Ninja Luxe Cafe review: a do-it-all espresso machine at a bargain price – but far from perfect | Coffee

If you’re not a morning person, decision-making is best avoided before 8am. Or, at the very least, until you’ve had a cup of coffee. That is why assisted espresso machines, such as the Ninja Luxe Cafe Premier ES601UK, are so welcome in my kitchen. They require more effort than a fully automatic bean-to-cup machine, but the reward is a glimmer of manual espresso perfection – without all the faff.

The Ninja Luxe Cafe Premier ES601UK has been gracing my kitchen worktop on and off for over a year, and – despite some mild to moderately serious irritations – it’s a capable alternative to the similarly priced, fully automatic bean-to-cup machines found in my roundup of the best coffee machines. The big question is whether you’re willing to put in a little more effort for your morning coffee in exchange for a tastier cup – and, in doing so, put up with some of the Luxe Cafe’s quirks.

What you need to know

Ninja’s Luxe Cafe ES601UK is dramatically cheaper than the competition. While Sage’s assisted models – the Barista Express Impress with Cold Extraction (£1,199.95), Oracle Jet (£1,699) and Oracle Dual Boiler (£2,499.95) – are eyebrow-raising at the very least, the Luxe Cafe Premier ES601 retails for £549.99. Wait for a sale such as Black Friday, and you may get it for even less.

And you get a lot for your money. Ninja’s home appliances often combine multiple machines into one, and the Luxe Cafe is no exception: it’s a bean-to-cup machine that brews almost any type of coffee.

You can choose between single and double shots of espresso – simply swapping between the two baskets – and its unusually tall portafilter also accommodates a third, larger basket called the Luxe. That basket holds about 40g of coffee, allowing you to make longer filter-coffee-style drinks – or a huge quad espresso.

Black-coffee drinkers can choose from espresso, americano, filter coffee (up to 530ml), cold brew and over-ice coffee. Those who prefer coffee with milk can use the integrated frother to whip milk into anything from a cold froth to steamed milk to dollops of hot thick froth.

Up top, the 350g bean hopper has a removable rubber-sealed lid to help keep the beans fresh. If you like the idea of having two (or more) types of beans on the go, you can buy spare hoppers for £24.99 from Ninja. Choose from 25 grind sizes using the knurled wheel on the left of the machine.

The two-litre water tank slots in at the rear, but it’s clearly been designed with a mind to limited clearance from kitchen cupboards above. You can just pop off the lid and fill it in situ, or lift it up by a couple of centimetres and remove it sideways.

All the tools you need can be stored in or around the machine. The plastic grounds funnel and tamper slot into the left-hand side, and a little door on the right opens to reveal a holder for whichever two baskets you’re not using – and the little cleaning brush. Pop the plastic end off the brush, and you’ll reveal the little pokey tool for clearing any blockages from the tip of the steam wand.

Down below, the drip tray slides out and, rather unusually, has a separate central drip tray that clips into place. This is designed so that you can squeeze ridiculously tall travel cups directly under the spouts.

Ninja Luxe Cafe Premier ES601UK specifications

Type: assisted espresso machine
Dimensions: 37 x 33 x 37cm (WDH)
Water tank: 2l, removable
Replaceable water filter: yes
Accessories supplied: 53.5mm portafilter, spring-loaded tamper, milk jug with integrated whisk, cleaning brush, single, double and luxe baskets, funnel, cleaning kit (2 x cleaning tablets, 1 x descaling tablet), water hardness test kit
Time to heat up: 35 secs
Time to steam milk: 2mins 20secs
Grinder included: yes, 25 settings
Noise: 48dB (brew), 58dB (steam), 63dB (grind)
Weight: 11.7kg
Warranty: two-year repair or replacement if you register within 28 days of purchase

What we love

The Luxe Cafe makes a very decent cup of coffee, and once you’ve got used to the button layout, it’s pretty simple. The ability to make quad shots or just over half a litre of filter coffee is a real step up on rival machines, too, as it means you can serve two or three people fairly quickly.

