The Gaggia Anima Prestige is a gorgeously simple, super automatic espresso machine that allows you to create richly delicious, authentic café beverages in your home or office at the touch of a button.
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With this best-in-class model of the Anima line, you’ll have a tiny barista at your service to brew your favorite specialty beverages. From the impressively easy to clean removable milk carafe to the elegant space saving design, there are so many things that wow us about this machine.
Made in Italy by the brilliant designers at Gaggia Milano, the Anima Prestige is truly the soul of espresso.
Whether you’re a novice when it comes to making espresso drinks, or a complete coffee nerd, you can’t go wrong with the Gaggia Anima Prestige.
Let us take you on a tour of one of our favorite super automatic espresso machines, to see if you’ll love it as much as we do.
What we love about the Gaggia Anima Prestige Automatic Espresso Machine:
- Petite and Elegant, Space Saving Design.
- Removable Milk Carafe with Quick Clean.
- One-touch Espresso, Espresso Lungo, Cappuccino, and Latte Macchiato.
- Incredibly Easy to Use with an Intuitive Interface.
- Fully Customizable Recipes with the Memo Function.
- Accommodates Large 6” Cups or Mugs.
- Integrated Flat Ceramic Grinder with 5 Grind Settings.
- Bypass Doser for Decaf or Specialty Grounds.
- Exceptionally Easy to Clean and Maintain.
Design of the Gaggia Anima Prestige Automatic Espresso Machine
Just a short 8.7 inches wide and 14 inches tall, the Gaggia Anima Prestige is perfect fit into a small office breakroom or city apartment. It’s just short of 17 inches tall with the top access water reservoir’s lid open, and under 20 pounds in weight.
The Gaggia Anima Prestige has an elegantly designed stainless steel front and top with black plastic sides. Under the easy-to-use command center, the exit spout adjusts to accommodate even our tall Irish coffee glass mugs perfectly.
To the left of the exit spout, you can plug in the milk carafe, hot waterspout, or stainless-steel cover to keep your machine looking sleek when it’s not in use.
The drip tray is easily removed with two pressable side buttons and manages to be mess-free thanks to its innovative design. The design team had short walls installed through the middle to create a no-spill drip tray.
Even being a petite machine, it packs a punch in capacity.
- 60-ounce capacity water reservoir,
- 8.8-ounce capacity bean hopper, and
- 15-puck capacity dredge box
You can make multiple cups a day for your family or office without worry.
The Anima Prestige’s user-friendly, stylish LCD display can be used to adjust through:
- 3 temperature settings,
- 5 intensity settings,
- shot length, and
- milk volume.
We love its convenient notification system that alerts you when the machine is low on water or beans, or needs to be maintained or descaled.
Features & Performance of Gaggia Anima Prestige Automatic Espresso Machine:
One Touch Beverage Selection
The main feature of this machine is its one-touch beverage menu.
And, we think that’s what makes this such a great fit for an office or a family with a range of different skill levels when it comes to coffee making.
The system allows novices to make fool-proof café-style drinks.
If there’s not enough water or beans, the machine will clearly let you know. Once stocked, all you have to do is:
- Take the milk carafe out of the fridge, and
- Plug it in in the case of a milk drink,
- Set a mug under the spout, and
- Press the drink you want.
Make delicious Espressos, Espresso Lungos, Cappuccinos, and Latte Macchiatos at the touch of a button. And if you want hot water or just frothed milk you can create your own tea, tea lattes, cocoas, and more!
Memo Function to Program Your Preferences
You can make sure your Anima Prestige knows your preferences and gets the recipe just right every time.
Choose the milk length, espresso length, temperature, and intensity, exactly to your taste for each of the four recipes.
This is one of our personal favorite functions because the customization is there all the way for all four recipes.
Let’s say you’re not a fan of latte macchiatos. Don’t let that discourage you from this machine because you can easily adjust that recipe button to an espresso macchiato by turning the milk foam all the way down – There are a plethora of options. We think this was a genius move on the design team’s part.
Integrated Milk Carafe with Milk Circuit Quick Clean
The stand-out feature for this cream of the crop Prestige model in the Anima line is its milk solution. The Prestige offers the most automated milk unit of the bunch, which is their intentionally designed integrated milk carafe.
The milk carafe holds 17 ounces of milk, or enough for around 4 to 5 beverages.
You can store the carafe in your refrigerator until you’re ready to make a drink, then simply plug it in to the front of the machine and watch it make deliciously textured micro foam.
You might wonder how it’s possible to store it full of milk in your fridge in between beverages. That would be thanks to its amazing milk circuit quick clean feature!
The machine will prompt you after to each use to run a quick clean. Just press the check mark and it will run hot water through the component where it froths and exits the carafe, not touching your fresh milk inside. It’s incredible!
Ceramic Grinder and Bypass Doser
The Gaggia Anima Prestige comes with a flat, 8.8-ounce capacity, 100% ceramic grinder.
Ceramic grinders are the way to go as they last longer, prevent overheating your beans, and extract the purest flavor from your coffee.
The grinder has 5 adjustable settings from fine to a coarse grind.
Further protecting the integrity of your beans, the Anima Prestige has an AromaSeal lid to keep your coffee extra fresh.
Of course, the Gaggia team had to include a bypass doser for any decaf or specialty ground coffee lovers too!
