Beko CaffeExperto Coffee Machine Review: Ridiculous Value Under £300

I spend a lot of time reviewing high-end espresso machines, including manual espresso machines aimed at people who enjoy weighing beans, tweaking grind size, and debating with strangers on the internet about extraction ratios and the efficiency of one distribution tool over the next…

And while I do love that world, I very much appreciate that most people aren't that level of coffee-obsessed ;-).  

For anyone who hasn't fallen down the home-barista rabbit hole, I completely understand the appeal of a bean-to-cup machine: simple, consistent coffee, multiple drinks, and very little faff, all at the touch of a button.

The most popular bean-to-cup machines, though, are usually around £500 or more, especially for touchscreen models. So when I saw the Beko CaffeExperto, a touchscreen bean-to-cup machine that sells for under £300, I had to buy it & test it. 

I know what you're thinking, because I was thinking the same: “A sub-£300 touchscreen bean-to-cup from Beko… surely this is going to be pants?”

We were incorrect!  It’s ace.

If this is your first time here, hello! I’m Kev (full name: Coffee Kev). I run CoffeeBlog.co.uk, the Coffee Kev YouTube channel, and CoffeeKev.com for my coffee-loving cousins in the U.S. I’m also the Founder & Director of Coffee at Cworks.co.uk, where we sell MEGA freshly roasted coffee.

My reviews are fully independent. I don’t take payment to promote machines or to say nice things about brands. I buy most of the machines I review myself, test them properly, and say what I actually think. That doesn’t mean I deliberately hunt for terrible products just to tear them apart; I do my homework, but if something’s rubbish, I’ll tell you. And if it’s great, I’ll tell you that too.

Throughout this article, you’ll find my full Beko CaffeExperto video review from the Coffee Kev YouTube channel, along with my own photos highlighting specific features and design details of the Beko CaffeExperto, so you can see exactly what I’m talking about.

As usual, I’ll also point you towards what I think are the best alternatives in the same general price range. I won’t go too deep on those here, but I’ll include a quick side-by-side comparison and links to my dedicated review articles and videos if you want to dive deeper.

Quick Navigation

• First Impressions
• Specs & Dimensions
• Espresso Intensity
• Quick Start Guide (How To Use It Properly)
• Top Tip: How To Make a Real Americano
• Top Tip: Use “Americano” for Café Crème
• A Word From Me (Coffee Beans)
• Steaming Milk (Panarello vs “Pro” Mode)
• Creating Your Own Pre-Ground (The Hack)
• Cleaning & Maintenance
• What I Like
• What I Don’t Like
• Alternatives
• Final Verdict: Who Is It For?

Beko CaffeExperto First Impressions

£449 Now £234 on Amazon

When I bought this for £299, I was expecting it to be… not great. But my first impression was: this is properly impressive.

The touchscreen looks like a neat little tablet, bright, responsive, and refreshingly simple. And that matters because the people buying a budget bean-to-cup generally want one thing: easy coffee, without menus, nonsense, or a UI that looks like a 2003 sat nav.

Build quality also surprised me. Everything feels solid. Nothing is particularly flimsy or awkward. A surprisingly handy design feature, is that the front opens up for ridiculously easy access to the bits you actually need to access: dreg drawer, drip tray, brewing unit.

Normally, you’re playing coffee machine Jenga, pull this out, slide that sideways, remove the tank, sacrifice a goat, before you can get to the brew unit. With the Beko CaffeExperto, you just pull the brew nozzles to open the front flap. Done!

Specs & Dimensions

Dimensions

• Width: 27.5 cm (10.8″)
• Depth: 40 cm (15.7″)
• Height: 36 cm at the front / 34 cm at the back (screen extends ~2 cm)
• Max cup height: ~14 cm (5.5″)

Key Specs

• Water tank: 2 L (68 fl oz) rear-accessible.
• Bean hopper: ~250 g 
• Grind settings: 13
• Burrs: Stainless steel conical burrs
• Bypass chute: Yes (for pre-ground)
• Interface: Touchscreen
• Pump: 19 bar (but who cares?)
• Extras: Barista lights (rare on budget bean-to-cup machines)

Small but important detail: The hopper lid has a properly fitting gasket. That might sound boring, but it's the kind of attention to detail that I wouldn't usually expect with super low-cost automatic bean-to-cup machines. Here, everything closes nicely. No rattly, quirky, awkward bits as can happen with some budget (and some not so budget…) bean-to-cup machines.

