There are several discussions on this subject here already. You should browse those.

The short answer to your ??? is "it depends".

Do you value looks and convenience foremost?
Are you a true coffee connoisseur ?
Are you strapped for cash or running out of room in the budget ?
Do you mind doing a bit routine maintenance AND cleaning the machine every day ?

Just looking for the differences between them

Family of coffee and latte drinkers .. Want to cut Starbucks out

No on tight budget

Yes on cleaning. Yes on looks.

Add to that easy to use/ plumbed would be great/ easy to clean

Thank you for answering.

Did a new house with a high end Kitchen 9 years ago as a member.
Starting a complete Gut and remodel of our Beach home soon.
So I came back to this site for more tidbits of knowledge.

Bottom Line: There's not much difference between the built in systems. I believe they're all sourced from the same OEM. Built ins are all about convenience, looks and space utilization.
Push a button and coffee appears. You can make far, far better coffee for much less money with a decent machine and grinder or the many manual pour-over systems that are popular now.

If you are averse to the cleaning and maintenance , the your search has just ended. This product is not for you.

They are clever but highly strung with complex engineering that require regular TLC or they'll leave you stranded by the side of the road.

If you ignore the cleaning and TLC , you face a large repair bill or be faced with a total replacement of a $2000-$4000 piece of equipment.

We had a Miele system in our last house and really liked it, used it daily for coffee, hot water for tea or hot chocolate. It was expensive and then the cost to build it in to the cabinets was also not cheap.

We are building again and are trying to cut some costs so no built-in coffee machine this time. We will probably just pick up a Tassimo. :(

Everyone in my family, including myself, has freestanding Juras. They are huge coffee nuts, even roasting their own coffee. I really like the Jura system. It is easy to clean with their cleaning tablets. Future MIL was smart, in redoing her house she put a pot filer next to her Jura in her coffee station to address the "unplumbed" issue! The good thing is, if it breaks it's easy to pack up and ship off for repairs or replace. With that said, we've had no issues with ours.

No it's not just as good as it seems. It's BETTER! Way way way better than I ever imagined.

Went with the Miele preplumbed machine. Would do it again in a heartbeat. It's simple to clean, and the act of sticking a cup under the spout first thing in the morning and having a great cup of freshly ground coffee magically appear one minute later is heaven!

I usually do regular coffee, my sister has lattes or a latte with an espresso shot when she visits, my DH usually alternates between coffee and espresso. All get great reviews.

It's a big splurge, but if we ever move again its the very first appliance I'd re-splurge on in a new kitchen.

You'll actually end up paying less for the Starbucks over time! But, unless you transplant the Starbucks into your kitchen, what you're actually paying the premium for is convenience. Not quality. As others have pointed out, you can get much better quality for less. It's just more effort.

And built in isn't effortless on your part. But, it is there first thing before you come to your senses enough to navigate the intricacies of something more complex than just pushing a button or two. So, the cost/benefit analysis is up to you as to how big of a benefit it is to you at the exorbitant cost. People pay for all kinds of luxury gadgets other than a built in coffee machine after all. A $300 golf ball washer is just as single purpose, even if it's 10x less overall.

just curious, what type of maintenance/cleaning are we talking about for these types of machines and how often?

you'll have to clean the milk dispenser / frother everyday.

the boiler and hoses will have to be descaled a couple of times a year in most instances, more if you have hard water or really make a lot of cups.

you'll need to clean the brew unit / grinder disc a few times a year also. Depends on how much it's used, and how oily the beans you use are.

xedos, thanks for the info, that really doesn't sound bad at all.

I think cleaning the milk system everyday is a drag.

The descaling will take 20-45 minutes, and you have to watch it on most machines because you can't get a suitable container to catch all the liquid. The descaling agent is also kinda pricey for what it is.

I have the Bosch Benvenuto countertop model that they sold a few years ago. It's basically the same as the Built in Bosch, Thermador, Gaggenau.
It has made almost 23,000 cups of coffee without a single hic-up ( not a typo - 22,816 to be exact as of this writing) I think I've had it about 6 years now and yes we do drink a lot of coffee and when friends come over they always want some of that "good coffee".

I don't use the milk frother/steamer very often but I do clean it when I'm done.
The machine gets a clean cycle about every 1.5 months and a descale about every 2 months.

As to coffee, the medium roasts work best and the dark roasts are too oily and will clog the grinder.
You can set the coarseness of the grind , the strengh of the coffee and how big of cup you want from esspresso to full American size cups.

The coffee come out with a rich foam "creama" layer on top.

I know there are some that will say that you can make better coffee using a more labor intensive method but it's not that much better.

I forgot to mention that when I clean the steamer/frother all I do is unscrew it and drop it in a cup of hot water for a few minutes and then reattach it. Not really a big deal.