Inside a Decent DE1

tompoland

For anyone who wants to know what goes on inside a Decent, this will be very interesting.

Love them or hate them, the making of a Decent is a truly remarkable achievement.

Of particular interest to me is John Buckmans commitment to ensure that every Decent is able to be upgraded with any new feature meaning that there is no need to sell a machine in order to get the latest features.

Also of interest is the Bluetooth and wireless chip that can simply be unplugged and replaced if ever needed.

8,000 Decents are now out in the wild.

hornbyben

There’s no denying that’s a nice, well thought out piece of engineering

whinmoor85

Full respect to John from Decent, clearly an innovator.

I wonder how much better would the DE1 look if a product designer made it? Saying that, the glossy white one looks much nicer than the black.

CoyoteOldMan

whinmoor85 how ~~much better~~ would the DE1 look if a product designer made it?

tompoland

CoyoteOldMan not sure that’s much better! How about this…

KyleT

Having owned a DE1 I can vouch for how great they are as a piece of tech. I really like the simplicity of the design too. Besides a few software hiccups on the tablet it ran very well. I just felt I never got the most out of the machine especially for the money I paid.

Rob666

tompoland Lovely but pricey.

CoyoteOldMan

tompoland not sure that’s much better!

Indeed not - it was a firmly tongue-in-cheek post. In fact, when Synesso issued the press release for the ES-1 I was surprised how much like a Decent it looks!

tompoland

Rob666 true, but from a design point of view, it spins my whizzer a lot more than the Decent. Still, one man’s meat…

Cuprajake

ive always been fascinated by the decent, as i do love to tinker lol

Petre

Expensive but at least we can see where the money goes. Some other brands be like: here we go we just put same 50y old tech in a smaller package, give us 5K cuz we have big name.

JonWoo187

Petre Thing is 50 yr old tech simply works… current overpriced/overrated machines trying to reinvent the wheel will never beat something like a Cremina that’s been around since the 60s IMBHO. I’ll also gladly say that the modern trend/fad on machine function, burr design, etc. is more about making underdeveloped coffees more palatable, thanks to the Turd Wave movement. If the Cremina could keep up with my daily use I’d jump back to using one… had a 1977 model years ago and achieved phenomenal results with it, even while using a 50 yr old KyM copper cylindrical espresso-specific hand grinder. Only beef with the Cremina is I could only get 4-5 doubles from it at most with a bit of flushing/cleaning and I consume more than that these days. Otherwise I’d gladly take it over any machine made at any price these days.

Sham

Nice video, as an engineer this video is a really fun watch. Watching things like this really makes me want to build my own espresso machine from scratch! Maybe in 20 years I’ll have a spare few hundred k to make a prototype (and then get some real funding) to make one!

tompoland

Sham too soon to place a pre-order?

Sham

tompoland I’ll happily take your money and make you wait an indefinite amount of time as per the traditional way 😉

tompoland

Worth a read https://worksinprogress.substack.com/p/in-pursuit-of-decent-coffee?sd=pf

Petre

JonWoo187 def Cremina was not the kind of machine I had in mind with my comment, spring levers are still one of the top tech you can use right now. But I was looking at the new linea micra. Instead of focusing on improving the mini, they just recreated it in a smaller package, who asked for that really.. Price is still quite high for what it offers imo.

JonWoo187

Petre Well the original Cremina was/is manual lever as I personally would avoid the spring with any machine. I agree on the Micra among others and will never bother with any machine that requires a phone/tablet/app to make adjustments. Technology will never replace hands-on skill/technique, just a training wheel approach to make espresso easier/more consistent for the masses.

Petre

JonWoo187

I think technology has good things to add on the table but I also respect the preference of users who are experimented enough and want to go full manual, there’s always room for both worlds.

JonWoo187

Totally agree, but will also point out that so much focus is placed on equipment when the real changes can be made with the coffee being used. Stepping into home roasting really puts things in perspective as to what is the ultimate variable in it all.