Quick answer: I’d recommend the Delonghi Dinamica Plus over the Philips 5400 LatteGo. The Delonghi Dinamica Plus justifies its extra cost over the Philips 5400 because it brews better espresso and steams milk to a greater variety of textures.
The Delonghi Dinamica Plus and Philips 5400 LatteGo are both super-automatic espresso machines with automatic milk frothers (as opposed to steam wands).
The Delonghi Dinamica Plus typically costs $500 more than the Philips 5400 LatteGo.
In this comparison of the Philips 5400 vs. Delonghi Dinamica Plus, I’ve tested these two machines against each other to see whether the Dinamica Plus can justify this increase in price compared to the Philips 5400 LatteGo.
Let’s go.
Should I Buy the Delonghi Dinamica Plus or Philips 5400 LatteGo?
I recommend the Delonghi Dinamica Plus over the Philips 5400 LatteGo.
The Delonghi Dinamica Plus is superior to the Philips 5400 LatteGo in the following three ways:
It produces better-tasting espresso: The Delonghi Dinamica Plus makes better-tasting espresso than the Philips 5400 LatteGo thanks to it using a higher-quality brewing unit.
It offers a wider range of milk textures: The Dinamica Plus can froth milk to three textures. The Philips 5400 only froths milk to one texture. This means that there’s real variation in the Delonghi’s latte, cappuccino, and macchiato. These drinks are all very similar on the Philips.
It has a higher build quality: The Dinamica Plus feels less flimsy than the Philips 5400 LatteGo. This means it’s likely to last longer and is significantly more quiet when brewing than the Philips.
Delonghi Dinamica Plus
The Delonghi Dinamica Plus makes a better espresso and superior milk drinks to the Philips 5400 LatteGo.
I’d only recommend the Philips 5400 LatteGo over the Delonghi Dinamica Plus if your biggest concern is an espresso machine’s ease of use and cleaning.
This might be the case if you’re buying a coffee machine for an office or as a gift for an older friend or relative.
The Philips 5400 LatteGo is easier to use and keep clean than the Delonghi Dinamica Plus for two reasons:
- Its milk frother doesn’t have any rubber tubes: Rubber tubes crust up with sour milk residue and are a pain to keep clean because their holes are so small.
- It’s operated by buttons rather than a touch screen: The Philips 5400’s buttons are less jumpy than the Delonghi Dinamica Plus’s touch screen.
Philips 5400 LatteGo
The Philips 5400 LatteGo’s superior ease of use and cleaning makes it better for offices than the Delonghi Dinamica Plus.
For more information on the Philips 5400 LatteGo please check out my Philips 5400 LatteGo review.
Difference Between the Philips 5400 LatteGo and the Delonghi Dinamica Plus
Here are the differences between the two espresso machines ranked in order of their importance to the machines’ overall performance and usability.
Brewing Basket
The Delonghi Dinamica Plus’s brew group uses a brewing basket with significantly smaller holes than the Philips 5400 LatteGo.
These holes provide resistance to your water when you brew your espresso. This determines how much direct contact time your ground coffee has with your water when you pull a shot.
The Dinamica Plus’s smaller holes mean that your brewing water runs through your ground coffee more slowly than when you brew with the Philips 5400 LatteGo.
This means that the Delonghi Dinamica Plus creates a stronger-tasting and better-bodied espresso than the Philips 5400 LatteGo, as your coffee has more time to extract into your water.
Winner: Delonghi Dinamica Plus
Milk Steaming System
The Delonghi Dinamica Plus can steam your milk to three textures. The Philips 5400 LatteGo can only steam your milk to one texture.
The Delonghi Dinamica Plus’s milk frother has a dial that you can turn in three positions for three different textures.
The machine will recommend a specific texture for each of its milk drinks. Its cappuccino calls for its thickest texture, latte macchiato calls for its middle texture, and latte calls for its thinnest texture.
This means that there is much more variety between each of the Delonghi Dinamica Plus’s milk drinks compared to the Philips 5400 LatteGo’s.
One advantage that the Philips 5400 LatteGo’s milk system has over the Dinamica’s is that it does not rely on rubber milk tubes. This makes the Philips’s milk system easier to keep clean than the Delonghi Dinamica Plus’s. Rubber milk tubes crust up with sour milk and are a nightmare to keep clean.
Winner: Delonghi Dinamica Plus
User Interface
The Delonghi Dinamica Plus uses a touch screen as well as a button-operated control panel. The Philips 5400 LatteGo is controlled by a button-operated digital display screen.
I personally prefer the Philips 5400’s user interface for two reasons:
- The Delonghi Dinamica’s buttons are poorly labeled, whereas it’s very clear what each of the Philips’s buttons do.
