Lavazza's newest launch solves the worst thing about pod machines – but does the coffee taste any good? I tried a range of different drinks to find out

When choosing an easy-to-use coffee appliance, many people opt for one of the best pod coffee machines. But others are put off because recycling the pods can be difficult, not to mention growing fears that microplastics could be leaching out of plastic pods while you brew your morning coffee.

The Tabli by Lavazza is an innovative new single serve coffee machine that offers all of the ease and convenience of a pod machine, but without any of the aforementioned downsides. Compressed coffee pucks called ‘tabs’ replace wasteful pods, this new system is surely set to shake up the pod coffee machine market and I for one am excited about it.

In a nutshell

The Lavazza Tabli is a single serve coffee machine that works just like a typical pod machine whereby you purchase pre-portioned coffee in a simple mess-free format. The difference is that there are no pods here, just compressed pucks of coffee that come packaged in cardboard trays with minimal plastic.

With just three drink options and easy-to-use coffee tabs, the experience of using it every morning is simple and effortless. There’s little-to-no thinking required, so it’s perfect for those bleary eyed, early morning coffees when you’re still waiting for your brain to engage.

While the coffees have a thick crema, it’s not rich and oily like you’ll get when an espresso is made from fresh beans. Similarly, the flavour of the coffees is closer to that you’ll get from other pod machines. The compressed tabs might look like an espresso machine coffee puck, but by definition, these pre-ground, long shelf life tabs can’t offer comparable fresh nuanced flavours.

Having said all of that, the coffee works well in milky drinks, but you’ll need to purchase a separate frother like the Lavazza MilkEasy Plus (£79) that I used during this review. And what you don't get in nuanced coffee flavour and aroma, is made up for in ease, speed, and convenience.

Who tested this coffee machine?

Helen McCue

As a Home Economist, I’ve had the lucky job of reviewing kitchen appliances, including coffee machines, for the best part of two decades. My personal coffee machine is the Sage Barista Express. I usually drink two coffees a day, switching between a flat white and a double espresso, depending on my mood.

I had the Lavazza Tabli in my kitchen at home for a week and tried five different Lavazza Tabli tabs during that time. I used filtered water via a Water2 filter that’s fitted to my kitchen tap. To accompany the Tabli, I used the Lavazza MilkEasy Plus which is a separate product for frothing milk.

Unboxing the product

The whole process of unboxing, performing the initial rinse while simultaneously connecting the coffee machine to the app, took about 30 minutes. And within 45 minutes of opening the box I was brewing my first coffee.

At the time of writing the tabs aren’t yet widely available in UK supermarkets, you’ll need to buy them online. So if you do buy this coffee machine then I’d recommend either buying it in a bundle with some coffee tabs, or at least ordering some at the same time, to guarantee you can get going from the day of delivery.

There’s no assembly required whatsoever, just a bit of rinsing and then brewing several coffees without a tab in place, to flush hot water through the machine and get it primed.

Likewise, if you do opt to buy the Lavazza MilkEasy Plus, there’s virtually no set up, just the advice to run it through one heating cycle with water instead of milk, to give it a bit of a clean.

Impact on a kitchen worktop

In comparison to some of the very compact Nespresso machines, it feels somewhat bulbous and bulky. Especially when you consider there’s no integrated milk frother, so you’ll need a separate appliance for that job.

It’s quite long (from front to back) but not too wide (16.5cm), so should easily tuck into a narrow space. The water tank sits at the back, but you should still be able to lift it up and out, even if it’s tucked below wall hung cabinets. And everything else you need access to is at the front of the machine.

First impressions

The chunky plastic appearance won’t be everyone's cup of tea. Furthermore, if you live in a hard water area, you should note that there’s no water filter included, nor is there the option to install one. So you’ll have to be diligent about descaling.

I noticed that it doesn’t perform an automatic rinse when switched on or off. The instruction manual recommends dispensing a Lungo without a tab in place to flush out any coffee residues. However, it suggests doing this every 2-3 days, but my instinct would be to do it daily.

The tab compartment is very easy to access at the front of the machine, and the slider mechanism is a breeze to operate. Plus, after the coffee is dispensed, the used tab automatically gets ejected into the internal bin, so you don’t even have to think about taking it out.

One thing that’s immediately noticeable is the limited space below the coffee spout. When it’s in the position for dispensing a single coffee you can just about squeeze a small 8cm tall cup onto the drip tray. Removing the drip tray gives clearance of roughly 12.5cm, which is ample for most standard mugs.

If you tilt the spout down so that it can dispense into two cups at once, you best be sure they’re proper espresso cups as they need to be 6cm tall or less to fit on the drip tray. As above, removing the drip tray gives you more room to play with and there’s space for cups up to 10.5cm tall.

