Mova Cremetica S20 Pro

We have reviewed a coffee machine or two here at Gamereactor, and we can confirm that there are just as many types of coffee machines as there are individual needs. It's generally good news for consumers that you can buy a Lavazza A Modo Mio Tiny Eco for £60 or a Sage Barista Oracle Jet for £1,700, and generally get your money's worth in both respects.

But that leaves us in a bit of a muddle, because which coffee machine should you actually buy? Well, it's much harder to give a concrete answer to that question, but if you're still keen on the slightly more manual version of the art of coffee brewing, there's simply no better deal than the Mova's Cremetica S20 Pro. It's simply the master of moderation, the golden mean, and a damn good coffee machine at a really good price.

You can get a Cremetica S20 Pro for around £540, and in many ways it competes directly with Sage's Oracle Touch, which costs three times as much, and even the otherwise quite reasonable Cuisinart EM640E, which costs £450. It's difficult to find similar machines for less, but Mova has not actually skimped on anything, at least not at first glance.

It's modelled on the traditional coffee machine, with brushed steel, beautiful, clean lines, and a slight curve that makes it quite authentically Italian. It isn't, but it looks like it, and design is a factor that should be taken into account when you have to look at it all the time. You have a small, simple display that spans the entire width of the machine, giving you an overview of coffee types and allowing you to easily set how much coffee to put in the plunger and which type you want in each case. The cool thing is that the actual brewing is done using physical buttons below the display, so you really get the best of both the digital and analogue ages here.

There are a few signs that Mova has cut corners here and there, but it's not particularly bothersome. Certain parts of the construction are plastic instead of metal, but no aspect of the user experience feels cheap. These are smart savings, not cutting corners.

Inside, there is a dual-boiler, which is used to ensure that the temperatures are as they should be, and there is a built-in milk steamer, which is used together with the steel jug that comes with it. You get two pumps, one for hot water for Americano, for example, and one for the steamer, which is selected with a cool little selector on the right-hand side. The most important thing is that we reach 20 bar, and then there are clever technologies such as "pre-infusion", which is fancy lingo for moistening the coffee before the actual brewing, and a "conical burr grinder", which is tech speak for a coffee grinder that works with an accompanying 250-gram bean container.

The short and long of it is that the Cremetica S20 Pro delivers excellent coffee, it really does. You can make cold brew, yes, but beyond that, it's simple espresso shots, all of which have delivered the perfect amount without having to adjust anything further, and you can steam milk yourself as needed without requiring a lot of cleaning afterwards.

There is a small funny side note at the end, which, however, does not affect the final sky-high score. There is no built-in limescale filter here. There are instructions for descaling in the manual, but nothing to address the relatively high limescale levels in some groundwater. There are no deposits in the tank yet, but I imagine that will happen over time, and it's still too early to say whether coffee machines really should have a limescale filter installed in addition to descaling from time to time.

That said, I am blown away by the S20 Pro, I really am. It's the cheapest and at the same time one of the most simple, intuitive, and well-functioning coffee machines I have tested, where everything is immediately understandable and the coffee tastes amazing. It can be highly recommended to anyone who wants a lot for less money.