u/kekela91

Hi everyone,

I've been researching semi-automatic espresso machines for a while now and I've pretty much narrowed my choice down to the Sage/Breville Barista Express Impress (SES882BSS). Before I spend this much money, I'd love to get some opinions from people who have actually used it or compared it with other options.

My priorities are a bit mixed:

I want something that's approachable enough that my wife can easily make espresso and milk-based drinks without needing me to dial everything in every time.
At the same time, I enjoy the hobby side of espresso and want enough control to experiment and improve my shots.

The Impress workflow seems like a nice middle ground. It automates some of the repetitive steps while still letting me control the grind and extraction.

My main concern is my coffee workflow. I don't keep a hopper full of beans for weeks. Most of the time I'll have some decent everyday beans, but I also like buying small bags of more expensive light roasts and pulling a few experimental shots. From what I've seen, the SES882 seems designed around keeping a hopper full of beans rather than frequently swapping coffees or single dosing.

So my questions are:

Is single dosing practical on the SES882, or does grinder retention make it more trouble than it's worth?
How well does it handle lighter roasts?
If you had roughly the same budget today, would you still buy the SES882?

I'm also completely open to separate grinder + machine recommendations if they offer a noticeably better experience. The only real requirement is that the workflow remains simple enough that my wife can walk up, make a good espresso or milk drink without fighting the equipment, and not need to become an espresso hobbyist herself.

Thanks in advance. I really appreciate any advice before I pull the trigger.

So I've been trying to set up my family in Plex Home, and after messing around with both Managed Accounts and full Plex User Accounts, I ended up preferring Plex User Accounts.

The reason is simple: I don't want to be logging into my account on everyone else's devices. I want family members to have their own credentials, their own watch history, their own profiles, and, bonus, their own accounts in Seerr so requests stay separated. From a usability standpoint, it's great. Everyone gets their own space, shared libraries still work, and requests don't get mixed together.

Then I stumbled across something that completely broke my brain.

In Plex's documentation they explicitly state:

> When You Switch, You Become That User When you switch to another user, you really are switching to that user. You effectively BECOME that user. That means that you have the same access as that user.

Like... what the actual fuck?

Why can a family member even see the admin account as a switchable option in the first place? The only thing standing between them and full admin access is a PIN.

And honestly, that's not even my biggest issue.

As someone who's fairly security-conscious, the entire concept feels insane. A Plex Home member can potentially switch into the server owner's account and gain full administrative control. All the work I've put into tuning the server, fixing transcoding issues, optimizing remote streaming, organizing libraries, and generally making everything run smoothly can be nuked by a curious kid pressing buttons.

Even worse, what happens if one of my kid's phones gets lost or stolen? The thief doesn't need to compromise my Plex account directly-they already have a device that's part of the Home. Now they're one PIN away from my admin account and potentially my entire server.

Am I missing something here? Because from where I'm sitting, Plex Home feels less like a family-sharing feature and more like "everyone in the house is one PIN away from becoming the server administrator."

[Budget: ~1200 EUR] Looking for a sanity check before buying a Sage/Breville Barista Express Impress (SES882BSS)

Rant: Plex Home User Management