Pre-Brewing System with Optiaroma for Maximum Flavor
Let’s talk a little bit about how the Anima Prestige creates such wonderful espresso up to par with what you’d find in a café.
This machine uses a pre-brewing system, often referred to as pre-infusion. It gently wets the freshly ground coffee to extract the cleanest and most nuanced flavor profile out of your coffee possible.
The Gaggia includes their standard “optiaroma” system which allows you to adjust how bold your beverage will be up through five settings – which is a lot more than most machines, which may only give you 2 or 3 intensity options.
Maintenance: Automatic Cleaning & Guided Descaling
The Anima Prestige is exceedingly easy to clean and maintain thanks to its milk circuit quick clean and removable parts including the brew unit.
It’s important to rinse off your brew unit once a week to keep the machine running optimally.
The Prestige even has a descale notification light and offers a guided descaling process, so that even the more taxing things about owning your own espresso machine are made easy.
To make your life even easier, its water reservoir has the ability to hold a water filter, so the times you have to descale are few and far between.
Things to Think About
There aren’t many drawbacks to this fully automatic unit, but there are some things you might want to consider before purchasing. For example, while we love the ceramic grinder, we wish it had a few more settings. Some other machines offer between 8 and 30 grind settings.
It’s also important to remember that the Gaggia Anima Prestige is a fully automatic machine, which might be exactly what you’re looking for. On the other hand if you’re wanting to learn more about the espresso making process and get your hands dirty, this isn’t the machine for you.
Setup Process:
Components of Gaggia Anima Prestige
2. Water tank seat
3. Coffee bean hopper
4. Pre-ground coffee compartment
5. Removable water tank
6. Main switch
I. ON
0. OFF
8. Coffee grounds drawer
9. Drip tray
10. Drip tray grill
11. Coffee dispensing spout
12. Hot water dispensing spout
13. Milk carafe
The setup process for Anima Prestige is simple:
- Step 0: Remove all the packaging and find a safe location allowing for some padding on all sides of the machine for you to work.
- Step 1: Remove the water tank, rinse, and fill to the max level.
- Step 2: Add your coffee beans to the coffee hopper and plug in the machine.
- Step 3: Place a container under the water and espresso spouts and power the machine on.
- Step 4: Press the okay check mark for circuit priming and let it rinse.
- Step 3: Once the cycle is complete, you’re ready to go!
Tip: Your first shot or two the coffee won’t be its best quality. By the third shot, you’ll get great results! Our recommended settings are highest intensity, highest heat, and finest grind.
Comparable: Gaggia Anima Prestige Automatic Espresso Machine vs. Philips 3200 Series Fully Automatic Espresso Machine w/LatteGo
If you’re in the market for a fully automatic espresso machine under $1,000, there’s some competition. We’ve also tried out and had a great experience with the Philips 3200 Series Fully Automatic Espresso Machine with LatteGo, so we thought it’d be a good comparable to look at against the Gaggia Anima Prestige Automatic Espresso Machine. Let’s see who will win out!
Design Comparison
Both have similar footprints, with the Gaggia Anima Prestige just eking out a victory, by being an inch less wide and an inch shorter.
We also find the aesthetic of the stainless-steel, digital Anima Prestige to be sleeker and more sophisticated than the mostly plastic, analog button Philips.
Even though the Prestige is more compact, it’s still slightly heavier, which lets you know it’s made of sturdier materials.
Beyond looks, we prefer the design of the water reservoir on the Philips 3200 series.
It’s got a slightly larger capacity, they include the filter (unlike the Gaggia), and best of all it can be accessed from the front of the machine. This makes it so much easier to refill.
The Philips bean hopper also has a larger capacity and is fully ceramic just like the Prestige. It also offers a bypass doser and aroma seal lid on the bean hopper.
Function Comparison
Both machines offer one-touch options, but the Philips 3200 series has a one touch button for Americano as well.
You can make an Americano with the Gaggia Anima Prestige, but it won’t be one touch.
The other main feature similarity between the two are the fully automatic milk solutions.
Having used both, we have to give the milk solution crown to Gaggia.
The Gaggia’s milk carafe is undoubtedly higher quality in look and feel, but it also creates better cappuccino foam specifically and doesn’t splash as much as our Philips LatteGo.
As far as quality of espresso, they are very close. We think the Gaggia’s flavor is a bit better, but it’s pretty subjective. One thing we don’t like so much about the Philips is that it leaks a little hot water into the cup before every shot. This is not an issue with the Gaggia.
Which model should you get?
Both Philips 3200 and the Anima Prestige are on our best seller list this year. Both are popular super automatic machines, and great value for the money.
Take a look at design and the control center, you may prefer digital versus analog or vice versa. Next, consider which type of milk carafe you favor. Personally, we think the Anima Prestige has a classier design and higher quality of material. You can’t go wrong with either one though.
Final Thoughts:
As the worthy flagship of Gaggia’s best-selling Anima line, the Gaggia Anima Prestige Automatic Espresso Machine (view on Amazon) is worth every penny.
We love the design from its aesthetic to its usability and ingenuity.
If you’re on the hunt for a super automatic espresso machine that can craft consistent, delicious, café-style beverages at the push of a button for your home or office, get the Gaggia Anima Prestige.
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