Excellent – I was really nervous about choosing a coffee machine, and considered this to be a good 'middle of the road' choice, pricewise at least. It makes fabulous coffee - I've been nothing but really impressed. It seriously rivals what my favourite coffee shop produces. It is a little noisy, but nothing too extreme or unexpected. You can use ground coffee or beans, and predictably the coffee made with fresh beans is the best. Take note that the manual says that upon setting it up it will take several cups of coffee before it consistently starts making a good brew, and this is true. I only need to empty the grounds container and drip tray once or twice a week, and other cleaning funtions are needed much less frequently than that. This is one of the few mid-range automatic models it seems where you can froth your own milk, which I think is great. Makes great babyccinos for the kids! Controls are easy to understand, comes with a great DVD that saves you having to read the manual, automatically rinses and other cleaning functions only need to be undertaken every so often, makes great milk froth would have liked to be able to buy it in silver (not white), can't froth a large jug of milk, only small. It's fairly large.