- the manual espresso machine or the piston; automation tossed upon them the aura of valuable-old; it is quite chic, slightly romantic to ennoble your kitchen with a Factory 8 from Gaggia or La Pavoni's Europiccola; with pistons you need to take into account that they have smaller water reservoirs, and can be pretty noisy during the initial heating; the minimum budget to buy: $400;
- the semi automatic espresso machine or electric pump machine; this type of espresso machine is much easier to use, as the pressure is not provided by the hand anymore, but through an electric pump; all you need to do is decide when the brewing process sttarts, by switching a knob, and decide the end of the extraction, by switching in the opposite direction; dosing, tamping and removing the grounds are still manual operations; the price to begin with is $150;
- the fully automatic espresso machine or the one touch system is very similar to the semi automatic machine, with one little difference: you only decide when the brewing starts, and the machine will stop itself, after a predefined amount of time; the lowest price is $450;
- the super automatic espresso machine - are just that, super automatics. They do allmost everything, from grinding, to dosing, tamping and brewing. They are very convenient appliances that allow you to mind your own business while the coffee is prepared, but at the same time, they don't allow you to experiment a lot. And they cost a bit more, from $800 through several thousand dollars.
Of course, there are also steam driven machines, the cheap type, but we formerly spoke about them, as not beeing able to produce enough pressure to extract (brew) real espresso.