First, like many of you, it's a journey and a rabbit hole that never ends. NEVER. LOL. I can tell you that I would purchase this machine repeatedly in the end - and I'm only two weeks into my espresso journey. I boiled it down to quality and consistency; that's what I was looking for in a machine. Knowing I could finance the purchase, I wanted to ensure I was getting the most out of my dollar; so far, so good! Undoubtedly, the best feature is its flow control and pre-infusion settings for someone learning how to pull shots initially. Once I got the hang of dialing in, adding flow control took extraction to another level of flavor and helped mitigate channeling. I'm nowhere near perfection, and from what I gather, you never will be. You will dial in your shot best as possible and to your specific liking and enjoy! I'm getting some tasty shots in just two weeks after burning through a bag of specialty beans, lol. It takes time to get to know your grinder and machine. Still, it falls into place with the support of the coffee community and the retailers you purchased your gear from (thank you, team C&P). For someone pulling shots for myself and my wife, the Binaca has zero issues delivering back-to-back consistency and then some! As a beginner, here's my process, I take the recommended recipe from my roaster. Adjust my grinder to the average range for grinding espresso. Measure out my dose, and apply water spray (RDT) per my manufacturer's recommendation. Shake them beans! Grind into my bottomless portafilter (with included funnel from my Lagom P64), Sworks WDT to break up clumps in the basket and even out the coffee puck. Tamp down with a calibrated Bravo tamper (58.5mm). I'm using Pullman baskets. I finish the puck prep with a Normcore puck screen (58.5mm), blow and or brush away any loose grounds, so they don't get stuck/pressed up in the group head of your machine. The puck screen is my favorite accessory for one key reason; it keeps your machine's shower screen clean and aids in even puck saturation. Still, do your daily and weekly cleaning routines. And be sure to follow Lelit's water guidelines, which I might add; Lelit's care team is super responsive and will answer any question via email. If I include flow control, I add the time of flow control onto the full recipe's time. So if I'm pulling 19g in, and 55g out, in 25 seconds (per my roaster), and I want to add 4 seconds of flow control to the recipe, I'm stopping the extraction around 29-30 seconds, depending on how well the extraction is going or tasting...trial and error my friends. I'm having good results with this process so far, but again, I can't stress it enough, pick up the phone, call C&P, and have a conversation. Also, if you are at the end of the line and on the fence with the Bianca, get it, lol.