If you love coffee and espresso drinks but you don’t love pulling your own espresso shots, then automatic is the name of the game for you. The De’Longhi PrimaDonna Aromatic is an automatic espresso machine that delivers barista-quality drinks from the comfort of your home coffee bar.
This espresso machine makes everything from cold brew to cappuccinos, with the tweaks and customizations to make each drink perfect for your exact tastes. It’s fully automatic (including cleaning its milk wands and dialling in your espresso beans), making every step of your brewing process as easy as pressing a button.
What’s in the box of the De’Longhi PrimaDonna Aromatic?
In the box of the De’Longhi PrimaDonna Aromatic espresso machine, you’ll find the machine itself along with a few extra drink-making accessories, setup accessories, and manuals. The setup and cleaning accessories include a water hardness test, a carbon filter (for water filtration), and a cleaning brush.
For drink-making, the machine’s accessories include a removable water spout, a measuring scoop for pre-ground beans, a LatteCrema milk carafe for hot drinks, a cold LatteCrema Cool milk carafe for cold drinks, and an ice tray.
The PrimaDonna has a built-in conical bean grinder, drip tray, grounds bin, and water tank.
What makes the PrimaDonna Aromatic different?
The PrimaDonna Aromatic is an automatic, at-home espresso machine that can create 38 different coffee drinks at the touch of a button. That includes drinks like espresso, drip coffee, americano, cold brew, and iced coffee—even tea and steamed milk. It uses three different extraction methods (espresso, drip, and cold brew) to perfect any coffee recipe, taking just three minutes to extract cold brew.
What’s really nice about the PrimaDonna Aromatic is that it’s truly automatic from the floor up. Not only does it pull each shot for you, but it also dials in your grind, adjusts your dose, steams your milk, rinses your milk spout, and more.
You can store six different coffee bean profiles and four custom user profiles in the Aromatic, using its 5-inch colour touchscreen to navigate every step. It has Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, pairing with De’Longhi’s Coffee Link app to access to remote brewing and additional recipes.
The PrimaDonna Aromatic is compatible with both coffee beans and grounds, with a self-cleaning system that features remarkably quick heat-up for both machine cleaning and everyday drink making.
Are De’Longhi espresso machines good coffee makers?
Ever since reviewing the De’Longhi Rivelia automatic espresso machine, I’ve been wondering: why are De’Longhi machines so nice nowadays? Are De’Longhi coffee makers good machines? When did they leave behind their down-to-earth 90s image and start producing more cutting-edge products?
I did a little research for this De’Longhi espresso machine review, and it turns out I wasn’t just imagining things. The De’Longhi of today is different from the one ten or twenty years ago. I think that’s reflected in their technologies and product knowledge, too.
How De’Longhi has upscaled
De’Longhi SpA, the Italian coffee makers’ parent company, has been buying up different brands in a major way.
In 2020, they acquired Capital Brands, including the blending and grinding technologies of NutriBullet and Magic Bullet.
In 2021, they bought out Everysys Group, the Swiss super-automatic espresso machine maker behind the Shotmaster—widely regarded as the best push-button espresso machine on the market. (A single Shotmaster machine retails in the range of $50K.)
Finally, in 2024, De’Longhi purchased a majority stake in La Marzocco, the cult-favourite espresso machine in almost every specialty coffee shop across North America and Europe.
When you look at this purchase history, you can kind of see how (and why) De’Longhi has changed in the past few years. The brand has upscaled in a big way. They’re serious about being able to make the best coffee possible, and they’re acquiring companies with the technologies, experience, and the knowledge to help them do that.
I, for one, have been loving the change. I think that De’Longhi is currently offering some of the best automatic machines on the market, and their machines are backed up by really deep-rooted knowledge that translates directly into your cup of espresso.
What it’s like to use the De’Longhi PrimaDonna Aromatic
The PrimaDonna is nice—and it’s also very, very automatic. I found it easy to swipe through the PrimaDonna Aromatic’s 38 preset drink types to make exactly what I wanted, and I enjoyed that it could execute almost every step on its own (even cleaning).