- The Delonghi Dinamica Plus’s touch screen is a bit jumpy and over-sensitive. You’re far more likely to select the wrong drink or mess up your customization settings with the Delonghi Dinamica Plus than with the Philips 5400 Lattego.
Winner: Philips 5400 LatteGo
Drink Customization System
The Philips 5400 lets you customize your coffee’s strength size and milk size with a few button presses. The Delonghi Dinamica Plus just lets you customize your drink’s overall strength and size in this way, but you cannot customize the ratio of coffee to milk in each drink.
To change the ratio of coffee to milk with the Delonghi Dinamica Plus you have to put the machine in customize mode (access this with the “MY” button) and then stop the coffee and milk dispensing at the point that you want it.
This will then be saved onto your user profile.
This is unnecessarily complicated. I’d much rather just be able to bump up or down my milk volume with one button press, as you can with the Philips 5400 LatteGo
Winner: Philips 5400 LatteGo
Drink Options
The Delonghi Dinamica Plus has four extra drink options than the Philips 5400 LatteGo.
Delonghi Dinamica Plus Drinks Menu
- Cappuccino
- Cappuccino mix
- Espresso
- Latte macchiato
- Long (Americano)
- Doppio
- Espresso macchiato
- Coffee
- Cappuccino double shot
- Caffe latte
- Flat white
- 2 x espresso
- Coffee pot
- True brew over ice (on some models)
Philips 5400 LatteGo Drinks Menu
- Espresso
- 2 x espresso
- Coffee
- Cappuccino
- Latte macchiato
- Caffe latte
- Flat white
- Cafe au lait
- Cafe crema
- Lungo
- Ristretto
- ToGo mug
Both machines can also dispense plain milk foam and hot water.
The biggest difference between the two machines, as far as drink selection is concerned, is that the Delonghi Dinamica Plus can make a cappuccino with a double shot of espresso with one button press.
This is how cappuccinos are made in a coffee shop.
You have to make a cappuccino and then add another espresso shot into the same glass to make this with the Philips 5400 so I like the Dinamica Plus’s added convenience here.
Winner: Delonghi Dinamica Plus
App Compatibility
The Delonghi Dinamica Plus has an app that allows you to control the machine from your phone or tablet. The Philips 5400 LatteGo does not have any such app.
The Delonghi Dinamica Plus’s app allows you to make fully custom drinks from scratch. You can customize your drinks:
- Strength (on a scale of one to five).
- Coffee volume (to the nearest 10 milliliters).
- Milk volume (to the nearest 0.1 second dispensing time).
- Brewing temperature (on a scale of one to four).
You can see a video of someone making a cappuccino using the Delonghi Dinamica Plus app (watch from 9:30 – 11:35)
Although this app integration is nice, I wish you could customize your drink’s volume this easily on the machine’s control panel.
Still, the option to use the app is better than no app, so the Delonghi Dinamica Plus beats out the Philips 5400 LatteGo here.
Winner: Delonghi Dinamica Plus
General Build Quality
The Delonghi Dinamica Plus feels more sturdily built than the Philips 5400 LatteGo.
Delonghi Dinamica Plus is 3.5 lbs heavier than the Philips 5400 LatteGo, despite the two machines being similar in size.
Although both machines have plastic housing, the Delonghi Dinamica Plus’s components all feel thicker and more durable than the Philips 5400 LatteGo’s.
I feel like the Delonghi Dinamica Plus will have greater longevity than the Philips 5400 LatteGo because of this.
Winner: Delonghi Dinamica Plus
What Do the Delonghi Dinamica Plus and Philips 5400 LatteGo Have in Common?
The two machines have the following features in common:
- They both have removable water tanks, drip trays, used coffee grounds containers, and brew groups.
- They both use milk frothers (rather than steam wands) to steam milk
- They are roughly the same size (although the Dinamica Plus is significantly heavier than the Philips 5400 LatteGo)
- Both come with a water filter that needs to be replaced every three months.
- They both have two-year warranties.
| Delonghi Dinamica Plus | Philips 5400 LatteGo | |
| Description | Super automatic espresso machine with automatic LatteCrema milk system | Super automatic espresso machine with automatic LatteGo milk frother |
| User Interface | Touch screen and buttons | Button-operated display screen |
| Number of black coffee drinks | 6 | 7 |
| Number of milk based coffee drinks | 7 | 5 |
| Strength Settings | 5 settings per drink | 5 settings per drink |
| Coffee volume settings | 4 settings per drink | 5 settings per drink |
| Milk volume settings | Yes – to nearest second dispensing time | 5 settings per drink |
| Extra shot function | Only for cappuccino | Only for black drinks |
| Brewing temperature settings | 4 settings | 3 settings |
| Milk texture settings | 3 settings | None |
| User Profiles | 3 | 4 |
| App Connectivity | Yes | No |
| Grinder Type | Steel conical burr grinder | Ceramic flat burr grinder |
| Grind size settings | 13 | 12 |
| Removable brew group | Yes | Yes |
| Water tank capacity | 60 oz | 61 oz |
| Dimensions (width x depth x height) | 9.3 W x 16.9 D x 13.7 H | 9.8 W x 17 D x 14.6 H |
I’m now going to compare the two machines against the following criteria:
Espresso quality
Milk steaming performance
Ease of use
Ease of cleaning
Design and durability
Value for money
Espresso Quality
The Delonghi Dinamica Plus makes a better-tasting, fuller-bodied espresso than the Philips 5400 LatteGo.
