The NEW Ninja Luxe Cafe espresso machine Can this machine do it all

Today we're going to be reviewing an espresso machine, a drip coffee maker and a cold brew machine and it's all one machine. It's this one. Oh my god I didn't see that coming. This is the new Ninja Lux. This is their entry machine into the home espresso market and this thing is a honking beast. This thing is like the Swiss army knife of espresso machine. It's got this giant portafilter that just looks kind of bizarre. It's got all these different pieces that just slot in in every part of the machine. We even got a little door that you can't see over here. I'll just look at that. And you've got buttons for days on this machine but we'll get to all of that very shortly. The machine is only $4.99 US. I find it hard to believe that at that price this machine can do all of those things really well but let's test out the three main brewing functions and we'll see how it goes. Everybody likes a golden brown logo, golden brown logo. Let's start with a quick overview of the machine, everything you get and how it works. So the first thing that everyone notices is this giant portafilter but there's a method to the madness. The reason it's so big is because not only does it have the normal double shot basket for espresso, it also has this big old giant basket so that you can do drip coffee through the portafilter and cold brews and it even has a quad shot feature which come on people if you're drinking the quad shot something's wrong. Please find some help, I'm here for you. But it does have the quad shot, I'm not excited to try it but I will. Then on the side there's little parts that have been here, it has this dosing funnel so you don't get any mess when you're making your coffee. We got my cameraman's gonna sneeze, shut up. And for ease of use it's got this really long tamp that look at that just fits in the dosing funnel and then it has like a little pressurized pop down so ideally you get the same pressure every time. The portafilter fits right in here for grinding, just slots in. It also has a scale in there so it's weighing out the same dose every single time for different coffees that you're looking at and then it even has this giant headspace here so you can fit in massive cups so if you're an ice latte girly, perfect for you. Or there's a little tray so you can have a few different adjustable heights there, you can have it here and you can have it here. Then it's got this smaller one here so you can put in little cups so it doesn't splash everywhere when you're making espresso. Then one of the interesting things that I'm excited to try out because I don't know if it'll work is it has this automatic steaming jug so it's got a little frother in the bottom so you just place it in here there's a thermometer on the bottom so it knows when to stop steaming. So you just pop it in here and then what it does is it's going to aerate the milk with the frother. I'm excited to see if it works, who knows. You can also do cold drinks with that as well so if you want some cold foam for your ice latte, bang you got that as well. Then it also comes with all the cleaning stuff that you'd expect. You get little cleaning tablets, some descaler and you get a little brush. Once again it all just fits in the machine here on the side. You can't see it there, it all slots in. Finally let's look at the front of the machine here so you've got this entire display coming up here. Now this feels pretty intimidating, there's a lot of buttons going on here. Once you get into your workflow it's pretty simple, it moves from left to right. You've got your grind settings here and you're grinding so that's easy. Then you've got your espresso drinks, you can just turn the knob and you can go from espresso to quad shot, cold press and then you get across to your drip coffees, classic, rich, cold brew all on that side. Then finally you have your froth levels over here so it's all pretty simple, you work from left to right. The other thing you notice here is this machine is designed for beginners. It's got guidance for you, recommendations, kind of learns what your brewing techniques are and then tells you how to improve it as you go along. Let's start by dialing in a new bag of coffee because I want to show you how this barista guidance works on the front. So I've got our Sundancer blend here, a little bit fruitier in that, often needs to grind a bit finer than our signature so I'm using this as a good example to see if it can tell how fine it needs to grind. So the holder has a scale in it so you can see we put it in and it tears off, that little sign is the scales tearing off how much weight is in there and then you can see it's got a recommended grind size of six so that's where we'll start and the machine's going to help us dial it in. If the first shot doesn't run right it'll change its recommendation for us. Also as you change a grind, that is the grinder doing little spurts of purging out the old grind and also making sure that the burrs are properly aligned as you change up. Cool and then we press the grind button, we'll try it at six. It's a pretty quiet grinder compared to some of the other machines at this level. We're ready to go, see the grind all in the dosing funnel there. All we have to do is give it a little tap. Oh that smells good, that uh Sundancer blend is fruity. Then little tamp just fits in the dosing funnel