Talk Coffee Blog — 2026-06-29

Olympia Cremina, Cremina SL20 or the New Maximatic? Here's How to Choose

Olympia Express is often referred to as the Rolex of espresso machines. It's a comparison that gets made a lot, and it's not hard to see why. The attention to detail, the build standards, the use of premium materials where other manufacturers cut corners, and the fact that machines from the 1970s are still in daily service. It all adds up to something genuinely different from the rest of the market. If you've been looking at the Olympia range and trying to decide between the Cremina, the Cremina SL20 and the new Maximatic, you're already asking the right question. These are all exceptional machines. The differences between them are real, though, and worth understanding before you commit. Here's how we see them. The Olympia Cremina The Cremina was introduced in 1967 and has been in continuous production ever since. That's not a marketing line, it's genuinely remarkable. Very few objects of any kind survive in essentially the same form for nearly 60 years because the market still wants t