Spinn Coffee Maker Review

Quick Verdict: I would not buy the Spinn Coffee maker. I’d instead buy the similarly priced (but much better) Delonghi Dinamica ECAM35020W.

This is my Spinn coffee maker review.

I have never owned a Spinn coffee maker. 

I have, however, owned a handful of super-automatic espresso machines (the same type of machine as a Spinn) in the past. 

I also spent a whole day researching this machine, and users’ experiences with it, online to put together this review.

Let’s go.

Should I Buy A Spinn Coffee Maker (Quick Verdict)

I would not recommend buying the Spinn Coffee Maker. Instead, I’d buy the similar, but better, Delonghi Dinamica ECAM35020W.

The Spinn Coffee maker’s main “thing” is that it’s operated by a phone app. You still need to put a cup on its drip tray to make your coffee.

This renders the whole “remotely controlled coffee machine” concept pointless in my opinion as you still need to be next to the machine to place your cup on its drip tray and not squirt coffee all over your counter.

The machine also just makes poor coffee. 

It offers every coffee option under the sun but doesn’t do any of them well. It also seems to be beset with technical issues, according to multiple Amazon reviews.

Avoid it entirely.

An excellent alternative to a Spinn Coffee Maker is the Delonghi Dinamica ECAM35020W. 

The two machines are similarly priced but the Delonghi makes much better coffee across the board even if you have to use *gasp* buttons to operate it.

Product Overview

The Spinn Coffee Maker is a super-automatic espresso machine with two key “unique selling points”:

• It is phone operated.
• It generates pressure by spinning your coffee and water rather than by pumping it.    

The machine has a built-in grinder. All you need to do to make a coffee is to fill the machine with whole coffee beans and water and then select your coffee type, strength and size from your phone.             

The machine has basic buttons so you do not have to operate it with your phone. 

You do need to use your phone to use its full range of functionalities, however. This includes having access to its full menu and being able to customize your coffee’s strength and serving size.                                              

The table below shows some key specifications of the product:

Specification	Spinn Coffee Maker
Dimensions (width x depth x height in inches)	13.5” x 8.5” x 14”
Available espresso types	Six
Available filter coffee types	At least six
Milk frothing functionalities	No
Built-in grinder?	Yes
Grind size settings	No
Strength settings	Yes – to the nearest ounce of water
Serving size settings	Yes – to the nearest gram of ground coffee
Control panel type	Phone operated
Cup clearance (inches)	6”

I do not recommend this machine.

Spinn Coffee Maker Pros

Has a very large menu of coffee types, which can continue growing as it is a “smart machine”.

It is very easy to clean and maintain.

It is more environmentally friendly than a Nespresso machine.

Spinn Coffee Maker Cons

Its reliance on its app is unnecessary and will greatly increase the operational cost of the machine.

It doesn’t make authentic espresso at all.

You cannot adjust its grind size – this is criminal for a machine that claims to make espresso.

The machine is overpriced for how good a coffee it can actually make.

The milk frother is sold separately.

Quality of Coffee

The Spinn Coffee Maker makes poor coffee across the board due to its dumb “G Force Infusion” brewing system.

The Spinn Coffee Maker makes three basic types of coffee:

• Espresso 
• Drip Coffee
• Cold Brew

Since the machine makes these three types of coffee in different ways, I am going to evaluate each of them individually.

Espresso

The Spinn Coffee Maker makes poor espresso that is comparable to that made by a Nespresso machine.

The Spinn makes an espresso by spinning your ground coffee and hot water very quickly together to achieve the pressure that characterises espresso brewing.

This is the same type of system that Nespresso machines use. 

The big difference between the way that Spinn and Nespresso machines brew coffee is that Spinn uses loose coffee grounds rather than Nespresso’s pod-based system.

Since their brewing systems are very similar, I am going to assume that Spinn and Nespresso coffee machines make similar-tasting espresso.

I have owned one of the premium Nespresso machines in the past and the espresso from it was NOT good. 

The espresso had no finish to it, meaning that you tasted it for about one second when it was in your mouth and then all the flavor was just…gone.

