De’Longhi Rivelia review: bean-to-cup service with a smile

Introduction

Bean-to-cup machines work out cheaper in the long run than daily trips to your local coffee shop, but they can be a little… impersonal. The De’Longhi Rivelia is the next best thing to a barista, with an extensive 16 drink menu and intuitive touchscreen that remembers your name and order. It’s also packing multiple user profiles and a pair of hoppers, which make it a cinch to swap from caffeinated to decaf coffee. Or let you keep your boujie bag of Preuvian Black Gold reserved for special occasions.

Like most fully automatic machines, the Rivelia isn’t an impulse buy. At £729 (or £750 if you go for the on-trend Pebble Grey or Sand Beige colourways) it’ll take at least six months to cancel out a store-bought coffee habit. But it rivals more highbrow brands for sheer convenience, and knows a thing or two about texturing milk to a barista standard. Does that make it a top choice for singletons as well as those with a houseful to keep jacked up on java?

Design & build: hip to be square

Whichever characterful colour option you go for, the De’Longhi Rivelia is a nice break from the stainless steel norm. There’s a nice blend of materials and finishes, which all wipe clean easily enough. I thought the blocky shape was a little utilitarian at first, but it does help keep the machine’s footprint in check. You’ll still need a decent whack of counter space, at least on one side, to make removing the 1.4-litre water tank less of a chore.

The tank and 200ml milk carafe are big enough to caffeinate an entire family with each refill, with the latter being slim enough to slip neatly into my fridge door when not in use. I also liked being able to adjust the height of the grouphead, in order to make room for various sizes of mug and cup.

Most of the action is found up top. A quartet of buttons surround a bright and colourful touchscreen, which handles pretty much every setting digitally. The only thing to adjust by hand is the grind size, using a lever next to the hopper – but the screen even walks you through that bit, so novices shouldn’t be put off.

Including two hoppers in the box is a real win for anyone that changes beans regularly, or lives with someone who insists on drinking decaf. You can also buy extras for the price of a few store-bought coffees. Different coloured lids remind you which is which, and the touchscreen offers you the choice to make one final drink with the remaining grounds, or dump them to avoid mixing bean batches. Some rivals can lock the hopper so you don’t even get that far, but this is the next best thing for preventing waste.

Features: touch and go

The Rivelia starts up in less than a minute and is impressively quiet when grinding beans and pouring drinks.

Home brewing novices will be quickly up to speed by the plain-talking interface, which holds your hand through the initial setup, and fully explains the basic maintenance steps when required. De’Longhi also includes a water testing strip in the box, letting the machine calibrate its descaling requests accordingly if you’re in a hard water areas – something I definitely needed in my leafy corner of Wiltshire, which is limestone central.

Three of the physical buttons on top of the machine are simply shortcuts; you really only need one (power), with everything else controlled by the touchscreen. That includes selecting drinks from the conveyor belt-style menu, and adjusting things like intensity and serving size. The machine learns from your habits, shunting your favourite brews to the front of the digital queue based on the time of day you usually drink them, and even suggests how many ice cubes for a cold coffee.

The friendly icons and chirpy messages that pop up after every pour brought a welcome bit of charm to my early mornings. A 5.45am caffelatte probably wasn’t “my best one yet”, but I admit the frothy crema was “Just how you like it”.

Customisation really comes into its own when you have multiple people to brew for, each with different tastes. The Rivelia can save up to four user profiles, each with a distinctive colour to remind you which is currently active; swapping between them just takes a few taps.

Performance: near-perfect pours

You create profiles for your beans, too. The Rivelia helps you dial in the grind and temperature for each new batch, by telling it the roast level and whether you’re using 100% Arabica or a blend. If the resulting espresso isn’t on the money, it’ll adjust accordingly. From the off, shots I poured had a rich brown crema and left the grouphead at a perfect temperature. You can switch profiles on the fly, so you don’t need to dial the same batch back in after changing to another bean hopper.

If all you want are black coffees, there’s really not much else to this machine. Milk-based drinks are just a teensy bit more involved, needing you to manually adjust a dial on top of the carafe to control the level of foam – though the screen does at least tell you which setting to turn to. Temperature might be an issue if you like your milk hotter than molten lava, as 60°C servings are about as good as it gets here, but I’ve got no criticism of the Rivelia’s frothing abilities. It produces the sort of fine microfoam bubbles other bean-to-cup machines can struggle with.

This machine isn’t a great pick if you brew a lot of tea; the hot water spout maxes out at around 80°C, so don’t ditch your kettle quite yet. At the other end of the spectrum, its ice serving suggestions for cold drinks were spot on, cooling them down quickly without making them turn watery.

Be ready to empty the Rivelia’s drip tray daily if you use it often; the machine pumps a little water through its plumbing every time you switch it on, and again when it turns off. It’ll prompt you to flush the milk frother after every milk-based drink, too. This gets mildly annoying if you’re making multiple drinks in a row, but you can always dismiss the notification.

Onscreen instructions make cleaning the milk carafe, emptying the grounds bin and draining the drip tray a breeze. There are fewer nooks and crannies to get a cleaning cloth around than other bean-to-cup machines, too, so there’s no excuse for letting the Rivelia get messy.

De’Longhi Rivelia verdict

The De’Longhi Rivelia earns marks for ease of use; few automatic bean-to-cup machines make changing beans as convenient as this, and the user-friendly touchscreen is all kinds of useful. It puts your favourites in easy reach, lets you customise them easily, has an extensive menu when you fancy mixing things up, and isn’t a faff for serving families either.

Not everyone will be a fan of the boxy styling – even if it does make the machine refreshingly easy to clean – and if you only ever use one type of bean at a time the multiple hoppers will be lost on you. But for households with varied coffee preferences, this all-in-one system is a superb choice.

De’Longhi Rivelia technical specifications

Bean capacity	250g
Water capacity	1.4 litres
Drink options	Espresso / Coffee / Long / Americano / Cappuccino / Latte Macchiato / Hot Milk / Caffelatte / Flat White / Cortado / Hot Water
Pump pressure	19 bar
Dimensions	245x430x385mm, 9.7kg
Guarantee	Two years