I've just moved from a Barista Pro to a Barista Touch Impress. The Pro was giving me problems (the stop-after-5-seconds-and-beep-3-times issue) and I decided to move to a different machine. (I'll probably get it serviced and sell it on, if anyone's interested).

The Touch Impress is a big step from the Pro - whether it's a step up is very much personal preference.

Things I like/are an improvement:

• The grinder - it uses Baratza burrs and is distinctly better than the grinder on the Pro. Takes longer to rind, but the output is good.
• Assisted tamp. I didn't think this would be important (my manual tamping is pretty good), but I find it extremely convenient, and it really does reduce the mess and faff. If you're wedded to WDT tools and all the other little tweaks going the rounds, you might not find this a benefit, because you'll end up tamping yourself. The does measurement seems to work well (the tamper measures the depth of coffee in the portafilter and tells you whether you need more or less). With the Pro, I'd got into the habit of weighing the beans before grinding to ensure a consistent dose. With the Impress, I haven't found the need to do that, which is nice.
• Auto milk steaming. Took a while to dial this in (I used skimmed milk, which makes a difference) but now it's set, it works really very well. Not quite as good as my best manual steaming, but very consistent (more so than my manual steaming).
• Auto purge of the steam wand - very convenient
• Cool touch steam wand - minor, but nice
• Ability to customise the shot (which I haven't need so far) and the steaming (which I definitely needed - skimmed milk). Once you've dialled in any custom values, they can be saved - up to 8 different variations.
• Useful guidance in the display - it'll tell you if the dose is too small or large; it'll tell you if it looks as if your grind is too coarse or fine (measures the time taken to pull the shot.

Things I'm neutral about
- Choice of pre-programmed drinks. I'm the only coffee drinker in the household and I'll either have a double espresso or a flat white. Since I can set this up myself, the other choices aren't of much value to me. They might be if you have a need or desire to produce a variety of different drinks.

Things that maybe aren't so great:

• Warming the portafilter and cup (by pulling blank shots) is a faff. The manual suggests using hot water from the separate spout, but that doesn't warm the group head, You have to get into manual mode and pull a short shot that way.
• You can do everything manually, just like the Pro, if you want, but it's a little more of a faff. The machine assumes automatic, so you have to explicitly tell it you're going manual this time around, each time you do it. So if you want complete control over every step - grind dose, puck prep, tamp, brew volume, milk prep - this is probably not the machine for you. If you're happy with its auto functions and only want to go manual occasionally, it's fine.
• The "cup warmer" doesn't warm cups - as with the Pro, the Impress only heats the thermoset on demand, so the top surface of the machine doesn't ever really warm up.
• The double spouts of the portafilter aren't sufficiently far apart to be able to pull 2 separate espressos at a time - this is an issue with the Sage 24mm portafilter. Not a major problem for me, but may be for others.

The Impress produces a great cup of coffee for me (all that really matters), consistently and with a minimum of mess and fuss. It's easy to dial in changes in coffee (the auto tamp/dose is real help here) and it's nice to be able to save a custom setup. Is it worth £500 more than the Pro? Good question : if you struggle to get consistency from a fully manual machine, or if you frequently have to make a variety of different drinks, it can help a lot. If you're successfully doing things your way and can handle variations, it won't give you much.

I'm very happy with the change - the convenience, recede mess, quicker delivery make it worth the update for me.