What is it?
The Purita is one of the slimmest, fully automatic bean-to-cup coffee machines on the market, ideal for those whose space is a premium in their kitchen. It offers a 'favourite coffee feature' to save your preferred coffee strength and amount, as well as a 'whisper quiet' steel cone grinder with five grinder settings.
It's not as advanced as the more expensive Melitta CI Touch that we previously reviewed, but at around £400 (often less online), the Purista aims to provide excellent coffee without all the confusion that coffee machine novices might expect. The device also comes with a two-year warranty.
What's it like?
At 20cm wide, the convenience of this relatively small coffee machine is a big selling point. Although, it is still fairly long. If you look at the photos in this review, you'll notice the Purista does stretch a significant distance across the marble counter.
It's also worth noting that the Purista doesn't come with a milk frother or frother arm. So if you want anything other than espresso or Café Crème, you'll need to spend a little extra - either on a Melitta Cremio milk frother (£70) or buying a basic one, like we did, from Amazon (£11 when we bought it).
On the plus side, the Purista is fairly simple to operate. It isn't quite intuitive enough for us to just throw the instructions to the side, but it only took a few minutes of reading to get to grips with the basic functions. A helpful smartphone app, simply called Melitta Companion, also makes setting up and maintaining the Purista a doddle - with tutorials to help you use the coffee machine. Further down the line, the app also works as a diagnostic tool in case anything needs troubleshooting.
If you haven't used a coffee machine before, it's common for rinsing to take place when the machine powers on or off, and the Purista is no exception. Once you switch on the appliance for the first time, it performs automatic rinsing - meaning hot water flows out of the coffee outlet. Melitta recommends pouring away the first two cups of coffee after initial start-up for this reason. The coffee outlet is height-adjustable up to 135mm so that we can use glasses or large mugs. We tend to keep the outlet at max height unless we're making espresso.
For creatures of habit, the Favourite Coffee Function enables use to programme our preferred coffee strength (and amount), which can be stored for quick and easy use every morning. It's a simple case of tapping the button with a loveheart mug on it, then making our cup of coffee to our preferred specifications.
There are a couple of new features that Melitta has been sure to highlight as well. The first being a new pump feature, designed to enable water to flow more slowly through the coffee - resulting in better coffee extraction. The second is the previously mentioned, newly designed drip tray that's comprised of a stainless steel drip plate with an integrated anti-scratch plastic insert.
Should I buy one?
We like the Melitta Purista and, despite £400 being a lot of money, it's actually a very good value investment if you (and/or anyone else in the house) will be using it every day. However, while we wouldn't expect the Purista to make lattes, cappuccinos etc - we would expect a milk frothing arm like the one on the similarly priced De'Longhi Magnifica (ESAM 4200).
The Magnifica sits at about £450 but is heavily discounted (at the time of writing) to £300. For your money, you get a two-year warranty and 15-bar pump pressure (just like with the Purista) - but you also get a stainless steel milk frothing arm and cup warmer. With the discount included, we'd opt for the De'Longhi. Without the discount, it's fairly neck and neck.
We found the Melitta Purista Series 300 very easy to use and clean, with alerts when it needs to be maintained - although we'd still recommend browsing the manual. The Favourite Coffee Function is very useful and we've made good use of it, while the same can be said for the Double Cup function. We like the levels of customisation when it comes to the amount and strength of our coffee, but the grinding of the beans isn't quite 'whisper quiet' as Melitta advertise.
As far as bean-to-cup coffee machines go, this one seems a reasonable bet for novices that are still learning the ropes and don't want to deal with things like tamping. Besides, if you buy two coffees per day - each at about £3.25 - then you spend over £700 a year on a coffee anyway. When it comes to coffee machines, this basic bean-to-cup leans on the side of budget-friendly, even if the price does seem quite high.