In short, the espresso that you’d likely get from a Spinn machine is bland and uninteresting. It is certainly far inferior to what you’d get from most mid-tier super-automatic espresso machines.

Quality of Espresso Rating: 4/10

Drip Coffee

The Spinn Coffee Maker makes a better drip coffee than most super-automatic espresso machines, but it is still nowhere near as good as one made by a good quality drip coffee machine.

While Spinn’s “G Force Infusion” technology doesn’t make a great espresso, it actually allows the machine to make a better drip coffee than most super-automatic espresso machines.

This still isn’t saying much, since super-automatic espresso machines in general make bad drip coffee.

The Spinn’s drip coffee pales in comparison to that made by a good drip coffee machine because it does not brew your coffee for long enough.

Drip coffee is meant to be brewed for around four minutes, according to the Specialty Coffee Association of America.

The Spinn makes a drip coffee in less than half of this time. This means that your drip coffee will be under-extracted, and a bit on the sharp side (Nespresso Vertuo drip coffees are brewed in the same way and also have this problem).

Still, if for some reason you want a super-automatic espresso machine to primarily make drip coffee with (…weirdo…), then the Spinn is a good option.

Quality of Drip Coffee Rating: 5/10

Cold Brew

Although people online seem to like Spinn’s cold brew. I am not convinced by the concept of making a cold brew in minutes.

The Spinn makes a cold brew in 60 seconds. A “proper” cold brew is usually brewed in about 12 hours.

The video below is from Spinn themselves, and they try to explain how they can make a cold brew in 60 seconds:

Although I was able to find some people praising Spinn’s cold brew online, I’m just not convinced you can make a good cold brew in 60 seconds, regardless of how much “agitation” you can achieve.

Quality of Cold Brew Rating: 5/10

Overall Quality of Coffee Rating: 4/10 

Functionalities

The Spinn has a large coffee menu but I find its inability to customize coffee grind size or froth milk to be very frustrating.

The Spinn has a menu that can rival pretty much any super-automatic espresso machine, even ones that retail at twice its price.

Spinn has gone down the “jack of all trades, master of none” approach with this machine. This is both a good and a bad thing.

You can customise the strength of your coffee (ie how much ground coffee you brew with) and your coffee size on the fly during brewing. This is a nice touch and is generally only offered by the better super automatics out there.

You cannot adjust grind size, as far as I can tell (it’s not entirely clear how to do this anyway). 

If this is indeed the case then it is a big black mark against this machine as adjusting grind size is one of the most important ways of fine-tuning your espresso. The quality of Spinn’s espresso drops even further if you cannot adjust its grind size.

The Spinn also cannot froth milk. Spinn does make a milk frother, but you have to buy this separately from the coffee machine (this is another way that the machine is inspired by Nespresso).

Given Spinn’s price tag, I think the fact that it cannot froth milk is a bit of a joke as it greatly reduces the number of drinks that you can make with this machine.

Functionalities Rating: 6/10

Ease of Use & Cleaning

The Spinn is very easy to use so long as you are comfortable using a smartphone.

The Spinn is almost entirely operated using your phone, with the only manual work involved in operating the machine being filling the machine with coffee and water.

Selecting your coffee, serving size and strength is all done with your phone (the machine has a dedicated app). You can also “tell” the machine to rinse and clean itself via the app.

The app is very intuitive.

In short, so long as you are comfortable with using a smartphone then you should find using the Spinn very easy.

I should add that although a smartphone-operated coffee machine is easy to use, I still think it is a bit of a redundant concept.

You still need to be present to place your cup on the machine’s drip tray, so you cannot really make a coffee “remotely” in any meaningful sense of the term.

Ease of Use and Cleaning Rating: 8/10

Design and Build Quality

The Spinn has a low-build quality and is just a poorly thought-out machine in general.

According to multiple Amazon reviews, the Spinn Coffee Maker is regularly plagued with technical issues and is just a really cheaply built machine in general.

Its most common technical problem is that it often stops mid-cycle. I could find multiple complaints about this online, despite the fact that there aren’t that many reviews of this machine in general.

