So Ninja have made a coffee machine – the Ninja Luxe Cafe, and let me tell you – it’s surprising! But its it surprisingly good, or surprisingly bad? Keep reading and you’ll find out ;-).
I love waffles, but if you don’t – just click here to go straight to the main review & skip my intro.
Ninja have made a couple of coffee machines, they’ve not been available in the UK, and on paper they didn’t really do much for me, it looked like they were just having a little punt at the coffee machine market to be honest.
So when people started contacting me about the Ninja Luxe Cafe asking me to review it, I have to admit I kind of shrugged it off at first.
“Oh yeah, yet another mainstream brand emulating one of the Sage espresso machines and selling it for a lower price point, yawn!”
But enough people nagged me about it, in fact people were even contacting Brickoven, the video production company in Manchester who do all of my YouTube videos, asking them if they could convince me to review it!
So I started to have a look at what the fuss was all about, and luckily my friend Mark Prince from CoffeeGeek.com had just done his first look blog post on the Nina Cafe Luxe.
Mark has more experience with espresso machines than anyone I know, and if he says a coffee machine is good, it’s definitely good.
I honestly thought as I started reading that Mark was going to confirm my assumption that the Ninja coffee machine was yet another low blow from another mainstream brand, a brand that doesn’t seem to understand what Sage (Breville Worldwide) really do, and who think that just slapping on an integrated grinder and paying lip service speciality coffee is all you need to do in order to capture some of that valuable growing market.
I was wrong!
Mark’s initial thoughts were largely positive, he did state that it was early days and he had a lot more testing to do, but so far, he was very impressed.
So I bought one from America, as they weren’t available yet in the UK – I also bought a step down converter so I could use a 120v machine on a 220v circuit. I’ve heard from others who’ve done the same, please don’t do this if you’re considering it.
They’re available to pre-order now at John Lewis with a dispatch date of 25th Sep, so you’ll probably have it quicker this way, and you’ll have a UK warranty, and you won’t need a bulky converter.
Anyway, I received it, my daughter unboxed it and did the unboxing video for Instagram, YouTube shorts etc., and then I had a look at it – and I was relatively indifferent to it, it looked how I’d expect a Ninja coffee machine to look.
But then I used it, and I was no longer indifferent!
Ninja Luxe Cafe Coffee Machine Review
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Now Available to pre-order on Amazon for delivery 23rd October!
Features:
- 53mm ultra deep (weird looking but there’s a point to it) portafilter, standard, unpressurised.
- Double shot basket & luxe basket (the point of the deep portafilter), standard, unpressurised.
- Basket recognition (it’ll only give you the drink options corresponding to the basket you’re using).
- 2 Litre water tank with water sensor
- Integrated conical burr grinder with 25 settings
- Built in scales for grinding by weight (kind of)
- Barista Assist technology with grind size guidance
- 3 brew temperature settings
- 3 espresso ratio settings
- 7 filter coffee & cold brew sizes from 6oz – 18oz
- Auto grinder pulsing when grinding finer
- Grinder purge function
- Auto pre-infusion
- Auto milk steaming & frothing
- Auto cold milk frothing
- Auto steam wand purge
- Brews espresso & various other kinds of coffees that you wouldn’t’ think it should be able to
- Digital Display
- Built in storage compartment for the important bits & bobs
- Very nice quality cup riser
- Spring loaded tamper & dosing ring with handy storage slots
- Special adjustable drip tray to accommodate giant cups
My Observations
This is great, buy it. Bye.
OK, I’m kidding, that’s not my full review ;-).
For the majority of people though, people who’d never contemplate buying a portafilter espresso machine, the kind of people that may have been considering a pod machine or a fully automatic bean to cup machine – this is probably all you really need to know.
You want a machine that you can pour whole coffee beans into the top, and produce just about all of the coffee drinks you’d find on any of the popular cafe chain menus, including espresso, filter, cold brew plus hot and cold milk foam – and the myriad of drink options all of these bring in combination? Then you probably want this.
If you have no idea what I’m on about by “the home barista hobby”, if you think people who weight their coffee beans are just weirdo’s – and you think that chains like Starbucks & Costa is where it’s at where coffee is concerned, then you’re probably going to fall madly in love with this machine.
That’s not me having a dig at the big chains by the way, it’s just an easy rule of thumb way to know if someone is a mainstream coffee drinker or if they’ve already been tempted over to the dark side.
If you already class yourself as a home barista, or if you know that’s where you’re headed, then this isn’t really aimed at you.
It doesn’t mean you can’t use it – you certainly can, but there are other machines that are better suited for that kind of use, for various reasons that will become clear a bit later on in this post.
If this is you and you want to see the best options for home barista setups, see:
Best Home Barista Espresso Machines
The New Version For UK & Europe
If you watched my initial Ninja Luxe Cafe review video on YouTube, or the review from Toms Coffee Corner, or James Hoffman’s recent review, these were all done on the US, 110V version.
I bought the US version and imported it into the UK so I could review it, and as soon as the UK version was available to pre-order, I put my pre-order in, and I was one of the first in the UK to get it before it went out of stock again.
The UK version of the Ninja Luxe Cafe has some nice surprises!
Hot Water Button!
This wasn’t a huge surprise, as quite a few people had noticed that they’d included a photo of a version with a hot water button, on the product imagery, but I wasn’t convinced, as there were multiple images, some that showed no hot water button, and a couple with a hot water button.
To add to the confusion, I could see that they are releasing another version (the “pro”, ES701) which will have a hot water button, so to begin with I assumed they’d just included some photos of this by mistake, until I realised that the 701 is also coming with a tamp lever.
Anyway, as I have it now I can confirm it does indeed have a hot water button, and not only that but a dedicated hot water spout, and not hot water dispensing through the steam wand as I initially thought may be the case.
When you select “hot water” there are three options you can set it to via the selector dial, these are the temperature settings (which isn’t very clear, I can’t find anything relating to this in any of the manuals that came with my machine):
- Option 1 (1 dot): 62C
- Option 2 (2 dots): 75C
- Option 3 (3 dots): 85C
These are the temperatures I’ve recorded, using an ETI thermapen 3 food thermometer, they’ve not come from Ninja.
