He's now drinking Nespresso like me :)
Breville doesn't seem to be a common brand here in Europe but I see it is a lot cheaper. Nothing like the 80 euro of a Nespresso machine though (which has also lasted me 10 years despite never descaling it).
Machines which grind internally and produce a coffee fully automatically can be configured to produce decent coffee, but it's not exactly easy.
What I tend to do is drink "half-caf", I take 1 pod decaf and 1 pod normal in the same cup. It looks like for this one I'd have to change out the bean reservoir every time (or mix normal beans with decaf beans somehow).
It would probably be cheaper though yeah. Even the aftermarket cups still cost me 25c. I'll have more of a look at it once my current machine fails (it's going on 10 years now).