The Gaggia Anima Prestige is an upgrade of the Gaggia Anima. It’s a sleek machine that can fit in almost any space and it does absolutely everything – the grinding, brewing and milk frothing, all at the touch of a button. The Gaggia Anima Prestige is going to give you great quality coffee and it has a number of features that we love. The only potential downside really is the price – it’s top of the line with a price to match! Keep reading the Gaggia Anima Prestige review to find out if this is the right super automatic espresso machine to buy for your home.
Contents
- 1 Gaggia Anima Prestige: What do we like?
- 2 Gaggia Anima Prestige Review : The Design
- 3 4 Major Key Benefits of the Gaggia Anima Prestige Automatic Coffee Machine
- 4 Other Specifications of Gaggia Anima Prestige
- 5 Potential Shortcomings of Gaggia Anima Prestige
- 6 Is Gaggia Anima Prestige worth it?
- 7 Gaggia Anima Prestige Review: Should I buy?
Gaggia Anima Prestige: What do we like?
One of the best Gaggia automatic espresso machine, Anima Prestige can make you frothy cappuccinos, lattes and normal espresso automatically, at the touch of a button.
It comes with a large water reservoir and bean hopper, meaning you won’t have to refill them too often. And this all comes in a nice slim sleek design. So not to worry about the large capacity, the Gaggia Anima Prestige isn’t going to take over your kitchen counter!
This fully automatic espresso machine has a secret weapon to make really good espresso. It comes with a pre-infusion stage.
This means it wets the grinded coffee prior to starting the espresso brewing. Espresso experts say that this will allow water to seep through the grinded coffee and thus maximize espresso extraction. When you buy Gaggia Anima Prestige, you will be able to enjoy a highly tasty and aromatic espresso.
The Gaggia Anima Prestige comes with a high quality ceramic burr grinder. The quality of the machine is high. It feels sturdy and we didn’t have any problems when we were using it.
We haven’t had the chance to use it for years on end, but the reviews we looked at seems to be pretty positive with how the Gaggia Anima Prestige stands up over time and repeated use.
Gaggia Anima Prestige Automatic Coffee Machine
Gaggia Anima Prestige Review : The Design
We like the styling of the Gaggia Anima Prestige without being particularly overwhelmed by it.
It’s pretty basic, and for the price point (more thoughts about that below!), maybe it could have been given a bit more styling especially, when this is an Italian espresso machine.
It’s not that it’s not stylish per se, it’s definitely a nice looking machine. But it’s also not particularly attention grabbing.
It has stainless steel housing, with 6 different buttons around an LED screen at the front top panel.
Simple and intuitive interface
You can make an espresso, cappuccino or latte at the press of a button. And then there are other options available by tapping through the onscreen menu.
It’s nice and compact, which is something to take into consideration – not everyone wants their coffee machines to be front and centre. The Gaggia Anima Prestige automatic coffee machine is definitely going to be able to blend in easily in your kitchen.
The water reservoir and bean hopper are both hidden behind a stainless steel cover, and can be accessed from the top. We’ll give some points for that – the water reservoir being hidden is something we would like to see in more automatic coffee machines.
Water tank and bean hopper are easy to access
The milk carafe is at the front, which means it’s easy to attach when you want to make a latte, and return to the fridge when you’re finished.
Other people also viewed:
Gaggia Brera Review – if you prefer a superautomatic with a manual milk frother instead
Gaggia Babila Review – if you want both manual and automatic frothers in 1 superautomatic espresso machine.
4 Major Key Benefits of the Gaggia Anima Prestige Automatic Coffee Machine
1. It comes with a high quality grinder
Gaggia Anima Prestige comes with a high quality coffee grinder made of 100% ceramic. Ceramic is the best material to use as it minimizes heat during grinding, much better than metal blades. This is important because heat will destroy the highly volatile aroma and flavours in the coffee beans.
2. It is Fully Automatic!
It’s the marquee feature of this machine. It’s all automated. You push a button and every step of the coffee process – the grinding, the pulling, the frothing – just happens. Just like that! Literally the only thing you have to do is fill up the beans, water, and attach the milk carafe if you are making a latte or a cappuccino
3. It gives you the option to use ground coffee
You can of course add ground coffee directly to the machine using a bypass doser in the bean hopper. But, don’t do that – go with the whole coffee beans! Your coffee is going to taste so fresh you’ll be wondering how you put up with all those pod machine coffee.