Simply slot your choice of coffee basket – single, double or luxe – into the portafilter, then place the plastic funnel over the top of the basket and place the portafilter into the grinder. The Luxe Cafe automatically recognises the basket in use, grinds the correct amount of coffee, and illuminates the relevant drink options on the control panel.

It also tells you when you need to adjust the grind size. If you prefer a filter-style brew, the Ninja will advise you to adjust the grind to a far coarser setting, and then dutifully brew you anything from a single mug to 530ml of filter coffee in a few minutes. Pour a few espressos, and it will advise you to adjust the grind size up or down if coffee is pouring too fast or too slowly. It’s not perfect – you’ll occasionally need to nudge it a step or two in either direction when things aren’t tasting quite right – but it gets you into the ballpark with zero trial and error.

The Ninja’s stainless steel milk jug has a little whisk attached at the bottom – it’s a similar design to most stand-alone milk frothers or integrated models found on capsule machines – that allows it to froth cold milk. You can also choose from four preset froth levels for hot and cold milk, and there’s a setting for plant-based milks, which did a pretty good job with the almond and oat milks I tested.

You can get hot water on demand, too. Pick between very warm, just right and lip-searingly hot – the Luxe Cafe will dole out about a mug’s worth in about a minute and a half. If you want less, just press the button a second time.

What we don’t love

The Luxe Cafe ES601 cuts a slightly daunting figure on the worktop. Where pricier rivals reel in users with bright, helpful touchscreens, Ninja has kept costs down with a panel of clicky buttons, knobs, and a vista of LED lights. As a result, it’s not the most welcoming machine.

Ninja admits as much, too, as the machine arrives tattooed with explanatory stickers. These explain some of the different drink sizes available and provide quick recipes for popular drinks. Another highlights the little hidden compartment where you can keep the baskets that aren’t in use.

Point your phone at the sticker with a big QR code, and it takes you to the Luxe Cafe’s 3D user guide on the Bilt app. Actually getting to the user guide is very clunky, but the 3D animations and robotic female voice do a decent job of explaining everything to complete beginners.

Frankly, though, most people will be far better off with the paper manual. It guides you through the setup process and also explains some handy titbits such as how to adjust the temperature of your coffee and milk via hidden menus.

The far bigger issue is that the Luxe Cafe may not offer enough assistance for some. Like other cheaper assisted models I’ve reviewed – such as the De’Longhi La Specialista Touch – the Luxe Cafe asks you to do a fair bit of the work yourself. You have to place the little plastic funnel on top of the portafilter before grinding every single time, and be careful not to drop or break it, because it won’t work without it. There’s a reason why you can buy extra funnels for £5.99 a pop on Ninja’s website. Then you’ll need to manually tamp down the coffee yourself using the sprung tamper, remove the dosing ring and lock it into place before brewing.

It doesn’t sound like much, but if you’re used to fully automatic machines where you just press a button – or fully assisted machines that provide automatic or lever-action tamping – the Luxe Cafe is more of a faff.

One option is to stretch your budget to the step-up ES701UK model. This replaces the manual tamper with a big lever. Just like Sage’s fancier machines, you grind, pull the lever and the tamping is done. It also does away with the annoying dosing ring and removes just enough steps in the process to make it feel markedly slicker and seamless.

Warranty and repairability

Register with Ninja, and you’ll get a two-year warranty. This is a normal repair or replacement policy and is at Ninja’s discretion.

For repairs outside the warranty, the situation is less optimistic. Radu Bria, a coffee machine whisperer and owner of espressorepairshop.co.uk, told me that in his experience, the quality of the Luxe Cafe’s parts suggests it’s a machine built to a budget. To compound matters, Ninja currently does not sell parts to third parties for repair purposes. Once you’re out of warranty, repair options may be limited.

