Review: Rancilio Silvia Pro Dual-Boiler Espresso Machine

Some people have stories about their first car, a fondly remembered bucket of bolts that carried them through high school, across the country to college, and to their first real job interview. I don’t drive, so I had an espresso machine. She saw me through high school, college, and beyond. I'd also say she brought me a lot more joy than grief, but it was close.

It was a Starbucks-branded single-boiler espresso machine, like this one. It had a simple, straightforward design, but lots of plastic parts that cracked as they aged. Still, the slim, classic design made it a great choice for at-home espresso. The Rancilio Silvia Pro is the spiritual successor to that machine. They have a lot in common, but the Rancilio delivers a professional-grade espresso that outclasses even some of the most expensive machines on the market.

When I saw the Rancilio Silvia Pro in the background of a YouTube video, my jaw dropped. I paused the video and scrolled back years through my photos. There it was. This mystery machine looked like a modern refresh of my beloved and long-dead single-boiler espresso machine. It wasn’t until months later, when I was unboxing the Silvia Pro, a dual-boiler machine, that I realized just how deep that resemblance ran.

To be clear, my old faithful featured a pretty standard design and build for mid- to high-end espresso machines. It's far from unique, but it’s a design that has fallen out of style over the last decade or so in favor of wider, more café-styled espresso machines like the Breville Barista Pro.

The profile is nice and narrow. It fits well on a small apartment countertop without taking up too much space. Unfortunately the feet did mark up my countertop whenever I moved it. That’s partially because they slipped and slid whenever I levered the portafilter back into place, unless I steadied the machine with my free hand. It's not a big deal, though, and it’s a problem the Silvia Pro shares with almost every other espresso machine of this approximate size and weight.

It's a striking, black and stainless steel espresso machine with a professional-grade steam pump. On your counter, it’s understated but powerful. It looks like a panther primed to pounce—and when you flip it on, it even growls like one as it slurps the water up and heats it.

The buttons on the front are all mechanical buttons or switches: a power switch, a manual brew switch, one for heating up steam, and another for hot water. There’s a small LCD display for adjusting the temperature, and that's it. The Silvia Pro pares away everything but the bare essentials, so there’s nothing standing between you and the perfect extraction but yourself. It’s daunting, in a way. Every time I pulled a watery shot, it was because my grind or my tamp was off, not because the machine had erred in some way. That’s true of all manual espresso machines, but here the spartan design and expert engineering just emphasizes it.

My old machine taught me a lot about how to make great coffee in the face of long odds. Does this shot taste funny because the grind is a bit off, or because I need to scour the rubber tubing inside again? Does this taste burned because of my beans, or because there’s something weird going on with the portafilter? Making coffee with that old machine was a bit of a minefield, but it taught me a lot.

That’s why I can appreciate the Silvia Pro’s expert engineering. I know what it looks like when a machine with this general design is giving me a hard time, or when it’s throwing errors. Early on, I had a few poor extractions and learned a couple of the Silvia’s quirks. The portafilter was a bit shallower than I was used to, so make sure you don’t overfill or over-tamp. It’s easy to over- or under-tighten the filter when you’re locking it in, so make sure you’re not pulling too hard. Use just enough force to get the portafilter back to its starting position, pointing straight at you—don’t try to muscle it as tight as it will go or you’ll end up with a thin, bitter shot.

It takes a couple tries to figure these things out with any espresso machine, but with the Silvia Pro I could clearly pinpoint my mistakes. Every time you do something kind of weird, it’ll feel weird. Over-tightening the portafilter to the group head (the part the portafilter latches on to) felt wrong as I did it. When I over-filled the portafilter, the threads barely lined up. It was like working with guard rails.

Normally, you hit the button and there’s a brief pause as it builds up pressure, then a gentle hiss as it pushes the water through the grounds and starts extracting. But when you over-tamp or overfill, you’ll hear the machine groan. It doesn't sound good. 

I ran into some hiccups when I tried to jump from steaming milk to pouring hot water, and vice versa. Hitting the water or steam buttons on the machine means you have to wait a little while before doing either—typically about three to four minutes. That was surprising, because the Silvia Pro is a dual-boiler machine, one for hot water and one for steam. There shouldn’t be much of a wait—if any—when you’re switching from one to the other. 

As small as these details are, it's a sticking point, because the Silvia Pro is $1,690. An extra boiler is expensive. It’s an addition most at-home espresso machines don’t need, but it’s really nice to have if you're making a lot of different drinks or if you’re often making more than one drink at a time, for you and guests.

When it comes to other pro features, though, the Silvia Pro lives up to its name. The steam wand blasts out steam in a star pattern instead of the usual straight-down pattern, which makes for beautifully polished and microfoamy steamed milk. The steam coming out on the sides creates a vortex where microfoam can form, just under the surface of the milk. It’s awesome. Plus, it has a built-in temperature gauge that switches to a shot timer when you start extracting. Knowing how long your shots typically are can really help you dial in how you like your coffee, and diagnose problems along the road.

This machine has far fewer plastic parts than my old espresso machine with the similar design, and that one lasted for over two decades. In my time with it, the Silvia Pro has been a rock-solid espresso machine for everyday use, and it’s easily one of my favorites. It even stands toe-to-toe with machines like the Breville Dual Boiler, and it runs circles around more expensive automated machines like the Breville Oracle Touch, or literally any machine that uses K-cups.

The way I see it, the more automation your machine has, the more failure points it has. More failure points make it hard to figure out what went wrong. On a mostly automated machine like the Breville Oracle Touch, where you choose your drink from a touchscreen, your weird coffee has way more potential errors. Maybe you pressed the wrong beverage button? Maybe there’s a software error? Maybe the grinder needs to be serviced, or maybe you bought the wrong beans?

That’s why I will always recommend manual machines like the Rancilio Silvia Pro, Silvia M, or Breville Dual Boiler to anyone with the time, energy, and money to devote to high-end home espresso. It makes better coffee for less, plus you pick up a new skill to impress your friends. I do wish it were quicker when switching from steam to water and vice versa, but it does still have a built-in shot timer, temperature gauge (with adjustable temperatures), and professional-grade steam wand which are features that are hard to come by on cheaper machines. Those can be crucial for flexing those at-home barista muscles.