today I'm going to take a look at these two wonderful machines and give you a bit of a
comparison we're looking at the Rocket R Nine One and the La Marzocco GS3 now if you're in
the market for one of these machines I'm going to try and answer some of the questions that you may
have things like the heritage of the machines how they actually work the user interface and
the specifications so that you can work out which one of these machines May suit your best [Music]
the GS3 is my machine now I've had this for about two years and really enjoyed making
coffee on it so we've got quite a few videos already on pressure profiling the specs and
how this machine works and a bit more of the detail so go and check that video out for a
bit more in-depth information and the r91 from rocket has been given to us kindly from espresso
Company Australia so thanks heaps guys and we've been able to produce a couple other videos around
this machine so again we do an unboxing and a bit of a how to use the interface
and a bit more in it so jump on and check out that video for the specifics of this machine
but the biggest thing that we want to cover is if you're in the market for a machine over the ten
thousand dollar Mark these are two of the options that you'd be considering and people sort of you
know play them against each other and really I think what you need to start to think about
is what do you use the machine for what do you want to get out of it and really should you be
paying for some of the features that each of the machines have because there are some differences
and I think some people aim for the most expensive machine but may not actually use the features
of the actual machine or it could become quite complex and then you won't actually enjoy coffee
so hopefully by the end of the video you'll have a better idea which one of these May suit your
coffee habits that you have at home so just to be clear we've been loaned the rocket R Nine One to
have a play with do a bit of a an assessment and put a bit of content up we don't get paid for it
and that machine will be heading back to them so trying to keep it a little bit non-biased and open
to conversation about these two machines so if you're looking at high-end machines you'll be
aware that a lot of machines come out of Italy and look that's where the heritage of beautiful
coffee machines come from the La Marzocco is made in Florence and the rockets come out of Milan so
you can see perhaps some styling of these two companies that have been around for a while
and they've definitely got distinct different looks with your big exposed head here on your
La Marzocco and a short sort of stature where the rocket is really sticking with its traditional
kind of square feel but really nice sharp clean line so the two of those Aesthetics you know
you've got to decide which one suits you best in your kitchen and the look and the feel so that's
a personal choice I'll leave that one up to you as far as the technical numbers go there are a
few differences between the two we've both got um dual boiler machines with saturated group heads
um we've they're both plummable or tank water we've got 3 related tank sorry 3.5 liter tank on
the La Marzocco you've got a three liter tank on the rocket you've got a cool touch steam ones your
hot water activations your big drip trays and so a lot of those things are quite similar when you
start to look at the numbers a few things do start to stand out so in the La Marzocco we've got the
double boilers you've got 3.5 liter steam boiler and a three liter Brew boiler so they're a little
bit larger than the rocket and to power that up it's 2100 Watts so that is a little bit higher
than the 1600 Watts that's in the rocket now the Rocket's got a 1.9 liter steam boiler and a 1.5
liter Brew boiler so they're a little bit smaller but that's not going to have any real effect for
you as the home user if you said you're going to look at these machines and pump out higher volume
the La Marzocco would have more capacity because of those large boilers to handle that flow through
of water and the volume so we're talking Cafe sort of volume here not you know pumping out a
heap of coffees for your friends both of these machines are going to absolutely smash that if
you've got a bit of a party at home and you know 10 or more people so I wouldn't really be putting
that into perspective if it's for the home market now I mentioned that they're both plummable that's
where the machines differ greatly so in the La Marzocco you've got a rotary pump I think it's
the pro con pump which is used in all commercial coffee machines whereas in the rocket you've
got an electric gear pump and that's where the water source and the nine bar of pressure or the
variable variable pressure can really show some distinct differences between these two models so
I'm going to come back and dive into that a little bit further when we start to get into the front
heads one of the biggest factors that I want you to understand about these two machines and to be
fair to them is to understand when they were made the GS3 has been around since 2008 so it's had
quite a few iterations and the three is obviously the third generation the G and the S stands for
