Dan No! Sage products area innovative but most folks are not able to fix them, if you can get the parts that is. I see the appeal of course but at that price personally, I would look at more traditional set ups.The grinder really is a dog!
When I started out in coffee, there really was very little choice in equipment. The prosumer market did not exist. The goto setup was a Gaggia Classic and an MC2 grinder. If you really pushed the boat out, you had a Sylvia. Then slowly but surely the choices became wider. I remember having a Fracino Heavenly and thinking I was the bees knees! Now, the choice for starter kits is tremendous. People think nothing of shelling out 2 to 3k on a machine and another huge amount on a grinder.
What has this got to do with Sage? In my humble, Sage are a throwaway company, hence the UK structure (unless it has changed) of only being able to deal with Coffee Classics and not being able to buy the majority of parts. If they have a 10% failure rate then that is 90% of machines that do not fail……to me, that is one expensive gamble. When I bought them, finding a 3 year warranty was easy….try it now!