[Employee of philipsglobal] We've made our own pasta for over 40 years but were limited to shapes based on flat sheets, like linguini or fettuccini. Extruded shapes such as penne or rigatoni aren't eligible. On the advice of a friend we took a chance with the Philips machine and are very pleased. In less than a half-hour from setup to cleanup we can make 250g for the two of us or twice that for a side-dish for as many as six people. Specialities with, say, spinach or squid ink are as simple as regular dough. And because it is an extruder, the tube-shapes are as easy as the flat. It takes ~ 10 minutes to clean up the bits and pieces of the machine at the end of the session. Some cleverly-signed 'tools' help to clear the extrusion dies, and an old toothbrush comes in handy. There are a few dies we haven't yet tried, e.g. lasagna noodles. I expect they will work as well as those we have used. Our old 'roller' machine will remain on hand for ravioli since it would be more manual work to get the filling between the sheets, but for most of our needs this is perfect.

I wish this thing worked as well as people say it does. This thing only works when it wants to, which is infrequently. This “foolproof” method is the furthest thing from intuitive. The “cup” is just a scoop that should weigh about 250g, and not a cup measurement as any normal person would assume. Forward thinking product engineers (a contradiction in terms I know) could head this off by just calling the cup a scoop, which it is. What we’re left with is a machine that requires a very precise sequence of steps and button presses to achieve a good pasta product. Unfortunately the instructions were written by a technical writer taking a crunch and I’m not sure which result was worse, the one on paper or the one in the bowl. The machine spits random error messages that tell you there is too little or too much flour in the hopper. God help you if there’s too much or you put it in too soon. You’ll have to tip the heavy machine over and dump the flour out and start again. This item is the nexus of a good product being ruined by a company unconcerned with user interface or experience.

It took me awhile to get started but once I did the pasta tasted good.