Which Dual Boiler

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.

A decent would be no good for steaming

Ive personally steamed 450mls of milk with my bianca for hot chocolate and it did that in about 40seconds.

I favour the bianca because i own one. But its a machine i settled on after going through 5 others.

For your needs dual boiler is a must.

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.

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.

Another vote for Meross from me- also work well with Google Home.

Goodfella I have the Synchronika and have been very happy with it. Great steam and plenty of it and really nice quality to the exterior - I’m sure you’ll be pleased with your purchase. Just remember its super heavy and you might need some help getting it out of the box and up on the counter ! As for value for money, well if your using something every day and its part of your kitchen, then you may well need to take aesthetics into consideration and that includes the weight and feel of the components, levers, handles etc.

My favourite definition of ‘value’ is “the perceived benefits, usefulness, and importance of something". It means that value is entirely subjective. For some the La Marzocco Linea Mini is overpriced for it’s technical functions for others it’s a joy to see every morning - just as my Synchronika is for me when I stumble into the kitchen on a Sunday morning…