38 drinks is a lot, which is why I like that the machine will refine your drink menu based on your habits. You can also sort the drink menu by temperature (hot or cold/iced) and then further sort by drink type (coffee or milk), which makes it easy to find what you need.
Upon selecting a drink, I also really liked that you can customize for things like flavour intensity, number of shots, and drink size. However, one thing that I’d love to see updated in future PrimaDonna models is the sizing of their smallest iced drinks. I can’t fit my favourite drink (an iced oat milk latte) into my favourite cup (the De’Longhi 7.4 oz cold brew glass) no matter what I do. The smallest possible iced latte size on the PrimaDonna Aromatic is 8 oz, even if I try to tweak it.
Give us tiny afternoon lattes, De’Longhi—I beg of you!
I really enjoyed having the PrimaDonna in my home, both for its drink quality (smooth and extremely rich) and for its convenience. Everything operates at the touch of a button with a focus on consistency.
Bean Adapt Technology
The PrimaDonna even dials in your espresso beans for you, recalibrating with “Bean Adapt Technology” that adjusts the machine’s built-in conical burr grinder for grind size, dose, and temperature within 3 shots for every new bag of beans.
You can digitally tweak these settings as needed, but it’s unlikely that you’ll have to. I recommend lowering the temperature by one stop for decaf beans; otherwise, the machine is great on its own.
LatteCrema carafes
Even the art of creating a milk-based coffee drink is easy with the PrimaDonna. The system uses De’Longhi LatteCrema carafes to craft both hot and cold drinks, and comes with an ice cube tray so it can lead you through crafting iced drinks that never taste watered-down.
The LatteCrema carafes work with both dairy and non-dairy milk, and they’re so easy to care for—each part of the carafes is dishwasher-safe. The carafes attach to the front of the PrimaDonna espresso machine with a simple insertion, and the machine reminds you to turn on the carafes’ automatic cleaning function after every use.
How to make consistent coffee drinks with digital accuracy
One noteable feature about the PrimaDonna is that it really focuses on user profiles. You can set up multiple users on this machine, customize drinks only within that user profile, and even customize for factors like time of day or type of coffee bean. The different profiles are easy to navigate, using visual cues like colour and symbols so you can create your perfect drink without any second-guessing.
Coffee lovers, in my experience, tend to be creatures of habit—sometimes in ways that can seem a little picky to the outside viewer. (I choose to view this as discernment rather than pickiness.)
The PrimaDonna Aromatic makes it easy to add in those little customizations that make a cup of coffee go from “nice” to “perfect,” like automatically sizing up in the mornings to fill your to-go cup or automatically pulling a smaller shot after 4 PM to reduce your caffeine intake in the evening.
What do PrimaDonna Aromatic drinks taste like?
Thanks to its high level of customization, the Aromatic produces drinks that taste exactly how you want them. It drips and brews bold, flavourful coffee with soft, full edges, extracted at just the right temperature and pressure to bring out the best in any bag of beans.
Customizations in the Aromatic include flavour intensity, shot count, extraction temperature, and more.
Watch the De’Longhi PrimmaDonna in action
Who the De’Longhi PrimaDonna Aromatic is perfect for
The De’Longhi PrimaDonna Aromatic is the perfect espresso machine for someone who loves coffee—and doesn’t want to lift a finger. It gives you the option of having a barista-quality drink from the comfort of your own home, with the convenience of having someone else make it for you.
You don’t have to remember any techniques, measurements, or processes in order to make an excellent drink with this machine, whether it’s an espresso shot, a cappuccino, or a cup of cold brew. For users who love coffee but aren’t interested in the barista arts, that’s a huge boon.
(For users who do love the more manual aspects of making a great coffee drink, check out this guide on choosing the best De’Longhi espresso machine for you. It’ll walk you through all of your options, including manual, hybrid, and automatic machines.)
Products like the PrimaDonna Aromatic one are the absolute top of the line at the moment when it comes to coffee quality and automation, and I really enjoyed using the Aromatic. It’s an excellent bean-to-cup machine that brews with big, bold flavours, and it makes every step (including maintenance and cleanup) very, very easy.
Shop the De’Longhi PrimaDonna Aromatic espresso machine at BestBuy.ca today.
