DrForinor Oh so many ways. The Barista Express was a nice machine to learn on, but it uses a thermoblock and not a true boiler. The group just could not get the portafilter hot enough, so many of my shots were sour. Then the steam was anemic, and took a while to get going. The grinder was just adequate, and did not give consistent grind shot to shot. Despite all of that I did like the machine, and learned the basics of espresso with it. Breville did a nice job for the price. The Elizabeth has all the qualities of a full size machine in a coffee house, including great temperature control with PID, and lots of thermal mass to make sure the puck stays hot during the extraction. Add to that the pre infusion, fast recovery after a shot, amazing software, tons of dry steam for milk steaming simultaneously while pulling a shot…so many other features that are actually useful like the purge mode, cleaning mode…the list goes on. So much packed into a small footprint. And, the case is easy to open so that if I ever need to service it, it should be easy to do.