The single espresso is set to 30ml, a double is 60ml, and a lungo is 100ml. In the app you can use a simple slider to adjust any drink between 20ml and 225ml to personalise your coffee. It’s possible to make the volume adjustment on the machine but it’s a bit more of a faff.

Double espresso requires a dedicated coffee tab that’s bigger and designed to dispense a double dose. The single espresso tabs are designed for either a lungo or a single espresso. And decaf tabs are readily available too.

At the time of writing the tabs are £5.89 for a pack of 12. That’s 49p per drink and is comparable with Nespresso pods. The double shot tabs are, as you would expect, slightly more expensive and work out at just over 57p per drink.

Coffee pods often end up in landfill or, if you’re conscientious about minimizing your impact on the environment then you have to go out of your way to collect them and post to a specialist recycling facility.

The beauty of these tabs in comparison is that the used coffee grounds from the tab, can go into your food waste bin. And the boxes they’re packed in are mostly paper and card that can go in your recycling. There’s just a thin piece of flexible plastic on top of each tray, which would have to be recycled with soft plastics at the supermarket.

Using the app

The app is useful, but mainly for adjusting settings. It offers an easier way to make adjustments to coffee volumes, turn off audible signals, or adjust coffee temperature.

You can start brewing a coffee via the app, but considering you still need to add a tab and a cup, I’m not convinced how useful this feature is, unless you set it all up in advance. Brewing coffee via one button on the machine isn’t difficult, so doing it via the app doesn’t really add a layer of convenience in my book.

The other thing you can do is connect the app to Google or Alexa, so that you can use voice activation to brew a coffee. Call me old fashioned, but if I’m going to the machine to add a coffee tab and put a cup under the spout, I’m happy to press the button while I’m there, I don’t need to ask Alexa to do it. But I acknowledge that there may be circumstances where this is helpful.

The ‘Morning Rush’ test

After switching on, it takes roughly 25 seconds to heat up, give or take. So from the point of first switching it on in the morning I was able to pour two individual servings of single espresso in a shade under 2 minutes.

Fans of a stronger drink will be keen to understand the timings for a double espresso, so I did the same test using the double espresso tabs. Again, including the time it takes from first switching the coffee machine on in the morning, the total time to dispense two servings of double espresso was still speedy at just under 2 minutes 30 seconds.

The Lavazza MilkEasy Plus when filled to its max 180ml capacity, takes a touch under 3 minutes to create foamed milk or hot milk. It has a smaller capacity for cappuccino style frothy milk, and consequently this takes just 1 minute 15 seconds.

The maximum 180ml of milk is really only enough for two shorter drinks. For two quite milky mugs of coffee, or for two cappuccinos, you’ll need to run it twice. So while the coffee machine is speedy, the milk frother adds quite considerably to the total time it takes to make two drinks.

What's it like to use?

After using it for several days, my experience with this machine can be summed up as easy. There’s nothing to learn, everything is very straightforward and from day one, it slots right into your morning routine pretty seamlessly.

The water tank lasts ages, obviously it depends on how many coffees you make in a day, but even when I was making several extra test coffees, it lasted 3-4 days.

There’s a little experimentation at first, to decide which tabs you prefer and whether you want to adjust the coffee volume, as well as deciding on the right amount of milk to add. But truly, because these are the only options, it's far easier than many coffee machines that have such an overwhelming array of adjustable settings that it can take days or even weeks to nail the perfect drink.

Although I’m usually a fan of the occasional double espresso, I leaned more into a flat white or cappuccino style drink with this machine as I preferred the flavour of these milky drinks to the espressos you get from the tabs.

From pressing the drink button to the finished brewed coffee, none of the drinks took longer than 60 seconds when using the default coffee coffee volume settings. And temperatures ranged from 68-78C which is plenty hot enough for espresso based coffee. Though if you brew the coffee using the app, you can activate a temperature boost for a hotter coffee.

If you buy the milk frother, it produces milk that’s around 70C, which is ideal for milky coffees, plus it can be used with plant milks as well as standard dairy milk.

Coffee quality

During the review I tried five different Tabli tabs. When drunk as an espresso, most of them have a bitter smokiness, as opposed to the nuanced and balanced espresso flavour that’s typical when using freshly ground beans in an espresso machine. So my main takeaway was that on the whole, I think these coffees are best enjoyed with milk.

The espresso crema is thick, and better than I’ve seen from many pod coffee machines. It does turn quite bubbly as the coffee sits though and lacks the oily microfoam that you get on top of the best espressos.