For each option, roughly the same amount of water is dispensed, roughly 210-230 ml, but you can stop it by pressing the “brew” button again when you’ve got the desired volume.
It is quite slow, it takes about 1 minute & 20 seconds to dispense this pre-set hot water volume, including about 20 seconds of heat-up. Probably faster than boiling the kettle though.
Single Espresso
The UK version also has a single shot basket, and single espresso on the menu. Personally, I don’t really use single shots, but I know some people do, and with a machine like this which is really all about versatility and catering to absolutely everyone, I think it makes perfect sense for them to put a single shot on the menu.
Americano Option
With the hot water button, the UK version has also been given an Americano option.
You adjust the Americano strength, with the “strength” button, which is a multi-purpose button which means different things for different drinks.
For Americano, the strength button adjusts the amount of water dispensed, and the dose remains the same (depending on the basket).
- Option 1 (1 dot). High volume, low strength. Water volume approx. 140ml. Total volume approx. 200ml
- Option 2 (2 dots). Medium volume, medium strength. Water volume approx. 90ml. Total volume approx. 150ml
- Option 3 (3 dots). Small volume, high strength. Water volume approx. 60ml. Total volume approx. 120ml.
With the double shot basket, each option doses 18g in the basket, and produces a roughly 1:3.5 ratio shot, about 62-65g. There’s no way to amend the ratio, other than to manually stop the shot early.
It’s hot water first, by the way, so some will say this is long black, personally I don’t think it matters what you call it, I know that down under a long black is hot water first, but I’ve never found any rule book that states Americano must therefore be espresso first.
Personally, though, I’d make Americano simply by pulling a shot and then pressing the hot water button (at the medium temperature), and then pressing it to stop when I think I’ve got roughly enough water, then taste it and add more water if required.
Ratio Adjustment
On the US, 110V model, ratio is adjusted in the additional settings menu. On the new 220 version for Europe, the strength button adjusts the ratio for espresso.
- Option 1 (1 dot). 1:4 ratio
- Option 2 (2 dots). 1:2.5 ratio (default)
- Option 3 (3 dots). 1:2 ratio
If you’re not sure what I’m going on about here, ratio refers to the ratio between ground coffee and espresso, so a 36g shot from an 18g dose is a 1:2 ratio. Most people will probably find that the default is fine, but if you’re not overly happy with the taste of your espresso, this would be the most obvious thing to try adjusting.
Additional Settings
The additional settings menu has also changed on the UK model.
To get into this, press and hold the drinks size button.
- _HD01: Beeps on/off
- _HD02: Eco mode on/off
- _HD03: Recommended grind size on/off
- _HD04: Re-set barista assist settings
- _HD05: Factory re-set
- _HD06: Brew temperature
- _HD07: Milk temperature
- _HD08: Water hardness settings
Filter Style Coffee Changes
The strength button adjusts the grinding time for the filter style coffee, to reduce or increase the coffee to water ratio.
- Option 1 (1 dot): Mild
- Option 2 (2 dots): Medium
- Option 3 (3dots): Strong
As far as I can tell, these options purely relate to grind time, when it comes to filter style, I don’t think it’s using the inbuilt scales in the same way that it does for espresso.
The grind time and dose isn’t set as it is with Americano, instead it takes into account the cup size and adjusts the grind time and therefore the dose depending on the size of drink you choose, so in theory the ratio will be the same (depending on which strength option you choose), regardless of the cup size, which is good!
Instead of a simple fluid ounce option for the coffee sizes, on the UK version we now have 7 volume options. Here’s what they relate to in ml and fluid ounces:
- Small: 175ml/6oz
- Small +: 235ml/8oz
- Medium: 295ml/10oz
- Medium +: 355ml/12oz
- Large: 415ml/14oz
- Large+: 475ml/16oz
- XL: 530ml/18oz
When it comes to cold brew, you’ll find that you get roughly half these volumes, which is simply because the machine is expecting that your cup volume is reduced due to the ice.
Better Milk Texture
Vs the US version, I’m finding the milk texture and temperature slightly more consistent, and overall slightly better. It’s as if the pump is happier on this power, so it could just be that the pump on the US version wasn’t quite as happy working via a step down adapter.
Anyway, vs using the American 11oV version here, so vs the results in the initial video review, the UK version produces better quality milk texture and it’s slightly quicker too.
Here’s the flat white I’m drinking as I’m updating this post, that I’ve just made with the Ninja Luxe.
This is a VERY good flat white, and it was incredibly simple to make. Other than one little trick I did on the milk texture side of things, I honestly think anyone regardless of their experience with espresso machines, could have made this flat white, my time served as a home barista has nothing to do with this, I basically did what the machine told me to do.
That trick with the milk texture, isn’t really a trick ;-), all I’ve done is to pour it from the Ninja milk jug into my favourite milk jug, doing this helps to polish the texture, and then a couple of knocks to break bubbles, and a bit of swirling to further polish off the texture slightly, and it turned out very nice & silky as you can see.
The Most Versatile Coffee Machine Ever?
This fairly unassuming looking, very low priced (comparatively speaking) coffee machine, will make:
- Double espresso
- Quad espresso
- Classic filter style coffee
- Rich filter style coffee
- Over ice filter style coffee
- Cold brew coffee
- Cold pressed espresso
- Americano (on the UK/EU version)
So this is the coffees it’ll make. Now let’s combine that with the milk side of things.
- Manual hot milk foam
- Automatic hot milk foam
- Automatic cold milk foam
If you combine these together, you basically have the ability to make any coffee drink you could ask for at ANY big chain coffee shop, and, you won’t need a mortgage to afford one or two drinks per day, and you can control exactly what goes in the drinks and therefore into your body!
This is made much easier, thanks to the “Inspiration Guide” that Ninja bundle with this machine, that I think they could actually sell as a stand alone product!
I think they’ve undersold this, by calling it an inspiration guide. Not only does it have loads of really good info on the machine and how to use it, it has a great how to guide for each coffee type, plus the inspirations (along with instructions and ingredient) for various drinks made using that coffee type.
OK, so it’ll make all these drinks, they’re all garbage though, right?
Wrong!
None of these drinks are garbage. This machine performs very well, at just about everything it does. More on that shortly, firstly:
A Quick Caveat – Ninja Vs Sage (or Breville, if you’re reading this from across the pond).
