Ninja Luxe Cafe Premier 601 Coffee Machine.
When I heard Ninja were releasing an espresso machine, I thought “yeah, whatever…”, it didn’t surprise me that yet another mainstream domestic home appliance brand were trying to get in on the home coffee machine market.
I wasn’t expecting the Ninja Luxe Cafe to be anything special, I just expected another more affordable and less impressive version of the Sage Barista Express or Barista Pro, and I’ve seen this several times over the past few years.
Enough people asked me to review it, though, so I caved in and imported one from the States before they were released over here – and I wasn’t just surprised, I was amazed!
If you’re not just looking for an “espresso machine”, you’re looking for a versatile home coffee machine capable of making just about every drink (hot or cold) on the Starbucks or Costa Coffee menu, then the Ninja Luxe Cafe was made for you.
| titlestrong Features and Benefits |
showbullet 53mm portafilter |
showbullet Double shot basket & luxe basket, standard, unpressurised. |
showbullet 2 Litre water tank with water sensor|
showbullet Integrated grinder with 25 settings|
showbullet Built in scales|
showbullet Grind size guidance|
showbullet 3 espresso ratio settings|
showbullet 7 filter coffee & cold brew sizes from 6oz – 18oz|
showbullet Auto grinder pulsing when grinding finer|
showbullet Automatic pre-infusion|
showbullet Automatic milk steaming & frothing|
showbullet Automatic cold milk frothing|
showbullet Auto steam wand purge|
showbullet Spring loaded tamper|
showbullet adjustable drip tray to accommodate tall cups|
If you see traditional, portafilter espresso machine as way to much of a faff, but the cup quality that fully automatic bean to cup machines produce isn’t quite up to your standards – there’s a growing number of options for you.
These are assisted bean to cup machines, Sage Appliances created the concept with the Oracle & Oracle Touch, and more recently the lesser expensive (yet still not exactly budget) Oracle Jet, Express Impress & Touch Impress.
Not only have Ninja entered the market with an assisted portafilter espresso machine at a VERY low price point, compared to the Sage assisted portafilter machines or “In-between” machines as I usually refer to them, they’ve also made it more versatile, leading to the Luxe having a much bigger menu.
The Ninja Luxe will do hot espresso and hot milk (to be fair, neither of which are quite up to the standard of the Sage options, in my opinion, but they’re not a million miles off!), but in addition, the Luxe will produce:
- Filter style coffee
- Cold brew style coffee
- Cold pressed espresso
- Cold milk foam
If you wish you could have a Costa or Starbucks in your home, one that you didn’t have to pay for ;-), then you’ll probably love this machine.
It’s fair to say to some degree at least that it’s a Jack of all trades, so I wouldn’t go for this if you’re purely looking for espresso.
It’ll do a pretty good job of espresso, with very little messing about, the barista assistance (grind size guidance) works very well, but if you drink neat espresso and you’re wanting to experiment with a range of different beans, a machine like this probably isn’t for you.
For classic espresso blends, for example Classic Italian, chocolate fondant, fruitcake blend & chocolate brownie, it’ll do a more than adequate job of espresso for cappuccino, latte, flat white etc., & Americano – for most palates.
Coffees Suitable For The Ninja Luxe Coffee Machine
The steam wand does a great job manually (with a bit of practise), and a fairly good job on Auto as long as you like relatively stiff cappuccino foam (you might want to steam manually for flat white).
You can’t steam and brew at the same time, but the cold frother will operate while brewing, which speeds up the process for iced coffees.
The cold frother is simply a spring whisk in the bottom of the jug that spins magnetically via the motor below, but it does the job brilliantly.
Via the cold pressed espresso or cold brew, and the cold frother, it’s possible to produce most iced coffees on the menu of any large chain coffee shop, all it won’t do for you is create the ice for you ;-).
The cold brew probably isn’t going to amaze you if you’re a cold brew fanatic, in fact it may offend you given that they’ve called it cold brew and it’s not really cold brew.
If you’re not a cold coffee connoisseur though, as I’m not, you may well really enjoy the cold brew the Ninja produces, as I did, in some of the nice weather we had not long after I got hold of it.
The “filter” coffee is a similar story, if you’re a pourover enthusiast, calling this “filter” may sound like swearing, but if you’re not – but you like big cups of strong coffee, again if you’re using espresso blends, you’ll probably be more than happy with the filter style coffee the Luxe produces.
So overall, I think the Ninja Luxe Cafe is a brilliant machine at this price, for the coffee lover who isn’t a specialist in any particular brew method, but would like to dabble in all of them.
For a more in depth review of the Ninja Luxe Cafe, see:
The Ninja Luxe Cafe Review
