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Philips’ Series 2200 LatteGo coffee machine offers consistent cappuccinos with a caveat

Think less and drink more coffee with the Series 2200.

Philips Series 2200
Philips Series 2200 LatteGo Coffee Machine
4 out of 5 stars
4
Grinder
Conical burr
Pump pressure
15 bars
RRP
$899
Fergus Halliday
May 24, 2022
Icon Time To Read5 min read

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Quick verdict: Philips Series 2200 LatteGo coffee machine

If you want fast and consistent coffee results, then the Philips Series 2200 LatteGo is more than up to the task. It's fast, intuitive and offers ample room for variation, even if it falls short on experimentation.

pro
Pros
pro Consistent results
pro Clean design
pro Automatic cleaning
con
Cons
con Messy milk spout
con LatteGo is loud
con Limited controls

For those looking to brew anything outside the basics, the Philips Series 2200's myriad competencies may begin to feel like constrictions. Nevertheless,  this reliable and hands-off coffee machine is easy to recommend to those who want to seeking home espresso hardware that lets them think less and drink more coffee.

Philips Series 2200 header

How much does the Philips Series 2200 LatteGo cost in Australia?

Consistency comes at a cost

The Philips Series 2200 LatteGo has a recommended retail price of $899 in Australia. That’s a little steep. Fortunately, it doesn’t take much shopping around to find a decent deal on the machine. Check out the table below for a sense of how local pricing for the Philip Series 2200 Latte go sits. 

Store
Price
More info
Amazon
🔥From$899
$649
Kogan
From
$786.45
Bing Lee
From
$799

Philips Series 2200 LatteGo - Design and Features

A clean and compact coffee maker
Philips Series 2200 review pictures

The Philips Series 2200 LatteGo bills itself as a sleek black box. Water and coffee beans go in. Delicious espresso comes out.

The top-half of the front-facing side of the Series 2200 is adorned with a dozen or so touch sensitive buttons that cover (almost) everything you’ll ever need when it comes to using the machine on a daily basis. These controls are complemented by the split spout from which the bean juice will inevitably flow and a mount that integrates with the LatteGo attachment that comes included in the box.

The overarching aesthetics here are curvy, glossy, and inconspicuous. Compared to something like the Sunbeam Barista Max, the Philips Series 2200 comes across as a bit more professional.

That's not to say a splash of practicality isn't in the mix here. A transparent panel on the top of the Philips Series 2200 houses an air-sealed bean hopper while a segment on the right-hand side houses the water tank. Thanks to the semi-transparent material involved in both cases, it’s easy to tell at a glance whether you need to top up the reservoir or the machine's supply of beans. In the case of the former, doing this is as simple as sliding the water tank forwards and outwards. The latter is even more straightforward.

The button layout on the Series 2200 covers the three beverages that this particular coffee machine is prepared to brew at an instant's notice (espresso, coffee and cappuccino), plus a few modifiers that allow you to refine the strength and water volume involved. If there’s an issue at any stage of the process, a red light will activate on the part of this button layout that corresponds to the source of the issue, which is a helpful touch that aid with any unexpected troubleshooting.

One of the big selling points for this coffee machine over the other options is the promise of the Philips’ Aroma Extract system. This feature allows the Series 2200 to deliver better results by regulating and maintaining a water temperature of between 90°C and 98°C. The sweet spot for coffee is said to sit around 94°C or so, so the Aroma Extract system essentially promises to help deliver more consistent results than a competing machine without the feature might. It's a blunt force approach to eke an edge over the competition, but if you care enough about the temperature that you're brewing at, you'll likely appreciate the inclusion.

Philips Series 2200 LatteGo - Performance and maintenance

LatteGo is loud, but automatic cleaning is a delight

In action, the Philips Series 2200 LatteGo does a solid job of delivering on fast hands-off espresso.

Whipping up a quick cuppa is fast and easy from start to finish. You power on the machine, give it a minute to execute its automatic cleaning routine, then select your caffeinated beverage of choice, lock in your water and strength settings and let things run. When you’re done, the machine will wait a minute before cleaning itself. 

Philips' LatteGo system, which is a fancy way of describing the optional accessory that comes with the Series 2200, is an admittedly-nifty inclusion here. It saves you the trouble of buying a discrete milk frother or steamer, helping sell the Series 2200 as an all-in-one solution for those who care enough about their coffee to want to invest in easy access to it but don't necessarily want to go quite that far down the rabbit-hole.

Unfortunately, the LatteGo milk steamer is significantly louder than the rest of the machine. Churning out a quick espresso in the early hours of the morning using the Philips Series 2200 without waking up my partner was a distinct possibility. However, if I wanted that beverage to involve milk, the chances they’d sleep through the sounds emitted by the optional frothing kit here slimmed significantly. 