I’m seeing a lot of people comparing this machine to Sage or Breville machines, including the Barista Express, and Barista Touch Impress.
I can 100% see the reason to make these comparisons. The Barista Express has been one of the best selling coffee machines in the world for over a decade, and the Barista Touch Impress and the Oracle Touch (and the Oracle Jet, which is available in America but not yet available in the UK) have been the only machines really catering for the “in between” market that Sage/Breville pioneered.
When it comes to coffee machines that give the ease of use and experience of a one touch fully automatic bean to cup but the cup quality of a traditional portafilter espresso machine, only Sage / Breville have done this up until now.
So I understand the comparison to Sage – but it’s definitely not a case that the Ninja Cafe Luxe is “better” than the Sage or Breville machines, that’s a misunderstanding, which I’ll explain in more detail a bit later on.
Just to quickly explain the “Sage/Breville” thing – in case you weren’t aware, the brand we know as Sage Appliances in Europe, are known under the Breville brand in America, Australia etc., Breville in the UK are a different company all together.
Sage Machines Review
The Ninja Luxe Cafe Shouldn’t be This Good, Surely?
I honestly have to say, I have been astounded by the quality of the drinks the Luxe cafe is capable of producing – given how easy it is to use.
I can’t think of anyone I know who isn’t accustomed to using espresso machines, who I don’t think would be able to easy use this machine, and all of these people I’m thinking of, I think would be amazed by the quality of the coffee (if using great, freshly roasted coffee beans, of course).
Espresso, filter coffee, cold brew, cold pressed espresso, hot and cold foam – is all ACE! To say I wasn’t expecting that, would be just a teeny understatement! ;-).
I mean, come on, for five hundred dollars, and presumably about the same in £ when it’s released here, how is it possible to make a machine that is actually capable of doing all of this well, I’m not sure, but it is, as Ninja has done it.
Let’s talk a bit about all the drinks it’ll make:
Double Espresso
The first time I made an espresso with the Luxe, I was quite impressed, but I didn’t think the barista guidance was all that accurate.
This is simply because I’m a moron, and I’d not RTFM’d properly at that point.
A quick glance at the (flipping) manual, and I realised that there’s some kind of machine learning going on, which means two or three shots are required to really start getting the best from the machine with any of the brew methods. I’ll give you a little hack shortly for speeding up that machine learning process.
I also wasn’t quite sure about the volumes, until I read Mark’s first thoughts review at CoffeeGeek (he had it a few weeks before me, which is handy as I was able to save time and get up to speed by reading his post, thanks Mark ;-).
I noticed in marks review that the ratios are adjustable, again I consulted the flipping manual and found that indeed there are three ratio settings, (1:2, 1:2.5 and 1:3) and that 1:2.5 was the default (meaning the liquid espresso is 2.5 times the weight of the ground coffee used, so 18g of coffee beans to 45g of espresso).
After a few shots, I was getting consistently decent espresso, using my Chocolate Brownie Blend, at about grind size 7, at the hottest of the three brew temperatures.
When I say consistently “decent” I mean perfectly acceptable. If I was dialling in manually on a traditional machine, these shots I was producing with little or no thought, just doing what the machine told me to do, are about at the point where I’d usually say “OK, that’s dialled in enough”.
If I was being the ultra perfectionist, if I had time to dial in to the nth degree, then I’d say a little bit of tweaking and I may be able to just push the extraction up just a tad, and when I’ve tested the extraction with the DI Fluid R2 which I’ve done a lot while using this, this confirmed what my taste buds were telling me.
Usually when I’m in the zone of “OK, that’ll do – could do slightly better if I had 20 mins to kill but I don’t and that’s perfectly acceptable” (that’s a long winded name for a zone, I know) and I test it, it’s somewhere around 19-20% extraction, and most of the shots I’ve had with the Ninja, just following the guidance, have been about the 19-20% extraction.
If I was using a traditional machine, paired with a very capable grinder, there are things I could do to get the extraction into the 21-22% zone where I usually find gives me just that extra bit of delight on top of the satisfaction that around 19-20% provides.
Let me tell you, this “acceptable” zone that the Ninja achieves with no effort, is leagues above what most pod machines or fully automatic bean to cup machines would produce. It’s also leagues above the “Sink, don’t drink” shots that you’ll encounter on your way to the “delightful” zone of dialled in, using a traditional setup.
You can’t put aftermarket baskets in the Cafe Luxe, which is one of the reasons home baristas may be put off it, and the finest grind size may not quite cut the mustard if you’re wanting to use slightly lighter roasts.
There’s no single shot basket, which I think is fine as the vast majority of people these days are using double shots. You can split a double into two cups, the portafilter does have a splitter, but there’s not much width under the splitter on the drip tray or cup riser, so you’ll probably be better making the espresso into one cup or measure, stirring it and then decanting into your two cups.
The dose is a very consistent 18 grams, consistent within a few points of a gram. The only time you may find it goes off a bit is after you’ve just made a grind adjustment.
The ratio is consistent too, I usually find it’s accurate to within a gram.
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Quad Shot Espresso
So this is made using the Luxe basket, the tall basket, and it will dose 40 grams, and then deliver however much espresso depending on your ratio setting.
So for a 1:2 ratio you’ll get an 80 gram shot. Wow, and Hugh Jackman & John Travolta thought they were tough ordering their triple shots in Swordfish! ;-).
Again, if you were making two flat whites for example, you could make one quad shot into a measure cup, stir, then decant into your two cups/glasses.
Single Espresso
I’ve already spoken about single espresso in the section above relating to the UK version, so I won’t go into much detail here, but there’s not a great deal to say anyway, really. Unlike the 110v version (and that may change in the future, I’m not sure if they’ll update the 110v version at some point) the 220V version comes with a single shot basket, so if you like, you can select a single espresso.
Americano
As I’ve mentioned, this is just on the latest European version that’s now available in the UK. You can make an Americano by pulling a single, double or quad shot espresso, and then adding the water separately via the water spout, or you can select the Americano button, and it’ll dispense the water first, and then the espresso.
The strength button, for Americano, relates to how much water is dispensed, 1 for the smallest amount of water & the strongest Americano, 3 for the largest amount of water & the weakest Americano.