4. It is highly programmable.
You can customize each drink to your liking, be it the volume, coffee strength and even the temperature. And best of all, you can store your preferred setting for future use.
4. It is easy to clean
Proper cleaning of coffee residues will ensure no stale coffee stains get mixed with your espresso and affect the taste. And Gaggia Anima Prestige comes with automatic cleaning cycles to help you do it conveniently. The coffee circuit is cleaned automatically when it is turned on or powered off.
Cleaning the milk circuit is so easy with a touch of the button, which will flush hot water through the circuit in a few seconds. You don’t want those milk residues affecting the taste of your milk-based drinks.
Removable brew group
The brew group is also easy to remove for cleaning. Simply open the side panel and remove the brew unit and wash the brew unit under the tap.
With the brew unit removed, it is so much easier to clean the inside of the machine thoroughly.
As for the periodic descaling to remove lime build-up due to heating of water, you will be prompted by the machine when to do it. So you are freed from the task of tracking your last descaling cycle. The procedure of descaling is really easy with guided step by step messages on the display panel.
Gaggia Anima Prestige Automatic Coffee Machine
Other Specifications of Gaggia Anima Prestige
- It has 4 one-touch beverage options – espresso, lungo, cappuccino and latte macchiato. You can also make milk froth with the integrated milk carafe. Or you can remove the carafe and attach a hot water dispenser to get hot water for Americano or tea.
- The coffee sprout is adjustable and can accommodate large mugs up to 5.9″ height clearance
- Huge removable water with capacity of 1.8 liters (60 ounces)
- removable milk carafe with capacity of 0.5 liters
- bean hopper holding up to 250 grams
- Removable coffee puck container able to hold up to 15 used coffee pucks
- Able to brew 2 coffee cups simultaneously
- 5 grind settings. This gives you more flexibility to adjust the taste of your coffee.
- Comes with Gaggia Adapting system which adjust the grinding to ensure the quantity of coffee used is exactly the one you choose.
- Adjustable brew temperature with 3 different settings.
- Comes with a bypass doser. If you wish to choose preground coffee or decaf one, simply use this option to bypass the grinder.
- Energy saving: it uses a only about a watt of energy on standby mode to reduce power consumption.
Product info
- Power Cord Length : 48 inches
- Free 2 YEAR WARRANTY. The best thing is that this is handled by Gaggia USA directly.
- Size: 16.9 x 8.7 x 13.4 inches
- Weight : 16 pounds
Potential Shortcomings of Gaggia Anima Prestige
Short time to react when using the self-cleaning option
You only have FIVE seconds to get to the machine and select the self-cleaning option. FIVE!
So if you’re busy doing something else (and surely one of the joys of this kind of machine is that you press a button, come back a minute or two later and see your coffee made ready), you probably won’t be able to select the self-cleaning option
Pretty expensive price
It’s a machine that does exactly what it says. It makes great coffee. It is packed with great features. And thus it comes with a hefty price tag.
Is Gaggia Anima Prestige worth it?
Gaggia Anima Prestige is not for the faint of heart. Coming in at close to 1000 dollars, this is clearly not a machine for your casual coffee user!
We like to measure the price against its merits – it’s good to have options at all price points. Considering that it really is an all-in-one super automatic machine and it does make a great coffee, whether it’s worth the price is going to be dependent on what you want in a machine.
We think it probably is worth the price if you make lots of coffees at home and want something easy to make great coffee.
The quality of the machine is really high and it comes with a two year warranty, so Gaggia are backing their machine. And like we said earlier, it feels sturdy and well-built.
Gaggia Anima Prestige Review: Should I buy?
It may sound like we’ve been a bit harsh on the Gaggia Anima Prestige for its high price and that’s probably fair.
When you’re shelling out nearly $1000 for a coffee machine, there’s no doubt that the stakes are higher.
What we might have overlooked in a machine costing $100, we’re not going to overlook in a machine ten times the price.
Having said that, we did like the Gaggia Anima Prestige and think that this machine could be perfect for people who are limited on time, drink lots of coffee and want a great brew without any fuss.
When you buy this Gaggia Anima Prestige for your home, you will get the convenience to grind coffee beans, froth milk automatically. If you do make multiple multiple coffees a day and the price point is within your budget, we would definitely consider the Gaggia Anima Prestige to be a strong contender for your next coffee machine.
