For over 30 years I have used commercial La Cimbali machines in my home : M30, M31, M32 Bistro models (single group). All were incredibly well made, extremely reliable and durable. The M26 is no exception. It is an old school heat exchanger machine with a saturated group (expensive to manufacture), but without potential complications, like a display or dual boiler setup or PID electronics.

The M26 has a 5 liter boiler, significantly larger than previous La Cimbali single group models. This makes for a true powerhouse: temperature stability is beyond belief. No matter what you throw at it, it won't budge. The massive group head and oversized boiler create a huge thermal mass. Warmup time is about 40 minutes. The M26 is easy to work on , easy to maintain and much “roomier” inside than your typical tightly packed prosumer home machine. I expect this one to last 25 years, just like my M31 did (until the control board died).

As mentioned above, this is a heat exchanger machine. By design it is less complicated than a dual boiler, and yet I would argue it is capable of delivering identical results, as long as you adhere to the required procedure, i. e. the “cooling flush”.

The machine's pump pressure came from the factory adjusted to10.5 bar. Not sure if this was intentional, but I adjusted it to the standard 9 bar. Right out of the box there was a strong, nauseating chemical smell coming from the machine, similar to that of a new PVC shower curtain. The smell came from the ABS…