Great post and great information!

I did the math regarding boutique coffee shops and Nespresso about 20 years ago. After that revelation I did NOT buy a standard coffee maker, but have had a series of automatic machines with a built in grinder.

This is the best of both worlds. I drink 3 or 4 espressos in the morning. Not one right after the other, but over the 90-120 minutes of getting up and doing my chores and on the weekend getting ready to go for a walk with my wife and Husky (she goes every day).

We (my wife and I) have tried out various beans over the years. Our favorite is Lavazza, particularly because they sell decaf beans that we mix 50/50 with their regular Espresso beans.

An automatic machine allows my wife to drink a Latte while I stick to espresso. Our latest is a De'Longhi Dinamica Plus.

The downside is the price. A machine like ours costs about €700. That being said, we had our last De'Longhi for about 8 years and sold it for about 20% of the new price, as everything still worked great. If you have the budget, I have nearly a couple of decades of experience drinking coffee all over the Europe and the US at business hotels and lounges to vouch for an automatic machine.

A fully automatic machine gives you boutique taste at Mr. Coffee price (after amortization).

I have friends who swear that semi-automatic machines where you press the grind in the cup after grinding yourself is even better, but my wife does not believe the extra work results in better tasting coffee (I'd need a couple of blind taste tests) and neither of us wants an extra machine (grinder) on the counter and to clean.

My two cents.