I roast coffee and thought this would be a good machine to test espresso with different pressure and prewetting settings. I also thought Simonelli had a pretty good reputation in the industry. After 2 years with this machine, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
To start, even though Majesty site said shipping within 1 business day at the time, Simonelli was pretty slow getting bench testing done and getting the machine to me. This should have been my first clue.
From the start the machine had issues with a thermal fuse. This was not just an issue with my machine- it has been an issue for most people I know with the same machine. It would go out about every 4-6 months. To be fair though, after the first 3 fuses, the most recent one has lasted over 12 months. But I believe the fuse issue was a defect.
There were also leak issues on the steam valve fitting and the discharge pipes. I am not a heavy user so having these things happen so quickly was a surprise and caused more downtime.
Worst of all, the machine relies on an iOS or Android app for many of its features. There is no way to adjust many of these features (prewetting, auto purge, steam temperature , group pressure, on/off scheduling) without it. As of right now, that app has been ‘down for maintenance’ for over a month. And when it was taken down it disabled the previous version leaving all users with disabled features on their machines. In my opinion, it should not be legal to sell a product with certain features advertised and then have the manufacturer disable those features remotely at any time. But that’s what is happening. And it could happen again. Eventually if they stop supporting the app it’s entirely possible these features could disappear forever. Needless to say that’s not acceptable.
Long story short- if you need a machine you can rely on day to day- this is not that machine. Avoid it at all costs.
