Is this the new Sage coffee machine, but at half the price?

You’ll have seen a lot of excitement around the Ninja Luxe Premier Café Coffee Machine. Although the brand is best known for making iconic air fryers and blenders, they’ve been in the business of brewing coffee for a decade and their expertise is beginning to take the limelight.

Whilst you might think of Sage, De’Longhi, and Gaggia for making the best coffee machines on the market, as a barista and self-confessed coffee snob, I’ve found myself changing my mind on which brands brew the best.

The Ninja Luxe Premier Café Coffee Machine is much cheaper than lots of other brands offering the same experience and yet their style, quality, and versatility is on a par, if not better in some instances. Could Ninja be better than Sage, coffee and kitchen royalty? That’s for you to ask and me to find out.

Ninja Luxe Premier Café Coffee Machine review

Who would the Ninja Luxe Premier Café Coffee Machine suit?

The Ninja Luxe Premier Café Coffee Machine is perfect for people who want barista-level coffee at home without any of the faff. It’s ideal if you love starting your day with a silky latte or strong americano, but don’t want to juggle multiple gadgets or complicated settings.

This machine suits anyone who appreciates smart design, reliable performance, and the option to switch between pods and grounds depending on your mood (or how much time you have before the school run or commute). If you enjoy a touch of luxury in your kitchen and want café-quality drinks with minimal effort, this is the coffee maker that slots seamlessly into your routine.

Unboxing the Ninja Luxe Premier Café Coffee Machine

If there’s one thing to know about coffee machines, especially espresso machines, it’s that they’re rarely lightweight and compact. Ninja does their best for offering efficient packing and compared to other brands, they do a really good job.

The Ninja Luxe Premier Café Coffee Machine box is easy to lift and all six sides are packed with useful information and titbits on how to make the most of your machine.

Inside, most of the packaging is recyclable, which is rare in the coffee machine industry, so it deserves a mention (and a celebration too).

Most of the Ninja Luxe Premier Café Coffee Machine comes assembled, so all you'll have to do have to do is add water to the reservoir and peel off a few stickers before getting started. The best part is, you don’t need an instruction manual. The machine tells you everything you need to know.

What is the Ninja Luxe Premier Café Coffee Machine like to use?

I always start off my tests with making an espresso, because it’s all about nailing the basics of coffee flavour and there isn’t really anything to hide behind. I brewed ten espressos in the Ninja Luxe Premier Café Coffee Machine, back to back and I liked what I sipped.

On average, they took 14 seconds to brew which is as close to perfection as you could hope for. Each one had a lovely thick crema on top, the layer which tells you that you’ve got all the lovely coffee oils extracted. My flavours were punchy and strong, extracted with just the right amount of heat and pressure.

As a former barista, I can’t help but get a little playful with these machines, so I did do some tweaking to the grind size, shot size, strength, and temperature. It was easy to tinker, so more advanced baristas could certainly get their fill, but I actually found that the Ninja’s intuition for what makes a good shot of coffee is spot on.

This next test is all about how the Ninja handles heat: making an Americano. Essentially, you’re making a ‘black coffee’ by adding water to an espresso. If it’s too cold, the coffee will take on an acidic edge. Too hot and it’ll burn and taste bitter, so you can see that there’s a fine line to tread.

The Ninja Luxe Premier Café Coffee Machine walked the tightrope faultlessly. My Americanos came out around 92°C, which is my ideal temperature for a coffee. The water obviously mellowed the flavours, but I still had a nice balance of my nutty, rich beans that were chosen for the job. There are plenty of options for cup size and I could actually even get my tall travel cup underneath which is a real result.

The final test is all about frothing, steaming and texturing milk for your café-style coffees. The Ninja Luxe Premier Café Coffee Machine makes a distinction between different milk types, asking whether you are steaming plant-based or dairy milks. It is certainly becoming more of a feature on semi-automatic machines, although it’s not a given, especially around this price point.

The beauty of this steam wand is that it can be left to its own devices entirely if you're not confident in your brewing. I wanted to put my skills and practice aside, so used the automatic function to see what the Ninja could whip up.

My cappuccino milk was perfect on both dairy and non-dairy milks, with a lovely layer of dense, glossy foam. The milk that just needed to be warm (not frothy) was also great, heated up without being burnt. The extra thermal base does a good job of keeping the temperature stable if you happen to get distracted mid-coffee too.

The only level that I struggled with was when the milk jug was at maximum capacity and aiming for latte milk, which should look like wet paint: you want a layer of glossy foam and then hot milk. However, when the Ninja Luxe Premier Café Coffee Machine is stretched, you don’t get quite the thickness of foam that I would call a latte. It’s easily resolved by opting for a cappuccino if you like foam or by filling the jug a little less, but I still think it would be great to have perfection across the board.

There are other nice extras on the machine, so you can make cups of tea, hot chocolates, and cold coffees if you want to. I think the most relevant of these is the iced coffee extra and the cold milk frothing option. It’s also one of the most impressive, as it’s difficult to texture milk in a way that’s smooth and not too aerated without warming the milk up too much.

My iced coffees, even though they were made in the winter when I just wanted my drinks extra hot, were brilliant. Cold coffee often tastes quite acidic, because it cools too quickly or isn't very well extracted. However, this was perfect. The coffee still had a nice balance of flavours, without an aftertaste that gave it too much of an edge.

Cleaning the Ninja Luxe Premier Café Coffee Machine

The Ninja Luxe Premier Café Coffee Machine is really independent when it comes to cleaning. You will see an orange indicator float when the drip tray is full and various other icons will indicate what you need to do, be it a refill of the water reservoir or the grounds tray needing an empty.

The one element which poses the biggest threat to cleaning is the steam wand. This is a classic place for milk to dry, burn, and go off. It has the potential to ruin your cup of coffee, but the Ninja automatically purged and cleans the machine, deftly dodging a place that lots of people trip up with their coffee machines.

How does Ninja Luxe Premier Café Coffee Machine compare?

If you’re on the market for an espresso machine like the Ninja Luxe Premier Café Coffee Machine, you’ve probably looked at Philips, De’Longhi, and Sage. So, let's cover the big one: the Sage Oracle Dual Boiler Coffee Machine.

While the Ninja Luxe Premier Café excels in versatility, offering everything from espresso to drip coffee and even cold-pressed espresso, the Sage Dual Boiler plays in a different league: precision and power.

The Sage’s dual-boiler system gives you temperature stability and simultaneous espresso brewing and milk steaming, something that more advanced baristas will appreciate for its consistency and control. But with that pro-level performance comes a much higher price tag and a steeper learning curve.

The Ninja is tailored for people who want café-quality drinks without the faff: it’s more user-friendly, makes excellent variety, and feels like a smart, all-in-one solution. If you’re looking for top-tier, manual-style control and don’t mind investing time (and money), Sage is hard to beat, but for most home drinkers who want convenience and high-quality coffee with minimal fuss, the Ninja offers better everyday value.

Should you buy Ninja Luxe Premier Café Coffee Machine?

I have to say: I'm impressed with the Ninja Luxe Premier Café Coffee Machine. This covers a whole host of different coffee types and it brews them exceptionally well. Pair that with the compact design and space-saving solutions integrated across the machine and this could very much be a rival to some bigger brands.