Intro
I enjoy using E 61 espresso machines, they are classic, they are consistent, and they are built to last, which is why I have always been a big fan of home-sized or Compact E 61 like the Rocket Appartamento or the Diletta Bello.
So today we’re looking at another relatively new competitor in this space the Profitec Pro 400 home espresso machine It has managed to fit many features into this very slim design. Should you be considering it? Let’s find out.
Profitec Pro 400 Specifications |
|
|---|---|
| Width | 9.0 in (228 mm) |
| Depth | 17.6 in (448 mm) |
| Height | 14.7 in (372 mm) |
| Weight | 47.4 lbs (21.5 kg) |
| Boiler Type | Heat Exchange |
| Boiler Capacity | 0.42 gal (1.6 L) |
| Water Tank Capacity | 0.74 gal (2.8 L) |
| Voltage | 110/120 V |
| Wattage | 1400 W |
| Water Source | Water Tank |
| Pump Type | Vibratory |
it’s a machine made by a manufacturer known for quality and this one gets you a lot of bang for your buck. it’s a new best value and in exchange boilers espresso machines with E 61 group and adjustable temperatures.
Hey espresso with that Profitec Pro 400 If quality and value are important to you when making purchase decisions, this one is worth a look.
details I’ll take you inside the machine for a look at the components of construction have test results for route temperatures and steaming performance, and talk about customizing options and what comes in the box.
But first, a quick teaser of a standard feature package you won’t get on more expensive machines.
The Basic
Profitec Pro 400 is the most affordable machine and products catalog and its prices are hundreds of dollars less than similar machines from other manufacturers Lacking similar features.
If your counter space is at a premium Profitec Pro 400 dimensions are 9 inches wide.
For scale, Here it is next to an ECM synchronika that’s about six inches wider. It’s a heat exchange boiler machine so you can brew and steam simultaneously.
A 2.8 liter water reservoir supplies the quiet vibration pump which feeds a 1.6 liter insulated stainless steel boiler.
The casework is all stainless polished up front brushed on the sides and back. The base is one piece with a textured finish.
The dual manometer gives you readings on the boiler and the brew pressure machine can be equipped with Profitec Pro 400 flow control.
Now I won’t go deep into it here but with flow control, you can custom craft your extractions to say we do brightness and fresh specialty coffees, bring out more sweetness, or maybe avoid bitter flavors and darker roast.
Design
Starting with the build quality and design, the Profitec Pro 400 espresso machine immediately stocks up favorably against some other competitors. Profitec machines are designed and hand-built in Germany, which is immediately apparent when you unbox this machine.
I have zero quality complaints about the Pro 400. Normally I can kind of nitpick here or there about a few areas where the manufacturer has scaled back on quality to save costs, not so on the Pro 400 Profitec Even the cup rail is solid metal and looks fantastic.
The same cannot be said for some other competitors at this same price point. Cough In terms of the design, I wasn’t immediately a big fan of this machine.
When I first saw it, it looked pretty standard and average for a nice E 61 Group Head. When I got it home onto my countertop, that opinion really changed. It’s a good-looking machine.
Simple, and not flashy, but the way that it mixes polished metal, brushed metal, and black accents just looks right. another big chrome cube like some other E 61 the sides are actually brushed metal while the front is a mirror finish.
It also comes with these interchangeable colored discs for the steam and hot water knobs, which I do find to be a little bit gimmicky.
But I think in the future, we’ll start to see some good-looking third-party options for this machine because I see this machine being far far more popular For now, I’m sticking with blue.
As I alluded to earlier in this Blog Post, this is a very slim machine and is next to the Appartamento which is an Appartamento Group head size E 61. The Apartamento looks borderline beefy in comparison.
The Profitec Pro 400 dimensions are just under 9 inches wide, which means that it’ll fit in all but most crowded kitchens.
Steam Performance
The other benefit of boosting the temperature is added steaming power. I found that putting the boiler into its highest temperature mode reduced the steaming Profitec Pro 400 heat-up time for a single drink from 24 seconds to around 19 seconds.
Now this might be a little bit unnecessary if you’re just steaming a single portion of milk. But if you’re using it for larger volumes, this is definitely a nice trick to know about.