That’s a real shame. The external accessory parts are available directly from Ninja’s website – the drip tray, water tank, milk jug, replacement water filters and so forth – so it doesn’t make sense for Ninja not to do the same for the internal parts.

I’ve found the Ninja a tad temperamental over the past six months. And I’m not alone: a quick Google search unearths users experiencing a range of issues, from minor annoyances to more serious faults. That’s not unusual for a machine that’s sold truckloads of units across the globe, but it’s worth knowing.

For my part, the issues have been more irritating than terminal. One repeating problem is that the milk frother starts to overheat the milk (it goes to 72C at every temperature setting), persisting even when I go into the hidden service menu and adjust the temperature manually.

Initially, I wondered whether the problem might have something to do with limescale buildup impeding the milk frothing system. Putting the machine through two 90-minute descaling cycles – one with descaler, one with fresh water – proved a temporary fix, though, and the issue returned while I was writing this review. I live in a moderately hard-water area, but I made sure to replace the internal water filter and use a water filter jug. By contrast, none of the other machines I have on rotation has experienced similar issues.

Another complaint is that the grinder doesn’t provide a wide enough range of adjustments: it has tended to recommend the finest of the 25 grind settings for all the medium-roast beans I’ve tried in recent weeks. I suspect that something has come loose in the grinder, as – even at the finest grind setting – the machine no longer grinds fine enough to produce a pleasingly full-bodied espresso with the kind of medium or medium-light roast beans I tend to use. For what it’s worth, it is just about fine enough for darker roasted beans – these tend to require a coarser grind – but it’s still less than ideal. If I were a normal customer, it would have to go back to Ninja under warranty.

Ninja Luxe Cafe Premier ES601UK: should I buy it?

I’m picky enough to notice and care about these issues. Some might prefer their milk superheated to 72C, and those same people may be perfectly happy with the grinding and the coffee quality because they prefer more robust-tasting dark roast beans. If the coffee is strong, fresh and easy to make, who cares, right? But if you’re buying the ES601UK expecting a super-reliable – and super-consistent – workhorse, I’d recalibrate your expectations.

The riposte is that – at its best – the Ninja will brew coffee that is better than any fully automatic machine at a similar price. Nor does it fall woefully short of assisted espresso rivals at twice the price. And that’s why, despite being far from perfect, the Luxe Cafe Premier ES601UK remains a great do-it-all machine for sensible money. At this price (£549.99 at the time of writing), I’d be willing to forgive more than a few quirks for the sheer value on offer – the big question is whether you are, too.

Ninja Cafe Luxe Pro vs

De’Longhi Rivelia

If the Ninja sounds a little too much like hard work, then consider a fully automatic machine. At this price, my pick would be the superb De’Longhi Rivelia. Prod the unusually helpful touchscreen, select from the wide menu of drinks (with or without milk), customise strength and length to taste, and out comes a drink. A darn good one as it happens: it goes toe-to-toe with fully automatic models at more than twice the price.

Be in no doubt, the Ninja Cafe Luxe can produce a more authentic espresso – and a stronger cup of filter-style coffee if you’re keen on filling king-size travel cups – but the difference isn’t as big as you might expect. Both machines make really good coffee – the Rivelia simply does it with way less faff.

Sage Bambino Plus

If you’re spending this kind of money, then consider the two-box alternative: an espresso machine and grinder. This kind of setup will allow you to make everything from espresso to americano and cortado to cappuccino. And if it’s the ‘manual’ bit that’s scaring you off, then the Bambino Plus will lend a hand – or rather, a wand.

It doesn’t help you select the right grind size or amount of coffee to use – although Sage’s Razor tool makes life a lot easier – but it steams milk to a creamy microfoam at the touch of a button. You can select the amount of froth and temperature, too. Partner it with a top-notch hand grinder such as the £99 KingGrinder K6, or a basic mains-powered grinder such as the £159.95 Baratza Encore ESP, and you’ll be rivalling your favourite coffee shops in no time.