KitchenAid KF7 Review

Until recently, we thought KitchenAid exclusively made beautiful but extremely expensive stand mixers used on The Great British Baking Show. Turns out they also make espresso machines, and people are raving about them. So we had to give them a go and put together this KitchenAid KF7 review. Sadly our skills only extend to coffee, not baked goods.

The KitchenAid KF7 utilizes the best ideas from other companies to make an extremely solid super-automatic espresso machine. It takes quite a lot of dialing in before you get the coffee you want, but after that, it really holds its own against the competition at the same price.

As with all super-automatic espresso machines, whether it’s the best one for you depends entirely on what you want from your machine. Here we’ll take a look at all the good, the bad, and the aesthetically pleasing from KitchenAid’s middle offering.

At a Glance: KitchenAid KF7 Review

1. 10 Coffee Options

KitchenAid boast “choose from 20+ recipe options.” But, in reality, there are 10 different base coffee recipes plus warm milk, foamed milk, and hot water.

Their focus is on “recipe options” because the KF7 comes with a nice booklet full of coffee recipes that aren’t programmed into the machine but that you can make using it. I think this is a really nice touch.

Your pre-programmed options are:

• Americano
• Espresso
• Espresso lungo
• Coffee
• Latte
• Cortado
• Cappuccino
• Latte macchiato
• Macchiato
• Flat white

All except Americano allow you to make 2 at once. They’re also all customizable and you can save your favorite recipe for later.

2. 15g Max Dose

We love a super-automatic with a large dose like this – it really helps to get great espresso out of one of these machines.

While there are only 3 “strength” levels for customizing the amount of coffee used, we recommend only using it on max to ensure you get a good espresso shot. Then, depending on your tastes, dilute it with more water or milk afterwards.

3. Swappable Bean Hopper

Maybe our favorite feature of the KitchenAid super-automatic range is the removable bean hoppers. You can take out the entire bean hopper, with the beans inside, making it a breeze to clean the grinder.

Even more importantly, it means you can have multiple sets of beans on the go at once and easily swap between them.

Simply buy a spare bean hopper with a lid and when you want to switch them out, tell the KF7 to “purge beans.” This will prompt you to detach the hopper and the machine will grind any beans left inside the grinder to avoid cross-contamination.

The hopper lid keeps the beans airtight though we recommend keeping them in a cool, dark place. It’s such a great feature if you like to drink caffeinated coffee in the morning and decaf in the evening.

4. 2 coffees at a time

All drinks, except Americano, can be brewed 2 at a time. This makes entertaining so much easier as your machine can swiftly knock out 6 cappuccinos for your guests.

It goes through two brew cycles to do this, which we like. Unfortunately, some super automatics use just 1 puck for 2 coffees meaning you get a weak, watery mess – KitchenAid is better than that though.

5. 4 user profiles

Every drink can be customized on the KF7, so you can get it just how you want it. Then you can save them to your own custom profile to come back to next time.

For anyone who doesn’t live alone, having multiple user profiles should be a dealbreaker when buying an automatic espresso machine.

6. Simple Interface

Selecting a menu with the touch buttons and then scrolling the touchscreen makes choosing, customizing, and brewing your coffee an absolute breeze.

It also means that any cleaning and maintenance tasks are clearly explained with pictures on the display so nothing is complicated.

Selecting your coffee, adjusting a few settings, and pouring is extremely straightforward. The menu is easy to navigate, the touch screen is nice to use, and most of the settings make perfect sense.

The issue we have with the KF7 is that it takes quite a lot of fiddling with the settings to get an espresso that tastes good. Even KitchenAid says you’ll need to make 4-5 test cups to get your ideal flavor. We’d say it might take closer to 10 before you get it down.

We had the grinder on the 2nd finest setting, max strength, strong “body”, medium temperature, and 1oz (30ml) volume for our best espresso settings.

The two key settings here are the maximum amount of coffee grounds and the 1oz espresso volume.

The screen takes you through all the steps for doing just about any task you could think of. So it’s super simple to save recipes to your profile. You can adjust whatever settings you need to in an intuitive, well-laid out way. And it talks you through all the cleaning taksks. It’s seriously slick.

We also love that it comes with a little recipe book. So if you were thinking about branching out from your usual coffee options (we highly recommend getting into espresso tonic) then you get a bunch of ideas and clear instructions on how to make them with your KF7.

Using the best quality, freshly roasted beans will result in better-tasting coffee. There is no coffee brewing method out there that can turn terrible beans into great coffee, so invest a little in some delicious beans specifically for espresso.

The bean hopper is 9.5oz (270g) and can be easily swapped out with another bean hopper (sold separately) if you want to switch up your beans.

This extremely simple idea is a game changer for people like me who love to try out various coffees, or want to switch from regular to decaf at a certain point in the day (again – the gift that keeps on giving!)

