Before purchasing the Imperia, I AGONIZED for weeks over which pasta machine to buy. I have a KitchenAid stand mixer and I considered getting the pasta roller set for that because I figured it would be a strenuous job to hand crank. The problem was that I didn't know if I'd really like homemade pasta (I'd never had it before) and those rollers are about twice the price of the manual machines, depending on which one you buy. I didn't want to waste a bunch of money and then find out that I hate making pasta. Plus, I wanted the machine to be mobile since I plan on using it at friends' houses for dinner parties. Hauling my mixer is out of the question.
I almost bought one of the cheaper manual machines (PastaFresh or Roma), but finally decided on the Imperia because it was "middle of the road" in price and the others got almost equal amounts of bad reviews as they did good reviews. I'm so happy with this machine! The instructions are a bit iffy (impossible, really) but with the help of a few online videos and the Complete Book of Pasta and Noodles (recommended here), I attempted my first ever batch of pasta. I used the egg noodle recipe for fettuccine from the book. Terrific! I expected the process to be difficult and time consuming, but from start to finish it probably took me about an hour, including cook time. I mixed the dough by hand without a food processor and it wasn't even that messy. I ran a quarter of the dough through the rollers and cutters first to clean them out, then threw it away as instructed. I could see some grey in the dough when I was done, so don't skip this part unless you want metal dust in your pasta! The dough was coming out thin and stringy at first and I wondered what was wrong. I had the machine on setting 1, and you're supposed to start on setting 6! With a cheaper machine I probably would have stripped the gears trying to run the thick dough through setting 1, but the machine was fine afterwards.
My biggest problem was trying to keep the fettuccine from sticking together after I ran it through the cutter. I was not using enough flour. The Youtube video I watched recommended rice flour, and that worked wonderfully while I was rolling and cutting. I didn't dry the pasta before cooking, I just threw it right in the boiling water. It turned out delicious, much better than expected. And, if you're curious as to what spaghettini looks like, picture ramen noodles.
I also bought the Norpro ravioli press with the machine and book, and I wanted to mention that the rollers on the Imperia DO make the dough wide enough for use with the ravioli press. Some of the cheaper manual machines didn't have wide enough rollers to cover the entire press, and wouldn't have worked with it.
This machine is built like a tank. Everything seems very heavy duty and should last forever. I'm so glad I didn't buy a cheaper machine! If you're on the fence about spending this much like I was, just do it. You won't regret learning on one of the best machines out there. If you can't decide between this and the KitchenAid rollers because you think the hand crank will be too hard, trust me, I did it all by myself from start to finish with no issues.