I bought the Z6 after my refurbished Capresso C3000 broke down after 3 years. I had liked my Capresso C3000 so I thought I would go with Jura's top of the line machine (Jura bought out Capresso and now all the machines are called Jura) I had this machine now for about a year and I have to say its is not worth the price $3,600. I listed the pros and cons that I found with the machine.
Pros
1) Looks Great. It is the Rolls Royce of coffee machines.
2) The Espresso/Coffee is good. (Not Excellent, and don't tell me about using diffrent beans I have, its not like I'm using folgers.
2) The Steamed/frothed milk attachment produces excellent results.
3) One touch button to make cappuccino/Lattes. (Nice to impress friends)
4) Has a timer for when to turn on and off so you don't need to wait around for the initial warmup time when you first start the machine.
Cons
1)The metal plate where the cup sits scratches very easily.
2)You can only fit a normal size coffee mug (8 oz)under the nozzle. You cannot deviate from this size at all. No travel mugs or slightly tall mugs. Same height restrictions for the cappuchino/Latte attachment.
3) The hotwater dispenser trickles out hot water. It takes almost 1 and half minutes to fill 8 oz of hot water. Its quicker to 'Nuke' the same amount of water in the microwave for tea.
4) You need to clean the machine with special tablets and they cost about $20 for 6. You will more than likely go thru 1 tablet every 2 months or at least 6 in a year and more if heavily used. Also theres no way around this since the machines displays 'Clean' and beeps every time you turn it on until you go thru the cleaning process.
5) Also the water filter. This costs about $20 and needs to be changed about every 3 months depending on the use. If you don't use the filter then you will have to descale the machine every 6 months or so but that also depends on the the water hardness in your area.
6) The electric cord is a fairly decent length which is good thing but its not retractable which is a pain. The C3000 had a retractable cord, so you would only pull out the amount of cord needed and the rest would be unseen. With the Z6 I have my plug right behind the machine on my countertop and have about of 2 feet of cord I need to hide.
7) The silver front is also just plastic and it is not made of any type of metal.
8) The rinse feature (which was a button on the front panel of the C3000) is buried deep in the menu with the Z9. So you have to press the Dial, then turn the dial to go to maintenance then turn it again until you find rinse then you have to press the button once to rinse the coffee spout then again for the espresso attachment (even if you didn't use it). This is a major pain to do and time consuming especially in the morning. So you tend not to rinse the machince as much as you should. This affects the taste of the coffee because little bits of the old grounds get mixed in with the new ones. On my old capresso I would press the rinse button before I made my coffee and then again after I made it so it would stay cleaner longer and not affect the taste of my coffee.
So, based on these facts i would have to say that for the price I would expect more. It is a nice machine but you could purchase the Jura E8 for the 1/3 the price and it would do everything the Z6 does (Except the one touch cappuccino/Latte) which is overrated anyways. Also there are more fully automatic machines entering the market with almost the same features but lower the price. When I did my research for this machine almost everybody said it was the greatest thing since sliced bread but after paying $3600 who would admit it wasn't all that?
UPDATE:2012-01-12
So had this machine for a few years now and so far I'm not impressed. The front plastic has warped off near the bottom tray since it comes in contact with water when making coffee/rinsing. The tray that you pull out to clean the grinds an empty the water does not fit that well and the now and then I get the 'Tray missing' error. When I was cleaning the machine I got a 'error 8' message and was like ok so what do you want me to do? So I turned off the machine because nothing else worked and had to restart the cleaning process. Pardon my French but that really sucks because the cleaning tablets are not cheap and happened 2 out of 5 cleanings I did. Also the price on the water filter cartridges have gone up by at least 10 dollars. I cannot find anything at the price I bought these at before. I really wanted to like this machine but man for a premium price I don't think anybody has to deal with these issues.