Espresso Intensity

This machine produces some of the most intense espresso I’ve had from a home bean-to-cup.

Intensity isn’t everything; just because it’s intense doesn’t mean you’ll automatically love the taste. But if you’re buying a machine like this because you want something closer to real espresso rather than “a small strong coffee”, this is one of the better budget machines I’ve used in this regard.

My intensity test (for the nerds)

I test intensity using a refractometer (DI Fluid R2), which measures the total dissolved solids. 

The TDS for automatic bean-to-cup machines is usually 4-6%, vs around 8-10% with traditional, portafilter espresso machines. To put it really simply, the higher the TDS, the more intense and bigger in body your espresso is going to be. 

For example, with a traditional portafilter espresso machine, you'd usually get around 20-22% extraction yield, from a 9-10% TDS, just depending on your brew ratio.

With automatic bean-to-cup machines, you'll often get a similar extraction yield, but from a much bigger brew ratio, for a bigger, less intense & thinner shot of espresso. 

With the Beko CaffeExperto, I've been recording the following TDS:

• 1-bean intensity: roughly 5-6% TDS
• 2-bean intensity: roughly 7.5-8.5% TDS

For an automatic bean-to-cup machine, this is a high TDS. I did actually manage to get a TDS as high as 11%  when messing with ristretto settings, but I haven’t had that consistently. 

Takeaway: If you want close to “true” portafilter espresso intensity and mouthfeel, there aren't many machines that can compete with the CaffeExperto at this price point. 

Beko CaffeExperto Quick Start Guide

For anyone who has just bought this machine, or is about to buy one, here's a quick start guide (or just watch the section of the video I've queued up above).

1) Touching The Screen Starts The Shot

You’ll probably tap an icon expecting options. You won’t get options. As soon as you tap, it starts grinding. It made me jump!

If you’re not ready, just tap again to stop. No drama.

2) Beans = intensity (dose)

The “bean” icons control intensity, which basically means dose (how long it grinds).

• 1 bean: around 8–10 g
• 2 beans: around 11–12 g

The exact dose depends on the bean type and grind setting.

3) Changing shot volume (the quick start guide is… nearly right)

The glossy A4 quick-start guide says, “Press and hold to set volume.” That’s nearly right.

Here’s how you actually do it:

1. Tap the drink icon to start the shot
2. Tap the icon again and then hold
3. Release when you’ve reached your desired volume

Reset to factory defaults: press a coffee icon while turning the machine off (yes, really).

4) Steam workflow (clever)

Tap steam once: it purges and heats (~20 seconds). Then it waits for you.

Only when you’re ready with the wand in the jug, do you tap steam again to start. This is genuinely smart, with most bean-to-cup machines with milk frother wands (vs milk carafes), you have to get the timing perfect to avoid purging condensation into your milk. Milk is wet enough as it is, no need to make it even wetter ;-).

5) Hot water

Tap the hot water icon. The default is ~150 ml, but you can reprogram it the same way as shot volumes: start, then press-and-hold, and release at your desired amount.

How To Make a Real Americano With The Beko CaffeExperto

The CaffeExperto has an Americano option, but… it isn’t an Americano. It’s just a bigger espresso volume (a long lungo). A real Americano is espresso + hot water.

If you don't think there's much of a difference, just try it both ways. What you'll probably find is that the long lungo version tastes slightly more bitter.

Do this instead:

1. Pull an espresso
2. Tap hot water and top it up via the wand
3. Stop when it tastes right

You can do it water first if you like (which would be, technically speaking, a long black, but who cares?), but if you do it espresso first, you can taste it, and add more water if it's too strong; much easier than removing water if it's too weak ;-).