and there's a pressurized little pop, it tamps the right amount of pressure each time. Take off the dosing funnel, money shot, beautiful. All right so let's pop it in if I can do it back. I'm a genius, I did it backwards. We've got a little tray so we can put in our cup and let's start. We're on espresso, double shot, click the middle button to start brewing. Now my theory is this coffee is harder to grind, it'll be quite coarse so I think this will come out quite fast. Yeah we've got a gusher that is coming out way too fast so if the machine is right it should change its grind adjustment to tell me to grind finer. There you go, change it down to five and it can do this one or two times to help you dial in the shot and then it will know when you're getting the right yield from your coffee and then it will stay at that recommended size. It's still pretty good, that's pretty fast but it's still pretty good. Now let's see if I can outsmart the machine there. That looked a little faster than one grind adjustment to me. I'm actually gonna go to four because I'm a bad boy for life and let's make a coffee again and see how that goes. All right so back into the holder, tears off, scales are going, let's grind. Give it a little tap, again tamp. If you're a beginner that's pretty good like it kind of takes out trying to keep it level, trying to keep it flat. All right let's try this bad boy. I did it again, I'm a reverse genius. All right we're on espresso, double shot, bippity boop. Let's see if I'm smarter than the Ninja Lux. The cameraman's shaking his head, you're not. So what I'm guessing happens is it weighs the coffee and the grind size and then I mean that looks good. That looks a lot better. I would still say it's a little fast, let's see if it adjusts. It's staying at five, it knows more than me. But again you can adjust it to however you want. If you want it running slower you can still change the grind, it's just giving you a base level recommendation for what it's weighing out, what it thinks is the optimal dose of coffee. I mean that's pretty good. For a more specialty coffee there's lots of bright fruity notes coming through there. There you go, it's a pretty decent espresso. Now I will say that this guidance is great for beginners. If you're more of a coffee nerd wanting to do like your dose in, yield out, weigh it all, you still can do that. You can just take it out and adjust the grinds but I think this machine is more tailored towards the beginner market who just want a machine that'll help them make a good cup of coffee. Now we move on to the milk, the Frothy Jack. So this machine does automatic steaming for both dairy and alternative milk so you can pick your settings that you want and the way that it works is you've got this little base here. There's a smart little hole for purging so water purges out into the bottom drip tray. You've got a thermometer on the bottom and you pull out your wand and then it just clicks in like that and the idea is that the little frother on the bottom is going to add the air in and then the steam wand is going to create a vortex that is going to break up the bubbles into a thinner microfoam. You've got dairy, plant-based, so we're going to go dairy because it's what we're using. Then you can choose your frother mount. You've got flat white, latte, cappuccino and then there's also a cold foam feature as well. So we're going to go just in the middle, try that out, feels like a good spot. Always good to purge before you steam. So we click froth and then let's see how it goes. Okay we can see a vortex is created. We can see at the bottom the little frother is adding in suctions of air. The frother spins at the start, adds air, then that stops and then it creates a vortex and tries to suck those bubbles down into the milk to create that velvety texture. I've got a little bit of bubbles in the middle but the milk's actually looking pretty good on the outside. It's kind of sucking all those bubbles down. That's hot enough for me. So for the auto steam, it does feel like it has a set temperature which is quite hot but you can just turn it off when you want so a little bit of user discretion. Auto purge there, see that? Look this milk has a few little bubbles in it but I mean it looks all right. All right let's see if we can get some latte out with this auto milk. Latte out might be a bit harder with it but the texture of it's not terrible. It's definitely better than some of those other auto frother kind of machines. I wouldn't say it's as good as manually steaming it so if you like auto, decent job but if you can do manual, I'd say that's still the way to go with this machine. Now one thing that I noticed with a few other reviews is they were saying that it was only auto steaming and there was no manual and I was like that's crazy. What do you mean there's no manual? There is a manual. You just gotta know the inside information like this legend here. Pull it out, it is locked in this position you don't get to move it around so you have to adjust to steam there. So flip to the thinnest setting on the froth, flat white. So for the manual mode you pull out your steam wand, place it in. You might need to lean your jug a bit forward for this steam wand because it's on quite a harsh angle out and then you just need to hold this for three seconds. One, two, three. So there you go we have the manual mode started and just like normal