Many users have also complained about the machine just being cheaply built, especially with regard to its exterior.

Cracked and ill-fitting water tanks that leak have often been cited in reviews.

Clearly, Spinn spent a lot of money making a “smart” coffee maker, even though such a device is completely unnecessary.

To make it affordable, Spinn cut corners in every other aspect of the machine, meaning that it regularly succumbs to technical issues. 

Design and Build Quality Rating: 2/10

Value for Money

The Spinn is overpriced, to begin with, and its reliability on an app where you can buy overpriced coffee means that its operational cost will be relatively high too.

I think that Spinn is overpriced considering the (not very high) quality of coffee that it can make.

This high price is likely due to the expense involved in building a phone-operated coffee maker. As I’ve said multiple times in this review, I think that the whole concept of a phone-operated coffee maker is redundant, so this money is not being put to good use.

Spinn is clearly trying to position itself as a “cheaper” alternative to Nespresso by arguing that it will save money in the long run by using loose-ground coffee rather than pods.

I think that this is a flawed argument for two reasons:

• The Spinn is so much more expensive than a similar Nespresso machine (the Nespresso Vertuo Next) that it would take more than two years to make your money back by buying loose coffee vs pods. For more information on this please see my article on whether Nespresso machines are worth it?

• Spinn’s app has a whole coffee marketplace where you buy coffee at marked-up prices. While you don’t have to buy your coffee on this app to use the machine, this extra convenience will likely tempt you to do so and negate any savings you might make by using loose-ground coffee over pods.

In short, while the Spinn Coffee Maker can, after a few years of ownership, be a cheaper alternative to a Nespresso machine, I still think that it is an overpriced machine that is trying to maximize its total cost of ownership by having you rely on an app to use it.

Value For Money Rating: 3/10

What Users Say

The Spinn Coffee Maker has been reviewed 108 times on Amazon as of January 2023. It has an average rating of 4.2 out of 5 stars.

Positive reviews of the machine (somewhat surprisingly) often praise its cold brew. You can find an example of this below

Amazon review, November 2022: I’ve really enjoyed all the coffees that Spinn is making, but my favorite is the Nitro Cold Brew – this cool brewed drink is very frothy, lots of flavor, silky smooth and not a trace of bitterness. I don’t know how it’s created but it’s really great.

Negative reviews of the machine often say that it has technical issues and poor build quality. In particular, the machine has a tendency to shut off halfway through making your coffee.

Amazon review, December 2022: “Now, after exchanging a “faulty” Spinn machine, and each machine has the exact same issue, I am wondering if the positive 5-star reviews are fake/paid. I keep having the same issue on the new exchanged machine, so it’s not just one faulty machine. My repeated issue is that the cycle will never complete, even when everything is set up perfectly. This is not convenient or even usable, on the contrary, it’s a waste of money.

Product Alternatives

Here are two much better alternatives to the Spinn Coffee Maker

Delonghi Dinamica ECAM35020W – Better Super Automatic at a Similar Price

The Delonghi Dinamica ECAM35020W is a similarly priced super-automatic espresso machine to the Spinn Coffee Maker. For a similar amount of money, you get a machine that:

• Is far less likely to stop working
• Makes better espresso
• Can actually froth milk

While the machine is not phone operated (oh no(!)) and makes slightly worse filter coffee than the Spinn, it is still a far better option for the money.

Nespresso Vertuo Next – Cheaper “Smart” Espresso Machine of Similar Quality

The Nespresso Vertuo Next is a “smart” coffee machine in that it has a compatible app which will expand the machine’s available coffees as new Nespresso pods come out.

The Vertuo Next is much cheaper than the Spinn. While you can make the argument that over time the total operational costs of a Nespresso machine will be higher, I think that the Vertuo Next still offers better value for money considering that it won’t break down every five minutes.

Final Verdict

I would not recommend buying a Spinn Coffee Maker

The machine is overpriced and has very poor build quality.

The Delonghi Dinamica ECAM35020W is a much better super-automatic espresso machine at a similar price.