DeLonghi La Specialista Touch Review: Better Than Breville?

The DeLonghi La Specialista Touch sits in the murky ground between super-automatic espresso machines and semi-automatics. It’s aimed at budding baristas who want to learn to pull their own shots but still have some training wheels. As former baristas who learned to pull espresso shots the hard way, we wanted to see how much easier the La Specialista makes it. So we spent a couple of weeks re-learning the art of espresso to give you this honest review of the DeLonghi La Specialista Touch.

Honestly? The DeLonghi La Specialista Touch is a great idea, which generally works pretty well. But you can’t use light roast coffee with it, and we think that similarly priced Breville machines are better.

The light roast thing is a very minor flaw – most people will be using medium-dark to dark roasts anyway. But the main competition being better is a major problem.

If you’re just starting your espresso pulling journey, we think the Breville Barista Touch is a better option (and costs the same as the La Specialista Touch). But if you can afford to spend $500 more, the Breville Barista Touch Impress is even better. We’ll compare them head-to-head later in our review.

There are lots of interesting features that make the La Specialista Touch a great espresso machine, and some less impressive ones. After testing it in our home, we’ll go deep into what it’s really like to use:

At a Glance: DeLonghi La Specialista Touch Review

✅ Buy the DeLonghi La Specialista Touch if:

• You want to learn to pull espresso shots and foam milk yourself. Though the La Specialista Touch helps you at every stage, the best results will be achieved when you learn to do everything yourself.
• You love medium roast coffee. Though it can handle various roasts, the grinder being inaccessible makes medium roast the best option for long-term use.
• You want a variety of milk foam textures. Super automatic machines struggle to deliver different milk foam textures, like silky flat white and foamy cappuccino, until you spend a lot of money. La Specialista Touch delivers this for far less.
• You want a stainless steel espresso machine. It’s increasingly difficult to find espresso machines that aren’t made of plastic, the stainless steel exterior is a big plus.
• You want to customize your coffee. With varying brewing temperatures, pre-infusion, milk temperature, and milk texture, the La Specialista Touch is ideal for those with very specific coffee preferences.

❌ Skip it if:

• You want minimal effort coffee. You need to set up, dose, tamp, and attach the portafilter for the coffee. The milk needs to be put in a jug under the steam wand. A lot more work than a traditional super-automatic espresso machine, where you only push a button.
• You love light roast coffee. The grinder can’t grind fine enough for light roast coffee, and you’ll likely end up jamming the machine.
• You want professional-grade espresso. While you’re doing the work of a barista (with help), the La Specialista Touch doesn’t have the required tech to match the quality your favorite cafe offers.

1. Interactive technology to “dial in” your machine

DeLonghi’s “Bean Adapt” technology suggests settings based on your coffee beans in a way that’s easy to understand and follow. It’s a really intuitive way to get the best-tasting espresso shots from your beans, whether you’re a newbie or a pro.

The La Specialista Touch also comes with a good quality doser, tamper, and puck trimmer, which all help you get the perfect puck for espresso brewing.

2. 8 coffee recipes

For a $1000 machine, 8 pre-programmed coffees might not seem like a lot. But you get A LOT of customization options and can save your creations to 4 user profiles.

These are the starting points for you to have 8 perfect-for-you coffees (plus hot water or foamed milk). You can choose from:

• Espresso
• Americano
• Long Black
• Cold Brew
• Cappuccino
• Latte
• Latte Macchiato
• Flat White

3. Extensive customization options

You can simply press a button and get one of the pre-programmed coffees. But the real magic (and flavor) happens when you start to adjust the settings to match your preferences.

There are 4 brewing temperatures, adjustable pre-infusion, 4 milk temperatures, and 5 milk texture settings. Plus, there’s always the option to steam your own milk manually to really nail it, or start learning latte art skills.

4. 3.5″ Touchscreen

The beautiful color touchscreen not only looks fantastic, but also makes choosing and customizing your drink incredibly easy. I found early DeLonghi touchscreens (like the Magnifica Plus) awkward to use, needing a firmer touch than I’d like. But that all seems to be resolved by the La Specialista Touch.

