good. When I do get a grinder and a tamp, I will be able to give more information about how it does making "real" espresso. Until then, i can comment on everything else. It is a beaautiful thing, and it's a very nice cream color. It looks right at home beside my Cosmic LAMY Al-Star. The design is thoughtful and simple to use, with the very minor exception of the fill lines in the water chamber being hard to read without using my phone flashlight. The design of the cup that it empties into is very clever. It has ridges on the inside, and the cylinder it slots onto has two sets of matching grooves - ones that go very deep, and others that go quite shallowly. This means that you can put it all the way on for compact storage, and when you want to brew coffee, it acts as its own stand, holding the espresso machine above it securely so it can brew. That's the kind of little design detail that makes a product - thoughtful, intentional, and functional.

We like coffee. We like camping. Those two things were very hard to put together, especially with a good non-instant coffee. Well, this problem is now solved, thanks to Maestri House. This machine works wonders to get us going is almost as good as our Breville at home. There are some drawbacks and limitations too, of course. In general, this machine works by first heating water, then pushing it down with pressure through the coffee. Unlike at home espresso machines which can bring water to temperature almost instantaneously with 1500W of power, this machine has to heat up the water first because it lacks the kind of power to do it all at once. The coffee could be regular ground coffee (messier) or a small Nespresso pod (more expensive). First, what I like: - Obviously I like good coffee in the morning and now I can have that, no matter where I am. The resulting coffee is actually surprisingly good. YMMV depending on the beans, water, etc. - It's small and it's packs very tight - basically about the size of a water bottle. - Brewing itself (not heating water) is super quick: only maybe 15-20 seconds What can be improved: - No tamper provided. This actually turned out to be a big deal b/c the filter puck is 44mm - which is not a standard size as far as I can tell, so there are no appropriate tampers available online. The manual recommends to use the bottom of the measuring spoon, but that's just ludicrous b/c the provided measuring spoon is nowhere large enough and it slopes up, so not a great fit at all. I actually ended up using one small empty former cosmetic jar we had laying around. It's not perfectly smooth on the bottom, but close enough. Anyway, this tamper situation is really the reason for -1 star. - If you're going to heat up water in it, be aware that there's enough juice in the battery to do 3, maximum 4 runs. You'll be empty and charging it a LONG time after that. Conveniently, it does have a mode of just running the water through without heating. I don't know if there's a practical limit to how many times you can do it on a single charge, but it must be in many hundreds. The reason, of course, is that water has a high heat capacity and, thus, it takes a lot of energy to heat up the water. Merely pushing the water through the coffee grounds is peanuts compare to that. Anyway, this mode is a great b/c if you have alternate ways of heating up water, whether that'd be a propane stove or a microwave, this machine can still deliver you a great coffee many many times. What I found actually works the best is combining both worlds: heating the water yourself but then selecting the heat cycle on the machine anyway. The reason for this is your water cools down some by the time it's in the machine, so running the heat cycle brings it up to temperature. However, this uses very little energy since the water is already mostly there. The whole cycle maybe takes 30-40 seconds this way. You don't get to do hundreds of cycles on a single charge, only maybe a few dozen, but this is still good enough in most circumstances. - You need to make sure you open up and "lock" the cup at the bottom in the open position rather than collapsed before brewing. Otherwise, you're going to end up with a lot of tasty coffee all over the table or yourself.

I found out about an upcoming road trip I would be taking and immediately thought, "But... what about our coffee?" Yeah, we like our morning espresso and I knew better than to think we (my traveling companion and I) would be ok with drip coffee from the hotel's continental breakfast offerings, and as we have become somewhat spoiled in our home setup (it makes amazing coffee), I immediately began looking for alternatives for the trip. When I found this "Maestri House 150W Espresso Machine with 2-3 Min Fast Self-Heating, Portable Travel Espresso Coffee Maker with Small Tea Cup Also Holder for NS Capsule & Ground Coffee for Car Camping, RV, Hiking" I was pretty sure this was going to fit the bill. I've used products by Maestri House before and I trust the name as a result. From my experience, Maestri House builds quality products and they seem to stand behind them, so that was that. When the package arrived, we were already mid-pack for our trip, so I took the unit out so it could be as charged as possible before we got on the road. It was another day and a half before we would get to try it out. Thankfully, there was still plenty of charge the morning we tested it, and that's how we jumped into our "first run" with this device - inexperienced and a bit groggier than is probably recommended for a first-time use, but hey. We read over the instructions again - we had already reviewed them as we packed to make sure we weren't leaving some critical thing behind (like coffee pods). And then we brewed our first cup. As Murphy always dictates, it did not go as planned. I managed to brew the first pod into the included cup, but I didn't realize I hadn't positioned it to HOLD the coffee, so it was a bit messy. Ok, oops. Duly noted. Attempt number two began immediately. Thankfully I brewed a pretty delicious espresso in just a few minutes. Alrighty then, attempt number three? Same deal - just as good as attempt number two. About fifteen minutes later I decided I wanted a second cup. No problem. "I may have messed up the first one, but I know what I'm doing now!" I said, and brewed myself another espresso. My traveling companion said, "I'd like another, please" and I set it up to go again. But it wouldn't brew. It wouldn't do anything. I checked the power and that seemed to be the problem. It was entirely out of juice and needed to be recharged. So we learned it can brew four cups before it was out of power. That's a bit disappointing, right? So we charged the unit back up and left it charging until the next morning. But the next morning we brewed three cups before it wouldn't do more. I thought perhaps the unit had some kind of overheat protection built in that prevented its use until it cooled back down. I mean I've had other devices with that kind of internal safeguard, so why wouldn't this device have something like that, right? But I don't know that that's what it was at all. I was able to brew a fourth cup later that same morning but was never able to determine if it was an overheating issue or a battery issue since we plugged it back in after it wouldn't brew earlier. After those first two days we only had a couple of instances where we used the espresso machine, and both times we didn't make more than 2 pods' worth of coffee, so the overheat/lack of power issue didn't surface again. We returned home after that and haven't had a reason to use a portable espresso machine since we have access to a non-portable espresso machine right there on the kitchen counter. In all, I love the convenience of this device and the quality of the coffee is pretty great - well, as great as any "pod coffee" is, I suppose. (Note: You can use grounds with the included "pod" adapter instead of the one that just holds the pods.) I'm sure we'll be packing this in our luggage for our next road trip, but I would be hesitant to take it on any adventures without a reliable power source simply because I don't really know why we were throttled at four cups on Day One and three cups on Day Two of our previous excursion. Happy to recommend this product, but with the caveats included. Be aware of possible throttling effect after brewing a few pods/cups. I don't know if it was from overheating or from depleting the battery, but if I took this camping with a few friends, I have a feeling one or two of them would be irritated they didn't get their caffeine fix.

Coffee lovers now have the freedom to enjoy a freshly brewed cup of espresso anywhere they go with a portable electric espresso machine, a small and handy equipment made to brew espresso on the go. Since these devices are usually run by electricity or rechargeable batteries, they can be used in a variety of locations, including offices, residences, campgrounds, and travel. Brewing espresso swiftly and effectively is made possible by the user-friendly design and automatic or semi-automatic functioning of portable electric espresso machines. A water reservoir, an integrated pump for extracting espresso, and a portafilter or pod system to store coffee grounds or capsules are typically included. Additionally, certain models could have other functions like milk frothers for making cappuccinos or lattes, and settings for adjusting the strength of the coffee.