Grupo Satro now I apologize for the pronunciation but it means saturated group so um that's where
the heritage of this machine has come from and in 2016 they redesigned and rebuilt this whole
internal piston system to update it when we look at the rocket it was in 2018 that this was built
so to be fair they've had the chance to look at what everyone else has done before they've gone
into pressure profiling and and look at how maybe to improve it and that's certainly the way the
rocket is featured it's more a digital approach and a new technology into pressure profiling and
stability controls where the GS3 has been around for quite some time and still stands the test of
time as a market leader so if you're looking at reliability and asking a couple of those questions
we've got a machine here that's been around for more than 15 years quick maths there and it's
still parts available it's reliable it's durable and if you look at the rocket machine it's only
a couple of years old but it's Heritage we've got machines that still come in back for like 2005 we
can still get parts rebuild them so I don't think there's a difference between quality or durability
these machines are going to last you quite a long time and you'll still be able to service them and
if you are still worried you've got 24 months warranty on these as a home user where a lot
of the lower end machines only have 12 months so that's a great confidence that they're going to
make sure that you've got that support for a bit longer now before I mentioned that what the GS3
means the R Nine One well to be honest I can't get a straight answer what it means at a quick guess
I'd say rocket the nine would be something about maybe variable pressure of nine and the one would
be a one group option now if you've got the answer hey I'd love to know pop it in the comments below
if we still can't find it give us your options tell us what you think it could be so now when we
come around to the business end of both of these machines there are really distinct differences so
the first thing is how they actually work and deliver their variable pressure and the other
one is the user interface so I'll try and answer both of those as easy as I can when we look at
the water and the temperature stability we've got those saturated groups in both the machines
they're both digitally controlled PIDs so that means you can change the water temperatures in
the head or the steam boiler on both of them from a digital perspective with the updates in the GS3
you can now use their La Marzocco home app and that's where you can play with all of those those
numbers very easily you can do it from the front interface it's a little bit trickier as well but
that interface allows you to have you know future proof who knows what they're going to put into
that app in the future but at least you've got that IOT connectivity to be able to play with
those things the interface with the rocket is all done through its display on the front so it
doesn't have internet capabilities but it's got a nice big display screen full color which allows
you to navigate through quite simply just by using the touch screen now if you're like me and you're
hitting that over 40 mark and your eyesight I start starting to go you do have a smaller
screen on your La Marzocco here which tells you the temperature the time and it turns into the
shot timer so it's on this right hand side you've got two gauges doing your pressure this one is
obviously a pump pressure then you've got your bypass pressure valve on the top which allows
you to see what's happening and then you've got your steam in your rocket over here they're much
bigger gauges a little bit easier to see and then you've got a nice big digital display there which
is going to bring up the shot timer so probably from a visual aspect everything's on one side a
little bit easier to see where these two you know you're the sort of on both sides so that might be
a little bit of a a positive or a negative to you but just thought I'd Point those out so how
do both of these machines work well they do get compared as pressure profiling machines and as I
said before I've gone deep into both of these and explained it if you want to see how to actually
use them or best navigate those so check those videos out but there are distinct differences in
how that pressure is provided to your coffee Puck so if we look at the GS3 first we've got a rotary
pump which is set to nine bar pressure the minute that you activate that head it's going to kick in
the pump and you can hear that running so we're straight up to nine bar of pressure on the pump
we now have the ability to vary how much of that nine bar actually gets put onto the coffee Park
from a variable valve so as you slide this along you are basically opening up a needle style valve
let's call it and the higher that valve opens the more pressure that's going to come through
so we're now starting to come along from right to left we've got a little dribble coming out
and as you keep going you'll start to ramp that right up to full nine bar pressure and as you
go back you'll be reducing it to nothing okay so you've got full manual control now as I said the
