DeLonghi Rivelia Review:
Espresso, Milk Frothing, and Dual Bean Hoppers (Oh My!)

The DeLonghi Rivelia bridges the gap between the entry level machines in the Magnifica series and the more high-end options like the Eletta Explore and Dinamica Plus. We were excited to see some new features and knew we had to do a hands-on DeLonghi Rivelia review to see how it measures up.

For the TL;DR version: The espresso and milk quality make the Rivelia a near perfect middle ground between the budget and premium DeLonghi machines. We love that you can swap the bean hoppers, the espresso quality and milk frothing are excellent, and the “Bean Adapt” system works great. The cold LatteCrema system is an expensive add-on though, but far from a deal breaker.

Depending on exactly what you’re after from the Rivelia, it might be the perfect espresso machine or completely miss the mark. So we need to go deeper… let’s dive in:

At a Glance: DeLonghi Rivelia Review

1. Dual Removable Hoppers with Instant Switch Mode

We’re going to start see multiple hoppers popping up all over the super-automatic market as it’s such a great idea.

DeLonghi’s version easily twists on and off. The Rivelia then goes into “Switch Mode” which gives you the option to use the remaining 10g of coffee beans in the grinder to make a coffee or to purge them. So there’s no wasted beans.

The only downside is the hoppers aren’t airtight so can’t be used for storing beans long term.

2. 11 One-Touch Recipes

You’ll see 12 quoted quite a lot in DeLonghi’s marketing material but that includes hot milk and if it doesn’t include coffee then it doesn’t count in our book. There are an extra 9 if you pay for the cold LatteCrema add-on as it makes cold versions of the hot drinks. But the 11 hot coffees are:

• Espresso
• Double Espresso
• Long (a double shot with pulsed infusion)
• Lungo
• Americano
• Latte
• Cappuccino
• Flat White
• Cortado
• Latte Macchiato
• Espresso Macchiato

Each coffee can then be customized for strength and length and saved to your profile.

3. Milk Frothing Dial with 3 settings

The Rivelia’s milk dial lets you choose between hot milk, soft foam, and dense foam. This level of control is rare in a mid-range super automatic machine, and it makes a huge difference in drink quality.

Your flat whites are silky and your cappuccinos creamy and airy.

4. 4 User Profiles

Save your perfect version of each coffee to your profile. Having unique profiles means you can have 4 versions of each coffee saved so it’s right every time without having to fiddle with the settings. They’re pretty standard at this price point and an absolute must if you’re in a house with multiple coffee preferences.

5. Bean Adapt System

Different coffee beans need different settings to get the best flavor. We’re a huge fan of the DeLonghi Bean Adapt System to help you “dial in” your settings for each type of beans you use. You can save these settings too so its effortless to switch between bean types.

The touchscreen works really nicely and you can use the soft touch buttons to only see a specific category of drinks to narrow your search. Since these are “one touch” drinks, you’ll want to set them up first to get your perfect coffee at a touch.

We went with the second finest grind setting and highest intensity with an espresso output of 30g to get the best results for us, using our medium roast Ethiopian beans.

As with most super automatic espresso machines, the coffee and milk settings were too long at factory settings. But luckily you can easily cut them off while its brewing, or extend them. The Rivelia will ask if you want to save these settings, then your sorted.

The screen will walk you through all the steps. DeLonghi in general is excellent for creating simple to use espresso machines and the Rivelia is really aimed at those who want great coffee with minimal effort.

With every super automatic we always say the same: beans are infinitely better than pre-ground and these machines are designed to make using beans easy.

DeLonghi have done two things to make this even more true with the Rivelia: They’ve given us two bean hoppers so we can swap beans easily, and they’ve made the pre-ground coffee bypass basically impossible to use.

It is, of course, possible to make a coffee with the bypass chute. But any time we tried, it either jammed the machine or made undrinkable coffee so it’s basically not worth attempting. Though they go get brownie points for the slick design of having a slot inside the machine for the coffee scoop.

Whole beans only from now on.

