A beautiful waste of space? (Dualit 84202)

Member Name: minkypolly

Product:	Dualit 84202
Date:	23/10/09 (111 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: You'll be the envy of your friends

Disadvantages: It'll end up gathering dust...

Despite being a champion coffee drinker, I didn't get myself a "proper" coffee machine until last year. I decided that £160 was a great investment considering my average monthly Costa tab runs to about £80 - even with the cost of buying coffee and milk, I figured I'd get my money back in no time.

I chose the Dualit because its beautiful (undeniably) - it does look gorgeous on the work surface, and anyone who comes round seems to say "ooh, I wish I had one of those" - which subconciously as consumers is EXACTLY what you want to hear.

The downside of that is that the visitor's next words are invariably "make me a coffee!"... and because you're still high on being the object of envy, you have no alternative than to adopt a fixed smile as you spend 15 minutes making two tiny cups, inwardly swearing at the further 15 minutes of cleaning the machine will need later on.

In fairness, it makes very good coffee - not at the level of proper bean-to-cup machines like they use in coffee shops, but a pretty close second - especially if you use really high quality ingredients. But it's quite tricky to use, and took me around twenty cups to get to anything like decent espresso (that was a wired evening!). Once you've got the hang of it, it's still quite a fiddly drawn out process to get to the finished product, and the cleaning is a real nightmare (although I have never used any coffee machine that isn't a pain to clean).

Consequently, it now only EVER gets used when people come round, and my Costa bill is exactly the same as it was before! Quite why I ever thought drinking better coffee at home would prevent me from stopping off for a relaxing cuppa when I'm out is beyond me now.

Buy it if you need to keep up with the Jones', but for me, not money well spent.

Summary: There are cheaper, easier ways to make decent coffee

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