Just remember that if you’re going to be brewing another drink afterward at a lower temperature, you’ll have to flush the group head to get rid of any overheated water.
The steam arm on the Pro 400 Profitec is a no-burn arm as I’d expect for a machine at this level, which makes it safer and makes milk cleanup a whole lot easier because the milk doesn’t get stuck as aggressively.
The Pro 400 comes with two whole steam tips and is capable of steaming great-quality milk very quickly if you’re trying to serve multiple drinks back to back.
Brew Temperature
Now have a pro 400 is not a PID machine but using its marquee feature, you can easily change your brew time using the three-position switch to honor the rights out of the machine, push forward for lower temperatures set to the middle for a higher brew, tap and push up in the back for the highest temperature and extra milk frothing power
Now I’d like to adjust this using the roast level of my coffee beans as a guide. I use a cooler front-end position for dark roast and a middle position for medium and light roast.
I’d save the rear end position for extra frothing power and do not recommend it for espresso brewing because it’s too hot at around 208 degrees Fahrenheit.
Now after making your espresso at the front or middle position, push it into the rear position and steam pressure quickly rises for extra frothing power.
In other non-PID machines. If you want to change boiler taps or steam pressure, you have to open the machine up to get the pressure stat to adjust.
The three-temperature switch gets you capabilities close to a PID machine without the higher price tag. So what temperatures and pressures will you get in various settings?
Milk temperature
To test milk steaming times at the three boiler settings I performed our standard test of the time it takes five ounces of milk from the fridge starting in the mid-40s in the pitcher to a finish.
Tap of about 140 degrees Fahrenheit. Starting boiler fresh organic range from one bar at the lowest setting up to 1.65 bar at the highest setting.
At the highest setting, it took 21 seconds to finish 25 seconds for the middle setting and 28 seconds for the lowest set not only does the highest setting reduce cleaning time by up to 25% but produces a more vigorous role in the pits are now if you’re newer to free Coffee and can even be too much but those with experience will appreciate the higher steaming for Sure as mentioned the last time Action I don’t recommend making espresso.
Pre-infusion
While you’re steaming, it makes you think of it maybe as a Profitec Pro 400 as an automatic free infusion mode when turned on lift the brew lever and the pump runs for five seconds, then pauses for three seconds.
After that, the pump comes back on and continues running until the brew lever is lowered. The pre-infusion is gentle due to the slow increase in pressure of the vibration pump.
potential benefits of preinfusion include swelling the coffee before full-pressure brewing to help prevent channeling and giving fresh from roast coffee a moment to off gas before full pressure to help reduce bright and acidic flavors.
Eco mode
ECO mode is another feature you can turn on or off when enabling the heating of the boilers.
Switched off after 90 minutes of inactivity, to save power, raising and lowering the blue lever or operating the main power switch reactivates boiler heating after the machine enters ECO mode.
Feature
The feature set is immediately what really stood out to me about the Pro 400 Especially at its price point and is what made me want to get it in for review in the first place.
It has a large 2.8 liter water tank accessible from the top of the machine and also accessible from the top of the machine is an easy adjustment to brewing pressure, no need to tear off all the body panels to get to a barrier valve in the box.
You get a very big you get very basic but not terrible tamper will tamper and both single and both single and double spouts portafilters, water filters as well as a blind bass as well as a blind basket for cleaning. Moving on to the really onto the really good stuff,
bottom of the machine there is a three-position switch first three boiler temperatures and corresponding brew temperatures.
This allows you to adjust the brewing temperature to your specific coffee. And it also allows you to get some extra steaming power if you turn the boiler into its highest temperature mode. On top of the adjustable temperature, the Pro 400 also has an automatic pre-infusion
No, not just the mechanical preinfusion from an E61 actual automatic preinfusion.
It does a 4-bar pre-soak for 5 seconds and then it pauses for 3 seconds before ramping up to full pressure. You can watch this happen on the Combined Brew pressure and boiler pressure gauge.
If for some reason you don’t want to pre-infusion you can actually toggle this feature off.
The same thing can be done for a built-in ECO mode that shuts down the boiler after 90 minutes of inactivity.
To put it bluntly, the Pro 400 kicks the crap out of the rocket apartamento from a feature set perspective and at the same price point.
