Philips 5400 LatteGo

My wife and I have always felt that the best sort of gifts are the ones that we can both enjoy together. We usually buy a joint gift, like a new laptop or TV for ourselves at Christmas and sometimes we do the same at birthdays or other occasions like Mother’s Day or Father’s Day.

So buying a luxury item – like a bean-to-cup coffee machine – for Father’s Day isn’t that much of an extravagance when you think about it. Especially if you’re both coffee lovers and have been using pod machines for a while.

I’ve been wanting to move on from our Nespresso machine for a while now, after realising how much plastic we were sending to compost on a weekly basis. Even the aluminium pods weren’t really a solution, as you’re supposed to open them up and wash them out first before putting them in the recycle bin. They’re not cheap either, costing £4 for ten cups of the brand I use, and it gets even more expensive if you like good quality decaf like my wife does.

The same brand of coffee I use costs just £7 for a large bag of beans in my local supermarket. Even for a someone who drinks 5 cups a day this has lasted me three weeks, in our new Phillips 5400, so far without running out. I’d have spent at least £36 on pods in that time. Add the money we save from my wife’s coffee and I calculate we’ll save £364 over the first year of having the machine. Not to mention reducing our environmental footprint at the same time. But what’s a Phillips 5400 actually like? Find out below:

Set up

Our Philips 5400 LatteGo arrived to great excitement in our house, but also a little trepidation. I was slightly worried by the fact we would have to set it up; I’m not great at following instruction manuals that mainly involve diagrams (I have a lifelong fear of IKEA for that very reason). There were quite a lot of scary looking parts too, and even a tube of grease and water hardness strip.

Luckily there is a very handy YouTube tutorial to help get the Philips 5400 LatteGo set up. Even I could follow it and to be honest a lot of the process was automated and prompted by the 5400 once it was plugged in and my language selected. The water hardness test was a simple affair, just holding the strip under the tap for a short while, waiting and then inputting the results when the 5400 asked for it. The AquaClean filter was a straightforward affair too, just soaking it in water for a while and then fitting it to the water container. According to the instructions this filter will prevent me having to de-scale the 5400 for approximately 5,000 cups of coffee, which is about two years for our family’s consumption and about seven years if you only have two cups a day.

Brewing your drink

Once it was set up, we were ready to brew our first drinks, so I filled the bean container with my beans and replaced the lid. I should add at this point that the lid for the bean container has a rubber aroma seal and UV filtered lid, to prevent the beans spoiling or the scent of coffee beans permeating your kitchen. It does a really good job of this and it was my wife’s main concerns, because as much as she likes the odd cup of coffee she doesn’t want the kitchen constantly smelling of beans.

Then it was just a case of selecting my drink – a regular coffee – and choosing the strength and cup size using the simple digital selection menu. Cue a fair bit whirring as the beans are ground and hey presto, the perfect cup of Italian coffee!

Next up was my wife’s decaf, which could have got problematic with a lesser machine. But thankfully the Philips 5400 has a bypass valve that you can simply scoop pre-ground coffee into. There’s even a scoop to measure it out properly. You simply select the pre-ground option on the digital display and off you go, one cup of decaf without having to change the beans. This feature is just as handy if you fancy a cup of Columbian or Ethiopian beans instead of your usual tipple, and not just to appease the decaf drinkers.

Next we decided to try the automatic LatteGo milk system to make the kids a babycino (since neither of us regularly drink cappuccino). The LatteGo is an automatic milk frother and is made up of a transparent container and an outlet through which the milk travels to your cup. It’s really simple to attach and remove from the coffee machine and is completely dishwasher friendly.

To froth the milk, you just add cold milk to the LatteGo milk container, and then press the button on the machine for the drink you want to make. If this is a cappuccino then the 5400 will ask the coffee strength, size of cup etc and make the entire drink while your cup sits under the spout. Since I chose “frothed milk” as the drink there was no need to select a strength we just waited as milk and air were mixed at high speed in the LatteGo milk container, and the babycino’s were automatically poured into the kids cups through the spout. There are no tubes, so cleaning and maintaining the LatteGo milk system is as simple as washing it in the sink or the dishwasher.

The Philips 5400 allows you to save four profiles, with your drink preferences automatically remembered, so that you don’t need to go through the process of selecting the strength, whether you want pre-ground beans or the cup size. Since we are both creatures of habit this feature has been great for shaving off a precious few seconds when I’m desperate for that first cup of the day! It probably works even better for users whose coffee preference is under the “more drinks” button rather than the first six options on the front of the 5400 (see below for full list).
• Espresso
• Coffee
• Americano
• Latte macchiato
• Cappuccino
• Café au lait
More drinks
• Flat white
• Cafe crema
• Cafe latte
• Espresso lungo
• Ristretto
• Milk froth
• Travel mug
• Hot water

The quality of your drink obviously depends to a large extent on your beans, and the Philips 5400 has done justice to both our favourite drinks since we worked out the right strength and size of drink for our personal preferences and stored them under our profiles. I’m certain that once we’ve got guests wanting one of the other options that they’ll be equally impressed with the LatteGo’s additional functionality.
 

Size and Appearance

Obviously a big factor when spending hundreds of pounds on a coffee machine is that you want something that looks stylish, and I’d say the timeless and elegant matt black and chrome of the Philips 5400 looks stylish enough to hold its own in most kitchens. The touch-pad buttons are responsive, the digital display clear and everything about the machine feels upmarket. Our kids love it, as they say it reminds them of being in a hotel.

Another plus point here, for me at least is the relatively modest footprint in our kitchen. Bean-to-cup machines are generally rather large, but considering everything it does the 5400 doesn’t take up much more space than our old Nespresso machine; I measured the 5400 at around 24cm x 37cm on the base.
 

Verdict

If you drink as much coffee as we do then ditching the pod machine in favour of a bean-to-cup is a really worthwhile investment. While the only other bean-to-cup machines I’ve used have been in hotels, the 5400 is the best I’ve used so far. The machines in hotels seem to just have really basic options (possibly because guests don’t want to be faffing around with strength options on an unfamiliar gadget) so having a machine that you can tailor the strength and size of our drinks to our exact preferences is great.

The 5400 is elegant, modern and very simple to use, and once you’ve set your preferences it’s just a case of switching it on and selecting your profile.

One thing that did take me by surprise afterwards was the fact that the Philips 5400 rinses itself out each and every time you turn the machine on or off. This is a great feature for getting the freshest possible taste every time, and it only rinses a small amount of water through but it takes some getting used to and I wasted some pre-ground coffee a couple of times by filling it before turning the machine on, only for it to get washed away in the rinse cycle. Once you get used to this it’s fine though and helps keep everything spick and span.

I would definitely recommend buying the Philips 5400. It’s by no means the cheapest bean-to-cup on the market but Phillips is a quality brand that I trust and I’ve been overjoyed with the machine thus far. I expect to have many years of enjoyment and refreshment from it.

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