Like all its workplace colleagues, Ninja’s new coffee machine enters your home with a completely different declaration of intent than is customary in such commercial worlds, a very particular kind of poise, and a worldview that flips the order. Not messy, heaven forbid, but more in the direction of shaking things up.
The company is known for its approach: “First of all, tell us what the problem is that everyone wants to solve, and we’ll take it from there.” That’s a healthy starting point for many areas of life, and especially effective when combining electricity and everyday life, human beings and their leisure. Most of us, it must be admitted, need a little help and are very happy when it arrives. Just like that.
To its disadvantage (the company and the approach alike), it only works if you’re willing to commit to it, since who’s to prove to you there’s a problem at all? To its credit—it works. Simply so. From blenders to kitchen knives. From meat smokers to air fryers. From ice cream machines to slushy makers. I’m sure there’s a disappointed customer of theirs somewhere. I just haven’t found one yet.
Now, it seems, comes a different kind of challenge, and a relationship that requires mutual effort to succeed. Coffee, clearly, is much more than a gadget. For all of us, coffee is love. And habits. And routine. And more love. It’s the first thing we meet in the morning, and so it should be perfect—or at least your perfect.
The Luxe (NIS 2,690, purchase here) targets the (very) soft belly of home coffee consumers who want to take the next step. That step could be classic—from various instant coffee cups—or a bit more modern, but it’s definitely the next step.
It’s defined as semi-automatic, meaning it combines (a lot of) technology and smarts with (a little) manual activity, and positions itself clearly between the fully manual machines—usually found in the kitchens of coffee and tinkering enthusiasts—the fully automatic ones, which require just a single button press (including grinding the coffee), and the common capsule machines.
On a personal level, for example, as a relatively sane coffee person—drinks a lot, refuses to bring in a fully manual machine, invests moderately, and considers himself knowledgeable—it seriously challenged the household, in a good way. I already own an automatic machine that grinds coffee, works excellently, and works harder than most of the household residents. So I may not be the classic target audience, but after weeks of use, even for me, the competition was very tough. That’s how it is.
It set out with the aspiration, if I understand and phrase it correctly, to produce decent home coffee while minimizing all possible mistakes along the way. As usual, it also found a cheeky name for this: Barista Assist technology. Think of a built-in personal assistant, inside the steel and behind every button.
Essentially, it works wonderfully. Every action is backed up. Every drink runs on a preset ideal format, but can also be changed if you have another preference. Everything—the grinding and frothing, the brewing that leads to cold brew, and the amount of espresso—is pre-arranged for you, but open to adjustments, flexible to updates, and in general functions less like a guide and more like a partner, like any healthy relationship, really.
The machine has a medium presence in space—about 34 cm deep, 37 cm high, and 35 cm wide, though these clean measurements require a bit more room for operating the containers and tools designed to stick to the machine from the side and for pulling up the water tank. It’s not as compact as the small ones, not monstrous like the big ones, and designed with the black-silver lines typical of the company. Nice if that’s your thing, but in any case, it’s a matter of taste.
As is customary (customary here, since elsewhere and in other companies it’s less common, as we know), it comes with everything you need to start (including, thank you in advance, this thing called coffee beans, in a Sarig package that adds four 200-gram bags of Beanz. You know, so you’ll have something to work with and to drink)—three filter sizes, an excellent funnel to prevent mess, a tamper and portafilter with a “Feel” worthy in itself in hand, an adjustable cup stand, a cleaning disk and brush, and a stainless steel milk jug with a built-in frother.
From there, the playground opens. And it’s full of devices and possibilities, at least until you stagger away with an unusually strong caffeine boost.
Espresso, of course, is the entry test, and works great as short and double, in a concentrated and intense Quad version, and also as the Americano popular here. The filter coffee, which has returned to our lives in recent years—and rightly so—will make some successful base drinks here (including a surprisingly good combination with ice), while the cold brew (slow cold extraction) delivered a very nice result compared to expectations, and excellent if you factor in the usual obstacle in many other home machines.
The frothing system is based on the included container that settles into a dedicated spot and offers cold foam, thick or thin layers, and of course hot milk. The process requires a bit of practice and some tests, given that a hundred Israelis will order at least a hundred different coffee and foam drinks, but once synchronized, a big V is marked here too, on the way to cappuccinos and lattes, flat whites and pampering lattes, trendy cortados and macchiatos.
Sarig backs up all promises with a detailed user manual, with a customer support and service system known for its efficiency (again, compared to what’s happening out there), and with what it calls an “Inspiration Guide”—a Hebrew booklet that’s a nearly perfect manual after unboxing, with recipes, tips, instructions, and recommendations.
This booklet is excellent, but quickly shifts to functioning true to its name only—inspiration. Everything else happens before your eyes and at your fingertips, with a convenient and clear user interface, and the overall feeling of a machine that came to work for you, at most with you, and certainly not against you. Ninja, in short.
The price—NIS 2,690—places the Luxe right in the middle of the category. Cheaper machines will make you capsule-based coffee. More expensive ones, much more expensive, will turn you into a barista on shift in those same seconds of work, and solid automatics will cost about the same, some with similar features, most with a set of functions that doesn’t come close to this.
In my eyes, at least two categories described in the paragraph above do not meet this bar for die-hard coffee lovers or for people still keeping their sanity, and their counter, free of pretension. For everyone else, this machine should wink sexy and tempting from the shelf and wake up with you the next morning.
Ninja Luxe Cafe, Sarig, NIS 2,690, includes official importer warranty (full one year + additional limited year), 800 grams of coffee beans, service, and support in Israel