Miele CM6350 Review - Is This Automatic Espresso Machine Worth It?

Summary

Overall Rating

89%

Design & Build Quality

88%

Features & Ease of Use

90%

Coffee Drink Quality

92%

Cleaning & Maintenance

92%

Value for Money

85%

The Bottom Line

The Miele CM6350 is an amazing super automatic espresso machine featuring a long and narrow design. The design saves space but if you have kitchen cabinets changing the water tank and adding coffee beans might be a bit bothersome.  Its minimalistic user interface makes it making any specialty coffee a breeze. It creates amazing piping hot espresso; however, the hot milk and frothed milk could be a little hotter. One of the greatest strengths is how easy it is to thoroughly clean. This could potentially increase its lifespan and long term value.

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The Miele CM6350 coffee machine is a top-of-the-line super automatic espresso machine that has a minimalistic design, yet, it is chock full of features and benefits that allow you to customize your coffee drink whatever way you want it.

In this review, we will explore the design and build quality of this Miele countertop coffee machine, as well as its features, ease of use, coffee drink quality, cleaning and maintenance ease, and value for money. 

After reading this review, you should have a good idea if the Miele CM6350 is the right coffee machine for you!

Overview

At A Glance...

• Good-looking machine with a minimalistic design.
  
  
• This machine has a long  but narrow design, a plus for small kitchens.
  
  
• Lots of plastic is used.
  
  
• The OneTouch buttons render making specialty coffee drinks a breeze.
  
  
• Features 8 pre-programmed coffee drinks that are highly customizable, not including the hot milk, froth and hot water “drinks”.
  
  
• You can create and save up to 4 user profiles.
  
  
• This machine operates quietly and dispenses drinks quickly.
  
  
• The espresso quality is amazing, but requires some initial tinkering as the default values don't fully utilize this machine's full potential.
  
  
• Virtually everything can be easily cleaned, removed or disassembled.
  
  
• Very robust cleaning programs and huge emphasis on hygiene.
  
  
• The cappuccinatore milk system makes a lot of foam quickly, and of good consistency.
  
  
• The milk temperature cannot be increased.
  
  
• No water filter can be installed.

Some Useful Specs...

• Model: Miele CM 6350 Countertop Coffee machine
  
  
• Type: Super automatic espresso machine
  
  
• Water Tank Capacity:  61 oz (1.8 L)
  
  
• Bean Hopper Capacity:  10.6 oz (300g)
  
  
• Dimensions (W x H x D): 9.9" x 14.1" x 16.8"
  
  
• Weight: 22 lb. (9.9kg)
  
  
• Spout Height Adjustment: from 3.25" to 5.6"
  
  
• Grinder Type: Stainless steel conical burr with 5 levels of adjustment
  
  
• Dose Amount: 6 to 14 grams (set by user)
  
  
• User Profiles: 4
  
  
• Number of Pre-programmed Drinks: 8
  
  
• Display Type:  Black and white LCD
  
  
• Brewing System: AromaticSystem
  
  
• Milk Frothing System: Cappuccinatore
  
  
• Ground Coffee Bypass: Yes
  
  
• Warranty: 1 year
  
  
• Power Requirements: 1,500 Watts

Design and Build Quality

The Miele CM6350 features an attractive minimalistic look, which has become characteristic of Miele countertop coffee makers. It comes with LED lights, which can be configured to highlight its beauty.

At the time of writing, this automatic espresso machine can be ordered in Lotus White, Graphite Gray and Obsidian Black.

It features a black and white LCD of decent size. However, it is not a touch screen. The black and white screen and its crisp font goes well with this Miele's minimalistic look.

Plastic is heavily used, but this does not make this machine any less attractive as the finishes are great.

Its dimensions are 9.9" x 14.1" x 16.8" (W x H x D). So the first thing we noticed when unpacking this espresso machine is how deep (or long) it is. This is a trade-off with width; it seems Miele has designed this machine to be longer in order to make it narrower, and thus save counter space.

But don’t make a decision purely on these dimensions. Miele in their manual recommend a minimum of space of 17.7”x 20” x 21.9”.

The long design is a good compromise as people with small kitchens may be able to fit this machine.

However, the longer design can have a few disadvantages.

For example, the water tank is located on the left side of the machine, and it's a long tank! It goes almost as deep as the Miele CM6350 itself! This poses some difficulties if you have kitchen cabinets when it comes to removing and refilling the water tank. 

