Ninja just dropped its most exciting coffee maker yet: the Luxe Café Premier Series and I can't wait to try it. This is Ninja's first foray into the world of luxury espresso machines, and it's a barista-ready brewer that can make drip coffee, espresso, and even rapid cold brew.
The Ninja Luxe Café Premier Series is the first of Ninja's machines to offer an in-built conical burr coffee grinder, which features 25 settings to provide a grind size for every type of brew. Creating a grinder that's capable of making coarse grounds for drip coffee and the ultra-fine grounds needed for quality espresso is a real challenge, so I'm looking forward to testing how well Ninja has achieved this when I get my hands on this latest launch.
Perhaps the most exciting element of this launch is that the Ninja Luxe Café Premier Series costs only $499. While that's still significantly more expensive than many of the best coffee makers on the market, it's a really competitive price for a top espresso machine with an integrated grinder.
What we know about the Ninja Luxe Café Premier Series
Although it's clearly a capable machine, the Ninja Luxe Café Premier Series is just 13.2 inches deep, 13.6 inches wide and 14.6 inches tall, so while it's decidedly larger than most Keurig machines, it won't take up too much space on your counter.
Not content with simply being a barista-style coffee maker, the machine offers "3-in-1 versatility" with a setting for drip coffee, espresso, and cold brew. Sound at risk of being a little too complicated? Well, Ninja has created "Barista Assist Technology", which will help you navigate grind size and brewing adjustments depending on your chosen drink, and the milk steamer combines steaming and whisking to make four different pre-set milk options: steamed milk, thin froth, thick froth, and cold foam.
In terms of coffee, it can make cold brew and drip coffee in 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18 oz. sizes, and the following settings:
- Espresso — double shot or quad shot
- Drip coffee — classic, rich, or over ice
- Cold Brew— cold-pressed espresso, or cold brew coffee
I'm always impressed by Ninja products, but as someone who's tested a lot of espresso machines, I'm a little nervous about the Luxe Café's integrated grinder. Most coffee grinders specialize in either making the super-fine grounds needed for espresso, or the more coarse texture you'll need to make a good cup of drip coffee, but it's hard to do both in one grinder. If Ninja has successfully created a grinder that can do both, and packaged it in a machine that costs under $500, I'll be mighty impressed.
How does it compare?
I'll always be first in line to try a new Ninja gadget, but the Luxe Café Premier is particularly exciting because it's Ninja's first attempt at breaking into the premium coffee scene. The brand's previous flagship, the Espresso & Coffee Barista System, retails for half the price at $249.99 and targets the single-serve market, using capsules to brew espresso as you would with a Nespresso or a Keurig.
The Luxe Café is styled after the likes of Breville and De'Longhi, and joins the ranks of assisted espresso makers that maintain the charm of a manual machines but with features such as hands-free frothing, weight-based dosing, and assisted tamping for an evenly compacted puck.
On features alone, the Ninja Luxe Café Premier System is comparable to market-leading machines such as the De'Longhi La Specialista Maestro, which can make cold brew, offers assisted tamping, and adjusts brewing settings to get the correct extraction. But at half the price, can it deliver? We'll be reviewing this latest machine as soon as we can get our hands on it, but if the Luxe Café lives up to its claims, it could be an unbeatable machine.
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