Gaggia Classic or Isomac Giada ?????

[wolfgangr]

Looking for a machine for around 350 EUR .... after having searched up and down the net, my choice is down to Gaggia Classic and Isomac Giada.

Any opinions?

Cheers,
Wolf

[zix]

I´d probably go for the Gaggia, because it has a better pricetag where I live. You should know it has an aluminium boiler, as all consumer Gaggias do. If your water is very soft, the aluminium will slowly be eaten up by the water. Small quantities (probably well below health limits, and certainly not tasteable to me) of aluminium will end up in your cup. With hard water, this will probably not happen.
If you are very worried about aluminium levels you should probably consider the Isomac Super Giada, which has a brass boiler.

The Gaggia, however, has a bigger & better portafilter, same size as their pro machine PF:s. And a good rep! The Gaggia Classic has a 3-way solenoid, does the Super Giada? Not that it is terribly important, but it is practical.

[steves]

This might not sound helpful, but it is meant to be

What criteria did you use to bring your short-list down to these two?

Please don't laugh too loudly guys (and with apologies in advance to tisri, but he can at least chew on his hottop filters ) but:

I had a set of criteria which made me arrive at the decision to buy a "beans to cup" machine. With help from TMC members I decided on which one. (Phil couldn't stop himself from being slightly disparaging - but he was *very* restrained, I thought). There is a point to this, by the way (apart from the fact that it is somewhat cathartic...)

Anyway, a series of events conspired to change things completely. I'll try not to go into too much detail (pault's article An enthusiast's journey to coffee nirvana expresses a lot of the sentiment - clearly the facts and time-scale are different for me!)

Where was I? The point? Not yet, but hopefully soon... So what happened?

1. The company I decided to buy from happened to be just down the road, so I went along.

2. They were very helpful, explaining things (and putting the fly in the ointment - they made me a coffee...) I went home with the Gaggia Titanium I was aiming for but had fallen in love with somthing else...

3. After a week or two, the Titanium developed a fault and the company offered to exchange it. I went along to swap it and they made me another coffee... I hadn't been imagining it the first time. Even though the Titanium had produced better coffee than I was used to, this was on another planet. I asked if I could upgrade...

To sum up, I thought the most important thing was convenience (the £300 budget I originally set went out of the window with the Titanium anyway), but it wasn't. The most important thing by far was getting the best coffee I could get. That's how I ended up with the machine I have now and I'm delighted with it. I'm not sure I've felt lucky that something malfunctioned before!

Without knowing what your criteria and situation are, it's difficult to comment, but if it were me, I'd be thinking:

1. Rancilio Silvia (no personal experience but everything I read looks good) also not sure how much more this would cost or if cost is the main factor for you.

Otherwise, go for the Super Giada - the frothing attachment on the Gaggia would drive me to distraction (of course it doesn't matter if you don't do milky things) also I don't like aluminium boilers.

But, as I say, the fundamental is getting your criteria right. If you get your criteria right, the machine chooses itself.

Steve