The best hot chocolate machines for 2025

This machine features four settings – hot chocolate, and a variety of milk froth settings including full foam, part foam and cold foam, which makes it a great accompaniment if you're looking for a fancier coffee. The biggest redeeming quality is its size. While most machines serve one drink each time, this one has the ability to make two in one go.

In terms of the design, little touches help you know that the gadget is doing its job, from the display showing the thermostat increasing while it heats, to the three beeps that declare the drink is ready to pour. You can choose to heat and serve your chocolate drink at four different temperatures: 45 degrees (ideal if you have children), 60, 70 or 80, and at each temperature, the machine produced a drink that was smooth, light and creamy, with no sign of lumpy bits.

While it's easy to clean, you have to be careful not to immerse any electrical parts in water, and it isn't dishwasher safe. A well-priced option to make multiple drinks at once.

Tested by Louise Bulgin

This is a really versatile option, offering no less than four settings to help you achieve a hot drink worthy of coming from a coffee shop. Aside from its ability to make hot chocolate, you can also produce hot milk froth and hot milk. And it has a cold froth setting, enhancing your ability to make a range of beverages including mochas, macchiatos and iced coffees.

But back to the hot chocolate – setup was simple enough, requiring only the frothing attachment to put into place. It was straightforward to operate. Once you have your ingredients in, you just need to fix the lid back on and twist the dial to choose your setting, and press down. Unlike some other brands, this doesn't come with its own chocolate, so it was tested with regular instant hot chocolate powder.

The finished result takes mere minutes, and the machine creates a light, frothy and creamy drink that blends well – setting it apart from the traditional boiling water method, which can often be tricky to mix. The only downside is the small plug-in cord means it can be hard to manoeuvre in the kitchen, but it's otherwise brilliant value for money.

Currently sold out, you can pre-order the machine and it'll dispatch once it's back in stock on 16 December 2025.

Tested by Michelle Hall

A smart, sleek design – we tested the copper coloured machine – there's no handle on this, which may seem unusual to some. But we liked the fact that it wasn't bulky and fit snugly on the kitchen worktop.

The setup and making process is incredibly simple, and making the drink to cleaning the machine afterwards is straightforward. There are markers on the inside to show you where to fill, and once you've done this, you can just pop the cap on, press the button and the machine does all the hard work for you. Altogether, the assembling and making process took under four minutes. The machine produced a frothy, velvety drink that matched the typical standard from a coffee shop. The machine can also produce frothy milk ideal for adding to coffees.

You can buy Dualit hot chocolate sachets at £13.95 for a pack of 10, but the brand says you can add any chocolate and it'll work – so it's ideal if you think you'll have any Christmas chocolates that need hoovering up.

Cleaning up was effortless. The internal whisk and cap are magnetised, so you can feel assured that you're cleaning everything thoroughly. A bonus is that the attachments are dishwasher safe (top shelf only).

Tested by Louisa Riley

It's likely that when you think of hot chocolate machines, the Hotel Chocolat Velvetiser comes to mind. The brand recently released a new edition that makes both hot and cold drinking chocolate. There are subtle differences to the original; the handle is parallel to the machine, instead of perpendicular, making it easier to store away, and details like the whisk resembling the cacao flower add to its luxurious design. It's not style over substance, either – both hot and cold drinks are produced to a high quality. The only thing you need to remember is to move the dial to blue for cold or red for hot.

Don't be tempted to experiment too much with how you produce the cold chocolate, because those sachets contain finely-milled powder that is designed to be blended with the milk at a lower temperature. Cleaning is as simple as making it, following the same steps, only this time you swap milk for water, and chocolate for washing-up liquid. Press the button (on hot mode) and it cleans it for you while you enjoy your drink.

The £149.95 price tag is the most generous of what we've tested, but it's not just the gadget that it covers. The package includes a Podcup and Podglass to drink your hot and cold drinks out of, along with 10 sachets to use (five hot, and five cold).

Tested by Helen Pike