Perfecting a home-pulled espresso shot is no easy feat, but Breville offers a wide range of machines that give varying degrees of assistance, whether you’re just starting out or looking to upgrade your setup. With thoughtful design, quality components, and a range of automation options, Breville stands out in the prosumer space for striking the right balance between ease of use and café-level performance.
As a barista and coffee roaster, I’ve worked with a wide variety of espresso machines both at home and behind the bar. I’ve reviewed several Breville machines for Business Insider, including the entry-level Bambino and the tech-forward Oracle Jet. For this guide, I’ve compared a range of models to help you choose the best Breville machine for your budget and experience level. For most people, the Barista Pro offers the best value and performance. If you’re just getting started, the Bambino is an entry-level and reliable option to learn the ropes, but it doesn’t have a built-in grinder. I’ve also created a comparison breakdown of the Breville’s espresso machine line up.
Breville makes great espresso machines, but there are plenty of other worthy options out there. For more of our top picks, check out our guides to the best espresso machines and best budget espresso machines.
Our top picks for Breville espresso machines
Best overall: Breville Barista Pro – See at Amazon
Best budget: Breville Bambino – See at Amazon
Best splurge: Breville Oracle Jet – See at Amazon
Best for beginners: Breville Barista Express Impress — See at Amazon
Best for advanced users: Breville Dual Boiler – See at Amazon
Best overall
Breville Barista Pro
Equipped with Breville’s Smart Grinder Pro and everything you need to make espresso, save for the beans, the Breville Barista Pro is among the easiest and fastest ways you can get a close-to-café-quality pour at home.
The Barista Pro offers the best combination of performance, features, and value in Breville’s lineup. It comes equipped with a built-in Baratza conical burr grinder with 30 grind settings, lightning-fast heat-up speeds thanks to Breville’s ThermoJet heating system, and precise dosing. It was a close call between the Barista Pro and the Express Impress, which is about $50 less, but the Pro ultimately wins out thanks to its higher-quality grinder with more adjustment steps. That extra precision goes a long way when dialing in your shot.
David Slotnick/Business Insider
The steam wand is fully manual, giving you complete control over milk texture, and the intuitive LCD screen provides straightforward controls for grinding and pulling shots, including dosing presets for single and double baskets that can be adjusted to taste. While the Pro doesn’t automate tamping like the Impress line, the improved grinder and dosing precision give you everything you need to fine-tune your espresso. The ThermoJet system recovers quickly between shots, and cleaning is simple with on-screen maintenance prompts. It’s an ideal machine for anyone who wants to grow their skills and values speed and control, without going fully automatic.
Read our full Breville Barista Pro review.
Best budget
Breville Bambino
The Breville Bambino is a great budget machine for beginners to start crafting espresso-based drinks at home. It heats up within seconds, consistently pulls a tasty, full-bodied shot of espresso, and can effectively steam milk to your desired texture.
If you’re looking for a more affordable way to start making espresso at home, the Bambino is Breville’s most budget-friendly machine, and one of the best values in the category overall. It doesn’t come with a built-in grinder or any automation for dosing or milk frothing, so you’ll need a separate grinder and a bit of patience. But once your setup is dialed in, the Bambino consistently pulls smooth, full-bodied shots.
Abby Hersh/Business Insider
Its compact footprint makes it perfect for small kitchens, and the simple four-button interface is intuitive right out of the box. The manual steam wand is surprisingly powerful for its size and can produce both traditional cappuccino foam and silky microfoam with a little practice. For beginners who are open to learning a hands-on workflow, the Bambino is a fantastic entry point, and having a separate grinder leaves room to upgrade without needing to replace the espresso machine itself.
Read our full Breville Bambino review.
Best splurge
Breville Oracle Jet
The Oracle Jet is Breville’s newest, most advanced, and most expensive espresso machine. It offers tons of customizations for making cafe-quality drinks at home, including the ability to make cold brew on demand.
Dialing in espresso — the process of tweaking variables until you get the perfect brew — is one of the steepest learning curves in home brewing, and the Oracle Jet makes that process feel intuitive and approachable. When I tested the machine, I was impressed by how well the touchscreen interface walked me through every step, from grind adjustment to extraction timing. The Oracle Jet automates dosing, tamping, and milk steaming, and it includes preset recipes for classic drinks like lattes, cappuccinos, and flat whites.
Abby Hersh/Business Insider
While you still need to adjust the grind size manually, the Oracle gives real-time feedback to help you get within the ideal brew time range. The built-in grinder features high-quality Baratza burrs with 45 fine-tuning steps — enough range to dial in everything from light to dark roasts. For anyone who wants café-style drinks without the research rabbit hole, the Oracle Jet removes most of the guesswork and delivers consistent, delicious results.
Read our full Breville Oracle Jet review.