Filter Coffee – Classic/Rich & Over Ice
This isn’t really filter or “drip” coffee in the traditional sense of the word, there is a filter involved but it’s a stainless steel espresso filter basket not a paper filter. That aside though, I’m a fan of the “filter” coffee the Luxe Cafe produces.
It’s nice & strong, to me it’s in between a strong filter coffee and a cafetiere coffee, and I find the classic is plenty intense enough.
Although as I’ve said, this isn’t “filter”, if you just fancy a fairly big, fairly strong cup of coffee, somewhere in between filter coffee & cafetiere, you’ll probably enjoy this.
If you’re a pour over or batch brew enthusiast, just be aware that this probably isn’t what you’re going to be looking for. It’s a bit rough around the edges, it’s made with a really course grind, so if you’re used to making very well dialled in paper filters, you’ll probably be unimpressed with this to say the least.
If you’re just looking for a big cup of black coffee to knock back and wake you up, though, you’ll probably enjoy this. I enjoy it when I want a big travel cup full of black coffee, using a darker roast single origin or an espresso blend, it’s quick, easy & satisfying.
The difference between the classic and the rich setting, is the amount of coffee used vs the amount of water, so the ratio. On the classic setting it’s a relatively standard 1:16 coffee to water ratio, and on the slightly stronger “rich” setting, it’s about 1:13.
So it’s good, but also it’s really quick and simple. A single cup (10 ounce, 285ml) takes about 3 minutes to brew (not including grinding, so probably about 4 minutes from start to finish depending on how speedy you are) and about 4 minutes for an 18 ounce brew. Clean up is literally as quick as knocking the portafilter into the knock box (or into your food waste or compost) too.
I’ve been using the Luxe Cafe every day in the run up to filming the initial YouTube review, and about a week since then at the time of writing, and the setting I’ve used the most is the classic filter, I really, really enjoy the coffee from this brew method, especially using cworks Chocolate Brownie blend & Chocolate Fondant blend.
If you’re wondering about TDS, then you must be a geek like me ;-), and the answer is that for the filter style coffee the TDS when I’ve measured it has been around 2.2 – 2.3%, using the brilliant DI Fluid R2.
If I’ve just completely thrown you, TDS is the total dissolved solids, it’s what we use to figure out the extraction %. Over 2% is pretty high for filter, and it does taste a bit on the strong side, but I love that.
The Over Ice setting is basically the same but a slower and cooler brew, which ends up at about the same extraction, but about 10-15 Celsius or 50-60 F cooler.
With the UK version, the strength button adjusts the dose/strength, with setting 1 (1 dot) grinding the smallest dose, and setting 3 (3 dots) grinding the biggest dose.
Cold Brew
If you’re really into your cold brew, especially if you make it yourself, you may be frowning at the idea of a “cold brew” from an espresso machine, which takes a matter of minutes, and isn’t brewed cold.
I do get that, and it’s exactly what I thought too. For the record, I’m not a big cold brew drinker, I usually drink my coffee hot – so I may be a cold brew heathen, but I have to say – I really like the “cold brew” that this machines, whether or not I think it has any right to be actually called cold brew.
The temperature of the coffee as it leaves the portafilter and enters the cup or server is about 40 degrees Celsius, 104F, I’m not sure I’d call “cold”, I’d probably call it luke warm – but when done over ice, or brewed and then put in the fridge or freezer and enjoyed cold, I really like this!
As luck would have it, receiving the Ninja Luxe Cafe to do this review has coincided with some of the hottest weather we’ve had in the UK for ages, so I’ve had a few cold brews with it, and it’s probably my second favourite drink to make on this machine after the filter coffee.
There have been a couple of days where it’s literally been that hot that making a flat white just seemed weird, and I’ve made a cold brew, poured some cold foam on the top, and enjoyed a very nice iced latte.
So, yup, cold brew on the Ninja gets my thumbs up – and it’s really quick. This is one of the great things about this machine, you can make really decent coffees on a whim, without taking too much time. Hmm, fancy a cold brew right now – a few minutes later you have one, that’s ace!
In terms of brew time, it depends on the volume, if you choose 6 ounce, you’ll find it’s about 2 & a half minutes, for the biggest volume (18 ounce) setting, it’s more like 7 minutes.
The volumes are different for cold brew, you’ll get just over 50% of the volume vs. filter, I thought it was a fault at first until I realised that they’re simply allowing for ice in the cup.
The TDS is about 3%, which is quite high for cold brew (well, it’s not really cold brew so that shouldn’t come as a surprise). I actually really like it at this strength, personally, but if you want to dilute it, obviously you can just top it up with cold water.
Cold Pressed Espresso?
This is espresso produced at a cooler brew temperature, over a longer brew time, to produce the same kind of extraction but at a cooler setting, leading to espresso hitting the cup/glass at about 36C (97F). As with the “over ice” filter, I wouldn’t want to drink this as it is, it’s luke warm – but pulled over ice to be used as the base for an iced latte, iced cappuccino etc., along with the cold frother, yes please!
It’s roughly a 2 minute brew, and if you’ve got the ratio set to 1:2.5, 18 grams of ground coffee to 45 grams of liquid, the extraction percentage is about 20%, which I was amazed by given the low brew temp.
Starbucks / Costa Coffee / Nero In Your Kitchen?
This machine makes espresso, so we could call it an “espresso machine”, but it does quite a bit more than that. Really, what this machine represents, is waking up to find that one of the big chain coffee shops has opened in your kitchen, offering you their full menu of coffee drinks. The drinks it’s capable of making will compete
Hmm, I think this morning I’ll have an Iced Dirty Chai – I mean, I have absolutely no clue what that is, it doesn’t taste like something I’d want to drink, but heck, I’ll try most things (definitely not anything…) once! The Ninja will do that, all I’d need to do is consult the glossy guide for the required ingredients and the directions.
How about a brown sugar oat milk shaken latte? No problem, same deal.
Mexican spiced coffee with chocolate cold foam? But of course.
OK you have to make these drinks yourself, but the other bonus is that you won’t re-mortgage your home for the pleasure either!
In fact, if you do regularly buy these kinds of drinks from these kinds of chain cafe’s, I don’t think it’ll take long at all for this machine to pay for itself in savings!
