The Bambino Plus does not pull a better shot than the Bambino, it just steams the milk for you

Breville Bambino

Breville Bambino

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Breville Bambino Plus baratza Encore ESP

Stand the two machines next to each other and almost nothing in the espresso path changes. Crew Review's walkthrough of the plain Bambino describes the same near-instant ThermoJet heat-up and the same 54mm basket that Breville advertises on the Plus, driven by the same single heater and the same low-pressure pre-infusion before the pump settles to nine bar. What the Plus adds is an automatic steam wand offering three milk temperatures and three foam textures, and a three-way valve that drops the pressure so the puck does not sneeze at you when you twist the portafilter out. That is the transaction. You are not buying a better espresso machine, you are buying two chores off your morning.

Both machines get shelved among the bean-to-cup listings, and neither belongs there. You grind, dose, level, tamp and lock in on either one, so if the appeal was pressing a button and walking away, our page on what Breville actually automates will save you a return. Espresso Den's position is that the Bambino line is the cheapest honest way into real espresso, and that the choice between the two versions is not a quality question at all. It is a question about which skill you want to learn first, and whether anyone else in the house is going to make a drink.

At a Glance

What the extra money is actually attached to

The automatic wand is a genuinely good piece of engineering, and the people best placed to be sniffy about it were not. Serious Eats went in sceptical of automated wands generally and came out convinced, noting that the machine injects air into the milk as it heats and that your entire involvement is choosing a temperature and a texture. That matters, because most automated frothers earn their reputation by producing warm bubbles.

The valve is the difference nobody mentions in the listing and everybody notices at the sink. On the plain machine the puck stays under pressure until you unlock it, which is why so many first-time owners describe grounds redecorating the drip tray. The three-way valve on the Plus bleeds that off first. It is a small thing that happens two or three times a day for years, which is roughly the definition of a thing worth paying for.

The sensor is a component, and components have moods

The automatic wand works by reading the jug, and the sensor it reads it with lives on the drip tray, which means the tray has to stay dry. On a machine whose drip tray is already small, that is a real constraint rather than a footnote. The sharpest argument for the plain Bambino comes from someone who owned both and kept the manual one, partly because a sleepy user kept setting the jug down slightly off the sensor and overflowing it, and partly because a couple of dozen lattes of practice produced better milk than the automatic result did.

Both halves of that are worth taking seriously. Hand steaming has no ceiling, and the automatic wand does. What the automatic wand has instead is repeatability at seven in the morning and the fact that a housemate can make a flat white without a tutorial. If you are still deciding whether you want a wand at all, our piece on which milk system you will actually live with takes the wider version of this decision apart.

The faults neither version fixes

This is the part that should shrink the argument. Every genuine complaint about these machines belongs to both of them equally. There is one heater, so back-to-back drinks are a scheduling problem: owners describe two as comfortable and the third as where it starts to wander, and one long-term owner who still recommends the machine to beginners says that after eighteen months he finds it inconsistent and awkward with lighter roasts even after a warm-up flush. Espresso arrives cooler than it should because ThermoJet heats water rather than metal, so the group head and the part-plastic portafilter are cold until you deliberately flush them.

Then there is the trap that costs more flavour than either wand ever will. Both machines ship with pressurised dual-wall baskets alongside the single-wall ones, and dual-wall baskets manufacture crema through a restriction instead of through extraction. One owner ran them for months and described the result exactly: handsome crema that collapsed immediately, flat flavour, and no adjustment that helped. Choosing the wrong Bambino costs you some milk quality. Choosing the wrong basket costs you the coffee.

Where the money would do more good

The gap between the two machines is real money, and there is a competing use for it. A beginner asking for a first setup on a modest budget got one answer over and over, a Bambino paired with a Baratza Encore ESP, and the reply that explains why this whole product category exists came from the person who asked: they had not budgeted for a grinder at all. The consensus across creators covering this end of the market is blunt about the priority, that at this price a better grinder moves the cup further than a better machine does. The bundle Espresso Den covers below is Breville's answer to that, and it is worth reading against the case for machines with the grinder built in, which is the other way people try to solve it.

Which one to buy, and who should buy neither

Take the Plus if you are learning espresso from zero, because it removes one of the two skills you would otherwise be learning simultaneously, and take it if the machine is communal. Take the plain Bambino if you already know the difference between a good pour and a warm one, or if you suspect you will enjoy the practice. One review site recommends exactly that build, the plain machine with the Encore ESP, as a capable first setup for meaningfully less than the bundled version costs, and names the automatic wand and the three-way valve as the two things you are giving up. That is a fair trade, and Espresso Den's only caveat is that the plain machine is not a page we carry, so the buy we can actually stand behind here is the bundled one.

Our full write-up of that pairing, including what the premium over the machine alone actually is and what the maintenance looks like month to month, is in the Bambino Plus and Encore ESP review. If you want to see where either machine sits against the rest of the range, our Breville roundup covers the ladder above it.

And buy neither if the honest answer to "do you want a hobby" is no. Neither Bambino is a walk-away machine, and an unused portafilter machine makes worse coffee than a button you actually press. The De'Longhi Magnifica Evo is the sensible landing spot for someone who wants the drink rather than the craft, the best super-automatics under a thousand dollars covers the rest of that field, and the case for and against the whole category is worth ten minutes before you commit either way.