What you Need to Know Before you Buy
It is important to note that there are very few authentic Italian manufacturers of super-automatic machines in the world today with the market being dominated by Swiss and German companies. Although some of this equipment can produce acceptable espresso coffee they were not originally designed to do so, but were historically made to produce very fast Swiss-German style coffees which are typically 6-8 oz drinks made in 8-10 seconds. Thus, when these machines are programed and adjusted to make "espresso" they are always attempting to make a coffee that the units were not intended to make.
If you are interested in a machine that can make an authentic highly concentrated 1-1.5 oz espresso coffee in the industry standard average brewing time of 25 seconds you should certainly look to a La Cimbali Italian made machine for quality.