The spout on the LatteGo also feels slightly misaligned with the espresso pumps. This often resulted in a lot of accidental mess, since most glasses, cups and mugs required very specific placement to reliably receive both milk and espresso from the Series 2200 without any spillage.

These hardware quirks aside, it feels weird that Philips don’t allow you to just activate and steam milk using the accessory on command.  The only way I could find to make it go was to brew a cappuccino. That's not to say you couldn't use this setup to make something like a latte or a flat white, but it feels like a very convoluted pathway to sipping on a latte or flat white.

Still, the inclusion of automatic cleaning here does add something to the experience that I don't think you get from a machine that's more hobby-grade.

Likewise, and even if there’s a little more long-term maintenance involved with this machine over something like the Nespresso Vertuo Next, the overall experience offered by the Philips Series 2200 LatteGo feels more frictionless than pod coffee. In some respects, it's the best of both worlds.

Recommended for your new coffee machine
These are the best sellers on Amazon that go with your Philips coffee machine

*Pricing and deals only accurate as of last page update. 

Is the Philips Series 2200 LatteGo worth buying?

Coffee this consistent doesn't come cheap
Philips Series 2200 review pictures

That said, fully automatic espresso machines as rigid as the Philips Series 2200 feel undeniably weird to recommend in 2022. You’re sacrificing the ability to brew lots of different styles of coffee but gaining the ability to brew your preferred take on the classic cappuccino with impressive speed and consistency.

That said, if you’re happy to spend more for easy access to something a little closer in the brew of your local barista and willing to sacrifice both the variety offered by pod machine systems, then this is a great option.

The Philips Series 2200 provides consistent results and buffers the wider experience of coffee machine ownership out through smart design details and the ability to hone in on your desired level of brew strength.

How does the Philips Series 2200 LatteGo compare?

When it came to the beverages brewed by the Philips Series 2200, I was mostly happy with the level of quality and consistency. That said, I'm more of a latte drinker than a cappuccino-hound.

The table below breaks down how the Philips Series 2200 LatteGo compares to a few of the other coffee machines we've reviewed.

Product
Our score
Price
Pump pressure
Coffee type
More info
3.8 out of 5 stars
3.75
🔥From $229
$183.20
15 barsPod coffee
3.8 out of 5 stars
3.75
From
$396
15 barsManual espresso
3.8 out of 5 stars
3.75
From
$505
15 barsManual espresso w/ grinder
4.3 out of 5 stars
4.25
From
$1298
19Manual espresso w/ grinder
3.8 out of 5 stars
3.75
🔥From $299
$269
15 barsPod coffee
4 out of 5 stars
4
From
$749
15 barsAutomatic espresso w/ grinder
4 out of 5 stars
4
🔥From $899
$649
15 barsAutomatic espresso w/ grinder
3 out of 5 stars
3
🔥From $529
$199
15 barsManual espresso

How we review coffee machines

The short answer: by making (and drinking) a lot of coffee. The longer one: We spend some serious time not just using the coffee machines we review, but also thinking about the type of users they're for. We don't just read and regurgitate a spec-sheet. We take stock of what the landscape looks like, and how machines like the Sunbeam Barista Max fit into it.

Even if there are clear differences between home espresso machines like this one and cheaper pod-based options, those differences can be bridged by a thorough assessment of how successful both approaches when it comes to solving the problem of delivering the quality homemade coffee possible with as little effort as possible.

For a full breakdown of our approach to reviewing coffee machines, visit this page.

Philips Series 2200 LatteGo FAQ

Here are the most frequently asked questions about the Philips Series 2200 LatteGo coffee machine.

No. Milk should only go into the LatteGo attachment for the Philips Series 2200.

Making a cappuccino with the Philips Series 2200 LatteGo is fairly straightforward.

  1. Turn on the machine and fill up the LatteGo accessory
  2. Wait for the machine to warm-up and initatiate its automatic cleaning cycle
  3. Select the cappuccino button on the control menu
  4. Confirm your desired level of strength and volume
  5. Place a cup below the milk and coffee spouts on the machine and press the start key
  6. In about a minute or so, you should have a hot but more-or-less drinkable cappuccino 

The Philips Series 2200 LatteGo can only steam milk when it is used to brew a cappuccino. This is done by following the steps listed in the answer above.

Fergus Halliday
Written by
Fergus Halliday
Fergus Halliday is a journalist and editor for Reviews.org. He’s written about technology, telecommunications, gaming and more for over a decade. He got his start writing in high school and began his full-time career as the Editor of PC World Australia. Fergus has made the MCV 30 Under 30 list, been a finalist for seven categories at the IT Journalism Awards and won Most Controversial Writer at the 2022 Consensus Awards. He has been published in Gizmodo, Kotaku, GamesHub, Press Start, Screen Rant, Superjump, Nestegg and more.

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