I tested a portable espresso machine for a month and the results shocked me — it actually makes proper coffee

The Wacaco Picopresso is a portable coffee maker, designed to let coffee lovers brew espresso on the go. And oh boy, is it good.

As a coffee enthusiast myself, I’ve used many of the best espresso machines around, including both home and commercial units. I was therefore a little skeptical (to say the least) about the Picopresso.

Could it really be possible to simulate the high pressures and intricate process of espresso brewing in a handheld machine? Turns out it is, and I was pleasantly surprised when (after a fair bit of fettling, admittedly) I pulled a hazelnut-colored, honey-textured shot of rich, thick, complex espresso.

If you can’t survive any camping trip, hike or sustained period of time away from your beloved espresso machine, or if you’re simply space deprived: look no further.

Find out more in my full Wacaco Picopresso review.

Wacaco Picopresso review: Price & availability

The Wacaco Picopresso costs $129 / £109 from Amazon, making it a very affordable way into espresso. To get properly brewed espresso, you’re normally looking at $400 to $500 outlay for a Breville Bambino Plus or Gaggia Classic. Those machines obviously feature boilers, though, and can steam milk.

Wacaco Picopresso review: Design

The Wacaco Picopresso is a squat little handheld pump machine. Frankly, it bears a rather uncanny and unfortunate resemblance to a, uh, male intimate toy. If you can’t see it, you’re a gentler soul than me, and I commend you. Virtually everyone who has come across me brewing with the Picopresso has made a jibe about it, so PSA: be prepared for that.

Anyway, back onto more sober topics. The Picopresso is well-built, featuring a matte black body and lid made from premium-feeling plastic. At the base of the body sits a metal ring with a roughly textured finish for grip. This ring screws into the body to lock the coffee basket in place below the shower head, doing the job that a portafilter would do on traditional machines.

Despite its solid construction, the Picopresso remains compact and lightweight, at just 3.9 inches tall and tipping the scales at only 0.77lbs.

52mm Basket

The Picopresso uses a metal 52mm basket, which Wacaco claims is good for 18g of coffee, although it’ll easily fit 20g and even up to 22g. As I’ll cover later, I often found optimal results came from 20g+ dosing, so it’s nice to have space in the basket for playing around with inputs.

While not an industry-standard size at 52mm, this is a bonafide espresso basket that will definitely stand up to repeated heavy use. I can’t confidently say the same about the plastic basket in the cheaper Wacaco Nanopresso.

With its tiny dimples, the Picopresso’s metal basket stops even the finest of grounds from getting through into your espresso — another frustrating issue with the Nanopresso’s plastic basket.

Accessories

Supplied with the Picopresso are a variety of accessories, including a small metal dosing funnel that fits on top of the basket. This is extremely welcome, making it much easier to dose in a shot without making a mess (once again, another glaring annoyance with the cheaper Nanopresso).

There’s also a metal tamp, which feels very high quality and has a decent weight to it. It’s shaped with a wider top than bottom. This means it can be used while the dosing funnel is in place on top of the basket, to lightly compress grounds and get things marginally tidy. You can then remove the funnel and use the tamp to fully compress grounds in the basket. Well thought out!

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Wacaco also supplies a tool for WDT (Weiss distribution technique) — basically a glorified paperclip — for you to remove clumps in your grounds when they’re in the basket. There’s a protective case included, plus a rubber base with a nozzle to channel the flow of espresso when pouring and thereby prevent spills.

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Unfortunately, my rubber base is useless and never fits — I go without, which results in coffee spattering everywhere. However, that means you can watch the espresso leave the basket like one of those fancy naked portafilters you see on social media. Ooh. Definitely worth the spatters.

Operation

As with Wacaco’s other products, like the Wacaco Minipresso GR2, the Picopresso is a hand-powered espresso pump. You fill the water chamber with hot water, then pump it through the machine using an extending pump handle. The Picopresso doesn’t heat water, nor is it thermally insulated to keep water hot for any extended period of time, so you need a water heating method with you to use the machine.

Inside the unit is a piston which draws water from the chamber and pressurizes it at up to 18-bar. Wacaco isn’t clear about where that 18-bar pressure exists. Is that in the portafilter or inside the piston assembly? 18-bar in the portafilter would usually be considered too high for espresso, the general consensus being that the sweet spot is around 9- to 11-bar.

That said, I’ve had absolutely no qualms with the espresso this thing makes, so whatever it’s doing works.

Scalding

Scalding has been a problem with other Wacaco machines, particularly the Pipamoka, which proved an incredibly risky thing to use during testing. Thankfully, the Picopresso isn’t quite so risky, although it is easy to burn yourself when opening the top chamber to drain out any unused hot water.

The issue is that, after pouring a shot, there’ll still be coffee dripping from the basket. You’ll naturally, therefore, find yourself holding the machine upside down on your way back to the sink or knock box — to avoid dripping the drips of said drippings onto your floor, of course. If you forget to rotate the Picopresso back to its upright position again before opening the water chamber, you’re likely to burn yourself, which I ended up doing once or twice.