No Hot Water Button?
Does the Ninja Luxe Cafe 601 “Premier” model have a hot water button? Yes it does, and no it doesn’t ;-).
The 110V version I bought from America, doesn’t have a hot water button, at the time of writing – this may change in the future.
The UK version does have a hot water button, though, and a dedicated hot water spout.
Why Isn’t This a Home Barista Machine?
The reason this machine is so great for “normal” coffee drinkers, is that it’s a very multi faceted coffee machine with very little to think about other than what drink you want, and what size you want.
Just to define what I mean by “normal”, because I do get pulled up on this occasionally. I mean, you’re not a complete fanatic like me, who’ll faff around for half an hour (longer…) just to make a coffee.
So if you’re a “normal” coffee drinker, who just wants a great cup of coffee (in whatever form you’re in the mood for), and who doesn’t want to faff, you’ll probably really appreciate the Ninja Luxe Cafe.
This is also the reason it’s not the obvious choice for home baristas, who actually want to faff around ;-), meaning that we want as much manual control as possible over our espresso.
We want to be able to pull manual shots, try different baskets, adjust the dose, the pre-infusion and so on, and this isn’t what the Ninja Luxe is about.
It’s made to deliver a set dose for espresso, of 18g for a double shot, and one of three volume settings depending on the ratio you choose in the menu (default is 45ml of espresso from 18g of ground coffee).
You could actually bypass the set dose by just grinding using the purge function, pressing and holding the start grind button – and if you’re getting this machine because you think everyone else using it will find it perfect, but you were wanting to get a bit more geeky with it, this how you’d get around that if you wanted to dose manually.
There’s no real option for manual shots, having said that, you can work around that too – by setting the ratio to the next one up vs the ratio you’re aiming for, and stopping the shot manually.
There’s no not water option for preheating the cup, or for long black/Americano, but possibly the biggest issue home baristas would have with the Ninja Luxe Cafe is the inability to use aftermarket baskets.
To be fair there’s probably a work around for this too, but I’m not 100% sure what it would be.
There’s a black ring around the top of the baskets is detected when you lock the portafilter in, and knows what basket you’re using. So I assume you’d need to remove this ring from the stock basket and attach it to a replacement basket, if you wanted to use a 53mm competition basket for example.
The Ninja Cafe Luxe is NOT better than the Sage Barista Express, or Touch Impress!
This is a very impressive machine, but as I alluded to earlier, it’s not the same as – or better than, any of the Sage or Breville espresso machines.
I’m not at all saying that the Ninja Luxe isn’t better suited to you than one of the Sage or Breville machines, it may well be, but that doesn’t mean that “the Ninja Luxe Cafe is better than Sage / Breville” which are some of the kind of comments I’m starting to see.
It’s Not All About Taste
Some other comments I’m seeing in particular in my first review video on the Luxe Cafe, are that it’s all about taste and I should have maybe focused more on makes the best tasting espresso.
On the face of it, it would seem that this is the main point, but there are too many variables for it to be simply about taste.
It depends on which Sage machine we’re comparing with, if we’re talking about Ninja Vs Sage/Breville, which many are – as Sage make many different machines, but then it also depends on your expectations.
For example, if you were thinking about the Sage/Breville Barista Express Vs. the Ninja Luxe Cafe, which many people are – we then need to know:
Do you want to or, are you prepared to do a bit of faffing in order to get potentially slightly better results, and are you OK with the downside of that in that as well as the potential for better, there’s also the potential for worse?
Or are you wanting no faff, just walk up to the machine move a few things around, done?
If the latter is the case, and what you’re asking is – without any hassle or faff, which machine is probably going to give you the most consistently decent cup quality every time without fail, then I’d say the Ninja.
The same may be true of the Sage Barista Touch Impress, by the way, which the Ninja Luxe Cafe has clearly been inspired by, and I think that looks nicer, the build quality is on a different level, as is the user experience with the full colour touch screen, but then the price tag is also on a similarly different level.
Sage Barista Touch Impress Review
If you’re comparing to the Barista Express, the Ninja is going to be easier to work with if you’re planning on using freshly roasted coffee beans – meaning coffee beans with a roasted on date, not just a use by date.
It’ll tell you what to do with the grind size depending on the drink you’re making, and it’s actually very accurate. The Barista Express requires the user to work this out for themselves, as it’s a traditional espresso machine, simply with an integrated grinder.
Will the Ninja get you 100% perfect extraction, maybe not quite (but good luck achieving that manually, too, it takes quite a bit of learning plus trial and error even once you’ve found your feet with it).
Could you achieve closer to perfection with the Barista Express, yeah probably, but that does require a learning curve, and a fair amount of faff, which is fine if you’re OK with that.
With the Barista Express, being an unassisted traditional machine, you have to pull out all the stops to get better extraction, and on the way there you may produce some espresso that taste like dirt (well it was just ground, hehe).
Sage Barista Express Review
Appliance Vs Machine
This is the other important thing to consider, when comparing the Ninja Luxe Cafe with any more expensive options including Sage machines.
Some seem to think this is down to looks, and materials – and I don’t fully agree with that. For me, what distinguishes a true machine from a kitchen appliance, is the ability to maintain and repair in order to get the maximum years of service from it.
Kitchen appliances generally last until they don’t, and then you replace them. This isn’t only due to the build quality & components, a lot of it is down to the availability of parts and the logistics being in place to diagnose and repair issues.
So a coffee machine that you can’t even get a group gasket for, for example, that’s what I’d refer to as an appliance grade machine – while a brand that has a good parts supply, and the infrastructure set up to enable owners to do self repair or to have an engineer sort it for them, is in my opinion a machine grade brand as opposed to an “appliance grade” brand.
Sage are often branded by the home barista community as being appliance grade. I understand where this is coming from, they’re a big international brand, and they cater as much as they can to the more mainstream market.
As a result their machines are more modern kitchen friendly in terms of appearance, than a lot of the traditional espresso machines on the market. They do better for PAF (partner acceptance factor), and they’re generally more affordable.
Plus, compared to the likes of Gaggia, Rancilio, Lelit, Rocket, ECM, Profitec and so on, it’s not been as easy to get hold of parts, which I know from personal experience, can be frustrating. They’ve been working on that though, there is a pretty good availability of spare parts in the UK now, via their out of warranty support partner, Coffee Classics.