Animations, real-time feedback, and instructions help to really nail your coffee workflow.

5. Cold Brew

Cold brew technology is becoming more and more common on espresso machines, and I’m here for it. They work by brewing the coffee at a lower temperature. This slower extraction allows you to get coffee similar to cold brew in under 5 minutes. This is slower than competitor machines, but it also brews cooler – closer to room temperature.

It’s a great feature for making delicious iced coffee at home, though we really need a new name for it as it’s not really cold brew at all (which needs 12-18 hours to brew).

If you prefer a milky iced coffee, your only option here is to add it straight from the carton. If you want an iced cappuccino or latte with cold foam technology, you’ll need to look at something like the DeLonghi Eletta Explore instead.

6. Conical Burr Grinder with 15 settings

The stainless steel conical burr grinder has 15 grind settings, allowing you to try different bean types and adjust to suit them. I like that the adjustment dial is accessed from the front of the hopper, making it really easy to make changes as you dial in your beans. Though it does mean you can accidentally knock it when you’re cleaning, if you’re not careful.

For starters, you need to get the correct dose into the portafilter. Seems simple, but the La Specialista Touch doesn’t have a sensor to know when the portafilter has the right dose. So you need to grind your beans, use the provided tools to check if it’s correct, and then adjust the grind time accordingly.

This involves using the tamper, which has lines on it to show if the amount is correct after tamping. Again, relatively simple… but DeLonghi’s instructions don’t make it clear if the thick line should be visible, in the middle, or completely hidden.

Once you’ve got this right, it’ll be fine as long as you use the same beans. You will always need to tamp yourself, but you won’t need to check that it has ground the correct amount of coffee.

When you do change beans, the touchscreen makes it as easy to dial in as it can be. The “Bean Adapt” guide recommends brew temperature and pre-infusion based on the beans you tell it you’re using.

Though it doesn’t seem to do a lot except change the temperature.

Depending on how you like your coffee, you can also use the screen to see your extraction time and set the target milk temperature and texture.

This is all a lot more involved than a super-automatic espresso machine. So it’s only a great machine if you want to do the work.

The milk is a little easier as you just add the amount you want to the jug, set the temperature and texture you would like, and off it goes.

If you want to manually foam your milk, the probe will still track the milk temperature and display it on the screen while you do it. Something we really appreciate.

Note: We had to use the “My” setting to change the shot length as the normal settings pull around 2oz, which was a little long for us. We also had the best flavor when pulling a little longer than the standard 1:2 ratio.

Getting the grind size dialled in is the most time-consuming element of this. You need to make sure it’s fine enough for proper extraction. The portafilters have unpressurized baskets, so there’s a lot less margin for error. But also means much better shots – when you get it right.

Once we’d dialed in our beans, it was really easy to get consistent shots. If you have or find a type of beans you like, then you’ll find you’re getting espresso in less than 2 minutes.

The grinder has 15 settings, stainless steel conical burrs, and a bean hopper that looks like your Gran’s dessert dish. The grinder itself is very good and though it lacks the precision needed for truly professional-level espresso, for the price of the machine it’s excellent.

The only issue with the grinder is that if you try to grind light roast beans, especially high-altitude-grown light roast beans, then you run the risk of jamming the grinder.

Lighter roast beans are denser than darker roasts, so they need more force to grind them. High altitude grown beans are also denser, so you can see how the grinder gets into difficulties. The obvious solution here is to just not use that type of bean, and you’ll be fine. Though the La Specialista Touch does have it as an option in their “Bean Adapt” guide.

Our recommendation is to only use this machine with medium or medium/dark roast beans. You’ll get great tasting coffee, and no grinder issues.

The Looks

The La Specialista looks great. Surprisingly compact, and the combination of the stainless steel body and the touchscreen works nicely for most kitchen aesthetics.

It loses some points for the plastic elements on the milk wand and the portafilter cradle. But in 2026, it’s nearly impossible to avoid plastic, so maybe I’m being a little bit mean.

The touchscreen doesn’t sacrifice any functionality for aesthetics (style over substance is my biggest annoyance in life). It looks good, is responsive, and works really well. Even if the bean hopper is a weirdly dated design, it’s still a really nice-looking machine.