pump is always providing nine bar of pressure and the excess has to then come down into the
drip tray so it does have a very large drip tray for you to be able to catch all that excess water
so if you do get this machine just keep an eye on your drip tray if you're using it quite a fair
bit you are filling it up but just be mindful of that so that's a more manual I guess again
it was built in in 2008 so it's an older style machine um and that's with the technology so
great constant pressure from a rotary pump and the ability to vary that manually so if I was
going to try and repeat that it's up to me to make sure that I'm moving that valve by the gauge and
the right time for me to get maybe three bar of a pre-infusion for the first five seconds
then I'd move that valve again to maybe up to six bar pressure for the next 10 seconds of my shot
and then I might you know ramp it up to nine or then finish slow but to repeat that I have to be
accurate every single time so I would call this more of an artisan style approach towards making
coffee it's definitely interactive it's definitely fun to play with the news if you don't want to do
that you can simply flick it all the way across and you've got that straight up nine bar pressure
onto your coffee and you don't have to worry about it so the R Nine One as I said is a bit different
from the pump perspective now we've gained about 15 years and technology has definitely improved
and what's been put in here is an electronic style gear pump now it it basically increases
or decreases its pressure by how much power is applied to that pump so with the the rotary pump
you've got a full nine bar pressure and then we're bypassing where in the R Nine One it's
it's ramping up or reducing depending on on that power supply and it's very repeatable and precise
so as we change this the lever again I got caught in other videos it goes the opposite way so as
we start to move this along the pump is on you can actually hear the pump working a little bit
and it starts to change and you can hear those sounds as you start to increase and you can go
all the way across to the right giving you up to nine coming back to maybe three or six or to
nothing now that is a much more precise and repeatable process so if you're the kind of
person that wants to have that manual feel you can do it but if you want to be able to repeat
that time and time again as you're sliding that valve around on the display here there is a graph
and it's starting to show you the three bar the six the nine bar pressure for the whole time that
you've done that extraction now you can simply go and save that and then you can repeat it it's very
easy to do there are five options where you can have preset settings that are in there or you can
go and adjust those as well so if you went through and picked a a b c d or E of those preferences and
you just simply went all the way to the right it will run that profile it will start low on a low
pressure for the first five or ten seconds that you've got you can hear that's now ramping up it's
following the recipe and it will just run through that whole extraction until it's finished and then
you'll have to turn it off so it just allows that repeatability consistency and also the ability to
go back into that recipe and super fine tune that pressure so you could pick at five seconds you may
have done a manual manual brew and done 3.1 or 3.2 of pressure you could go back and and nail that
recipe right back to that proper three bar for the first five seconds so it really comes down to that
digital interface which is the distinct difference with the GS3 and the repeatability so if you're a
bit more technically minded and you want to be a bit geeky that would probably be something
that wouldn't you'd enjoy if you want to be a bit more manual and Artisan that's where probably the
GS3 is going to suit you best as well so I hope that information has allowed you to understand a
little bit more about the inner workings and the differences between the R Nine One and the GS3
and and whether that's going to suit you again as I said at the start how you make coffee how
you'd use it are you going to use this digital technology from theR Nine One or are you really
happy to be a bit more Artisan approach in the GS3 now again there's two other videos here for
all you know what comes with them watch them individually and the parts the accessories a
whole lot you'll get that information to help make the decision of which one of these would
suit you best in your house I'd love to know in the comments below what kind of machine have you
been thinking about is it the R9 one is it the GS3 do you like the look The Touch the feel you know
what is it that you're already thinking about on these two models that would suit you best
and if you've got any questions about them hey please leave one down below I'll happily answer
those for you thanks so much for watching and I hope that's giving you a great insight to these
two wonderful machines that would be perfect in anyone's home I don't think one or the other is
really better they're just slightly different in their approach to making beautiful home espresso
thanks very much for watching everyone we'll catch you next time cheers [Music]