Although that’s good, it’s still not perfect, mainly because of the pricing. Some of the parts aren’t too bad, some of them are ridiculous, an Ulka Ep5 pump for £47.95, jog on Coffee Classics, that’s a £20 part!
Thankfully you can get standard parts like this from various places, it’s just Sage specific parts that you’d really need to get from these guys, for example if you need a replacement thermojet (Bambino Plus, Barista Touch Impress, Barista Pro etc.), that’s just under £70, a triac board is about £8, and a group gasket is about a tenner.
An email I had from a reader just last week perfectly illustrates my point here.
His ten year old Barista Express has stopped grinding – I responded to say no need to replace it, I put him in touch with an engineer (Radu, from espressorepairshop.co.uk). It sounds like he’ll just need the “gear main kit” which is about £9, and Radu will have it back up and running and back to him within a week, and it won’t cost much at all, probably a 30 minute fix.
Another recent email from a reader is an example of a pure appliance brand, one of those who make machines that are made to look very much like Sage machines, and appear to be the same thing at a much lower price.
The gasket (simply the rubber seal around the shower screen) had gone, within his warranty period. He looked online, found that this is an easy fix, they’re usually about £10, and you just pull the old one out and slap the new one in.
So he pulled it out, and tried to get a new one, to discover that you can’t get them, it’s a very specific part, and there’s no supply in the UK. He got in touch with their support folk (he sent me a copy of the support thread) and they told him that in order to fix his machine, he’d need to replace it.
They said that if he’d not have told him that he’d already removed the old one, they would have rectified the situation by swapping out the entire machine! But, because he had told them this, they voided his warranty, and told him to buy a new one.
It seems ridiculous to think they’d waste an entire machine just because it needs a new group gasket – but it’s the way appliance brands tend to to be, they don’t usually have the infrastructure around supplying spare parts and organizing repairs.
I have to say, though, it seems Ninja are not quite like some of the other appliance brands, at least when it comes to the most obvious external components.
The group gasket and shower screen are both available on the US Ninja website, and they’re really low cost, too. You can also get the milk jug, the frothing whisk on it’s own, the steam wand, water tank, drip tray (even all the individual parts of the drip tray) portafilter & baskets, and the tamper.
They’re not showing in on the Ninja Kitchen UK website yet, but I’m assuming they will do in the very near future.
So this definitely earns Ninja some points when it comes to potential longevity.
What about internal components though? If your machine develops a fault, is there any infrastructure in place for dealing with that?
If there isn’t, if anyone from Ninja is reading this – I think this is very simple. Just create a parts supply website and a parts diagram, allow users and engineers to buy parts.
This way, if a user is handy and wants to repair it themselves out of warranty, they can, or if they prefer then can just look up an engineer, and if parts are available, independent engineers and small firms are likely to offer to diagnose and repair, they won’t bother if they can’t access parts, especially if there are some Ninja specific components, and I suspect there are a couple of these.
Ninja Cafe Luxe Vs Sage Barista Express Comparison Chart
Ninja are running a comparison image that shows the Luxe Cafe compared to the Barista Express, which looks like this:
If you’ve seen that, then you may think it’s simple, Ninja Luxe Cafe Vs Sage Barista Express, Ninja wins right? Not so simple.
Firstly, this comparison isn’t a fair one, if it was, they’d be including “hot water dispensing”, with a cross for the ninja and a tick for the Barista Express (unless my assumption is correct about the UK version having a hot water button) and the same for “pressure gauge”, and for “adjustable dose/strength for each drink”.
Also, this chart is on the product info for the Luxe Cafe Premier series, 601, however it appears to suggest that the Luxe Cafe “Premier” 601 has an assisted tamper, which the Luxe 601 version doesn’t, as well as showing a hot water button, but as I’ve mentioned, I do think the UK version of the 601 may be coming with a hot water button.
I can see why they’ve compared to the Barista Express though, as it’s one of the best selling coffee machines no the planet – but it’s really not a great comparison, the Barista Express is a traditional espresso machine with an integrated grinder.
The Ninja Luxe is what I’d describe as a family coffee machine, which is clearly geared up to make crowd pleasing coffee drinks that anyone could think of, including the entire menu of most chain coffee shops.
So it’s a different machine for a different user – if you’re really the kind of person who the Barista Express is really for, the Ninja Luxe Cafe really isn’t for you, and vice versa.
Ninja Luxe Cafe Vs Sage/Breville Barista Touch Impress
Another comparison I’m seeing people making, for obvious reasons, is the Touch Impress.
These are both assisted machines, they both have the barista guidance, so it’s a more obvious comparison, but they’re still very different machines with different pros and cons.
Pros For The Sage Touch Impress Vs Ninja Cafe Luxe 601
The Sage Touch Impress is clearly a different level of machine in terms of premium quality build and materials. Yes it’s about twice the price vs the Luxe Premier 601, but it’s obviously a much more premium machine, anyone who looks at them side by side I think would agree with me there.
It’s a different level of experience, too, the touch impress is a more immersive & interactive experience with the swipe & touch display.
The touch impress has a hot water feature, with a tea setting and multiple hot water temperatures, and it has an assisted tamper (the touch impress system) which works brilliantly.
Yeah, the blurb at the moment seems to state that the same is true for both of these things for the Luxe Cafe, but it’s the 701, “Pro” model, which is coming with a tamp lever, which hasn’t been release yet. The 601 “premier series” doesn’t have this, and as I’ve mentioned, only time will tell re the hot water button.
Also, the Touch Impress is a machine that you’ll be able to have repaired and maintained well outside of the warranty period, so although it’s about twice the cost, the overall value will depend on how long one lasts vs the other.
So in my opinion the Touch Impress wins, hands down, for overall quality, for the touch screen interactive user experience (if that’s something you’re looking for, not everyone is), and I am assuming also for long term value.
The fact is, the Ninja Luxe is an amazing machine for the cost, Ninja have clearly focused on performance, and I’m assuming (I may be wrong) that we’re not going to see an internal parts supply, or some kind of infrastructure being put in place to deal with fixing these machines outside of the warranty.
