Summary: A great little machine, especially for the price. Ideal for making top-notch hot drinks when you want coffee-shop quality in the comfort of your own home.

Lockdown left us without a lot of things. When it came to working from home, it left me without the decent coffee I had on tap from the commercial-grade machine in the office. With a little wedding money left in the pot, there was only one thing for it – treat myself to a new toy that gave me the much-needed espresso hit. No more instant ‘mud’ for me. Nope, just hot, full-of-kick coffee. I chose the Swan ‘Retro’ Espresso Machine, and here’s what I think of it. Spoiler alert: I love the thing.

Price

I’m guessing that pounds and pence is the main thing you’re probably comparing right now, so that’s where I’ll start. As I write this (fuelled of course by a cheeky morning pick-me-up), a Swan comes in at as little as £79.99 depending on colour and seller. A tad annoying as I picked mine up for £109, but that’s still a great price for this calibre of coffee maker in my opinion. 

Looks

This espresso maker caught my eye when I was trawling the web thanks to its retro Scandi appearance and different-from-the-rest colour options. I was tempted by the light blue and the cream (black is just a bit samey for me and the red, purple yellow, orange and pink were cool-looking but a bit too bright for my taste) but eventually plumped for grey to match our kitchen units. 

like how the Swan (yes, it looks a bit like one with its beaky filter holder) has more of a gadgety feel than some of the more functional, generic ‘appliance’ designs out there. It’s nice to admire on the worktop and, without being too imposing, adds a quirky feature to your countertop.

By the way, Swan also do toasters, mugs, microwaves, slow cookers and food mixers so this espresso maker is perfect if you’re all about buying stuff in sets.

The Pour

OK, the coffee itself. Well, put it this way, I won’t touch instant espresso again unless I’m stranded somewhere that doesn’t have a machine and I’m flagging big time. 

The crema is top-notch when using a Swan, and it’s pretty consistent as long as you pack the filter full (you get a small and large filter with the machine but I always use the double measure). As always, a quality coffee is dependent on the actual coffee quality. It does the job with supermarket ground varieties, but really excels when you use next level beans from such as Pact. It might just be me, but the subscription coffees always seem to be more finely ground which allows the Swan to do its thing better.  

In short, if I had to do it all again, I’d buy another Swan. Yes, you can get a better machine if you want to spend more, but I’m not convinced that without stretching to a four-figure commercial type machine you’ll get a better homemade espresso.

---