Bartesian^® Premier Review: An Honest Owner's Take

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I have owned a Bartesian^® for about three years. The original machine lives at our second home, where I do most of my hosting, and it is the one that pulled me into Bartesian in the first place. When I went to add a machine to my main house, I ordered the Professional.

I used it for less than a month. In that window, Bartesian released the Premier. The truth is, if the Premier had been available when I placed my order, I would have bought it from the start. So I returned the Professional and ordered the Premier instead. This review is my hands-on take on the Premier after living with it. Both are good machines. I will get into how they compare further down, but the Premier is the one that fits how I actually use it.

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Where the Premier fits in the Bartesian lineup

Bartesian now sells several machines and the names are easy to mix up, so here is the quick map.

• The original Bartesian, often called the Premium, is the touchscreen machine most people picture. It is the one I have at our second home.
• The Duet is the compact two-bottle model.
• The Professional has lockable spirit bottles and NSF certification.
• The Premier is the one I am reviewing. Bartesian positions it as the home-entertaining, everyday, one-touch machine. It lists at $399.99, but it is regularly discounted, so it is worth checking the current price. It holds four spirits in the machine with a fifth bottle included as a spare, uses 1 liter glass spirit bottles, and works with all the same Bartesian capsules.

The short version: the Premier looks and feels almost identical to the Professional, minus the bottle lock and the commercial certification. That turned out to be exactly what I wanted.

The bottle redesign is the real story

This is the part that interested me most, because bottle leaking has always been my one worry with the original machine.

On my original machine, each glass bottle has a lid that screws directly onto the glass, with a small spout, and you drop the bottle straight into its holder. Owners have talked for years about that machine occasionally leaking if you leave the bottles in, whiskey especially. I am cautious enough that whenever I travel or leave the second home for a week or two, I pull the bottles and rinse the machine, because I never wanted to come home to a leak.

The Premier bottles are built differently. Each glass bottle has a plastic collar permanently attached to it, and the dispenser lid screws plastic into plastic rather than onto bare glass. There is a washer in there as well. When you load a bottle it does not just drop in. You angle it in, push it down, and it clicks and locks into place. It takes a little more deliberate motion than the original, but it feels sealed in a way the old one never did.

Here is my honest read, and I want to be careful with it. This looks to me like a design built to address the leaking that owners reported on the original. I have not seen Bartesian say that anywhere, so I am not going to put words in their mouth. What I can tell you is that in my own use so far I have not had the leaking I always worried about, and the way these bottles seat makes me far less nervous about leaving them in. I will keep using it and report back if anything changes.

One upkeep note worth knowing. Each spirit bottle has a small rubber valve inside, and Bartesian says to keep it clean and open so it does not stick shut after a bottle sits unused. It is an easy thing to stay on top of.

The other differences I noticed

A few more things stood out next to my original machine.

The spirit bottles sit at staggered heights. The front two are about the same height, then there is a step up to the back, so the bottles climb in tiers. On my original machine, the bottles all sit in a row at the same height. It is a small thing, but the staggered layout looks better on the counter, and it matches the Professional.

Loading a capsule is cleaner. On my original machine the lid never quite sat right and I would sometimes have to work at it. Years ago I read in a Bartesian Facebook group that the trick was to close the lid like you were holding a hamburger, two hands, even pressure, so the capsule seated evenly. On the Premier you just bring the handle down and it closes tight on the capsule. No hamburger grip needed.

The screen is a dial, not a touchscreen. My original machine has a full touchscreen, which looks sleek. The Premier, like the Professional and the Duet, uses a display with a rotary dial and a button. You turn the dial and press to select. This is my opinion and not a fact, but I suspect the dial will hold up better over the years than a touchscreen, which can get finicky with age. It feels like the sturdier choice.

And yes, there is a light. I made a drink to check, and the Premier lights up while it mixes and dispenses, the same as the Professional and the Duet.

What made the Premier the right machine for me

The single biggest difference between the Premier and the Professional is the bottle lock. The Professional secures its spirit bottles with a key and a release lever on the side that you pull out before the bottles will come free. For a home with kids around, or anyone who wants the alcohol locked, that is a real benefit, and it is exactly why many people choose the Professional.

For me, it added a step I kept forgetting. I would go to pull a bottle, forget the lever was still engaged, and end up wrestling with it. The Premier has no lock. The spirit bottles come right out, and that suits the way I use the machine at home. If locked storage matters in your house, the Professional is the better choice. If it does not, the Premier is simpler to live with.

A few things I am still figuring out

I would rather tell you what I do not know than guess, so here are the open items.

The Water Reservoir looks larger to me than the one on my original machine. The catch is that Bartesian does not publish a Water Reservoir capacity for the Premier anywhere I can find, and my original machine is at the second home, so I cannot set them side by side. Given how closely the Premier tracks the Professional, I would expect it to be in the same neighborhood as the Professional 1.5 liter reservoir, but I have not measured mine, so I am not going to print a hard number until I do. When I measure it, I will update this page.

The machine also shipped with something new in the box: a full page insert about Wi-Fi. It states, in bold, that this model includes Wi-Fi connectivity for future functionality, that the feature is currently inactive, and that Wi-Fi is not required to use the machine. During setup, when it asks you to connect, you turn the dial to no and continue. So the hardware is in there, but it does nothing yet. My guess is that it points to something coming with the Bartesian app down the road, maybe troubleshooting or updates. For now it is a future promise, not a feature.

One more thing worth watching. As I write this, the Shop menu on Bartesian own site lists three machines: the Professional, the Premier, and the Duet. The original Bartesian is still available if you go to its product page directly, but it is no longer in the main menu. I am not going to tell you the original is being discontinued, because Bartesian has not said that. But between the new bottle design, the move to a dial, and the original quietly dropping out of the menu, it is fair to wonder whether the Premier is the direction the everyday machine is heading. If you own a Professional or a Duet, I would love to hear in the comments whether your bottles seat the same way mine do.

Bartesian Premier specs

Sources: bartesian.com Premier product page (verified). Hands-on details from my own machine.

Who the Premier is for

If you host at home and you liked the idea of the Professional but did not need the bottle lock or the NSF certification, the Premier is, in my experience, the better machine for the money. You get the same staggered bottle design, the same easy capsule loading, the redesigned bottles that have eased my leak worry, and the dial control, without the one feature that sent me back to the store. If you specifically want lockable alcohol storage, buy the Professional instead. And if you already own the original and it is working fine, there is no urgent reason to replace it, though the new bottle design is the upgrade I would point to.

The way I see it, the Premier is the version two of the original machine. It is the same idea I fell for three years ago, rebuilt on the Professional frame, with the lock taken off and the bottle problem apparently designed out.

If the Premier is the machine for you, here's where to get it.

Prices move, so it's worth seeing whether a deal is running.

Shop the Bartesian Premier →

▶ Watch the Full Video Review

Prefer to watch instead of read? Here is the full walkthrough. The switch story, the redesigned bottles, the lock difference, and who each machine is for, in video form.