Krups XP5620 review

The first thing we noticed about the Krups XP5620 was the rather complicated-looking group handle, which ratchets into place in the machine. The reason for this is that Krups has its own tamping system built into the machine, which means you don’t need to tamp by hand.

On the group head is a scale that helps you decide how much you need to turn the group handle, depending on the amount of ground coffee you have put in. For one cup of coffee you need to turn it, so it’s pointing to the right; for two cups, the handle should be straight forwards. It’s a clever idea, although it means that for one cup the dual spouts of the group handle aren’t straight, so lining up a cup is a little trickier.

The XP5620 has a built-in tamping system, so you just turn the group handle to the desired position

When you’re ready to make coffee, you need to make sure that the 1.1L reservoir has water in it, and that the machine is up to temperature, by looking at the indicator light. You can warm up your cups while you’re waiting using the cup warmer on top. There’s 89mm of room underneath the group handle, so all but the largest of mugs will fit; our test mug went under with no problems.

With the machine warmed up, you just have to put the coffee into the group handle, turn it to the correct position and turn the control handle to the coffee symbol.

Coffee initially started pouring out at the right rate, but part way through the flow started to reduce and we were left with more of a dribble towards the end of the pour.

Espresso started to pour slowly towards the end, and we got a very thin crema

This meant that we were left with very thin crema, which was far too white and lacked the reddish-brown colour that a good espresso has. We tried again, but adjusted our grinder to produce a courser ground. This time, the results, were much better. The XP5620 still started to reduce the flow part pay through the pour, but it made less of an impact. We ended up with a thicker, darker crema, although it was still a little too light for our liking and slightly bubbly where the coffee poured in.

Get the grind right and you can get decent coffee out of the XP5620

Taste was better again, with the right level of bitterness, although it wasn’t quite as rich as with the best other machines that we’ve reviewed.

We like the easy eject system on the group handle, though, which pushes the used coffee grounds out into the bin, removing the for rapping it against the bin.

We like the easy eject button

Next we frothed milk using the steamer setting. To do this you have to turn the dial on the XP5620 to the pre-heat setting and wait for the indicator light to turn on. When it has, you turn the dial to the steam setting.

There’s no tap and the steam control is automatic. While the steam wand is very long, we found that it too a long time to get the milk up to temperature, which meant that we ended up with a lot of foam that was quite bubbly. Given the slow build-up of temperature it’s hard to control the type of milk you produce.

We found it hard to control the level of foam

We tried again, but the milk was too frothy. Knowing this, we used a spoon to hold back the froth, while we poured the milk into the latte glass containing an espresso shot. This time we got the right mix of foam and milky coffee.

Be careful of how you pour milk in order to get the best latte

The Krups 5620 is a coffee machine with plenty of clever features, but the results are quite variable. While the automatic tamping is supposed to make pouring coffee easier, we found that learning how the system worked was harder than just tamping. We also found it harder to froth milk properly on this machine.

That said, once you know its foibles and the type of grind the machine likes, it’s possible to get good espresso and milk drinks out of it. Even so, for the same amount of money you can buy the De’Longhi Scultura, which makes much better coffee.