The Looks

There’s something about the Rivelia that just doesn’t quite feel right looks wise for me. I can’t quite figure out what I don’t like, maybe it’s the round hopper on the cuboid body. It feels a bit Jetsons, but not in a retro cool way.

I’m probably in the minority with this opinion – it’s compact and sleek with nice rounded edges.

You can get it in 4 colors – black, white, gray, and beige. Though a couple of them are online exclusives from DeLonghi so you won’t see them in your local store.

The chrome accents against the machine look nice and the color screen is bright and beautiful. So it’s very much on trend with the minimalist coffee machine look.

The Rivelia is fairly narrow at just 9.75″ wide (anything under 10″ is pretty good for a super automatic.) With the bean hopper on top it’s 14.75″ tall. This is less of an issue since you can detach the hopper to refill, meaning it can be closer to your overhead cabinets than some other machines. At 17 inches deep, it is about normal for these coffee machine types.

The Build

DeLonghi are a brand we keep reviewing because they make good machines that will last. Buying an espresso machine like this is a big investment so longevity is very important to us, and probably you too.

All DeLonghi machines come with a 1 year warranty. The build quality is very high so nothing should realistically go wrong but you always want to have a little leeway as products just break sometimes. And espresso machines are complex beasts.

All the moving parts fit together with very satisfying “clicks”. It is mostly made of plastic so elements like the bean hoppers and drip trays don’t feel super solid. But this is true of most super-automatics and we just have to deal with it.

The one issue we have is that the bean hoppers don’t come with air-tight lids for storage. It would make such a difference knowing you can just store your beans in one while you use the other like you can with the KitchenAid KF range. But alas, we must drink enough coffee to use 2 whole bean hoppers, what a trial!

With super-automatics, quality often comes down to your settings (which we’ll break down even further in the next section). But once you’ve set up the Rivelia, you can get a rich and full espresso with nice crema that shines on its own or with milk. This will likely take 3 or 4 coffees to get right though.

We find that it tends to err towards the darker and more chocolatey notes of the beans but that’s true of most automatic espresso machines when compared to a well-trained barista. So it’s not a knock on the Rivelia specifically.

Our preferred settings are: max strength, 2nd finest grind setting, and a 30g espresso output.

We really love the LatteCrema system though with the 3 milk settings.

Our common complaint with other DeLonghi machines was that the microfoam was never quite right for either flat white or cappuccino. It was mid-point that never fully satisfied us either way. Being able to set the Rivelia for dense foam or lighter foam now means we get a much better texture for specific milk drinks which is a major improvement.

Like the coffee, it’s not barista quality texture. But it is very good and considerably cheaper than going to the cafe for perfectly foamed milk.

“Iced Coffee”

DeLonghi has settings for iced coffee, where it tells you how many ice cubes to use and then pours the coffee over them for an iced version of the drink.

We’ve found that if you use the right number of ice cubes and, more importantly, the right size of ice cubes, it works just fine. DeLonghi sell an ice tray (because of course they’d try to upsell you) for that perfect serve. Plus they’re coffee bean shaped for cuteness.

This is no where near the quality of the Jura Z10 cold brew coffeee, but it’s also a third of the price of that machine so we’re not going to complain (too much!)

Bean Adapt Technology

Earlier we teased something about getting your espresso settings nailed, and this is it.

The idea is that different beans will require different settings, so far so basic. However working out what those settings are can be tough if you’re not a trained barista.

DeLonghi has made this super easy. On the Rivelia, once you add your new beans to the hopper you just follow these steps:

Bean Adapt is really good if you know nothing about coffee and have no interest Googling how to make your espresso taste better. It will do all the heavy lifting for you.

It’s a really nice feature aimed at people who value convenience and quality in their coffee. On the other hand, if you love nerding out on these details, you lose that element.

Switch Mode

So swapping out the bean hoppers is cool. The actual hoppers aren’t as good as the ones on the KitchenAid KF series, but the “Switch Mode” that comes with them is better.

Each time you switch the hopper, some beans are already inside the machine. The KitchenAid just purges these. The Rivelia instead gives you the option to purge, or to use them in “switch mode” to make a coffee.