Best for beginners
Breville Barista Express Impress
The Barista Express Impress is an all-in-one machine that offers consistency with mess-free assisted tamping, and everything you need to easily make quality espresso drinks at home.
There’s only about a $50 difference between the Barista Express Impress and our top Breville, the Barista Pro, but what makes the Express Impress ideal for beginners is its automatic tamping system, which takes a lot of the guesswork out of dosing and prioritizes ease of use over fine-tuning your cup with too many settings. This let’s you enjoy good espresso right away without months of technique practice, but leaves plenty of opportunity for experimentation as you get more comfortable dialing in.
Dubbed the Impress Puck System, the machine tamps a constant 22 pound impression to your dose, finishing it with a 7° barista twist for a more polished puck. It also has intelligent dosing memory to learn your dose over time so future shots are even more consistent.
Owen Burke/Business Insider
Unlike the Barista Pro, which has an LCD digital screen, the Express Impress features buttons and an analog pressure gauge. Overall, this keeps things simple, while feeling like an traditional brewing experience and uses indicators to let you know you’ve pulled a good shot. The Barista Express Impress also features a built-in conical burr grinder (with 25 settings) and a milk frothing wand to integrate the brew process into one machine.
Read our full Breville Barista Express Impress review.
Best for advanced users
Breville Dual Broiler
The Breville Dual Boiler is a high-performance espresso machine designed for advanced users who want full control over their coffee workflow. With dual heating elements, PID temperature control, and a customizable interface, it delivers café-level precision for brewing and steaming simultaneously.
If you want full control over every part of your espresso workflow, the Dual Boiler is Breville’s most capable and customizable machine. Unlike Breville’s ThermoJet-based models, this machine features two separate heating elements for brewing and steaming, which means you can pull a shot and steam milk at the same time without waiting for temperature recovery. (To learn more about the difference between a boiler and Breville’s ThermoJet heating system, check out the FAQ below.) It also includes a pressure gauge and PID-controlled temperature adjustments.
The minimal LCD interface gives you access to customizable shot timing, brew temperature, and volumetric settings, making it ideal for experienced users who like to fine-tune their espresso. The lack of a built-in grinder is actually a plus here: you’re free to pair it with a grinder of your choice and upgrade over time. If you’re chasing the kind of precision you’d find in a café setup, the Dual Boiler gives you the tools to get there.
Every Breville espresso machine, compared
Breville makes 12 different espresso machines, ranging in price from $300 to $3,000, not including their partnership with Nespresso. The lineup spans a wide range of automation, from fully manual to nearly hands-free, and can be overwhelming to sort through. The Barista models come with a built-in grinder, the Impress line adds assisted tamping, and the Oracle machines offer advanced automation with touchscreen controls. We’ve broken down the key differences between each model below.
FAQs
What’s the difference between Breville’s ThermoJet, Thermocoil, and traditional boilers?
Breville’s ThermoJet system flash-heats a small volume of water in just 3 seconds, allowing for near-instant startup and quick recovery between brews. It’s the fastest and most energy-efficient heating system in Breville’s lineup. The Thermocoil system, found in slightly older models like the Barista Express, works similarly by heating water as it flows through a metal coil inside an aluminum block. It’s slower to heat up (about 30 to 60 seconds) and less efficient than ThermoJet, but it still offers decent thermal stability for home use.
Traditional boilers heat a full reservoir of water and take longer to warm up, but they offer greater thermal stability, especially when pulling back-to-back shots or steaming milk. A single boiler machine uses the same boiler to heat water for both brewing and steaming, which means you can only do one at a time. After pulling a shot, you have to wait a few seconds for the machine to come to temperature before steaming milk (or vice versa). A dual boiler, on the other hand, has separate boilers for each task, so you can brew and steam simultaneously.
How long do Breville espresso machines typically last?
With regular maintenance, Breville espresso machines typically last 5 to 10 years. All models come with a minimum 1-year warranty (most have 2 years), and replacement parts are available for repairs. Machines like the Dual Boiler, which are more modular and serviceable, may last even longer with proper care.
What kind of maintenance is required for Breville machines?
You should backflush your machine regularly (with the included cleaning disc), purge and wipe down the steam wand after every use, and run the built-in descaling cycle periodically, depending on your water hardness. Breville includes descaling solution and other cleaning tools with most models, and even entry-level machines come with clear instructions to help keep everything running smoothly.
Are Breville espresso machines good for beginners?
Yes. Breville machines are designed with accessibility in mind, and many models, like the Barista Express Impress and Oracle Jet, offer guided workflows and automation to help beginners brew great espresso with minimal trial and error. Even the more manual models like the Bambino are easy to set up and come with all the tools you need to get started.
Should I get a single or dual boiler model?
For most home users, Breville’s ThermoJet and Thermocoil machines are more than enough; they just require a quick wait when switching between brewing and steaming. If you want to steam milk and brew at the same time or fine-tune your shot with more precision, the Dual Boiler is worth the investment.
