PrimaDonna Aromatic countertop machine

De'Longhi

For the past 10 days, my wife and I have been waking up blissfully every morning and quickly hitting our target heart rates. C’mon, get your mind out of the gutter. We’ve been using De’Longhi’s brand-new PrimaDonna Aromatic machine to make our morning coffee, flat whites, cappuccinos, and espresso double shots. And because everything’s tasted so good, I’ve been having an extra cup. Which can’t be great for my already high metabolism.

Designed in Italy, this already award-winning machine blends sleek, stainless-steel countertop aesthetics with cutting-edge technology to deliver a café-quality experience that can be personalized to every cup. It’s also the brand’s first-ever machine to have fully integrated, intelligent bean-to-cup adaptation. The machine automatically recognizes the beans being used and fine-tunes the grind size, dose, and brewing temperature in real time. The result is consistently optimized aroma and flavor, with no guesswork or manual calibration needed. It’s actually pretty fantastic.

And apparently, many coffee lovers feel the same way. Since 2020, the home barista boom of countertop espresso machines has grown by 50 percent in America. The overall market for upscale $2,000 automatic coffee machines in 2026 is reportedly characterized by a sweet spot where professional-grade technology meets consumer convenience – this De’Longhi model sells for $2,500 – in which entry-level plastic builds transition to super-automatic (one-touch) and assisted-manual machines with heavy-duty construction and advanced digital features.

Perhaps typical for models in this range, everything on the PrimaDonna is controlled via its immersive 5-inch full-touch display. You can pick through a photo menu of 38 hot and iced recipes, including espresso, cappuccino, latte macchiato, americano, iced coffee, and cold brews. Each can be customized to individual strength, volume, temperature, coffee-to-milk ratio, and froth thickness preferences. The machine supports four user profiles and six bean profiles, letting you personalize and save your favorites. I love being able to toggle between my favorites and my wife’s. It also uses dedicated extraction technologies for espresso, drip coffee, and cold brew beverages. And you can use dairy or plant-based alternative milks with the foamer.

To boot, the integrated conical burr grinder continuously monitors brewing performance and adjusts grind settings in real time to maintain consistent extraction. Although I didn’t try it, there is built-in WiFi connectivity that works with the brand’s app – a common feature for upscale models – letting you brew remotely, manage bean profiles, discover recipes, track coffee habits and access customer service directly from your smartphone.

There’s still one thing about it that I’m not a fan of, which seems to be present in literally every automatic coffee machine I’ve tried. And that’s the process of self-cleaning when you power on and power off the machine. It runs a water cycle through the machine. And if you forget to put a cup underneath the spout, it just pours the water into the drip tray. I personally will make a cup of Joe, walk away and enjoy it. And then I’ll hear that self-cleaning mode kick in a half hour later. By then it’s usually too late to stop the water from finding the drip tray. I cannot find any way to turn off this feature. At least with this particular model, it seems to minimize how much water it uses for the process.

Without doubt, this is an awesome machine. Which can easily trigger a pricey habit and a jumpy morning. Regardless, it definitely beats running over to Starbucks every morning.