It does lose the cool “90s Cadillac” look of the next machine up in the range, the DeLonghi La Specialista Maestro, which is a shame.

At 11.2″ wide, 14.3″ deep, and 15.8″ tall (31.9 x 36.7 x 40 cm), it isn’t the smallest machine, but it somehow feels a lot smaller than this. The bean hopper accounts for a lot of that height, though you still need to fit it under your cabinets.

The Build

DeLonghi is one of the main brands we trust as they have such a good reputation for build quality in their espresso machines. This product needs to last you years, so the build is extremely important.

Stainless steel is a good start, but all the plastic parts fit together well and don’t feel cheap or flimsy. The main body of the tamper is plastic, but the part that actually tamps the grounds is stainless steel. Even if these parts fail, they’re much easier and cheaper to replace than a whole machine.

The great thing about portafilter espresso machines is that we don’t have to worry about internal brew units and their longevity/cleanliness. Instead, you can see and take control of the cleanliness.

It is very possible to get better coffee from the DeLonghi La Specialista Touch than from any of the super-automatics at the same price. Using portafilters with unpressurized baskets and an 18g dose just makes it more likely.

But, since you’re in control of so many elements, your skill level (and quality of beans) will play a big role in how good a cup of coffee you end up drinking.

For the whole thing to work, you have to get the right grind size and tamp correctly.

The good news is that there’s a valve that releases the pressure in the filter basket if it exceeds 9 BAR (the ideal level for espresso brewing). So grind fine, tamp hard, and work from there.

Once you’ve got the machine “dialed in” and you’re getting espresso shots you like, it’s very repeatable. You’ll only need to adjust settings again if/when you change coffee beans.

For both the hot espresso and cold brew, we were impressed with the results. The espresso shots were smooth, had good body, and clearly defined crema. The cold brew, whilst not as impressive, had a mild smoothness that would be great on summer days, especially if you take your cold brew with milk. However, I wouldn’t buy this machine specifically for the cold brew technology.

That said, the coffee quality can’t reach the heights of the stuff you’ll get from a good barista, or from the Breville Barista Touch machines, for two main reasons:

1. The grinder isn’t precise enough for the small adjustments needed to really nail that espresso shot or get the nuance of flavor from specialty beans.
2. It doesn’t have a PID (an algorithmic way to control water temperature) for super-precise water temperatures.

Basically, no espresso machine with a built-in grinder has one as precise as your barista’s stepless grinder. So it may be unfair to hold that as the standard. But the Breville Barista Touch has a PID and costs the same as the La Specialista Touch, though it doesn’t have the tamping assistance. Or the Barista Touch Impress has both a PID and very good tamping assistance for $500 more.

Milk Quality

The milk steaming is really good. Though we found it ended up a few degrees hotter than the thermometer setting when we used it on automatic mode. Once you realise this, it’s not really a problem as you can adjust accordingly.

Having 4 temperatures and 5 textures to choose from gives you a lot of control over the milk texture. Again, it’s a lot more than any super-automatic espresso machine at this price.

Though if we’re being really critical, we found the foam a little bit stiff.

You can also use the steam wand manually and use the screen to monitor the temperature as you steam. It takes very little practice to get good microfoam yourself, but it’s well worth the effort, in our opinion.

Each time you brew coffee, you’ll need to knock the puck out of the portafilter and give it a quick rinse before brewing another coffee. This takes seconds, but those are seconds you save with a more automated machine.

Like any milk wand, it has to be wiped down after every use, though it will purge itself with steam to stop it from getting clogged up. The two-pronged design, with the probe on a separate prong, makes this a little more annoying, as you have to make sure you properly clean between the two.

You’ll also want to clean the shower screen periodically – the bit where the water comes out. Plus the usual emptying of the drip tray.

If you plan to use this machine daily, you’ll need to be pretty organized to keep the machine and the surrounding area clean. There are lots of accessories to keep track of, though they’re well designed to keep things as tidy as possible.

