Seven of the machines we cover top out under £400: four manual espresso machines and three bean to cup machines that grind on their own. Set each next to a dearer machine from the same maker, where one exists, and the gap stops being about quality and starts being about parts that are fitted or not.
Those seven are a slice of the UK market. Every price is the UK range on 21 September 2026.
The machines under £400 we cover
| Machine | W x D x H (mm) | Tank | Milk | PID | UK warranty | UK price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| De’Longhi Dedica Style | not published | 1.1 L | Manual wand | not published | not published | £179 to £179.90 |
| Philips Series 2200 | 246 x not published x 371 | 1.8 L | Manual wand | not published | 24 months | £279 to £279.99 |
| De’Longhi Magnifica S | 240 x 430 x 350 | 1.8 L | Manual wand | not published | not published | £294.79 to £349.99 |
| Smeg ECF02 | 149 x 329 x 330 | 1.1 L | Manual wand | not published | 24 months | £299.95 |
| Melitta Purista | 200 x 460 x 334 | 1.2 L | None | not published | 24 months | £299.95 to £399.99 |
| Sage the Bambino | 302 x 154 x 342 | 1.4 L | Manual wand | Yes | 24 months | £329 to £329.95 |
| Sage the Bambino Plus | 194 x 362 x 304 | 1.9 L | Automatic wand | Yes | 24 months | £349.95 to £399.95 |
Four of the seven have no grinder; a grinder is a separate purchase for those. The other three grind on demand instead of taking a portafilter. The cheapest manual machine with a burr grinder built in is the Ninja Luxe Café Premier at £499 to £499.99, then the Sage the Barista Express at £499.95. Blade versus burr grinders is the first thing to settle before buying one without.
Sage: £329, £399.95, £499.95, £599.95
The Sage range is the clearest ladder here: the same facts are published at every rung.
Sage’s page for the Bambino gives a thermojet heater, PID, 3 seconds to brewing temperature, a 1.4 litre tank, a manual wand, 1,600 watts and a 24 month warranty, at £329 to £329.95.
Sage’s page for the Bambino Plus repeats those facts and changes two things for £349.95 to £399.95: a 1.9 litre tank and an automatic wand. Half a litre more water, not a faster machine.
Sage’s page for the Barista Express, £499.95, adds conical steel burrs, 16 grind settings and a 250 g hopper, and takes the tank to 2 litres. It drops to a thermocoil with no published heat-up time, and the wand goes back to manual. £100 to £150 more than the Bambino Plus buys the grinder and hands back the automatic milk.
The 3 second thermojet returns alongside the grinder at £599.95 on the Sage the Barista Pro, with 30 grind settings instead of 16. The Barista Express against the Bambino Plus sets those two out line by line, and which Sage coffee machine covers the whole range.
De’Longhi: £179 against £1,299
De’Longhi’s page for the Dedica Style publishes a thermoblock, 15 bar, a 1.1 litre tank, 4.22 kg, 1,450 watts and 120 mm of cup clearance, at £179 to £179.90: the cheapest machine we cover and the least described, with no width, depth, height, portafilter size or warranty length given.
De’Longhi’s page for the La Specialista Maestro, the same maker at £1,299 to £1,299.99, adds PID, steel burrs with 15 settings, a 2.5 litre tank, 20 seconds to temperature and 140 mm of cup clearance, but still no published warranty length or portafilter size. Seven times the price buys the grinder and the water; the gaps in what De’Longhi publishes stay open at both ends.
De’Longhi bean to cup: £294.79 against £349 to £443.99
De’Longhi also sells a bean to cup pair either side of £400. De’Longhi’s page for the Magnifica S gives a 15 bar pump, a 1.8 litre tank, a manual wand and 1,450 watts, at £294.79 to £349.99, again with no published warranty.
De’Longhi’s page for the Magnifica Evo, £349 to £443.99, repeats those facts and swaps the wand for an automatic milk carafe, publishing a 140 mm cup clearance the Magnifica S does not. Automatic milk is what the extra money buys.
Melitta: no dearer machine to compare
Melitta has one machine on this site, the Melitta Purista, so there is no dearer Melitta machine to compare it with. Melitta’s page for the Purista gives a conical steel grinder with 5 grind settings and 24 months of warranty, and states plainly it has no milk system at all. At £299.95 to £399.99, it is the only one of the three bean to cup machines here that drops milk entirely.
Smeg: the same watts with and without a grinder
Smeg’s page for the ECF02 gives a thermoblock, 15 bar, a 51 mm portafilter, a 1.1 litre tank, 4.7 kg, 1,350 watts, a 24 month warranty and an auto-off set to 10, 20 or 30 minutes, in a 149 mm wide body.
Smeg’s page for the BCC12, the bean to cup version at £699 to £699.95, brings steel burrs, 10 grind settings, a 150 g hopper, a grounds drawer good for 7 servings, 19 bar, a 1.4 litre tank and 185 mm of cup clearance. Power, warranty and the manual wand stay the same, and Smeg publishes no PID for either machine.
One thing the ECF02 gives up is choice of basket: Smeg supplies only double wall baskets and calls the portafilter pressurised, where Sage supplies both single and dual wall baskets with the £329 Bambino. Portafilter sizes explained covers what the two basket types do.
Philips: £279 to £279.99 against £422.95 to £569.99
Philips gives a bean to cup pair too. Philips’s leaflet for the Series 2200 states a 15 bar pump, a 275 g hopper, ceramic burrs, 12 grind settings, a manual wand and a 24 month guarantee, at £279 to £279.99, with no published depth.
Philips’s leaflet for the Series 3300 LatteGo, £422.95 to £569.99, repeats those facts, swaps the wand for a 250 ml LatteGo carafe, and publishes the depth the Series 2200 leaves out, 434 mm.
Where the low price takes nothing away
Three things do not get worse as the price falls across these makers.
Warranty is the first. Sage and Smeg publish 24 months on every machine they sell here, from the £299.95 ECF02 to the £1,699.95 Oracle Jet. The longest warranty published on any machine we cover, 36 months, sits on the £549 Gaggia Classic E24, neither the dearest nor the cheapest.
Temperature control is the second. The £329 Bambino and the £349.95 Bambino Plus publish PID; none of the other five machines here do, and neither does De’Longhi’s £949.99 Eletta Explore. PID tracks the maker, not the money.
How much gets published is the third. Sage says more about the £329 Bambino, down to the filter change interval and the tamper diameter, than De’Longhi says about machines costing three times as much, and Philips does not publish a depth for the £279 Series 2200. A thin spec page is not proof of a cheap machine.
If your budget is a fixed number
Prices below are the UK ranges on 21 September 2026. At £179 to £179.90 the Dedica is the only machine here, and De’Longhi does not give its size. At £279 to £279.99 the Philips Series 2200 is the cheapest machine with a grinder built in. The Magnifica S, at £294.79 to £349.99, is a second bean to cup option with a manual wand, and De’Longhi publishes no UK warranty length for it. At £299.95 the Smeg ECF02 is the narrowest machine we cover at 149 mm. The Melitta Purista starts at the same £299.95 but runs to £399.99, and it has no milk system at all. At £329 to £329.95 the Bambino adds PID. At £349 to £443.99 the Magnifica Evo swaps the manual wand for a milk carafe, and at £349.95 to £399.95 the Bambino Plus swaps it for an automatic wand.
Bean to cup under £500 picks up the three bean to cup machines here; espresso machines under £500 and machines with a grinder built in pick up the four manual machines, and espresso machines for the home covers the kind as a whole.