Use The “Americano” Setting for Café Crème

Want something like a hotel coffee in Germany (café crème)? This is really simple, just use the Americano setting, but move the grinder to a coarser setting, and you’ll get a larger-volume long espresso that’s much closer to café crème.

Important: only change the grind setting while it’s grinding. This is especially important when adjusting finer, not crucial when adjusting coarser.

The Importance of Choosing Freshly Roasted Beans

One quick but very important reality check: no coffee machine, Beko, De’Longhi, or anything with more chrome than a 1970s motorbike, will ever compensate for bad coffee beans.

You can spend hours comparing machines, but the truth is simple: the coffee you put in is the coffee you’ll drink. Even the greatest alchemist couldn’t turn lead into gold, and the Beko CaffeExperto definitely won’t turn stale supermarket beans into rich espresso or silky lattes.

If you want better coffee, do yourself (and your taste buds) a favour and buy freshly roasted beans from a reputable small roaster. If you don’t know where to start, you’re very welcome to try mine at Cworks.co.uk,  affordable, freshly roasted (often on the day of dispatch), and with 24-hour free shipping on any order over £10. Your machine will thank you. Your coffee definitely will.

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Milk Frothing Options

The steam wand looks like a pro wand, but it is a panarello (turbo frother/auto frother). It has a tiny air intake hole that pulls air in automatically.

Option A: Old-school cappuccino/latte froth (easy mode)

Leave the panarello on, shove it in the milk, and it will happily make thick, bubbly, old-school froth. Nothing to need to consider, just stop when your milk is hot enough.

Option B: Microfoam for flat whites (better, but faffier)

If you want more modern microfoam, you have two options:

• Remove the panarello sleeve (twist and pull) and use it more like a pro wand
• Or leave it on, but tape over the air hole

Steaming with a standard, pro style wand does take practice. You need to introduce just enough air (stretching). If you pull in no air, you get hot milk with no foam. If you pull in loads of air, you get bubble bath.

And remember: tap steam once to purge/heat, then tap again to start when you’re ready.

Creating Your Own Pre-Ground Coffee (The Pre-Ground Hack)

This is one of the standout features of the machine, and I doubt it was intentional.

Unlike many bean-to-cup machines, with the Beko CaffeExperto, if you start a coffee and cancel it after grinding but before brewing, it simply dumps dry grounds into the dreg drawer. It pumps no water into the puck.

Most machines insist on squirting at least some water onto the grounds when you cancel, ruining this trick. This one doesn’t. Which means…

This is the easiest bean-to-cup machine I’ve used for creating your own “fresh” pre-ground coffee.

Why would you do this?

Classic scenario: you fill the hopper with full-caff beans, but you want decaf occasionally. So you use the bypass chute for decaf… but pre-ground coffee goes stale WAY faster than whole bean.

Solution: buy whole-bean decaf (stays fresher way longer), and use the Beko to grind it into a container when needed, to then load via the bypass chute.

Step-by-step

1. Empty, clean, and dry the dreg drawer
2. Add a handful of decaf / half-caff beans
3. Start an espresso
4. As soon as grinding finishes, tap again to cancel before brewing starts
5. Repeat until you’ve made enough pre-ground
6. Store it airtight
7. Load via the bypass chute when needed

Tip: for best results, do this before you start making coffee for the day. If you do it right after brewing, you might get a drip or two into the grounds; no big deal, just get an SPN tool (also known as a spoon) and scoop out any wet bits.

Also, if you use the bypass chute, clean it regularly. The Bypass chute is warm and damp, if you don't keep it clean it can easily end up being a bit rank.

Bonus workflow tip

If you regularly switch beans, don’t fill the hopper. Stick ~100 g in at a time and top up as needed. Freshness wins.

Cleaning & Maintenance

Cleaning, like most things on the Beko Caffe Experto, is super simple. 