We love not wasting our precious coffee beans so this is great. When we’re switching to decaf beans, we take the hopper off, enter “switch mode” and we make a final caffeinated coffee before attaching the decaf hopper.

There are only 2 issues with this. The first being you have to remember you can make an extra coffee when switching. So if we forget to switch until the moment we want decaf, we’re going to have to purge the beans or be caffeinated when we don’t want to be.

The second is that only 9-10g of coffee is inside, less than we’d normally use for a cup of coffee. And you can’t adjust the strength from there since it’s using the beans left in the machine.

We probably shouldn’t be mean about it since the alternative is wasting them though so 10/10 to DeLonghi.

LatteCrema Cool

If you want to unlock the “over ice” milky drinks then you need to buy the LatteCrema Cool add on. Its usually around $130 and comes with 4 glasses, which are fine but not especially nice.

The LatteCrema Cool is very impressive. This is essentially the same thing that comes included with the DeLognhi Eletta Explore and produces creamy cool frothed milk and really takes your iced coffees at home to another level. But at over $100 extra, you’ve got to really want it. We’d really like them to offer it as a bundle at a discount, so maybe if they read this they will!

I hate cleaning milk carafes. It’s so important to do it regularly and thoroughly, but I’m not happy about it. The Rivelia milk carafe comes apart easily and needs to be hand cleaned in soapy water. It doesn’t take very long to do, but you need to do it at least once a week, ideally much more.

Cleaning the other parts of the machine is fairly straight forward and standard. Emptying the puck container and drip tray (after every 10 coffees) is a simple empty and rinse procedure.

You’ll need to descale the machine every 6-8 weeks, maybe less frequently if you use filtered water. As with most super automatic machines, the DeLonghi Rivelia guides you through the process on the screen. You use branded descaler, obviously, and it takes around 20 minutes.

This is about the standard level of cleaning needed on a super automatic machine. The only thing to remember is that if you have the cool and hot LatteCrema systems then that’s 2 milk carafes to clean.

Breville Barista Touch Impress

A completely different animal at basically the exact same price as the DeLonghi Rivelia.

The Barista Touch Impress only has 5 drinks options but the level of customization and precision is insanely high. The grinder has 30 settings, you can alter your milk foam based on the milk type you’re using, you can control every aspect of your coffee to a much greater degree than with any other machine at this price.

The downside is that this takes time, effort, and honestly a relative amount of coffee knowledge. It’s not a machine built for simplicity and a sleepy brain. It’s built for creating your perfect coffee at home.

Admittedly, once programmed you do just need to select your coffee, move the portafilter and put the milk under the wand. But that’s at least two more things than you might want to do.

You will absolutely get better coffee and milk from the Barista Touch Impress. But do you want to invest the time playing with the settings to achieve that?

DeLonghi Eletta Explore

The Eletta Explore is listed at around $2,000, so considerably more than the Rivelia. However, it is often on sale at around $1750. If you’re looking at the Rivelia with LatteCrema Cool add on then its not much more expensive for A LOT more choice of drinks.

You’re looking at a very similar machine internally. You don’t get the swappable bean hoppers but you get more iced coffee options and the LatteCrema Cool included.

If you’re a huge iced coffee drinker and that’s what you’re wanting from your espresso machine, then the Eletta Explore is worth a look for a little more money to get all that extra drinks choice. If it’s on sale, of course.

Read next: Our in-depth DeLonghi Eletta Explore Review

If you’re interested in great coffee at home, trying different beans, maybe learning a little about how brewing coffee works, the DeLonghi Rivelia is excellent.

The foamed milk is maybe not hot enough for some, though it’s perfect for us, and we’d like the cool milk foamer to be cheaper or bundled with the machine. But that’s very few negatives to pull out.

If iced coffee is your passion, we’d definitely check to see if the Eletta Explore is on sale. For not much more, you can get a lot more choice.

To sum up our DeLonghi Rivelia review:

If you’re looking for an easy to use espresso machine that offers the cafe classics, a little help dialling in, and some really useful features then the DeLonghi Rivelia is a really good machine for you.

Don’t forget to buy your DeLonghi Rivelia today

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.