Some maneuvering might be required to avoid hitting your kitchen cabinets. See the image below.

The coffee beans container is located on top of the machine, but far back. Again, if you have kitchen cabinets (as most do kitchens have nowadays), it might be challenging adding coffee beans to your machine. 

The coffee beans are added using a small opening, and unfortunately, they cannot be removed (unless you vacuum them or patiently scoop them with a spoon). This small opening makes removing any beans for cleaning the container difficult as well.

The coffee grounds by-pass is more conveniently located, which is also on top but closer to the front. This is where the whole beans container access should be. Why place the coffee grounds by-pass in a more convenient location than the whole beans container, when it would be a shame to use ground coffee with this machine?

Perhaps Miele ran into some space constraints in the engineering design process…

Obviously, if you are able to place this machine somewhere without kitchen cabinets then these issues go away.

The right side panel  can be opened to reveal the brew unit, which is removable (it's always a good sign when you can remove the brew unit). 

Opening this panel also reveals the grind settings and a slot to place the milk tube. This means that when placing your machine you should allow for some space to be able to open the panel.

The Miele CM6350 uses a cappuccinatore frothing system, integrated into the main dispenser, using a plastic tube to draw milk from a stand-alone high quality stainless steel milk container. This milk container is insulated to keep your milk as cool as possible.

Overall, the Miele CM6350 looks great with its minimalistic design, and has a distinctive long and narrow design. This is a good trade-off if you are extremely limited in counter space. However, removing the water tank and filling the bean container can be a bit annoying if you don’t have super tall kitchen cabinets.

Features and Ease of Use

The Miele CM6350 is a super automatic espresso machine, which means that it does everything for you. You just need to add espresso coffee beans, water, and connect the milk carafe if you want a milky drink. Then you press one of the OneTouch sensors and the machine will do the rest, including cleaning itself.

Miele places a high emphasis on cleaning as we'll see in the section below.

But for now, this means every time you turn on and turn off the machine, it will go through a rinsing cycle. If you use  milk, it will also rinse the milk pipes and inner components.

This machine comes with 8 pre-programmed drinks. These include ristretto, espresso, coffee, café Americano, cappuccino, latte macchiato, latte and coffee jug. In addition, Miele considers hot water, hot milk and milk froth as separate beverages.

Note that if you are looking forward to preparing lots of coffee for the family using the coffee pot function, it requires a carafe. A carafe is unfortunately not included with this machine.

Also, you’re not really limited to the above drinks. For example, I made myself a cortado by pulling an espresso shot and then selecting the milk froth “drink”, and stopping it short.

The user interface is controlled by tapping sensors (they're not buttons) located in the front, below, left and right of the screen. The sensors are very responsive and they "beep" when you press them, providing the user with feedback.

Overall, using this machine is very intuitive to use.

It comes with four dedicated OneTouch sensors for espresso, coffee, cappuccino and café macchiato. To make these drinks, all you have to do is tap one of the buttons and that's it. Simple!

And this super automatic prepares the drinks very quickly. We were surprised at how fast it dispenses milk froth!

If you want a double portion, all you need to do is tap the "double portion" button. It will illuminate in yellow indicating any drinks you make will be double. To be clear, a double portion means making the drink twice. So if you want a double espresso, the machine will grind the beans and pull the espresso shot twice; it will not increase the coffee and water quantities and do a single extraction.

If you want other coffee drinks, all you have to do is tap the "Additional Programs" icon, and navigate with the top and down arrows to select your drink and then tap "ok" to initiate drink preparation.

The pre-programmed drinks are highly customizable. You can change the following parameters:

• Amount of coffee: select how much coffee is used for your drink, from 6 to 14 grams. There are 7 intervals of selection.
  
  
• Brewing Temperature: select the brewing temperature from the following options: low, medium, high and max.
  
  
• Pre-brewing: the coffee grounds are moistened prior to extraction. The available settings are off, low and high pre-brewing times.
  
  
• Portion Size: This option selects the amount of water or milk used in your drink. The portion size can only be changed by initiating a drink. Once the drink starts pouring you can tap the "ok" button to stop the pouring. The machine will automatically save the resulting drink volume for next time. The portion size can also be changed for the hot and frothed milk using the same process. This means that for a macchiato which uses espresso, hot milk and frothed milk, you will have to press the "ok" button three times.

The portion size setting can be a bit wasteful. We like how you can very precisely select the portion size based on actual pours, but there should be a way to change the portion size without having to prepare an actual drink.