This difference in espresso is down to the Dinamica Plus using a better quality brewing basket than the Philips 5400 LatteGo.
This means that the Delonghi Dinamica Plus brews your espresso about 5 seconds slower than the Philips 5400. Slower brewing means more extraction, resulting in a more complex-tasting and fuller-bodied espresso.
Espresso Quality Winner: Delonghi Dinamica Plus
Milk Steaming Performance
The Delonghi Dinamica Plus can froth milk to three textures compared to the Philips 5400 LatteGo’s single texture.
I taste-tested the Dinamica Plus’s three textures and there were noticeable differences between them. The Philips 5400 LatteGo’s only texture is closest to the Dinamica Plus’s thickest texture.
This means that there will be clear textural differences between the Dinamica Plus’s latte, cappuccino, and macchiato. These drinks are all pretty much the same on the Philips 5400 LatteGo.
Milk Steaming Performance Winner: Delonghi Dinamica Plus
User Friendliness
The Philips 5400 LatteGo is slightly easier to use than the Delonghi Dinamica Plus.
The Philips’s superior user-friendliness is down to two reasons:
- The Dinamica Plus’s touch screen can be a bit jumpy and hyper-responsive compared to the Philips 5400 LatteGo’s buttons.
- The Dinamica Plus requires you to put the machine into customized mode and then hard code the milk volume settings for each of its milk drinks. The Philips 5400 LatteGo just lets you bump up/down your milk volume for each drink as you make it.
These differences in ease of use are not huge. But I would still recommend the Philips 5400 over the Delonghi Dinamica Plus to someone who isn’t at all tech-savvy.
Winner: Philips 5400 LatteGo
Ease of Cleaning
The Philips 5400 LatteGo is easier to keep clean than the Delonghi Dinamica Plus due to its lack of rubber milk tubing.
The two machines have basically the same cleaning procedures. The machines run rinse cycles to clean their internal components, but you need to manually empty and clean its used coffee container and drip tray.
The Philips 5400 LatteGo is less of a pain to keep clean than the Delonghi Dinamica Plus because its milk system doesn’t use any rubber hoses.
Rubber milk tubes are a nightmare to keep clean. They crust up with sour milk residue which is hard to remove because its holes are so small that you can’t rinse them.
The Delonghi Dinamica Plus’s rubber milk hose is BY FAR its hardest component to keep clean. This simply isn’t a problem on the Philips 5400 LatteGo.
The Philips 5400 LatteGo also needs to be de-scaled far less often than the Delonghi Dinamica Plus. The Dinamica Plus needs to be descaled every three months, whereas the Philips needs to be descaled every 4-5 years.
Ease of Cleaning Winner: Philips 5400 LatteGo
Design and Durability
The Delonghi Dinamica Plus has a higher build quality and is less prone to breaking down than the Philips 5400 LatteGo.
The Philips 5400 LatteGo has a problem where lots of steam rises up through its grinder chute when you brew. You can see the condensation build-up on its grinder and bypass doser.
This means that the Philips’s grinder regularly clogs up. This happens so often that Philips has made an instructional video on how to unclog its grinder.
The Delonghi Dinamica Plus is designed in a way that doesn’t happen anywhere near as often.
The Dinamica Plus also just uses thicker, better-quality materials for its housing. The Philips 5400 LatteGo is very flimsy in comparison and I doubt it will last as long as the Dinamica Plus.
Design and Durability Winner: Delonghi Dinamica Plus
Value For Money
The Delonghi Dinamica Plus offers better value than the Philips 5400 LatteGo even though it is around $500 more expensive than it.
This better value is because the Dinamica Plus is superior to the Philips 5400 in the most important factors for a super-automatic espresso machine:
- Espresso quality
- Milk steaming performance
- Durability and longevity
Value for Money Winner: Delonghi Dinamica Plus
Final Verdict
I’d recommend the Delonghi Dinamica Plus over the Philips 5400 LatteGo because it makes better-tasting espresso and milk drinks.
Delonghi Dinamica Plus
The Delonghi Dinamica Plus makes a better espresso and superior milk drinks to the Philips 5400 LatteGo.
If you’d like to find out more about Delonghi’s range of espresso machines please check out my roundup of the best Delonghi espresso machines.
