Pulling an Espresso Shot on a Silvercrest Espresso Machine

My partner and I testing out our Silvercrest Espresso Machine (rebranded DeLonghi, similar to the EC152). We bought the Silvercrest from Lidl for £39.99 and it's AWESOME! The machine comes supplied with 2 pressurised portafilters (a single and a double) allowing you to use pre-ground coffee off-the-shelf. We used LaVazza Qualità Rossa coffee for this video and the pressurised double portafilter. We bastardised one of the portafilters so there's no longer any pressurisation, therefore relying solely on the coffee tamp and grounds to produce the perfect pull. But unfortunately off-the-shelf, pre-ground coffee pulls in about 10 seconds. Our local Italian restaurant was kind enough to give us some of their own ground coffee to sample. By chance it was almost perfectly dialed for our machine, producing a 24 second pull. Beautiful! This proves that the machine is capable. However, we now know we need a grinder to get the best out of the machine. By the way, throw the supplied pannarello attachment away - it serves no useful purpose, unless what it produces is your idea of cappuccino foam :-)