De'Longhi Eletta Explore ECAM45086S vs Philips Series 5500 LatteGo EP5544/90

Hot and cold milk foam from one machine, with cold brew in minutes rather than hours

Scores higher on capacity & refills, build quality & warranty.

Twenty drinks including six iced, from a two-part milk system that rinses in seconds

Scores higher on cleaning & upkeep, grinder & grind control, value for money.

• +Two milk systems, LatteCrema Hot and LatteCrema Cool, which nothing else here has.
• +Cold foam for iced drinks rather than hot foam poured over ice.
• +Cold coffee in minutes from De'Longhi's Cold Extraction Technology.
• +A 6.24 inch cup clearance and a travel mug that takes 15 of the recipes up to 16 oz.
• +Custom recipes and four user profiles through De'Longhi's Coffee Link app.

• −$1,999.95, the third dearest bean-to-cup on this site, after the JURA Z10 and E8.
• −De'Longhi's own pages say cold brew takes under 3 minutes and under 5 minutes.
• −It markets 50+ recipes and names 31 in its own comparison table.
• −No burr material is published, and nothing says whether the brew group comes out.
• −The warranty is two years, with a third only on registration.

• +Twenty drinks, all named by Philips, including six iced ones and a travel mug setting.
• +LatteGo is two parts with no tubes, and Philips states both go in the dishwasher.
• +A removable brew group, which is what lets you rinse the part that does the work.
• +AquaClean, which Philips says means no descaling for up to 5000 cups.
• +Four user profiles plus a guest, so a household is not re-setting strength every morning.

• −Philips publishes no price, and its own retailer list runs from $699.00 to $1,299.95.
• −The SKU most shops sell, EP5544/94, has no page on Philips' own site at all.
• −Philips' two pages for this series disagree on voltage and country of manufacture.
• −The AquaClean claim assumes eight filter replacements, which is a running cost to price in.