It’s unfair to expect long shelf life pre-portioned coffee to exhibit bold fresh flavours that are comparable to freshly ground beans. Furthermore, if you’re buying this machine, you’re unlikely to be the kind of coffee snob seeking the best espresso shot on offer, moreso a decent caffeine hit that’s easy and convenient. And on that front, when added to hot milk, it delivers. You’ll get drinkable coffee with minimal fuss.

Noise test

It’s not a noisy machine. When I used a sound meter to check the noise level as it brewed a double espresso, it peaked at 62dB. During the majority of the process the noise level sat in the mid fifties, so it’s not the type of coffee machine that’ll disturb sleeping members of your household in adjoining rooms.

It does beep at the end of brewing, but you can switch that sound off should you need it to be as quiet as possible.

The milk frother is virtually silent, it’s so quiet that there wasn’t any point me measuring the sound. It does emit a beep when frothing ends, and this can’t be turned off. I measured the noise of the beep at 49dB, which is still very quiet, plus it’s a very short sound, so really unlikely to be an issue.

Thermal stability

When brewing five single espresso shots back-to-back they did become progressively warmer. The first was 68C and the final of the five shots was 76C. While a jump in 8C might not sound a lot, in coffee terms it is. This rising temperature can affect extraction and ultimately the flavour. So if you want double shots, you’re probably better off buying the dedicated double espresso tabs, rather than dispensing multiple single shots back to back.

The ‘Wet Paint’ test

As I’ve already mentioned, the Lavazza Tabli doesn’t have an integrated milk frother and the Lavazza MilkEasy Plus that I used during this review is a completely separate product. In case you’re thinking of buying it though, you’ll want to know how good it is at milk texturing.

The ‘wet paint’ test refers to whether the foamed steamed milk has a dense silky microfoam texture like wet paint, as opposed to being overly bubbly. As you’d expect, it does deliver bubbly foamy milk on its cappuccino setting.

The hot milk setting gives zero foam, so the foamed milk setting is really the only option if you’re looking for that silkier microfoam. And while it’s not barista quality dense microfoam, it's not overly bubbly either. I’d say it lands somewhere in between.

Unless you’re trying to create coffee shop style latte art on top of your drink or nail the perfect milk foams, then I think you’ll be more than satisfied with what this milk frother can deliver. Especially considering it’s completely automated and hands-free.

What's it like to clean?

On a daily basis I found myself doing very little in the way of cleaning. The tiltable coffee spout is removable so it can be rinsed, but that’s only used when dispensing into two cups. The main spout can only be cleaned by running a coffee programme without a tab in place.

The tab compartment does end up with ground coffee residues in it. I found the best way to clean it is by wiping it with a bit of kitchen towel or a clean cloth. Equally running a coffee programme without a tab does the same job.

There’s an indicator light that comes on when the used tab drawer has filled up. It can hold quite a few though and doesn’t need emptying daily. It doesn’t take much to rinse it clean, but it can also go in the dishwasher, as can the drip tray.

The MilkEasy Plus is very easy to keep clean as long as you give it a quick rinse after every use.

Descaling

The descaling cycle needs to be performed periodically when the yellow indicator light comes on. You’ll need a coffee machine descaling solution and the full process takes around 20 minutes.

It’s not difficult, but you do need the instruction manual as you have to pay attention to the steps in the process. Plus I found that I couldn’t fit a very big container under the spout, so I had to stay nearby to keep swapping and emptying the containers, especially during the rinse phase, which runs more than one full tank of water through the machine to get rid of residues.

How does it compare to similar machines?

The Tabli is best compared to pod machines like Nespresso and the benefit of these machines is that many of them are smaller, cheaper, and the pods are more widely available. Plus there are even models with integrated milk frothers. You can see our four favourites from that brand in our best Nespresso machines guide.

It’s also worth mentioning the Russell Hobbs Cafe Genie which is a similar price to the Tabli, but crucially has an integrated milk frother. It can be used as an espresso machine with ground coffee, but also takes Nespresso pods. It’s great for pod coffee fans looking to transition to ground coffee because it straddles both worlds.

Should you buy the Lavazza Tabli?

If you’re in the market for a pod style coffee machine, then I really think this innovative design from Lavazza is one of the best choices for several reasons. Firstly, brewing coffee from a compressed coffee puck as opposed to a pod that may contain plastic, is definitely preferable. And secondly, the reduction in coffee pod waste is a huge win.

For milky coffees like cappuccino, flat white, or latte I found the coffee very drinkable. The straight espresso is somewhat harsh and bitter. Meanwhile the coffee crema might not be as robust as you’ll get from an espresso machine, but it’s still satisfyingly thick. On balance, I’d opt for the Lavazza Tabli over most pod based machines any day of the week.