• Auto purges the group and wand when you turn it on, and when it turns itself off
• The “stars” icon also purges both
• When the stars icon lights up, it’s prompting you to descale
• The wand twists/pulls off for rinsing
• The brewing unit pulls out from the front. Just squeeze the clips and remove

Everything you’ll actually need to do regularly: emptying the dreg drawer, rinsing, and accessing the brewing unit, is refreshingly straightforward.

What I Like

• Outstanding value for money (Difficult to beat for this price, or even at £100-£200 more)
• Touchscreen is simple, bright, responsive, and not annoying (once you know that tapping any drink icon instantly starts that drink)
• Front access makes maintenance ridiculously easy
• Espresso intensity is on the stronger side for a bean-to-cup
• The “dry dump” cancel behaviour makes the pre-ground hack very effective
• Barista lights are a great touch at this price
• Steam workflow is clever (purge/heat first, then wait for you)

What I Don’t Like

• “Americano” isn’t an Americano (it’s a massive lungo/café crème)
• The glossy quick start guide is wrong(ish) about reprogramming volumes

Alternatives

At this price, you’ll inevitably end up looking at De’Longhi, and for good reason. De’Longhi is the biggest coffee machine manufacturer on the planet, and they’ve earned a reputation for making bean-to-cup machines that are usually more or less fault-free, reliable for years, and generally very hard to mess up.

There are other similarly priced machines that might look flashier on paper, but what they can’t usually offer is the peace of mind that comes with buying something that’s been sold in huge numbers, refined over time, and proven to be dependable.

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That’s the main trade-off here:

• Beko CaffeExperto: more “wow” for the money, simpler touchscreen workflow, surprisingly intense espresso, and the best version of the pre-ground “hack” I’ve seen.
• De’Longhi Magnifica range: the safe bet,  tried, tested, and very unlikely to give you headaches.

Option 1: De’Longhi Magnifica S (The Safe Bet Under £300)

£349 Now £269 on De'Longhi
including my 10% OFF code£299 on Amazon

If reliability is high on your list,  i.e., you want the lowest chance of anything going wrong out of the box or six months down the line, the Magnifica S is still one of the safest bean-to-cup buys at this price.

It’s not flashy. No fancy touchscreen. Just classic Magnifica dials and buttons, one of the reasons it's so reliable. It’s “old-school” in a good way: simple interface, simple components, and a long track record of being a solid little workhorse.

Why would you choose the Magnifica S?

• Peace of mind: huge brand, tried & tested model, known to run for years
• Same coffee quality as pricier De’Longhi machines: the core coffee-making parts are very similar
• Compact & kitchen-friendly: small footprint and front-access water tank
• Manual milk wand: easy old-school foam, and you can remove the panarello for microfoam

What you give up vs the Beko

• No touchscreen / less “premium” feel
• No true double-shot button (you can manually make two singles, so it's not a massive deal)
• Milk steaming workflow isn't quite as slick
• Pre-ground hack doesn't work as well 

In short: if you just want a dependable bean-to-cup for under £300 and you don’t care about a touchscreen, the Magnifica S is still a cracking option. Read my full De’Longhi Magnifica S review →

Option 2: De’Longhi Magnifica Start (Similar Price, More Modern Controls)

£319 Now £287 on De'Longhi
including my 10% OFF code Now £319 on Amazon

The Magnifica Start is basically the newer kid on the Magnifica block. Think of it as a Magnifica S with a slightly more modern, “soft-touch” control panel and some updated drink presets.

In terms of what’s going on internally, it’s almost identical to the Magnifica S, but the interface is more modern.

Why would you choose it

• More modern interface: soft-touch buttons rather than old-school clicky ones
• Better drink presets: usually includes an Americano preset (handy for a lot of people)
• Similar reliability angle: it’s still De’Longhi, still Magnifica DNA

In short: if you like the Magnifica S idea but want a slightly more modern interface (and a one-touch Americano), the Magnifica Start may be the better pick. See my Magnifica Start coverage/updates →

Option 3: De’Longhi Magnifica Evo / Evo Next (If You Can Stretch the Budget)

Check price on De'Longhi£599 Now £499 on Amazon

If you’re in the “I like modern-looking machines with slick interfaces” camp, and you’re willing to spend more than £300, then the Magnifica Evo Next is well worth a look.  It feels like De’Longhi took everything they learned from their best-selling classics and rebuilt it for 2025 kitchens.

