Krups 888-43 Caffe Centro Time 10-Cup Coffee/Pump Espresso Machine

I am the type of buyer who reads reviews on everything before I buy it and after reading some of the reviews on this product, I was hesitant to buy. Well, I decided to give it a shot and boy am I glad I did. This product has worked flawlessly every single morning for the past month. I LOVE IT. I want to marry it. No, seriously though, how anyone can not pour coffee out of the pot without spilling it all over the place, blows my mind. These must be the same people who run a car for 20,000 miles without an oil change and then write negative reviews regarding engine noise. The espresso maker works great and as for the temperature, it burns my tongue. The unit is well made and a breeze to use. The auto timer is great and easy to set up. The only thing that is true about some of these reviews is that it doesn't brew espresso and coffee simultaneously. No big deal.
Just goes to show that one needs to keep an open mind before reading online reviews.

ddub

I do not know the most about coffee but I think this is a great product. The frother steams milk very hot and very quick. I bought it as a gift for a girl and it definitely got me laid.

We have owned this machine for about six years and it has worked faithfully for us, but we have had to replace the carafe twice and the cost each time was ridiculous. (type in "Krups 888 carafe" in the Amazon search field and you'll see what I mean). They are very difficult to locate and when you do find one they cost a fortune. And they WILL break eventually. They are made of glass and the ones we have had have cracked over time.

We only make "regular" coffee every Saturday and Sunday, so the machine has not really seen use every single day, but having said that, we have never had any problems with it except for replacing the carafe, like I mentioned earlier.

We thought the espresso capability would be a great feature for us and in the beginning it was a nice "novelty," but over time we considered it just too much hassle and ended up only using the coffee making part. In hindsight, I really think instead of this machine we should have bought a basic, cheaper machine that just makes regular coffee, costing far less with easy to find, cheaper carafe replacements to boot.

We have decided that once the carafe breaks again, we'll scrap this machine and move to a cheaper, basic unit. We can get one with far cheaper and easy to find carafe replacements for about the same price we pay for replacing the carafe for the Krups 888.

Having used this Krups product for several years, my sole complaint is its very poor design.

For example, on the espresso side, the two (2) brew head gaskets (hard rubber) become loose which results in the leaking of hot water from the boiler. These gaskets ARE NOT available as replacement parts - the entire boiler assembly must be replaced. An approximately $100 repair for a few dollars parts!

This is the last Krups product we will buy. We strongly recommend against Krups products.

Just about any machine can make good coffee but not every machine can make perfect espresso or cappuccino. I have been using this machine for about 4 years now and I love it. I read a lot of information on how to pull a perfect shot of espresso and how to perfectly foam the milk. This machine does it all like a pro. I am very happy with it and after 4 years of use it still works. It's worth the money