Ninja Luxe Café Premier ES601: espresso, filter and cold brew

One machine for three kinds of coffee drinker

In plenty of households the disagreement is about style: one person wants espresso with milk, another a plain mug. The Luxe Café Premier’s answer is on its spec sheet, which lists espresso, a filter coffee function and a cold brew function. No other espresso machine in our UK database lists all three. The Sage Barista Express, in the same bracket, is an espresso machine and nothing else.

That is the reason to buy it, and also the question to put to yourself: if nobody at home will use the filter or cold brew modes, you are paying for range you will not touch, and the comparison with a conventional machine becomes less flattering, as the sections below show.

It weighs the dose and suggests the grind

Its grinder offers 25 settings on conical burrs, against 16 on the Barista Express and 15 on De’Longhi’s La Specialista Arte. More steps give finer adjustment; they do not show whether the grind comes out even.

What sets the Ninja apart is how much of the adjusting it takes on. Dosing is by weight: scales are built in and measure the coffee as it is ground, where the other two all-in-ones leave the amount to you. Ninja also describes a function it calls Barista Assist, which recommends a grind setting. Dose and grind are the two variables our grind size guide spends most of its length on, so for a beginner this is the heart of the machine.

Two things about the grinder go unsaid: the burr material and the size of the bean hopper.

Milk without a wand in your hand

There is no conventional steam wand to learn. Ninja supplies a jug with a whisk built into it; steam and whisk work together, hands-free, on one of 4 froth presets. In our tables that counts as an automatic frother, which puts the Ninja beside the Sage Bambino Plus and apart from the two other all-in-ones, both of which have manual wands.

You still fill a jug and pour. For milk drawn and dispensed with no jug at all, see the bean-to-cup comparison.

11.7 kg and a permanent place

Ninja gives 33.6 cm of width, 34.4 cm of depth and 37.2 cm of height. At 11.7 kg it is the heaviest of the three espresso machines whose weight is published, and close to three times a Dedica Duo. This is not a machine to lift in and out of a cupboard.

The 2 l tank matches the Barista Express. Counted in double espressos it looks generous; counted in mugs of filter coffee, each several times the volume of a shot, it is a daily refill for a household that uses all three modes.

Read as a conventional espresso machine, the sheet has holes

Ninja lists 3 baskets: single, double and one it calls Luxe. The manual adds that the single basket does not come with every version. There the information stops. Nothing says whether the baskets are pressurised, no portafilter diameter is given, and no pump pressure is stated for this model.

For a buyer who wants a guided machine, none of this matters. It matters if you expect to treat the Ninja like a traditional espresso machine and shop for third-party baskets or a different tamper: the data cannot tell you what fits. Sage states 54 mm, both basket types and a pump rating of 15 bar for the Barista Express. The Barista Express vs Ninja Luxe Café head-to-head goes through the two sheets line by line, and the espresso machine comparison places both among the nine machines we list.

Where the figures were read

Three loose ends:

• Power. 1,650 W on the product page, 1,800 W in the manual. Neither is entered.
• Weight. We use the 11.7 kg of the specifications table; the page text also mentions 17 kg, probably the boxed weight.
• Guarantee. The Irish site gives two years after registration with Ninja. We have not read a UK statement, so our table refers you to the retailer’s terms.

Not sure a machine of this kind matches the way you drink coffee? The machine finder starts from your habits, not from the hardware.