Fellow Series 1 Espresso Machine Review (2026): Excellent, but a Work in Progress

There aren't a lot of game changers among espresso machines. But after testing the Fellow Series 1 for three weeks, I feel confident in saying that it will almost certainly change the conversation about what a home espresso machine is supposed to do.

For decades, most home espresso makers have aimed at mostly the same goal: a consistent temperature and a consistent 9 bars of pressure, delivered with precision and reliability. Nine bars is, after all, the traditional ideal of an espresso shot. According to popular imagination, this was the pressure that baristas were able to exert back when espresso was pulled manually with spring-loaded levers. It was also the pressure chosen for the first electric-pump espresso machine from Faema, in 1961.

But there's no particular magic to this number, especially not for medium and lighter roasts. The brand-new Fellow Series 1 Espresso machine, which began shipping this week, seems willing to leave this convention behind. The Series 1 will still make you a traditional 9-bar shot, if that's what you want. But unlike any accessibly priced home espresso machine I've tested, Fellow's machine lets home baristas adjust flow rates and pressure curves to elicit new flavors and new character from their espresso.

Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

This is sophisticated stuff, previously reserved for the richest and nerdiest of nerds, attainable with commercial-caliber machines like Slayer that start at $10,000 and work up from there. Fellow offers this capability for a seventh of that price. And it's still easy to use for espresso beginners who've never even heard the word “pre-infusion” before today. Just select a preset shot profile for light or medium or dark beans, and the machine will do the hard work for you.

If I sound excited about this machine, I am—even as many features remain under development, and the phone app remains a placeholder for now. The device also has a couple peevish quirks, but the Fellow Series 1 is quite simply the most impressive espresso machine I've tested in the past couple years.

The Basic Specs

OK, first things first. The Fellow is a handsome and distinctive machine, in a Silicon Valley sort of way. My editor, after seeing a picture, said she wouldn't have assumed it was an espresso machine at all. It is a smooth-lined, minimalist box with a big stainless steel, brass-core group head floating in front. It's just 11 inches tall, fitting handily under pretty much any cabinet.

These streamlined aesthetics are par for the course for San Francisco–based Fellow, whose Aiden drip coffee machine is also a minimalist Steve Jobsian box. Fellow also shares a tech startup's habit for launching quickly and sending out a barrage of early firmware updates: I received three firmware fixes during a few weeks of pre-launch testing.

But if the app and firmware are still in flux as of late February, the Series 1's hardware is in lovely shape. The portafilter and group head are machined with admirable precision, sliding into place easily and satisfyingly without feeling loose. The haptics on the dial are pleasant. The steam wand has good heft and maneuverability, and its power is optimized to get dense milk froth without fear of hot spatter. It can also be heated up to a preset temperature rather than risk burning the milk.

Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

Another big innovation for the Series 1 is its patented heating system. Most espresso machines use either boilers or thermoblocks to heat up the water that goes into espresso. Boilers have admirable stability, but take forever to get hot. Thermoblocks are near instant, but less stable.

Fellow's heating system falls somewhere in between, with a boiler supplemented by a thermoblock that heats water before it enters the boiler, and a heated group head that helps stabilize temperature at the portafilter. This theoretically offers the best of both worlds. It heats within 2 minutes (I clocked it) but also offers greater temperature stability across an espresso shot, without the cold starts and hot finishes that can plague some home thermoblock machines.

The water tank is a capacious 2 liters, and is removable for easy filling, with one caveat: The tank can only be removed from the machine straight upward. And so if you've placed this machine under your cabinets, you may have a hard time removing the water tank—a minor kvetch that may be quite meaningful depending on your kitchen setup.

Shot Selection

OK, on to what's actually got me jazzed about this machine: shot profiles. It has them. Seven of them, each one quite different from the others.

Does the Series 1 offer very different profiles for light, medium, and dark beans? Yes, of course it does. How about a “lever” profile with six infusion stages that mimics the syrupy body and big crema of a manual espresso machine? Sure, why not? Turbo shots? Got your back, ’spro bro. It's a whole new ball game.

Most espresso novices may never have to get past the light roast, medium roast, and dark roast modes. Dark roast is straightforward, nearly traditional. Medium adds a pre-infusion for better extraction. Light roast adds a pressure ramp-down after the shot, to keep shots from running away as a puck degrades. For fun, you can track pressure as a “shot curve” that appears on the Series 1's circular screen.

Right out of the box, the S1 is every bit as easy to use as the Breville Oracle Jet ($2,000), my previous benchmark for combining excellent shots, versatility, and ease of use for all skill levels. If all you ever do with the Series 1 is change your shot profile depending on what bean you put in the portafilter, you'll still have very lovely espresso. And like the Oracle Jet or the Ninja Luxe Cafe, the Fellow has a bean-assist function to help espresso newcomers dial in the appropriate grind size for each shot.

True bean heads, on the other hand, can have fun digging into the other shot profiles and messing around with the parameters. The 9-bar and “lever” options mimic traditional 9-bar machines and manual espresso, respectively. The “Modern Arc” is designed to make smoother shots that appeal to modern tastes. And the turbo shot takes this even farther, designed to basically remove bitterness from espresso by grinding coarser and blasting water through a shot. (See here for a longer discussion of turbo shots.)

Fellow research and development head Nick Terzulli told me in an interview earlier this month that he'd initially planned even more shot profiles before reconsidering. Fellow didn't want to risk scaring people away with too many esoteric options.

But as the app gets developed, expect many more options. As happened with the Aiden long after the device launched, Fellow plans to eventually add a social component to the app, allowing you to download other people's shot profiles and play around with them. In conjunction with coffee subscription service Fellow Drops, Fellow will also release bean-specific recommendations.

The Caveats

Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

Still, there are a few wrinkles and TBDs. One, as mentioned above, is the placement of the water reservoir so that it can only be removed vertically, which may not be possible for those with low counter clearance.

Water dispensing is also a bit troublesome—a problem Fellow's designers say they're already aware of. Right now, the hot water dispenser defaults to the previous temperature and volume setting, without giving you the chance to adjust these settings before the water spits out. Terzulli said a change is already in the works, after other users had similar feedback.

The volumetric controls also weren't quite dialed in yet on my review model. Depending on how fast the shot was flowing, my shots often ended up a milliliter long or a milliliter short. This isn't the end of the world, but for a device that promises such minute customization, precision seems a reasonable ask.

And, of course, there's the fact that the machine is shipping without its full complement of features—including a fully operational phone app that would sync with the device to allow easier adjustment of shot profile parameters. For now, until a planned app upgrade, you might develop a bit of pull-down menu fatigue while navigating through the on-device menu.

Most of these complaints are likely just growing pains for a brand-new device. But even without the fixes that will surely come, the Series 1 is already a genuine achievement—one that'll have me asking more of other espresso machines in the future.

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