Using “auto-purge” from the cleaning menu, the KF7 will prompt you to unlock the hopper (closing the grinder off) and will grind any beans already in the mechanism. This leaves it all cleared out ready for your bean substitution. The spare hoppers come with a lid to keep your beans fresh too.

There is the standard bypass chute for pre-ground coffee though being able to swap out the hoppers renders this pretty useless. Unless you want to have a go with a flavored coffee as you should never put those through your grinder.

Also, the grinder is whisper quiet, that fun Quiet Mark sticker on the front isn’t just for show. The KF series are some of the quietest espresso machines you can buy and are independently certified as such. The milk frothing makes more noise than the grinder which still blows my mind.

The Looks

The big screen with the light-up icons and the different textures make this a considerably nicer-looking machine than the previous generation, KitchenAid KF6 (you can read our KF6 review, here.) Even if it’s not quite at Gaggia Accademia levels of beauty.

You can get it in 4 different colors too: stainless steel, black, white, and juniper. I didn’t know what color juniper would be until I saw the picture, apparently its light green… who knew?

As long as you’re into the more minimalist style that is very much in vogue these days then any of the colors are a great choice. Its also nice that it’s the same price in every color, which is far less common with top super-automatic machines than you’d think.

If awards are you’re thing, the KF7 was also a Red Dot Design winner 2024.

It’s exactly the same size as its little brother, the KF6. The KF7 is 14.3 inches tall by 10.2 inches wide by 18.5 inches deep (26 x 36 x 47cm). Compared to other superautomatic machine, it’s certainly not enormous and being only 10.2 inches wide is nice for those tight on counterspace.

We love that the outside is mostly made of metal. We’re not on a plastic-hating crusade, its just the outside of your coffee machine after all. But if we had the choice, we’d take a metal outer casing over plastic for the same price every time.

The Build

The mostly metal exterior really helps with the feel of the KitchenAid KF7. Everything about it just feels more sturdy and more durable. This is pure vibes – we haven’t been throwing pieces of it on the floor to check.

KitchenAid offers a 2-year warranty though. This is significant as many manufacturers will only offer one year. If nothing else this tells us that KitchenAid have real confidence in the build quality of their products.

It is made in Switzerland, if that matters to you. We don’t believe the location the machine is built in really matters in terms of the quality of the product. That’s much more dependent on the manufacturer’s standards, but if it gives you confidence then that’s good.

Like most of these machines, it is HEAVY. At 37lbs (16.7kg) you are not going to want to be moving it around a lot. KitchenAid has very nicely installed wheels on the back of the machine to make it easier to move forwards and backward on your countertop though which is very thoughtful. And hopefully avoids scratching your surfaces.

If you only take one thing away from our KitchenAid KF7 review, let it be this:

Straight out of the box, on factory settings, the coffee is terrible. Like really, really bad. This isn’t super uncommon for bean-to-cup machines, but it is surprising how bad it is considering the price and general quality of the machine. So don’t return it immediately – we promise it gets better.

Once we got the grind size down much finer, and turned the KF7 up to max dose, max body, and shortened the espresso to 1oz (30ml), we got a very nice espresso. Rich, flavorful, nice depth and complexity. Exactly what you would hope for from an espresso machine at this price.

The customization options on the KF7 are a collection of pretty standard settings like the dose, temperature, and length.

However, there’s also the “body” setting, which actually controls the flow rate through the puck. This is really useful for getting a little bit more fine control on your espresso shot.

We always have it on “strong” to get the best flavor. But dialing it back did seem to make subtle differences, especially with espresso lungo and the “coffee” option which use longer extraction times.

There’s also an excellent option to choose milk or coffee first for all milk-based drinks. We like that they’ve put the choice in our hands, especially since they got it the wrong way around for cappuccinos on the KF6.

Speaking of milk, the milk frothing is good, but not excellent.

For us, the foam for the cappuccino and macchiato drinks isn’t quite dense enough. We’re nitpicking here but when you’re spending a lot of money on an espresso machine (and the competition is so strong), we have to hold it to high standards.

Double Shot Drinks

Our review of the KitchenAid KF7 would be incomplete if we didn’t talk about the so-called “double shot” drinks.

KitchenAid lists their drink recipes with “(1 & 2 shot)” next to most of them. This is misleading as what happens when you ask for a x2 drink is NOT that you get just 2 shots, instead, it doubles everything. So if your standard cappuccino is 30ml espresso and 60ml milk, it’ll pour 60ml espresso and 120ml milk.

So while it is a “true” 2 shot in terms of doing 2 full brew cycles, you can’t just use your normal latte setup and then be like “oh, I’ll have a double shot today cos I’m tired” as it’ll just pour 2 lattes out.

Now this is fine if you never want to use the 2-shot option except when you want to make 2 of the same drink. In that case, it’s very easy – 2 drinks are made with no fuss.

It is also fine if you never want to use a single shot or make 2 drinks at the same time. Then you can just set your milk at half the volume you want and it’ll work fine.

