The Rocket Appartamento TCA is an evolution of the Appartamento, which has been successful on the market. The small heat exchanger machine was appreciated by many and is a pioneer of the machine manufacturer Rocket's success. The new Appartamento TCA has been equipped with temperature control in four stages. A valuable addition for a heat exchanger machine, provided it works fully. During our tests, we encountered some difficulties in this regard, which is why we measured and tested two additional machines alongside the test unit. You can find out what our test results are in this video.
Buy Rocket Appartamento TCA
The following specialist retailers sell the Rocket Appartamento TCA and we can recommend purchasing from these companies. All of them offer the option to adjust the machine's offset.
Germany:
Switzerland:
We are looking for specialist partners for you who we know provide good work and good service, and we are in close contact with the aforementioned retailers. The links provided are so-called commission links. If you order via one of these links, you won't pay a cent more – however, we receive a small commission, which we invest directly into new test equipment.
We are still on the lookout for competent partners in the DACH region for you.
Strengths of the Rocket Appartamento TCA
One of the strengths of the Rocket Appartamento TCA is undoubtedly its good steaming performance. The machine does a good and solid job here. It has good power to set the milk circulation in the steaming pitcher in motion. It doesn't matter whether you are steaming with a small 0.3l or large 0.6l pitcher. The Rocket Appartamento TCA steams very well.
Another strength lies in the eye of the beholder. The Appartamento TCA is an espresso machine with a Faema E61-style brew group. While this format is widespread and we know it from many machines, the Appartamento also stands out positively in the TCA version. Not only the side panels but also the tapered brew group stand out from the crowd of E61 machines. The build quality also feels solid.
The machine shines with a beautiful pressure gauge, stylish matte turning knobs, and controls reduced to the essentials.
Weaknesses of the machine
The biggest weakness of the Rocket Appartamento TCA is its temperature stability and its slow heat-up time. The machine finds itself at the bottom of all the espresso machines we have tested in terms of heat-up time; it does not reach the required temperature in a realistic usage timeframe. We gave the machine a heat-up time of 42 minutes with a lot of goodwill. But even then, we were actually still below the target temperature. We discuss the topic of temperature in more detail further down in the article.
We also have to register the poorly preset temperature ranges of the TCA in the area of the Rocket Appartamento TCA's temperature settings. Absurd, because the Temperature Control Adjustment is precisely what is supposed to set the machine apart from its predecessor in a positive way. From our point of view, however, the machine's preset temperature levels are all below the target temperature. It is not clear to us why Rocket has set them so low. In other words: we have an idea. We believe that Rocket only looked at what temperature the machine reached after running for over an hour. In that case, it is indeed warm enough at the highest setting. But is an hour of run time really the benchmark for setting the target temperature of an espresso machine in this day and age? In an era where other espresso machines are warm in 5 minutes and other Faema E61 brew groups manage it in 17 to 18 minutes?
Coupled with the long heat-up time, the Rocket has a very high power consumption for preparing one or more espressos. At 0.34 kWh, the Rocket Appartamento TCA is in the range of large dual boilers, thus showing very poor performance.
Temperature curves: WBC protocol and KM protocol
We discussed the topic of the temperature problem in another YouTube live stream.
Energy consumption and performance measurement
Further information on the machine will be added. For a comprehensive test, please watch the video.