The stainless steel conical burr grinder has 5 levels of adjustment and is very quiet. The grind setting is global for all drinks and users. It can be accessed via the right panel of the machine. 

You cannot change the milk temperature, and the only two textures you get is hot milk (no texture) and milk froth (lots of foam). This means latte art is out of the question with this machine. However, this is typical of most super automatic machines.

You can also create up to 4 different user profiles. The profiles can be easily set up and changed via the User Profile sensor below the screen.

A cup warmer is also included on top of the machine. It is actively heated and is warmer than most other machines out there. However, this is a feature I seldom use as I prefer to warm my espresso cups with hot water.

Other features include the Eco Mode (the machine is not constantly heating up, it needs to heat up in-between drinks), lighting settings, and auto turn on and off settings.

Overall, the Miele CM6350 is a quiet machine that allows you to customize almost everything about your coffee drink. Its no-fuss user interface with its OneTouch buttons allow you to make specialty coffee drinks quickly and conveniently.

Coffee Drink Quality

We've gone through the looks and features of the Miele CM6350...but does it prepare great drinks?

In short, yes, it does! In fact, the Miele CM6350 might prepare one of the best espressos within the super automatic espresso machine category.

However, some tinkering is required before obtaining optimal results, as we’ll see later on.

To achieve high quality drinks, the CM6350 features Miele's AromaticSystem, which means the brew chamber expands upon adding water to allow proper mixing of coffee grounds and water. Miele claims this system boosts the coffee's aromatics - hence the name.

The main dispenser can also be adjusted by pulling down or up. Its vertical clearance from the drip tray ranges from 3.25 " to 5.6". This is a great feature to keep your drink hot and preserve the espresso crema.

When we first unboxed this machine the first drink we tried was of course, an espresso. We did run the machine a few times before trying any drink, to remove the plastic taste and the potential of consuming months’ old coffee grounds from testing…

We were initially a bit disappointed with the espresso. We had heard this machine made some amazing ones. So we looked deeper and then saw the default settings…

Thankfully, after changing the settings, the espresso was delicious and piping hot. Here are the default settings we changed in case you're wondering.

• Amount of coffee: It was set to level 3/7. Keeping in mind the amount ranges from 6 to 14 grams, setting 3/7 is about 9.5 grams of coffee. The machine yielded about 33 grams of espresso, resulting in a brew ratio of about 1/4  to 1/3. So we cranked up the amount of coffee setting to the max.
  
  
• Brew temperature: This setting was set to medium. We maxed it out as well.
  
  
• Pre-brewing time: This setting was turned off, we turned it on and set it to long pre-brewing time.
  
  
• Portion size: We decreased the portion size (this means less water) to try to achieve a 1:2 brew ratio.

After making these changes the espresso was heavenly. Kudos to Miele for that!

Now let's talk about the milk system...it's probably the most controversial feature of this machine.

The  cappuccinatore milk system delivers lots of froth of good consistency very quickly.

However, the milk temperature cannot be changed! We measured it at around 50-53 degrees Celsius (122 to 127 Fahrenheit). Keeping in mind the milk does cool down by the time it hits your cup, we estimate the milk was heated to around 60 degrees Celsius (140 Fahrenheit) inside the machine.

However, many people prefer their milk hotter at around 65 degrees (149 Fahrenheit).

This is not to say that Miele's CM6350 coffee and milk drinks are not good - they are better than what your average machine could make. Just be aware that milky drinks may not be as hot.

Overall, the Miele CM6350 prepares amazing piping hot espresso after some tinkering. Milky espresso drinks such as cappuccinos are good too, but the milk temperature cannot be changed and may not be deemed hot enough by some.

Ease of Cleaning and Maintenance

Miele coffee machines usually have strong ease of cleaning and maintenance features. This machine is no exception and is one its greatest strengths.

Miele has put huge emphasis on keeping your machine clean, and we're extremely glad to see this. Super automatic espresso machines create the perfect environment for bacteria to thrive in (coffee grounds and milk in a warm, humid, dark environment with poor air circulation).

The drip tray and waste grounds system can be easily removed by pulling from the front of the machine. This system consists of various pieces, including the lower panel, the drip tray and lid, the drip tray cover, the waste coffee grounds basket. They can be rinsed by hand with dish soap or tossed in the dishwasher, except for the lower panel.

The water container should also be rinsed on a daily basis (as per Miele) but in practice it makes sense to rinse it every time it needs refilling.

