Everything was great with this machine until the handle on the espresso filter broke off. That is a part whose function entails a certain amount of stress, but when it broke off one could easily see that breaking as it did was almost invetiable due to shoddy design. The place where the handle snapped is the point at which the plastic handle attaches to the filter itself, and thus endures more stress than any other part of the machine, but it is reinforced only with thin plastic. Krups seems to have cuts corners on this model.