Ninja Luxe Cafe vs Sage (Breville) Barista Express Impress

Intro this right here is the Barista Express impress it's been on the market for going on 2 years now and this right here is the Ninja Lux Cafe Premiere a brand new espresso machine that's on the market it's not even available in Europe yet and today we are going to compare these two models I think that the ninja Lux Cafe Compares pretty well to the Barista Express impress although actually it has a whole bunch more functionality than does the bista express impress and it's offered at a lower price that being said they both Similarities have very similar Grinders we'll take a look at that a bit later in their design and in the dial setting you got 25 settings on both of them they also both have adaptive dosing so the express impress will manage the dose based on how far the plunger plunges or rather the tamper plunges on the other hand how it's done on the Lux Cafe is there's actually a scale in here and I think that's way better it does work much more consistently with that being the case they both offer those features they both also offer you know real Porta filters with real baskets in them with non pressurized single Walt baskets so that's very nice they're both 53 mm baskets so they share that in common and both of these machines also have some Nifty little tricks up their sleeves if for example you open up this little flap here you've got another basket that thing is humongous that is for brw coffee as well as a quad espresso shot and you got a little area there for your back flushing disc which looks eily similar to the one that comes with the express impress so we got the that little hiding area on the other side we've got a little cubby hole for the tamper which is a spring type and we've got also a little area where the funnel gets stuck in so that's really neat the Lux Cafe offers that and um on the other hand what you've got here on the express impress is a cute little cubby hole here where you can keep your accessories so you got your other stuff in there this is the trimming tool I do need to use this sometimes when the Adaptive dosing doesn't work properly and gives me too much then I just scrape some off the top and here you can put your single basket your pressurized baskets if you want your cleaning stuff so that's pretty neat put that back in there so I mean as far as delightfulness is concerned both these machines do offer some nice delightful features some Nifty Things uh that I think a lot of people enjoy now they both also offer pre-infusion on the espresso extractions which is a nice thing it is not programmable however on this machine or manually adjustable on the Lux Cafe you can actually manually adjust it on the bista express impress simply by pressing and holding one of these buttons and it will give you a low water flow the whole time you're pressing that button for the pre-infusion so that's kind of a plus point for the express impress now one Differences thing the Bria Express impress does have over the Lux Cafe as a water spout take a look at this so that's a nice feature that I don't understand why they omitted on the first version of the Lux Cafe but I have heard that on the next Edition the one coming up in the next months they are going to add a hot water spout nevertheless as a touche look at this the Lux Cafe comes with an automatic steam wand so you put your milk in here and it will automatically put Steam and hot air into the milk I'll swirl it around with this disc inside and so that actually works so you got Auto milk steaming on this machine which you on the Lux Cafe which you do not have on the Barista Express impress even on the touch impress the higher model in the Barista line I find that the automatic milk frothing doesn't work very good cuz it doesn't get a Vortex going or a whirlpool rather whereas Lux Cafe does get that going so Lux Cafe has got that really cool trick up its sleeves you can also steam manually with this machine if you like and it does a good job I'd say that they both work just about the same okay this steam one by the way you can only move up and down but it's fine with me this one you can move however you like it's on a ball joint so that's kind of yeah it's kind of nice but I'd say for me they both give me nice silky milk they both take a while like up to a minute to steam milk for a cappuccino of course the Lux Cafe as I mentioned it's got other tricks up its sleeve it's got not only espresso but it can also do a cold pressed espresso it can do the quad espresso so you're getting not just a double but you're getting a quad a four times espresso that is a lot of espresso you can put into a huge drink like maybe into a Yeti cup for example to take with you on the go it also does brood coffee so if you just switch to The Brood mode you got classic you got rich you got over ice which means it's going to give a little bit less of the extraction um to compensate for the ice and Rapid cold brew as well so this machine will actually cool down the boiler it's a thermal block rather it's going to cool down the thermal block so that you can either do a cold press espresso or you can do a rapid cold brew coffee so that cold brew coffee takes about 4 minutes by the way now I know a lot of people are going to say a cold brew coffee should actually Brew overnight in the fridge so this is just kind of emulating a cold brew coffee but it does do that and it also will allow you to steam milk not steam but froth milk cold so you can make yourself a cold drink with a cal press espresso put it over ice and put some nice tasty froth cold milk on on top and that is tasty so yeah in the end it's it's kind of hard to really compare these two just feature-wise they both make espresso but the Luxe Cafe also does Brew Coffee it does cold drinks it does Auto milk steaming and it's even got a scale in the grinder plus it's cheaper so yeah honestly it's um it's kind of nuts the Lux Cafe packs just a ton into its package another thing that the Cafe offers that the Barista Express impress does not is a water sensor so when the water is getting low the machine will tell you hey fill up the water which is a really good thing because for example on the breea express and express impress there is no water sensor and you can be mid shot and then suddenly run out of water and then you have to again reime your water circuit and you have to throw the shot away so that's pretty annoying and I like the the fact that the Lux Cafe comes with a water sensor it also comes with this display that is it's pretty functional I mean it's it's actually quite nice it's not a touch display so it's not like super fancy but it gives you the information that you need and talking about that they do also have Brew