for the first kind of four to six seconds on a lower powered machine you want to integrate air. You're going to let those air bubbles kind of come in at the top and then after that first part of aeration you kind of want to lower a little bit create a vortex and you want to pull down any bubbles left on the top into the milk and that's going to create that velvety texture. Once you have a vortex going like this you pretty much don't have to do anything just stand there, enjoy your time, meditate, think about all the people in your life that you love if there's anyone you need to text, call, just tell them you love them because that'll make their day. Tell your cameraman Sam I want to let you know that I really love you man you're doing a really oh no come on nod what's what's this there we go thank you I love you so much too hot to touch I give it like three seconds on a lower powered machine after it's too hot to touch and generally my milk's good to go then make sure to wipe that down let's see does it auto purge it does now this milk is looking silky now let's see if we can pour some banging latte out you know we can oh yeah it's really good perfect for a flat white oh this little marker here on the side that means that the tray is full of water it needs to be emptied so that's a nice little touch and it definitely does there's a lot of water in this now we get to the part that scares me a little bit I don't know if this is for me but it does it so let's try it this is the quad shot it's too much coffee but sure maybe someone wants it I don't want it so same as before grab that put on your little dosing funnel so this is the luxe basket and I think the grinder knows when you put it in yeah it's clicked over to luxe so it knows what you're using and it's gone to one of the recommendations cold press espresso so now we're on quad shot we're gonna need to grind a lot coarser to get the water to pass through so now it's recommending 13 so let's go to 13 and let's grind it's too much coffee it's still grinding I've already had like three coffees as well we're getting jacked people all in the name of science give it a little tap beep bop beep get your tamp out pressurize tamp pop into the machine will this even fit a quad shot might have some overflow here people okay quad shot so the water obviously has to pass through that entire bed of coffee which filled in a giant basket so there it is you can see it takes a little bit of time I mean it's got a crema looking all right but oh man it's so much coffee there is a market for this it isn't me I guess if you're having like a giant 16 ounce coffee like with milk this could be good if you're doing a cold an ice latte and it's really big then maybe that's helpful you don't have to do double we're getting very close to the top here look at that the quad shot so that is an entire cup of espresso right there perfect size did the recommendation change no I was happy with that let's try it it's a little acidic which is interesting it was a little bit on the brighter side look if you're just drinking this straight I worry for you if you're putting it in like a giant latte or ice latte that makes sense efficiencies you're not pulling two shots I'm here for that so in terms of espresso pulls a decent shot the guidance is great for beginners the auto steaming is decent if you don't know how to steam milk and then the manual steaming was really good if you want to do latte art and that kind of thing now for the second functionality in the machine we're looking at drip coffee so for this we're using that giant basket again the lux basket just slides in we want to put our basket in again it'll tear off and then with the little dial on the front we can go down from quad cold pressed and then we can go to classic or rich so rich is just a higher percentage of coffee in it so you can see we're going to go on classic here and then you can pick how many ounces you want your coffee to be so it goes all the way up from six to eighteen in two ounce increments so we're going to go what eight eight feels like a good size we're set on 25 for grind and then it's going to grind out the right amount of coffee so it's going to weigh out the amount of coffee that you need for the amount of ounces that you're doing so it did less because we're in eight now you don't need to tamp when you're doing the drip coffee just give it a little tap make sure that it's kind of flat and even because you want that even extraction and then we'll put in our portafilter so we're set on classic so i'm going to do a timer on this just so that everyone can see how long it takes so we press brew start oh so it's wet the bed first so it's actually i think it's blooming the coffee so it's letting those gases escape that's quite cool there you go so you can see this is a much slower extraction closer to that of what you get from like a drip coffee or a pour over it's a lot lighter in color it's a coarser grind size so you're getting that more american style drip once it's full it kind of lets it drip through then it injects a bit more water again so far we're sitting at about a minute and a half which when you do a pour over for like this amount of coffee how long does that take probably three minutes of extraction time so probably similar to that time frame we're hitting it with the cups today here people so that was 228 and this is going to be piping hot i feel