The Gaggia Anima gives you the ability to make a good quality coffee as you like it and probably as quickly as you need it. In Anima, Gaggia has brought their Italian coffee know-how into to a pretty easy to use machine and we applaud them for it. Keep reading this Gaggia Anima review to find out if it is the right Gaggia Automatic espresso machine for you.
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Gaggia Anima Review: What do we like?
Gaggia Anima Coffee and Espresso Machine
Gaggia are experts in espresso and it shows in their machines. And Gaggia Anima is no exception. This makes great coffee!
We really like this Gaggia Anima automatic coffee machine. It’s easy to use, simply put in your water and beans, select the options you want, and your coffee will be out in minutes. It comes with a burr grinder under the lid and you also have a bypass doser to use pre-ground coffee when you like it. We wouldn’t really recommend using pre-ground coffee though because coffee is always better made fresh from the beans.
Anima comes with a manual paranello frothing wand. The coffee is made automatic from beans to cup but the milk frothing is manual. It’s a good wand for frothing milk, but frothing is actually quite a skill. So for those who have never used a espresso maker before, it will require a bit of time to master it.
Try Gaggia Anima Prestige if you want to make your lattes and cappuccinos automatically
Try Gaggia Accademia if you want to make your milk based drink automatically on your busy workdays and yet have the chance to practice your milk frothing during your leisure time.
Gaggoa Anima is easy to maintain, with an automatic rinse cycle every time the machine is turned on and off. There is also a descaling cycle function so it’s easy to perform the periodic maintenance for this machine.
The Design of Gaggia Anima Espresso Machine
The Gaggia Anima, like basically all Gaggia machines, takes up a good amount of space. I assume the designers are told to design the machines for the coffee, and no one along the way thinks about the apartment dwellers amongst us. I’m joking of course, but at the same time Gaggia does seem to have a tendency to make big machines!
The Anima is thankfully “slimline”, so you can actually ignore my earlier joke – the Anima will fit on your counter! But take into consideration the height of the machine and the fact that you have to put the water and beans into the machine from the top.
The Anima has a 60 ounce water reservoir on its left side and a well-sized bean hopper on the right. They’re both covered, but easy to access. The bean hopper can also be removed entirely for cleaning. Simply open the side panel and remove. The Panarello frothing wand is on the right side of the machine.
The Gaggia Anima has six buttons surrounding an LCD screen. It’s not our favourite design of all time. But thankfully the buttons are nice and easy to understand. So generally, there’s not too much pressing of buttons to get your caffeine hit!
Espresso and Espresso Lungo are two of the buttons, and the rest are for adjusting your settings. There is also a hot water button for you to make your Americano or even hot tea.
The Gaggia Anima has a plastic build. If we were assigning points, we would definitely take some off for this and the lack of stainless steel. We know stainless steel is more expensive. But this isn’t a budget machine, so it would have been nice, even if it were just for some of the finishes.
Overall, despite it being mainly plastic, we like the styling of the Gaggia Anima and feel that it would look pretty good in any kitchen.
4 Key Benefits of Gaggia Anima Coffee and Espresso Machine
1. It makes a really good espresso from fresh whole coffee beans automatically.
This has to be the selling point of this machine. You’re getting almost (not quite but much closer than many other models on the market) true cafe-quality espresso just by pressing a button.
2. It comes integrated with a high quality burr grinder.
The actual mechanics of any Gaggia are usually pretty solid and this is no exception. Pour in your coffee beans and the machine will spit out freshly ground coffee in minutes.
We’re probably going to give you ten different pros telling you the exact same thing – the coffee from the Gaggia Anima is good. Not 100% cafe quality but still really good quality for a home automatic machine! Gaggia is known for their coffee and this machine does the family proud yet again!
3. It comes with a Paranello steam wand
If you know what you’re doing – and that is key – the wand is pretty good. This wand comes with an intake hole. This helps to siphon the air right into the milk and allow you to make very rich milky foam for your cappuccino and lattes!
Automatic milk frothers can be a hit or miss. Manual milk frothers are actually more consistent, if you know what you’re doing. Although milk frothing is an art which require some time to master, it is not really hard to pick up though. Just watch the some youtube videos and that will give you some idea of what you have to do to froth milk
4. It comes with an automatic rinsing cycle
It automatically rinses the internal water circuit when turned on and off. No need to explain why we like a self-rinsing machine! It simply help maintains your espresso machine and ensure the cleanliness inside which can make or break the coffee quality.
Potential Shortcoming of Gaggia Anima
Plastic Housing
It’s not stainless steel. It’s not that there’s anything particularly wrong with plastic. Just that for the price, we would have preferred a stainless steel machine. Having said that it feels pretty sturdy, so that’s some consolation.
It doesn’t brew big cups of coffee.
It makes only espresso and lungo cup sizes. So don’t expect to make lot of coffee at one go. Even so, you can still fit a big mug under the coffee spout! You just need to brew a few rounds of espresso if you want more volume.
No cup warmer.
Pre-warming the cups can help to reduce the temperature drop as the coffee flows from the sprout to your cups. This can help to preserve the taste better. But most people can’t taste the difference though.
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Gaggia Anima Review: is it worth the Price?
The Gaggia Anima costs around $700 which is rather expensive. But you do get what you pay for. It does have some great features. As with all coffee machines, the price is going to depend entirely on what you need, and what you have to spend.
For us, we think this is a decent price. It has got a high quality ceramic burr grinder, a good paranello milk frothing wand and the ability to customise your coffee.
We would have liked stainless steel (especially for the price) but the Gaggia Anima is still pretty stylish.
And it brews really an excellent cup of coffee, and it does it automatically right from the coffee bean.
The milk frothing wand is going to be a plus for some people and a negative for others (who may want the whole process fully automated or who may not drink milk coffee) So just keep that in mind when considering the price. But if the milk frothing wand doesn’t put you off, it’s a good price. And you don’t have to buy anything extra, like a coffee grinder!!
Video of Gaggia Anima in action
Should I buy the Gaggia Anima Espresso Machine?
If you want a coffee machine where you can press a button and out comes your coffee, but WITHOUT the use of capsules, the Gaggia Anima might just be your new coffee machine.
The Gaggia Anima is easy to use, pretty easy to clean and maintain, and it makes a great cup of coffee. All those things sound great and they are great, but is this the machine for you?
We think that can be answered by two questions:
- do you like pressing a button and getting a coffee directly from fresh coffee beans?
- does $640 sound too much?
do you like pressing a button and getting a coffee directly from fresh coffee beans?
If you love, or want to have, the experience of pulling your own shots, you’ll never be satisfied with an automatic machine. However, if you are a bit of a coffee lover, but have accepted your fate as a drinker and not as a barista, then this machine might just be the machine to bridge the gap. Nevertheless, you still have the option to learn how to froth milk at least.
does $640 sound too much?
The second question about the price is more difficult. For the quality, it’s a good price, especially with an integrated ceramic burr grinder and automatic bean-to-cup brewing.
Putting price aside for the moment, we could almost (almost!) recommend this machine to anyone. There aren’t many downsides – the only one being that you might be paying for a milk frothing wand even though you will just actually be adding the milk directly to your coffee, if you find the milk wand is more trouble than it’s worth. But in terms of the coffee, we don’t have anything negative to say! It’s just a great automatic coffee machine!
If you can splash the cash, you would want an automatic cup-to-bean machine and if you’re willing to give frothing milk a go, the Gaggia Anima espresso machine is a great choice.