Obviously, the milk flask should also be cleaned if you use it - nobody wants stale milk anywhere. It's not dishwasher safe though so you will need to wash it by hand.

Even if you're lazy the CM6350 will make sure some cleaning takes place. Every time you turn on and turn off the machine, it will rinse itself. If you used the automatic milk frothing system, the machine will rinse the milk pipework when you turn it off. These programs are not optional and you will need to wait 30-45 seconds for them to finish.

You can also (and should) remove the brew unit and rinse it with warm water only once a week. This literally takes 30 seconds and is well worth it if you want to preserve the lifespan of your machine. And your coffee to taste good.

You can even take apart the main dispenser and cappuccitanore system for deep cleaning.

The beans container can also be cleaned. You will need to wait until the container is empty, and then vacuum any remaining coffee particles. Then, with a damp cloth remove the oil stains. 

When cleaning the beans container it is VERY IMPORTANT to disconnect this machine! It is VERY EASY to accidentally press a OneTouch sensor, which activates the grinder.

The coffee grounds by-pass chute can also be cleaned by vacuuming it, but you will not be able to get all the coffee grounds remains. We did not use the ground coffee chute but there were some remains, likely from resting.

In terms of cleaning programs, the Miele CM 6350 comes with:

• Rinsing the coffee system
  
  
• Rinsing the milk pipework
  
  
• Cleaning the milk pipework
  
  
• Degreasing the brew unit
  
  
• Descaling the machine.

As can be seen, the Miele CM6350 can be thoroughly cleaned, and Miele has integrated features to ensure the machine stays clean to the extent possible, even if the user lacks the propensity to clean it.

However, it lacks a water filter. This means if you live in an area with overly hard water you will have to run the descaling cycle more often. You could use filtered water, but make sure the water hardness settings programmed into the machine matches the hardness of the filtered water, not the tap water.

Overall, the Miele CM6350, despite the lack of a water filter, boasts a very comprehensive set of cleaning programs. It can also be very thoroughly cleaned, including the brew unit and main dispenser. Most of the components needing daily cleaning are conveniently dishwasher safe. The CM6350 is amongst the best super automatic espresso machines when it comes to cleaning and maintenance.

Value for Money

The Miele CM6350 is not a cheap machine, it's not what we would call "budget friendly".

That being said, we think the CM6350 offers good value for money thanks to its ton of features and great espresso quality.

For starters, you can customize virtually everything about your drink (except the milk temperature).

Its OneTouch technology allows you to prepare third wave coffee drinks by simply tapping a button. The machine will quietly and quickly grind, brew and froth milk with little supervision. This Miele truly hits the pin on the head when it comes to what a super automatic espresso machine should be about - getting great espresso based drinks by simply tapping a button.

The great majority of this machine is made of plastic, which raises questions about long-term reliability. However, the robust cleaning programs and the fact you can clean almost every component of this machine should boost its lifespan and long-term value.

You get all of this for about $2,400 (at the time of writing). This means over a year this machine will cost about $6 to $7 per day. This cost is easily offset if you have 2 people at home who buy coffee every day.

Overall, if your household spends around $6 to $7 per day on coffee, then getting this machine makes financial sense. You will no longer have to make that detour to get coffee, and instead, all you'll need to do is tap a button to get your morning started with that Instagram-worthy (and delicious) caffe macchiato. 

Verdict

Who is the Miele CM6350 For?

The Miele CM6350 is a great machine for those who want to enjoy third wave coffee without any hassle but are not on a budget. It is also for those who want all the bells and whistles when it comes to customizing their drinks, all packaged in a minimalistic design.

If you are willing to pay a bit more to upgrade your daily cup of joe from that 4-cup coffee maker, then this machine will serve you well for many years.

Who should avoid the Miele CM6350?

The Miele CM6350 is not a budget machine. If you are looking for an espresso machine under $1000 then check out our post! A great budget choice for beginners is the De’Longhi Magnifica ESAM3300.

The CM6350 is also not for those who want to have a manual experience. But then again, those people should get another type of coffee maker, perhaps a semi-automatic or fully manual espresso machine. 

Or check the Breville Oracle Touch which is a super automatic machine with a portafilter that can also be used as a manual one. It’s a pricey one though.

Finally, if you're fussy about the milk, then you may need to look somewhere else as this Miele dispenses milk on the cooler side of things.

Frequently Asked Questions