Breville Barista Touch Impress Review: An Espresso Machine That Makes Brewing Espresso Easy

By Zoe Denenberg

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Learning to operate an espresso machine is a bit like learning to drive a stick shift. Most of the time it involves a series of precise steps—push with the right pressure here, twist a piece just so there. Over the six years I worked in restaurants I managed to avoid the espresso machine, convinced I’d push the wrong button or pull the wrong lever (so many buttons! So many levers!) and break it. Each time a guest ordered a cappuccino or affogato, I bartered with my coworkers to pull the espresso shots for me, offering to iron their linens in exchange.

I love drinking espresso, but the prospect of actually making it always intimidated me. That’s why I was drawn to Breville’s new Barista Touch Impress, an espresso machine that teaches you how to brew (even as it does most of the hard work for you). Since I started using this machine, I’ve become a full espresso devotee.

Breville

The Breville Barista Touch Impress both educates the user about all the factors that go into a good cup of espresso and self-corrects when it notices something awry, so you don’t really have to know what you’re doing. The result is a seamless espresso brewing experience, with minimal troubleshooting required on the user’s part and some learning along the way.

The Barista Touch Impress—a more automated version of the Barista Express Impress we reviewed in 2022—is furnished with a sophisticated touch screen, complete with impressively detailed full-color graphics that make brewing a cup of coffee feel like playing a video game. Swipe on the touchscreen to select your drink of choice—from an americano to a cappuccino—and the machine will walk you through each step of the brewing process. It grinds just the right amount of beans (18–22 grams), tamps them with consistent pressure (22 lb.), extracts the espresso at just the right temperature (200°F), and textures the milk to just the right consistency. Unlike fully automatic espresso machines like the Delonghi Eletta Explore that you can just set a cup under and push a single button, this one does require some user involvement. But it’s just a few additional button pushes, a lever pull to tamp, and moving the portafilter over to the brew head—enough motions to make you feel like you’re brewing espresso, when the machine is really doing most of the work.

The first thing I noted about the Breville Barista Touch Impress is that it was surprisingly compact, only slightly larger than my old Nespresso machine. I powered it on for the first time and it purred to life, the screen flashing with a warm welcome. I expected to rely on the user manual’s instructions to set up the machine and sort through all the accessories, but the screen immediately launched into an automatic program, walking me through each step of the set-up process. It felt as breezy and exciting as setting up a new iPhone, only I didn’t have to try to remember my iCloud password.

With gentle encouragement, the machine guided me on the step-by-step journey of brewing my first espresso. I’ll admit that, after the 15-minute set-up process, I was already running late for work and blew through the tutorial. Still, the steps were intuitive. I deposited the beans into the attached hopper (furnished with Baratza burrs) and pressed the coffee grounds icon to grind the beans directly into the portafilter. The ability to grind directly into a portafilter is something we look for in a quality coffee grinder, as it minimizes mess, but this machine takes it a step further: Instead of removing the portafilter to tamp the puck, simply pull an attached lever to tamp the grounds.

A little green check mark showed up, indicating the filter basket was filled with the correct amount of grounds and I could proceed to the next step. After twisting the portafilter into place for brewing I pressed the espresso shot icon. The machine told me which buttons to press and, aside from moving the portafilter from here to there, I didn’t really feel like I did much at all. At each step, it affirmed me with a little green check mark. Here’s the important part: The resulting espresso shot was as smooth and complex as any I’d had at a coffee shop, with a nice cap of crema ringing the surface. My initial reaction was, I made that?

Even without the in-depth tutorial, the machine is intuitive to use. As a houseguest brewed a shot of espresso, I stood along quietly, resisting the urge to jump in with instructions. In the end, she didn’t need them: “It’s not hard to figure out,” she told me, sipping her espresso. “This is great.”

The bean hopper on the Breville Barista Touch Impress grinds directly into the portafilter.

If you’re not using a scale to weigh the beans before depositing them into the hopper, it’s difficult to tell the correct amount of beans to use for a single dose. You don’t have to worry about that with the Barista Touch Impress, which uses Smart Grind technology to gauge precisely how many beans it needs to grind to fill a shot. A few times, a pop-up on the screen notified me that the extraction had been too fast: consider a smaller grind next time, it suggested. That’s something I never would have noticed or thought to change on my own.

Most espresso machines—including almost all of Breville’s other models—require you to tamp the grounds by hand, leaving the question of how much pressure to exert up to the user’s discretion. Perhaps my favorite feature of the Breville Barista Touch is the assisted tamping—once you grind the beans into the portafilter, pull a lever and the machine automatically tamps the grounds with just the right amount of pressure (7° twist and consistent 22 lb. of pressure, according to Breville). If there aren’t enough grounds to pull a full shot, the machine will notify you to add more and automatically remember the new amount for the next dose.

Making drinks with steamed milk showed off the machine’s real mastery of texturing for both dairy and alternative milks. You can tell the machine if you’re using dairy or non-dairy milk, and it’ll adjust. Non-dairy milks have different frothing qualities, and the machine has three alternative-milk settings, calibrating air injection time and temperature based on the type of milk used (dairy, almond, oat, or soy). All I had to do to froth the milk was set the stainless steel jug on the sensor, select the type of milk, and the steam wand would work its magic.

The one con I found personally with this machine is that it’s not clear how much milk to use for each drink. The stainless steel milk jug does come with etched minimum and maximum lines, but it doesn’t specify the volume of milk to use for a cappuccino versus a latte. The minimum amount of milk struck me as quite a lot, so I typically ended up with some waste. More broadly, if you’re the type of person who prefers to do things by hand, this heavily automated machine might not be for you.

The Breville Barista Touch Impress comes with a $1,500 price tag. That’s $600 more than the analog Express Impress model, which has the same assisted tamp setting, but no touch screen—just a series of buttons and dials. If you really want things spelled out for you, that jump is probably worth it.

If you’ve been intimidated by espresso machines in the past, the Breville Barista Touch Impress is an excellent way to get started. It produces great-tasting coffee in a fun, easy format that you’ll get the hang of quickly. It does cost more than Breville’s manual machines, but if you love automation, this is the way to go. Now to work on that latte art…