- The De'Longhi La Specialista Touch is a new bean-to-cup coffee machine
- It can adapt brewing to suit your coffee beans, and offers five milk textures
- The machine can also prepare cold brew coffee in five minutes
De'Longhi makes some of the best coffee makers we've tested here at TechRadar, and its latest bean-to-cup machine looks like it could rival the technical skills of a professional barista. Not only does the new De'Longhi La Specialista Touch offer an extensive menu of hot and cold drinks, it can also tailor the brewing process to suit your preferred beans, and offers five different milk textures. The only thing you need to worry about is pouring the latte art.
Unlike the De'Longhi La Specialista Opera, which launched in October, the new La Specialista Touch has a large color touchscreen that lets you browse through a list of preset drink options, and tinker with brewing settings, taking your pick from 15 grind sizes and three brewing temperatures.
Not quite sure how to extract the most flavor from your beans? The machine's Bean Adapt technology makes recommendations for different types of coffee, with optimized dosing, grind and extraction settings for different types, roasts, and blends. Once you've found something you like, you can save it to your personal profile so you can access it quickly next time.
Plant or dairy
As a fan of a good macchiato, what I find most intriguing is the machine's new milk texturizing system, which uses a cool-touch automatic steam wand to produce five different milk textures. The system has settings for both plant and dairy milk, which is always welcome too. Many machines are optimized for dairy only, and struggle to create silky foam with almond or oat alternatives.
Another particularly interesting feature is cold extraction, which De'Longhi promises will create a smooth drink with the same flavor profile as traditional overnight cold brewing, but takes just five minutes from start to finish. Several coffee machines I've tried recently have done a respectable job of cold extraction, so I'm interested to see how the La Specialista Touch compares.
I'll be testing the new machine very soon, and will bring you a full review so you can see how it holds up against the competition – and whether it can create the dreamy, creamy microfoam it promises. It's available now direct from De'Longhi, priced at £699 (about $880 / AU$1,400).
