How much should I spend on my first espresso machine?

Work out your total budget first, then split it roughly evenly between machine and grinder. An even split will consistently beat spending everything on the machine and using pre-ground coffee. If your total budget is small enough that half of it will not buy a burr grinder, do not split it: buy a machine with a pressurised basket and revisit later.

Does 15 bar or 20 bar pressure make better coffee?

No. Espresso extracts at around 9 bar. A '15 bar' or '20 bar' rating describes the pump's maximum, which is then limited by a valve during actual brewing. It is a marketing number, and a higher one is not better.

What is the difference between a single boiler, a thermoblock and a dual boiler?

A single boiler holds a reservoir of water at temperature. That is stable, but it must be reheated to steam, which means waiting. A thermoblock heats water on demand, which is fast to start and to switch modes but less thermally stable. A dual boiler has separate brew and steam boilers, so it does both at once, and costs several times as much.

Do I need a bottomless portafilter?

Not to make good coffee, but it is the cheapest diagnostic tool you can buy. It shows you exactly where your puck is channelling, which is otherwise invisible. Only worth it on a machine with a standard 58mm group and non-pressurised baskets.

How to Buy an Espresso Machine Without Wasting Your Money

Buy the grinder first

This is the single most important sentence in this guide, and it is the advice most often ignored.

Espresso is brewed under about nine bars of pressure, which makes it uniquely sensitive to how evenly the coffee is ground. A blade grinder produces particles of wildly different sizes; water rushes through the small gaps between large chunks and over-extracts the dust, giving you something simultaneously sour and bitter. No machine can fix this after the fact.

A burr grinder crushes beans between two shaped surfaces at a fixed distance, producing consistent particle size. This is the difference between a repeatable shot and a lottery.

The practical rule: split your budget roughly evenly between machine and grinder. An even split makes better coffee than spending it all on the machine and grinding nothing yourself. Every time, without exception.

If half your budget will not buy a burr grinder, do not split it. Buy a machine with a pressurised basket, accept the quality ceiling, and revisit later.

The three numbers to ignore

Bar pressure

You will see "15 bar" and "20 bar" on boxes. Espresso extracts at roughly 9 bar, and machines advertising 15 or 20 achieve that by limiting the pump with an over-pressure valve during brewing. The advertised figure is the pump's theoretical maximum, not the brewing pressure, and a higher number tells you nothing useful.

Wattage

Higher wattage means faster heating, not better coffee. It is worth knowing if warm-up time matters to you, and irrelevant to what ends up in the cup.

Number of "programmes"

Preset buttons for espresso, lungo, cappuccino and so on are timers. They do not adapt to your beans, your grind or your dose. Once you have dialled a machine in you will use one of them, or none.

The four things that actually matter

1. Pressurised or non-pressurised basket

This is the most consequential specification on any cheap machine, and it is frequently not mentioned in the listing at all.

A pressurised basket has a single small hole that generates crema by forcing coffee through a restriction. It makes almost any grind produce something drinkable. That is a floor under how bad your coffee can be, and at the same time a ceiling on how good it can get.

A non-pressurised basket is what cafés use. It gives you nothing for free and rewards good grinding with genuinely excellent coffee.

Neither is objectively correct. Pressurised is right if you will not buy a grinder. Non-pressurised is right if you will.

2. Temperature stability

Extraction is extremely sensitive to brew temperature. A machine that drifts by five degrees between shots gives you different coffee each morning from identical inputs, which makes improving impossible because you cannot tell what changed.

Manufacturers almost never publish stability figures, which is precisely why reviews that measure it are worth reading. Look for figures given as a range across consecutive shots, not a single headline temperature.

3. Portafilter size

58mm is the de facto standard. Choosing it gives you access to a huge ecosystem of baskets, tampers, distribution tools and bottomless portafilters, mostly at low prices.

Machines with 51mm or 53mm groups exist and work fine, but the accessory market is much thinner and you are more dependent on the manufacturer. If you expect to tinker at all, treat 58mm as a requirement.

4. Boiler type

Thermoblock. Heats water on demand. Fast to warm up and fast to switch between brewing and steaming, at the cost of thermal stability. Best for speed and convenience.
Single boiler. Holds water at temperature. Stable brewing, but switching to steam means waiting 30 to 60 seconds and then flushing to cool back down. Best value for the money.
Dual boiler. Separate brew and steam boilers, so no waiting and no flushing. Several times the price, and only worth it if you regularly make several milk drinks in a row.

How to decide in two minutes

Answer these in order and stop at the first "no".

Will you buy a burr grinder? If no → pressurised basket, thermoblock, and spend as little as possible. You are optimising for convenience, and that is a legitimate choice.
Will you make more than two milk drinks at once, regularly? If yes → you need a dual boiler, and your budget just increased substantially. There is no way around this.
Otherwise → single boiler, 58mm non-pressurised, and put the rest into the grinder.

That is genuinely the whole decision. Everything else is refinement.

What nobody tells you about the first fortnight

Your first week on a non-pressurised machine will produce bad coffee. This is normal and it is not a fault in the machine.

Dialling in means adjusting grind size until a given dose of coffee takes roughly the right time to produce roughly the right volume, and every new bag of beans changes it slightly. Expect to throw away shots. Expect to feel like you have bought the wrong thing around day four.

If that sounds tedious rather than interesting, you want a pressurised basket, and there is no shame in that at all. The best espresso machine is the one still being used in six months.