like you can see here there's no crema on top that's more classic drip style coffee that you'd get from like a big vat by joe that's hot if you like piping hot coffee this makes some hot coffee so i will say i lived in america for a bit and this just takes me back to that classic drip style kind of coffee it's definitely more leaning in that like big drip coffee rather than like a nuanced pour over so it's a lot stronger more robust there's lots of body it's not like the lighter more delicate notes that you might get from like a v60 but again if you're in a household with different people who want different coffees it's good to have it in one machine rather than having 20 pieces of machinery around your kitchen the final thing we're doing here is the cold brew feature so again we've got our big lux basket in there pop it into the grinder then on the screen we can just adjust down here till we reach cold brew now grind size 23 recommended machines the boss let's grind now as i said before this machine has thought of everything i love that you can take out the stand here so you can fit in a bigger glass it's just so wasteful pouring into one glass having to distribute it into another glass very helpful again we don't need to tamp here just give it a little shake and then our cold brew glass can just fit straight underneath let's start that oh you know what i should do timer for this so it's been running for about 20 seconds already this brews at about 38 degrees so you know above room temperature but way colder than what you'd normally brew out between 80 to 100 degrees for hot coffee so with this style of brew you're going to get a lot less acidity it's going to pair really well with milk with ice so it's perfect for the summer kind of drinks that you want to make and then we just have to wait because i think this will probably take like three to five minutes but cold brew normally takes 12 hours so i think they call this rapid cold brew so i'll be interested to see what the taste is like and how much it compares to that longer extraction 12 hour cold brew while that brews we'll just catch up on some reading cinnamon latte with honey delightful you get a little book with the machine with lots of different drinks it's a lot of drinks oh there you go how to brew espresso vanilla cappuccino oh so that's kind of cool it has little um diagrams in the book with how to how to make the drinks and that drip coffee how to do it let's oh i'll see if i did it right and that's done oh i had it set on eight ounce so it's made me an eight ounce cold brew um but again you can go all the way up to like 18 on this that was about three minutes for the cold brew for the rapid cold brew there i'll give it a taste first because why not oh that's surprisingly good no acidity all sweetness brown sugar cold brew is not really my thing but i'm sure with a bit of ice and vanilla we can make something pretty special it wouldn't be cold brew without doing a little cold foam so let's see how the little cold foam frother works on that so let's purge sorry cold foam same as before for the manual you pop it in with the steam wand we're gonna switch ours all the way across here to the cold function and then let's start we're on dairy so that's just spinning and using the little frother obviously the steam wand isn't going to be used in this part of it to integrate heat it's just going to be the frothing device and it's going to spin and texture that milk until it's nice and foamy while that foams we can look at getting our ice out of this tiny ice tray i've got the little tiny cubes the problem with these tiny cubes is so hard to get out of the packaging we'll add our ice in okay let's see this cold foam in action oh that's what you want look at that i love the little like it falling slowly through the black coffee that's the magic oh the starbucks fans are gonna love this i mean i say it's not my thing but that's pretty good all the things we like as adults are just excuses to act like children where you're like i want my little foamy coffee come on i could smash that down in summer that's pretty good now time for the review and the big question on everyone's mind is how did they make this machine for 500 us i don't understand it how it can do all those things for 500 so who do i think this machine is for i definitely think this is for beginners and i think it's for people who want a machine that can kind of do a little bit of everything in their kitchen so for beginners because of the guidance that it helps you dial in your coffee and it's also got the auto steaming but you can manually do it if you want i would say if you're more of a coffee nerd that's going to be weighing in your dose and your yield and trying a bunch of different crazy coffees this machine might not be it for you but if you're someone that just wants a good espresso to be able to make a flat white and then have the ability to make drip coffee cold brew cold foams then i don't know how you go past this machine for 500 bucks i think it's set a really high benchmark for that price level so that's the review of the ninja lux let me know what you think of it have you tried it at home did i miss anything while i was going through it also let us know what machines you want us to review next this is golden brown coffee like subscribe ding that subscribe button and we'll see you next time coffee yo we'll have some videos over here