But if you want to switch between all these things, then it becomes a problem.

Our solution, if you’re not using all the profiles is to create a “double shot” profile with all your normal drinks in it but with the milk halved. That way you can switch over to it easily to get your extra caffeine without getting coffee on the floor.

Pressing the button that looks like a water drop inside rotating arrows will bring up the cleaning menu.

It’ll pull up everything from simple daily tasks like cleaning the milk hose or flushing the coffee brewing system, up to bigger jobs like descaling and cleaning the brewgroup.

The KF7 will helpfully flash a little warning icon on the screen whenever some form of cleaning is required. For example, it asks you to clean the milk hose after every use. This is a great way of ensuring you can’t forget to clean something and you also don’t have to remember when it was last done.

Emptying the drip tray is awkward as it’s a drip tray and coffee puck bin combo, making it large and unwieldy. Sadly this is true of a lot of machines these days and something we just have to deal with.

If you’re concerned about internal cleanliness, you’ll be pleased to know that the brewgroup is very easily removed and can be cleaned as often as you like. (Unlike Jura machines.) There is a setting for when you need to use one of their lovely branded tablets to deep clean it.

You’ll also need to periodically remove the frothing nozzle from inside the brewhead to keep the milk system nice and sparkly.

I wish the KitchenAid milk container was dishwasher safe, but we can’t have everything. That said, the KF7 doesn’t come with a milk container so you can place the hose into any random jug you have lying around.

Cappuccino King: Jura E6

When it comes to espresso quality from a super automatic coffee machine, Jura is the gold standard. Their machines are often very expensive and do require quite a lot of maintenance compared to others, but if pure coffee quality is what matters to you then they are the best brand to go for.

The Jura E6 is almost the complete opposite of the KitchenAid KF7 in terms of its drinks strengths. The milk foam is too dense for lattes but is absolutely sensational for cappuccino or latte macchiato.

If you’re looking for a machine to do black coffee and cappuccino or latte macchiato at the best possible quality then the Jura E6 is for you.

If you want more choice or aren’t bothered by having perfect foam on some of your drinks, then the KF7 is a much better value-for-money coffee machine.

Ultimate in Coffee Choice: DeLonghi Eletta Explore

A little bit more expensive than the KitchenAid KF7, but the Eletta Explore has an incredible library of coffee drinks to choose from including “over ice” versions of most of your favorite coffees.

You get an insane number of different coffees to choose from with the Eletta Explore, mostly because of that “over ice” option on most of them. This isn’t just a gimmick, it actually brews the coffee at a lower temperature and, maybe most impressively, it uses cool milk foaming. It will tell you the correct number of ice cubes to use for the perfect temperature too.

The downside to this incredibly cool feature? The coffee and milk quality from the Eletta Explore isn’t quite at the same level as the KitchenAid KF7.

So your choice here is:

• fewer drinks and no iced options, but those drinks will be better quality (the KF7). OR;
• lots of drinks options, including a raft of iced coffees, but they won’t be quite as good (the Eletta Explore.) Plus it costs a little more and isn’t quite as stylish.

For most people, this is probably a pretty easy choice as you either want iced coffee or you don’t.

More Work, Bigger Payoff: Breville Barista Touch Impress

Is this technically a super-automatic espresso machine? Not really since you do have to move the portafilter from the grinder/tamper to the brew head and put the milk jug under the milk wand. But the Barista Touch Impress does everything else for you when it comes to actually making the coffee.

We love Breville espresso machines, mostly because we don’t mind doing a little extra work when the results can be so spectacular. You have up to a 22g dose (a professional-sized portafilter), and the automatic steam wand is sensational. Or you can just steam the milk yourself.

The Barista Touch Impress has very few preset drink options, but with the insane customization, you can save another 8 drinks exactly how you want. So you can program it to make basically anything you want.

It also has settings for foaming different plant-based milk, which is a very nice feature at this price point. (You’ll need to splurge on the KF8 to get this in the KitchenAid series – read our full KF8 review here.)

Aesthetically, it’s totally different and is really a different beast when it comes to the actual operation of the machine. But the espresso and milk are insanely good with no skill needed, so it would be a crime not to include it as an option.

By coming in late to the espresso market, KitchenAid has the huge advantage of seeing what features everyone likes and then putting them into their machines.

This is a strong, all-around machine that stacks up really well with its competition at the same price point. Really that is all we could ask for from our KitchenAid KF7 review.

Sure, it isn’t perfect:

We’d like denser foam on our cappuccinos, we’d like it to be easier to get great coffee from, and we’d like the “double shot” drinks to be a little easier to use.

But no espresso machine is 100% perfect and when we look around at the competition, we see nothing that is clearly better than the KF7. Just the usual collection of “it depends on what matters most to you” comparisons that all super automatics have.

Don’t forget to buy your KitchenAid KF7 On Amazon

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.