De'Longhi La Specialista Arte Evo (EC9255M)

The La Specialista Arte Evo is for someone who wants a grinder, an espresso machine and a real steam wand in one box, without paying Breville's higher price classes and without giving up much counter. Tom's Guide calls it the best-value espresso machine with a grinder its reviewer has tested, and TechRadar lists it as its best manual bean-to-cup machine in its September 2026 guide. It is the budget pick on our list of espresso machines with a built-in grinder.

Skip it if you drink light roasts and like to fine-tune, because eight grind steps is a coarse range, or if you want the machine to steam milk for you. The Barista Pro has 30 steps and PID; the Barista Touch Impress adds automatic milk.

The grinder punches above its step count. De'Longhi fits a conical burr grinder with eight settings that doses by a level you set rather than by time. Tom's Guide ran the espresso setting through its sieves and found the particle size very uniform, which is the property that matters most for an even extraction, and pulled a 36 g double in 29 seconds that it found free of bitterness. It did see a few clumps in an 18 g dose, which a cheap distribution tool fixes.

Puck prep is tidy. The kit includes a dosing and tamping guide that screws onto the portafilter, a tamper and a mat, and Tom's Guide preferred it to the automatic tamping lever on De'Longhi's pricier Opera because it keeps you in control while keeping grounds off the counter. The front gauge is not a true bar reading, per Tom's Guide, but TechRadar found it a useful real-time check on grind and tamp.

Milk is strong in two of three tests. TechRadar found the wand held good pressure, enough that newcomers would have no trouble texturing milk, and Tom's Guide made latte-art-quality oat milk with it. De'Longhi adds three brew temperatures under what it calls Active Temperature Control, four presets (espresso, Americano, hot water and cold brew) and a Cold Extraction mode it rates at under five minutes; TechRadar found the cold brew needed some tweaking.

It is also the most compact pick. De'Longhi's figures work out to about 11.2 in wide and 15.9 in tall, and its US store lists two years of warranty plus a third with product registration.

The grind range is the ceiling. Eight settings with no steps in between means that when a shot runs slightly fast at one setting and slightly slow at the next, you have to adjust dose or tamp instead. That is fine with medium and dark roasts and harder with light ones.

Results are not uniform across tests. Business Insider could never get its sample dialed in: shots stayed watery with loose pucks and uneven extraction, the foam disappointed, and the reviewer found the number of parts excessive. That sits against positive results at Tom's Guide and TechRadar, so treat the first week as a dial-in period and buy where returns are easy.

Smaller irritations: Tom's Guide found the wand sits low with a stiff joint, so getting a vortex needed an awkward angle, and there is no automatic purge after steaming. TechRadar found the portafilter took effort to unlock after brewing. The temperature control is three presets rather than a PID, per Tom's Guide, and the grinder is not removable for cleaning.

Against the Barista Pro, the Arte Evo gives up fine grind steps, ThermoJet speed and PID control, and gains a narrower body, cold brew and a tamping guide in a lower price class. Against the Barista Express, the closest Breville in price class, it has fewer grind steps (8 against 16) and a longer warranty on De'Longhi's US terms. If you would rather choose the grinder yourself, a compact machine and a grinder from our grinder list may come in at a similar total, as our home espresso setup guide shows.

The Arte Evo is the sensible budget pick for a first all-in-one espresso machine: small, easy to learn, good on milk in most expert hands, with cold brew as a bonus. Its eight-step grinder and simple temperature presets limit how far you can push it, and one major test could not make it work well. If you drink medium to dark roasts and have a narrow counter, it is the best value here.