The first and only decision that you need to make with this machine is what colour! The Senseo coffee machine  is available in Blue, Black or White. We opted for the black. It looks pretty smart in all three colours but be have been informed by Philips that the blue is the fastest selling colour and other than Amazon there are very few places that have stock. In fact they are estimating that by the beginning of the January sales only online retailers will have stock of any of the colours. We picked three John Lewis stores at random today and only one had stock.

The Senseo coffee machine works on its own unique coffee pod system in conjunction with Douwe Egberts (the ‘expensive’ ground coffee people.) The pods are actually not pods at all but more like tea bags. Once inserted into the machine at the press of a button fresh coffee will be produced. The trick with these machines is not the machine itself but the pods, whether you want latte or cappuccino its decided by which pod you put in and not by a control on the machine.

So if you make someone in the office the wrong drink you will only have yourself to blame! The machine we purchased came with a gift pack selection of coffee pods, this we believe was a promotion only and eventually the machine will come without any pods. The pods, which there are four flavours of are now available from most major supermarkets. 

The main features of the Philips Senseo coffee machine aren’t really anything to shout about. The water tank is easy to remove and clean, but it only holds about five cups. If your making two cups at a time as we did it gets quite frustrating that after every two brews it needs to be refilled. The Senseo also has a removable stainless steel drip tray that contrasts nicely with all three colours. We found that the machine also had a fantastic built in crema function that produced great froth every time; usually on machines like this they are pretty naff but not so with the Senseo.

Overall we found this machine incredibly simple to operate (even the girls in the office could work it,) and for the money it is definitely worth every penny. It does everything it says it does and I must add that we found all four coffee pods to be pretty good, although we did run out and had trouble finding somewhere that still had stock.

It was interesting (although we wouldn’t recommend it!) that the Gaggia coffee pods also seemed to work in the machine. At the end of the day if we didn’t already have a better coffee machine in the LP office we would probably keep the Philips Senseo coffee machine as it is simple to make great cup of coffee with no technology degree needed!

More Coffee Machines -

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