Descaling the thermoblock boilers is the biggest cleaning job you’ll need to do, and the frequency will depend on your water hardness. This took us about 40 minutes, so it’s a solid ‘admin day’ job and not for doing on the fly.

Overall, it is more work than a super-automatic machine. But you know your coffee is being brewed in a clean environment, because you can see it. Cleaning is a lot of little jobs that don’t take long, but it’s enough that it would be unfair to write it off as irrelevant.

Breville Barista Touch

The Breville Barista Touch is the same RRP as the DeLonghi La Specialista Touch. It offers a very similar experience but without the helpful physical tools that the DeLonghi offers.

You have to work out the correct dose and set the grinder yourself, just like the DeLonghi. But you don’t get the dosing and tamping tools to check that you’ve got it right. So you need to do it with some trial and error, the old-fashioned way.

The “Barista Guidance” helps you to dial in your beans, and the potential quality is higher as it has:

• better quality hardware
• a PID thermoblock boiler heating your water
• a better grinder
• and a superior steam wand

Combined, this all makes it easier to get really top-quality espresso shots and milk from the Barista Touch.

I also think the Breville looks like a more premium espresso machine than the DeLonghi. And if you’re going to be putting in the work anyway, then I’m fully on team “get the machine with the better hardware”.

The Barista Touch has fewer pre-programmed drinks, but you’ll be using custom ones on both machines anyway, so I don’t think that really matters. What might matter is that there’s no “cold brew” option on the Barista Touch. You’ll need the Barista Touch Impress for that.

I also like that you can dismantle and access the burrs on the Breville machine, too. This is handy for keeping on top of cleaning and ensuring everything runs smoothly. When they’re at the same price (no sales events), I’d pick Breville over DeLonghi every time.

Breville Barista Touch Impress

At RRP, the Breville Barista Touch Impress is $500 more expensive than the La Specialista Touch, putting it on par with the top-end DeLonghi Rivelia. So it may seem unfair to compare them. But this is the machine that DeLonghi is clearly trying to be a cheaper version of. So let’s see how close they got.

There are 3 major things that the Breville Barista Touch Impress does better than the DeLonghi to justify the extra cost:

1. It has a dosing sensor so you don’t have to fiddle around, adjusting the dose yourself. This saves A LOT of time and hassle.
2. It has a PID Thermoblock boiler. This means more accurate and consistent water temperature, which makes pulling espresso shots easier and taste better.
3. It has a better steam wand. This may seem trivial but you get better milk texture, faster with the Breville Barista Touch Impress.

The “Barista Guidance” is also better than DeLonghi’s “Bean Adapt” technology for helping you get the best coffee from your machine.

For us, it’s no contest. The Breville Barista Touch Impress is well worth the extra cost over the DeLonghi. It’s better in every aspect of the process, for all levels of coffee lovers… If you can swallow the price.

Realistically, this is a machine that should last 5-10 years, so it’s worth saving for a little longer and investing in.

Having used the Breville machines extensively in the past, we went into this DeLonghi La Specialista review expecting to be underwhelmed. But, honestly, there’s not much wrong with this machine other than inaccessible grinders. The issue is just that Breville makes a better espresso machine than DeLonghi, even when taking price into account.

The little gadgets for getting the dose and tamping right are nice, and the “Bean Adapt” technology is ok. But you’re still doing quite a bit yourself, and realistically, you’re better off doing one of two things:

1. Get the Breville Barista Touch for the same price and learn to dose without the DeLonghi gadgets.
2. Splurge on the Breville Barista Touch Impress for a few hundred dollars more and find everything a lot easier.

DeLonghi makes superb super-automatic espresso machines; the La Specialista Touch is just a little out of their lane and not living up to the quality of the competition for us.

If you find it on sale, though, it becomes a much more attractive option. Keep an eye on the current price, here.

Matt Woodburn-Simmonds

Matt's coffee obsession started in 2006 when working as a Barista. A tendency to turn up to work hungover kickstarted his coffee journey which quickly turned into a love affair. As he moved on to work as a Restaurant Manager and Sommelier, the obsession continued to grow. Now, his passion is helping others to enjoy better coffee at home.