The Evo Next is more expensive (often around the £500 mark). Still, it’s a very polished package: compact, easy to use, capable of fairly intense espresso for a bean-to-cup, and it includes some features you normally associate with more premium machines.

Why would you choose it

• Slick interface: 2.4″ colour display with fast shortcuts to drinks
• User profiles: 3 customisable profiles (useful in a household)
• One-touch milk drinks: LatteCrema Hot carafe (hotter milk than most, high 60s °C)
• Compact footprint: and still front-access water tank
• De’Longhi reliability: tried-and-tested brand track record

What to be aware of

• The milk carafe is on the small side (around 280 ml max)
• No “true” double shot in the purist sense (though it’s better than older De’Longhis)
• It’s a lot more money than the Beko — you’re paying for convenience and polish

In short: if you want maximum convenience with one-touch milk drinks and a premium interface, the Evo Next is a strong upgrade. But if you prefer a steam wand and don’t mind making your own milk, the Beko is still better value. Read my full De’Longhi Magnifica Evo Next review →

No Mention of Ninja Luxe Cafe?

A few people have commented on my Beko CaffeExperto YouTube video, asking the “Beko Vs Ninja Luxe” question. Also, I've had similar comments on my best bean-to-cup coffee machines video, and it's the same answer: the Ninja Luxe Cafe machines aren't automatic bean-to-cup coffee machines, so it's not a comparable machine.

The fundamental difference is: Portafilter vs internal brewing unit. 

Auto bean-to-cup machines are slightly less involved; you don't need to lock the portafilter into the grinder cradle, push the tamp lever, lock the portafilter into the group, or knock out the puck after. 

Portafilter espresso machines produce thicker-bodied, more intense espresso.

They're usually much more complicated to use, but, as with the Sage Barista Express & Touch Impress, the Ninja Luxe machines are what I refer to as “in-between machines”, meaning they deliver home barista espresso with similar ease & convenience to auto bean-to-cup machines.

The Ninja Luxe machines (601 Premier & 701 Pro) also have a bigger drinks menu, including filter-style coffee, cold brew (style), and cold foam. 

They're a few hundred quid more than the Beko, but they'll produce closer to true cafe-quality drinks than most automatic bean-to-cup machines, and if you can cope with the extra cost and the slightly more involved workflow, your taste buds will probably thank you.

Beko CaffeExperto vs. De’Longhi Magnifica S, Magnifica Start & Magnifica Evo Next

So… which should you choose?

• Choose the Beko CaffeExperto if you want the most “premium feel” and usability under £300, prefer a steam wand, and like the idea of easily being able to pre-grind your own decaf.
• Choose the Magnifica S/Start if you want the safest, most proven option at this price, and you value reliability and simplicity over touchscreen flair.
• Choose the Magnifica Evo Next if you want a more modern, polished experience and you’re happy to spend more for one-touch milk convenience and user profiles.

Final Verdict: Who Is the Beko CaffeExperto For?

If you want the best bang-for-buck bean-to-cup under £300 and you prefer a steam wand to a one-touch milk carafe, this should be on your shortlist.

It punches WAY above its weight (touchscreen or not), and it wipes the floor with some much more expensive machines for ease of use, espresso intensity, and overall look and feel.

Is it tried and tested like a De’Longhi Magnifica? Not quite. Beko aren’t a “coffee machine brand” in the same way. But if you can live with that, and you want something that feels surprisingly premium for the money (with a 2-year UK warranty), this is a very strong buy.

Also, Beko… the name is rubbish. Please change it and go full Harry Potter. Just call it Expecto Patronum. Or Nimbus 2000.

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