So it’s my opinion at this point in time, that just as with most relatively low cost small home appliances, you can only really count on owning this while the warranty lasts, and every month after that is a bonus.
This isn’t a put down of the Ninja, the majority of home appliances are built in this way, it’s just a choice you make when you decide to go for a machine like this, and there are many pros for the Ninja, too.
Pros For The Ninja Luxe Cafe Vs the Barista Touch Impress
The main thing that I think the Luxe Cafe has over the Touch Impress, is the affordable price point. A lot of people will struggle, either to justify or to afford (or both) the cost of the touch impress, while the price of the Luxe Cafe is far less intimidating.
Again, this doesn’t actually mean the Luxe offers better value for money, this would depend on how long they both end up lasting. If one machine costs double and lasts three times as long, then in terms of long term value, the pricier one was better value.
But most people don’t put quite this much thought into buying a coffee machine, and about £550 doesn’t seem cheap for a coffee machine, although this actually is very cheap given the features and performance.
The other thing at the top of the list of pros, is the versatility in terms of all the drink options the Ninja will produce. This is what makes the Ninja really special.
If you’re looking for a home coffee machine that will make all of the options at most chain cafes, and will allow you to make them to just as good a quality, and to tweak them to your hearts content until you get each drink exactly how you want it, for a fraction of what you’d pay per drink in a chain cafe, then this is what the Luxe Cafe is, and it’s really quite unique in in that regard.
The Touch Impress is an espresso machine, it’ll make espresso based drinks and produce hot foamed milk. The Ninja Luxe Cafe is a family coffee machine, it’ll make espresso based drinks, and classic filter style coffee, and cold brew, and cold pressed espresso, and it’ll do hot foamed milk and cold milk foam too.
I do think the Touch Impress produces slightly better quality espresso, but the people who I think Ninja are targeting with the Luxe I don’t think will care, the espresso it produces just by following the screen and adjusting the grind to what it tells you to, is good enough for most people.
It’s “true” espresso, and I think anyone with a relatively normal palate, will find that just by doing what the screen says, they’ll get espresso they’re amazed by, every time. The Barista guidance works very well too, there’s really not much to think about, all you need to do is what the screen tells you.
I think the main thing to say here is that it’s a case of horses for courses, it’s just a case of figuring out which machine is right for you.
Check Price & Pre-Order From John Lewis
Ninja Luxe Cafe Tips, Tricks & Hacks.
Espresso Ratio
The most common espresso ratios are 1:2 (sometimes expressed as 2:1, I like to be backwards), meaning for example 18g of ground coffee to 36 grams of liquid espresso, 1:2.5, and 1:3 which is generally regarded as a Lungo espresso, or long espresso.
The factory pre-set is 1:2.5, and I’d recommend just sticking with this to start with and seeing what you think. If you want to experiment with the ratio, it’s very simple to do that.
In the extra settings menu (press and hold the size button for 3 seconds) turn the dial until you see setting h06, this is the ratio setting – just choose your ratio in here, 20 is a 1:2 ratio, 25 is 1:2.5, and 30 is 1:3.
With the Ninja, the way you adjust the volume is by adjusting the ratio.
This is always the case, but it’s not usually labelled in the user interface in a way that makes this clear, and I think Ninja have made a great move by doing it this way.
With most machines that have programmable shot buttons, you program just by pulling a shot of a certain volume and then saving that as the new default for that shot button, and people often think they’re just increasing or decreasing the volume of their espresso, but they’re actually increasing or decreasing the ratio, which has an impact on the extraction.
Whenever you increase the shot volume while keeping the dose weight (weight of ground coffee beans) the same, you’re increasing the ratio, and whenever you reduce the shot volume while keeping the dose weight the same, you’re reducing the ratio.
Increasing the ratio increases the extraction, but also but also has the effect of reducing the texture of the shot and the intensity. So the reason we wouldn’t just ignore the grind size and focus purely on ratio, is that if we did that we’d be sacrificing intensity and body.
So we want to dial in mainly with grind, but then to also use ratio when we need to, and it’s a particularly useful tool when we don’t have ultra precise grinders, which we don’t tend to have in integrated grinder espresso machines.
Dialling in Espresso With The Ninja Luxe Cafe
For the most part, the Ninja Luxe will dial in for you, and it does a flipping good job too.
If you’re not quite happy with it, though, firstly – just give it a few shots, there’s some machine learning going on where the machine knows grind time, dose weight & shot time, so I’d recommend holding your judgement each time you try a new bag of beans, until you’ve let it run a few shots.
If you find you need to do some manual dialling in, the trick is knowing which way to go. Is it under extracting, in which case you need to up the extraction, or is it over extracting, in which case you’ll need to do the opposite.
Thankfully with the Ninja, you’ll probably find you don’t need to do anything, you’re more than happy with the results, and if you’re not, you probably won’t have to do much.
There can be other things at play when espresso tastes bad, including the beans just not being to your liking, or being a difficult bean for your machine to work with (light to medium roast, high grown, washed processed single origins, for example, can be a real challenge for anything but premium setups), but most of the time it’s simply under or over extraction.
With the Ninja Luxe Cafe, and most similar machines, it’s usually under extraction – but thanks to the barista assistance on the Ninja, which works well, you’ll usually only be very slightly off.
In terms of how to detect this, it’s harder than it sounds. We usually say if it’s sourness, it’s under extraction, and if it’s bitterness it’s over extraction, and I say that a lot myself, but I’ve realised lately that this is a fairly useless description, especially when people are relative beginners to espresso.
When it comes to tasting espresso, the brain and the tastebuds can sometimes forget how to communicate, and this is especially common when people are just getting into espresso, although it happens to be fairly regularly and I don’t have that excuse ;-).
The beans will offer a clue. If your beans are medium roast, especially if they’re a high quality SCA scored single origin, under extraction would be more likely. If it’s a particularly well developed, dark roast espresso blend, over extraction would be more likely.
In reality, if you’re using either an entry level espresso setup, or an integrated grinder machine like the Ninja, most of the time it’s going to be under extraction – unless you’re using a very dark roast.
So what I’d do with the Ninja espresso machine and other integrated grinder machines and low cost espresso setups, if it tastes “bad” is assume it’s under extraction, and therefore work on upping the extraction.
