Which Dual Boiler

lm trade on their name and for nearly 4k you’re not getting value for money imo

What does the LMLM actually offer over and above the machines you are considering? They have brand reputation, but that only appeals to certain folks. Ask yourself this. If someone presented you with 5 of your favourite drinks, made on 5 well known machines, would you be able to pick out the LMLM? If not, why not? The obvious answer of course is no, so why pay more for something that delivers less or the same?
Does owning a Mercedes A class really make you feel like a real Merc owner?

You can mod a lmlm but thats abother 1500 onto so im led to belive

Mate, you are probably over thinking here; understandable, though! 😊

If it is Bianca - Bella Barrista!

If Vesuvius - Direct from Paolo of ACS

You can’t go wrong with either of these. Both are excellent machines, as we advised you before.

If you feed the machine with good water that won’t scale or significantly reduce the risk, and give the TLC she deserves, she will serve you very well for a long long time.

I am sorry as I am not sure if you mentioned anything about your water situation. We can’t emphasis more than enough than by simply advising you to sort this before getting a new machine.

While the LMLM is a gorgeous looking machine, and I have no doubt has very good quality parts, I do think it’s incredibly expensive for the feature set.

Sprometheus recently did a video that included the running costs of the LMLM and it was a lot:

If I was looking to spend that sort of money I think I’d go for a Decent. Much more option to play with pressures, flow, temperature etc.

Cuprajake A decent would be no good for steaming

Why?

I know it’s a bit slower than some, and doesn’t work in parallel, but it can produce it almost instantly, so from a workflow perspective you can churn out drinks pretty quickly. This is for home use after all.

Because it takes nearly a minute to steam milk for one drink

Its just slow and if the op is going to be making 5 to 6 milk drinks one after the other its just a faff.
That vid shows the new wand, iirc that comes ln 4k machine now.

Thanks for clarifying your reasoning @Cuprajake.

I’m not sure a decent is on the list, but at least 250ml of milk in 60s will help people assess whether this is ok or not for their situation. I tend to do flat whites [130ml], so two drinks worth of milk in 60s, especially with the auto feature so that you can be prepping the next shots, would be fine. That’s the beauty of this hobby though, plenty of options for everyone’s use cases.

Decent would be like buying the latest gaming PC, you know in 6-12 months time you would need another upgrade, new CPU, new generation GPU, faster memory, SSD, etc.
Buying something that has relatively (to HX machines) new technologies in it, e.g. PID, double boiler, ability to program start up, etc. is more modest technology-wise but bullet proof and is going to last.

John_Yossarian Don’t know if I fully agree with the PC analogy - my PC is over 2 years old and can still comfortably play the latest games at 2560×1440 60FPS, mostly on the highest quality settings and 4k with a mix of settings. I doubt I will need to upgrade anytime soon…for at least another year or 2.

Beverast I was talking about the game enthusiasts that populate forums such as overclockers.co.uk

Rarely a “self respected” gamer would stay with the same rig for longer than 12 months. And I do not mean to undermine your gamer’s skills at all. 🙂

John_Yossarian Ah ok, fair enough. I would not consider myself a skilful gamer anyway so no worries haha 😁

Goodfella I use Meross smart plugs, they integrate wethh with Alexa.