Big deal? Not for an ex-chef. But for those less well acquainted with serious burns: take care during operation.

Wacaco Picopresso review: Espresso

As I’ve briefly mentioned, it took me a fair amount of trial and error to get decent results from the Picopresso. In fact, as you can see from the studio shots below, it's easy to get far too watery coffee from the Picopresso — just like any other espresso maker, the grind is the most important thing!

Wacaco lists the 52mm basket as suitable for 18g, and indeed that’s usually my default starting dose for espresso shots when testing machines. At 18g though, using several different beans, I just couldn’t get thick, properly-extracted espresso, instead ending up with watery, over-extracted messes.

Wacaco’s instructions acknowledge this may be an issue (presumably due to high operating pressure) and suggest grinding finer. So I did, to Turkish level — nay, beyond Turkish. I’m tellin’ ya, I wasn’t producing coffee grounds as much as I was coffee atoms! (Credit where credit is due to the Wacaco Exagrind grinder I used: that thing goes hella fine.) But still no dice.

Eventually, I just upped the dose to 20g and scaled back the grind to typical espresso consistency, maybe ever-so-slightly finer to handle +9-bar pressures. And voilá: rich, caramel-colored, honey-textured, complex-flavored espresso, replete with tiger-printed crema. This prospector had struck gold.

The images below show one of my many espresso shots after settling, with a rich, dark body and layer of crema on top.

My next few shots were perfect, with balanced bitterness and acidity profiles, plenty of body, and long-lasting finish. This was proper espresso.

After that, I stuck to an in/out ratio of 20-22g of coffee ‘in’ to ~40g of espresso ‘out’, for a standard 1:2 double espresso ratio. Over the course of around a month, I tested with a range of beans from our supplier, Hard Lines, and have rarely had a bad shot since (except when dialing-in, of course).

Shot-to-shot consistency is definitely an issue with the Picopresso. Even when keeping all other variables the same, pumping by hand this way is inherently changeable. You must repeatedly pump to build up and maintain pressure, but the speed and intensity with which you do so affects how the shot pulls. Both variables are impossible to precisely replicate, meaning no two shots are ever the same.

Does that mean the coffee is bad? Nope. All things considered, especially its size and price, the Picopresso produces wonderful-tasting, genuine espresso. Two thumbs up from me, and if I had a third, I’d put that one up, too. Maybe a big toe instead.

Wacaco Picopresso review: Storage & maintenance

Thanks to its compact design, the Picopresso is extremely easy to store in even the tightest cupboards or on cramped countertops. All the accessories can be stacked within the basket and water chambers, meaning everything fits inside the zip-up protective case for easy stowage.

If you’re using at home, though, you’ll want those accessories out at your coffee station rather than zipped away. I found it a little frustrating having the tamp, funnel and WDT tool just lying around on my worktop or loose in a nearby drawer. Admittedly, that’s a very minor issue, and solved easily with a novel contraption known as “a box”.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: why couldn’t I simply stow the tools inside the Picopresso when not using it? They fit inside, after all. Simple: I use it so much that it’s constantly in pieces, airing out on my drying rack.

One issue to note is that, due to having no portafilter, it's very difficult to knock the basket out into a knock box. You'll often have to repeatedly smack it in a sink or use a spoon to scoop out spent pucks.

Basic maintenance is a piece of cake. With the lower portafilter ring unscrewed, the basket and shower head fall out for easy cleaning. To clean the actual innards, I simply pump boiling water through the machine into an empty basket to sterilize the piston assembly. Wacaco recommends doing this pre-shot anyway, to preheat the machine.

If you live in a hard water area, I would pump through some descaling agent once a month to avoid limescale buildup.

Wacaco Picopresso review: How does it compare?

While all of Wacaco’s models claim to produce either espresso or ‘espresso-style’ coffee, the Picopresso is the only one in the range so far to actually deliver the real thing. The Wacaco Pipamoka produces strong, AeroPress-style short black coffee, as does the Wacaco Minipresso GR2.

The Wacaco Nanopresso gets close to the real thing, but isn’t quite the business. As I’ve covered above, the Picopresso makes the genuine article, so this is the only model I’d recommend to espresso lovers.

As I mentioned earlier, due to the nature of its operation, the Picopresso’s espresso is not as consistent as you’ll find from a proper electric pump machine (although single-boiler non-PID machines like the Rancilio Silvia V6 aren’t that consistent either).

If you’re an espresso connoisseur looking for a compact daily driver to slot into a cramped kitchen, I would instead recommend the Breville Bambino Plus, which will deliver much more consistent results due to, well, not involving you as much.

However, considering how small and simple the Picopresso is, its coffee is very respectable. If you’re not an espresso evangelist and/or you simply love intense, pressure-brewed coffee, or if you want to take your shots on the road, the Picopresso is the perfect choice.

Wacaco Picopresso review: Verdict

I love this little espresso maker. It’s affordable, beautifully made, super simple and produces genuine espresso. Sure, it won’t quite deliver the complexity or consistency of a full-size boiler-fed machine, but when was the last time you managed to fit your De’Longhi La Specialista into your hiking backpack? Exactly.