Just remember, though, unless you’re using beans the Ninja is struggling with, you probably won’t be far off, so I wouldn’t make drastic adjustments.
Remember, light to medium roast single origins are a challenge, particularly denser high grown beans. They can require pulling out all the stops even with high end setups, so trying to get great results with beans like this with an integrated grinder machine can be a recipe for frustration.
So let’s just assume your espresso tastes bad because of under extraction. We can decrease the grind size, grind finer, we can up the brew temperature, and we can up the ratio, but we want to do just one of these at a time.
With my Chocolate Brownie blend, I started at default settings, followed the barista guidance, and it was almost there but wasn’t quite right, it tasted a bit under extracted, and a bit thin compared to how I’m used to tasting Choc Brownie.
So I dropped the ratio to 1:2, the body and intensity was better, but it still tasted slightly odd, I suspected slight under extraction. I tested it with the DI Fluid R2, and that confirmed my suspicions, about 17.5% extraction.
So I increased the temp to the highest brew temp, pulled a couple more shots, and that tasted really good. I tested it with the R2, and we’re talking about 19.5%, which for me is, as I mentioned earlier, well inside the “that’ll do” zone.
If I was wanting perfection, I might want to push the extraction up a bit, but this is where we get into home barista territory, swapping to a high extraction basket and grinding finer, the kinds of things that would be very difficult to do with a machine like this.
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Purge Your Grinder
The machine does have a purge grind option, which is mentioned on page 10 of the inspiration guide. It’s mainly intended for purging left over beans before swapping over beans, but you can use this function when changing in between brew types that use a very different grind size.
All you do it make your grind adjustment first, with the portafilter in the grinding cradle, then press and hold the start grind button, and it will start grinding. Keep it going for a few seconds, then chuck the grinds in the compost or whatever, and then make your next coffee.
You wouldn’t need to do this for example when changing from quad shot to double espresso, or filter to cold brew, as they’re very similar, but you would find it beneficial to do this when changing from cold brew or filter, to espresso, and vice versa.
This will mean that all the ground coffee in the basket is now within the same grind range, you don’t have half a basket at grind size 7 and half at grind size 24 for example.
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Trick The Ninja Into Pre-Heating
When you pull a shot with the Ninja, the first progress bar is the thermocoil heating up, that’s why it seems like the pre-infusion is long, it’s not, pre-infusion is the second progress bar, the first is heatup.
But, I noticed that as soon as you grind, the machine makes a similar noise to the noise it makes when you press the shot button and it starts heating – and the shower screen and the cup warmer start to get hot. So, grinding starts the machine heating up.
I don’t know at this stage if it has a second thermocoil that heats up after grinding, or if it’s the same thermocoil (I assume it’s just one but I may be wrong), in any case, if you grind as soon as you turn the machine on, it starts heating up, and it heats up to the point that the centre screw in the shower screen when measured with a (very accurate, I might add) surface thermometer probe, is about 70C / 160F.
So when it comes to the first shot when your machine is stone cold, I’d recommend purging coffee anyway so all the coffee in the basket is fresh, if you don’t, you’ll have a few grams of stale grounds in there – so, just grind as if you were about to pull a shot, as soon as you turn the machine on, then press the start brew button twice, once to start, and once to stop – to get it out of the brew cycle.
If you do this then come to the machine in 5 mins, the group will be hot, the cup warmer will be hot, the brew path will be hot, so you’re less likely to find that the first shot is a bit under extracted.
By the way, I’ve experimented with just pressing the start brew button twice without grinding, that doesn’t work. It appears that to be a grind cycle that starts the heating, a purge doesn’t appear to do this either.
This doesn’t appear to mess up the machine learning either, I’ve done this and measured everything, for example I’ve just done this now (the machine is behind me in the studio as I’m creating this review post) and as I was expecting, bang on 18g dose, 35g shot (OK, 1g under but I’ll let it off) extraction of 19.63%, not bad!
If you’d rather just put up with a slightly less perfect coffee than waste beans, just do the same but don’t start and stop the brew cycle. So just grind as soon as you turn the machine on, and come back to the machine a few minutes later to carry on making your coffee.
Milk Queuing
If you’re making a cappuccino, latte or flat white, which require hot milk foam, you’ll need to steam the milk and brew your espresso separately, but you can speed things up a bit meaning you don’t have to be hovering over the machine, simply by putting the jug in place and pressing the start steam button just after pressing the start brew button. The milk steaming will start as soon as the shot stops.
Simultaneous Cold Foam
If you want cold foam, to use with cold pressed espresso or cold brew – or even for on top of hot coffee, whatever floats your boat – you can start the cold foaming while the machine is brewing, as it doesn’t use the heater for this, just the whisk.
Buy Stuff!
When people buy their espresso machine, they often contact me to ask me which bits they should buy first, and usually when it comes to traditional setups I advise people to save their money to start with, there’s really no need to buy a kitchen full of gadgets & gizmos.
With the Ninja though, there are a few bits you can buy that I think will be very helpful. Well, this is the case in the States, and I presume it’ll be the case here in the UK soon too.
The first, would be a spare portafilter, so you’ll have a portafilter for your double basket, and a portafilter for your luxe basket, and you don’t have to swap the basket whenever you’re switching brew methods.
For me, this would be a big help, because I’m struggling to use my right hand at present for anything more than typing. I’ve torn the tendon that connects to the elbow joint, which has hugely weakened my grip (temporarily hopefully), so switching the baskets out is a bit of a pain.
But if you are going to be regularly switching from filter style to espresso, I think this will be a good investment.
The other thing I would definitely buy, is a spare dosing funnel.
You can’t use the machine without this, it’s a bit on the delicate side for my liking, and if it does break you can always get another one if they’re in stock, but it would be way more convenient to simply have a spare, I believe when they’re available in the UK they’ll be roughly poorly mollusc (six quid – you may have to say that to get the terrible joke).
I’d highly recommend, also, getting a spare group gasket. The reason I say this is that as with the funnel, they’re very cheap (like, three quid) and they’re crucial, if a gasket goes, it’s better to have one to replace it with rather than having to be without your machine while you get one.
You can get a replacement shower screen too, you probably won’t need it, but again it’s cheap so you may want to just on the off chance.
