Can I justify a Sage Barista Express Impress to break a £4-a-day coffee habit?
I don’t own this one — yet. This is the machine I’m seriously considering, and the sums are more interesting than I expected.
This is deliberately an ‘I’d buy it’, not an ‘I have it’. I’m looking at the Sage Barista Express Impress in brushed stainless steel, currently £599.95 when I checked on 6 August 2026. I like the idea of bean-to-cup freshness with help on dosing and tamping rather than a completely automatic machine.
My expensive little habit is a roughly £4 coffee. At one every day that is £1,460 a year; even five days a week is £1,040. The machine price is the equivalent of about 150 £4 coffees before allowing for beans, milk and electricity.
A fairer example is to assume a home coffee costs about £1. That would save about £3 each time. At five coffees a week, the £599.95 machine would take roughly 40 weeks to recover its purchase price. My real question is whether I’d actually stop buying coffee out — because that matters more than clever arithmetic.
WHY IT BRINGS JOYIt could turn an expensive habit into a nicer at-home ritual — but I’m only calling it a recommendation once I’ve lived with it.
Price checked 6 August 2026. The savings example is illustrative: your beans, milk, energy use and café habits will change the real payback.