User experience
I have really been enjoying my time with the Profitec Pro 400 So much so that I’m having a tough time deciding whether to keep it or send it back at the end of this review period.
The machine warms up very quickly and having a large 2.8 litre water reservoir is really nice because it means you’re going much longer in between refills.
One small nitpick that I do have is that you have to lift up the entire top plate to get access to the water reservoir it’s also used in the programming when you’re toggling on and off the preinfusion or the built-in Eco mode.
One thing that I immediately noticed is that it is very bright, which shouldn’t be an issue because it’s turned off most of the time, but it’s definitely something to note.
in addition to the large water reservoir, the drip tray is also well-sized. As an added bit of foresight below, they’ve also included a cutout in the frame for the blind basket to be stored.
One small thing that doesn’t annoy me about the drip tray is that it doesn’t just slide straight out, you need to tilt it and then lift it, which can get tricky if it’s close to being full.
Espresso quality
The Pro 400 once again has a pretty big leg up in comparison to other e61 group head espresso machines.
Having the option to turn on or off an automatic low-pressure preinfusion is a great feature to have. Gently introducing water at the beginning of the extraction for 5 seconds, and then pausing for 3 seconds helps to saturate the puck evenly, allowing it to expand and fill in any imperfections before hitting it with full pressure.
External build
Profitec Pro 400 has a poor industrial look than other Profitec machines with a brushed stainless single-piece housing making up the back and sides wrapped.
To a mirror-friendliest front panel that has standard bows for steam and hot water well prospects more expensive machines use quarter-turn strong bells the knobs come pre-installed with blue disclets.
Users can customize with Profitec Pro 400 disclets red, green, or yellow which are included with the machine wands or no burn in the steam line thieves age who hold a dual Manometer reads a boiler brew pressure the E 61 group head has a custom taper similar to those on many ECM machines.
With its narrow web, the drip tray is smaller and has to tilt out slightly to remove for emptying, so you want to be careful of overfilling.
Under the drip tray, there’s a hidden storage area for a backflush disk and an extra steam tip when it’s easy to see things easy to now
Internal components
Notice under the cup warming tray. The OPV adjustment is fully exposed, allowing for brute pressure adjustment without removing a case which is a relatively uncommon feature.
On the majority of HX boiler machines including the Rocket Apartamento and even Profitec 500, You have to remove panels to get an OPV adjustment and get inside some machines.
That’s a real hassle on the Pro 400 that’s not the case. Remove four exposed 2.5 millimeter Allen head bolts and the single piece making up the side rear panels comes right off.
From there you can access the majority of components of 400 join a high-end ECM synchronize and older expo bar Brew to machines as one of the easiest machines to open up with just six more screws.
The top cover and water reservoir support are out-of-the-way components that are high quality and laid out to protect electronics from heat and water. moisture from the vacuum relief on the boiler is then into the drip tray.
Excellent pump mounts reduce noise and make the Pro 400 near whisper-quiet vibration pump machine.
Profitec Pro 400 accessories are in a box
Profitec Pro 400 accessories get single and double spout porta filters and filter baskets, a blind filter basket for pressure adjustment and backflushing a real usable tamper the color diskless for customizing the knobs and group brush, and a user’s manual
who do I think should buy it?
The answer is a resounding yes I think that Profitec has made an absolute no-brainer knockout with the Pro 400 in this market segment.
They have listened to all the things that people care about having a large water tank having easy access to pressure adjustment having preinfusion having temperature adjustment and putting it into a well-built good-looking and competitively priced package.
If you are looking for a compact and reasonably priced Profitec Pro 400 e61 is absolutely one that you should be considering. Again, if you want to check it out.
Final Thought
The Profitec Pro 400 is a solid and well-built machine and is currently the most affordable machine in their lineup.
The package features not found on similar but more expensive machines from other manufacturers like the easy-to-adjust brew temperatures using the three-way switch, automatic preinfusion dual Manometer for monitoring steam and brew pressure, externally adjustable brew pressure, and of course, legendary Profitec quality inside now.
Now it’s not a PID machine but does allow you to easily select temperatures based on coffee roast level and kick up to higher temperature for extra steaming power. You’ll want to take things up a notch Profitec Pro 500 PID is worth a look and hit check it out
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