temps so low medium and high and for me for my like medium little bit darker side of medium uh espresso roast beans I'm actually keeping it on the low setting I've tried it on the high setting as well for a really light roast bean and that is doing a good job for me as well it's not sour it's fruity it's doing a good job on that now you can also set the Barista Express impress up to have higher temperature for those lighter rast beans but you got to turn the machine off and you have to remember a certain button combination and it's just really not intuitive with that being said the express impress does include a manometer which I think is very nice uh it's good to know what pressure you're extracting it or at least have an indication whereas the Lux Cafe does it doesn't have any manometer the Lux Cafe comes with temperature regulation as well as pressure regulation I've actually never managed to completely stall this machine which I think is pretty incredible and that's also with using the Barista assist uh dosing um so it tells you it weighs the dose first of all and then it tells you based on the previous extraction where it's um where the best grind setting is going to be for the next one so right now it's recommending there we go right now it's recommending five I'm on five and that's based on the previous shots that I've done and I find that actually does really nice job I get my extraction uh like a 2:1 extraction and you can set that up in here you can set up a 2:1 a two and a half to one or 3:1 extraction and it does a pretty good job actually hitting those numbers so I mean this machine it really really offers a lot with all that stuff being said aesthetically I still do think that the the breeze to line it's prettier it's somehow more handsome it's kind of a little bit more organically shaped it's more rounded off it's easier to wipe down I don't know I just find it's a little bit easier to keep clean than all the different surfaces on this machine so but that's that's subjective you know whether you think this is more aesthetically pleasing or the Luxe Cafe that's up to you guys now I have done dedicated videos on both of these I've gone through all the features espresso um The Brew Coffee the cold drinks I've gone through all of the features of this uh Lux Cafe as well as the express impress check out those videos if you like but I think what we're going to do next is just grind some coffee make an espresso I've got these both dialed in as close as I can get them just compare the espresso we'll also steam some milk and close out the video getting value from this video please take a moment to like And Espresso subscribe all right on to the second part of the video These are the beans I'm using right here this is M espresso by Marr mullet very good beans these cost €6 per kilo but they are fresh they're more gently roasted they're going to be better than lavaza or something that's been sitting on Supermarket shelves for a long time I'm start with the Luxe Cafe so this is the workflow right here you got to take the funnel put it on the porter filter like so I'm going to just tear out the scale to see what we get I have been getting 17.8 G almost always so 17.7 17.8 is generally what I get stick that in the Cradle you can see it's tearing the scale right now we're going to hit grind one thing to keep in mind is that I've actually got this machine on 50 HZ and it's a 60 HZ machine so you're going to maybe hear that in the grinder and in the pump it might just take a little bit longer as well see what did we get 17.8 I mean this thing is really consistent it's pretty amazing so take this cool um tamper we got here spring type and stick that back into the machine and let's see what kind of espresso we get out well that is another thing you can also adjust the height here which is kind of nice and I got it set for a 2: one ratio so let's just see what we get out 18 G in just about we should get around 36 but let's see where where we end [Music] up pre-infusion [Music] okay so in that case we got out 32 G so not quite 36 but close it's about a 1 to 1.9 ratio I'll take it for the easiness of just pressing the button and having to do the volumetric extraction on its own now let's do the same thing here with the brief to express impress there we go let's tear that guy out oh says those levels low so this is the Adaptive dosing I'm going to hit the button again still just a little low all right right right on the green okay so let's see what do we get there 17.8 wow this is a perfect comparison let's see how these two shots compare in the end and again here I'm going to do the volumetric dosing I'm just going to press the button let the machine do its thing I had it set up to do around a 2 to one ratio so let's see and one more thing I have had both these machines on for a little bit so they're heated up actually the pter filters are pretty nice and warm it's looking pretty good too H that one stopped pretty pretty early actually at just 25 G so I mean how these machines generally work or have work conventionally is that they got a little wheel inside inside that counts the water that goes past but that's before the pump that's before having to deal with the pressure so it's a little unfortunate 25 G 32 G that means that this one is a little bit more Stout but I'm just going to compare them anyway this is a real empirical test so let's test the first one oh it's pretty good it's got a nice body to it kind of thick on the tongue it's good not it's a bittersweet chocolate just a a little bit of milk chocolate yeah some milk chocolate in there too let's try the second shot they're very similar although the the ratios are a little bit different between the two somehow this one seems just a little bit more astringent I do get the notes of chocolate in there but I don't know it's a little bit less sweetness a little bit more astringency but I do think that that varies a lot I I find these machines are really similar in the results but as you see it's this one's not quite as consistent you know I was texting this machine before the video and I got exactly 36 G out of my shot and this time 25 so that's without changing the grind setting or anything with that being the case this machine somehow is able to stay more consistent the Lux Cafe that is and I'm not so sure how it does that but it must must have a better way of regulating the pressure and knowing based on how the pressure is changing in the system to adjust for the ratio action now as far as the Grinders Burr Comparison are concerned these look to be really identical to me or nearly identical if you just take a look at these two lower burs to me they look to be exactly the same they got five blades on them and I don't know as far as I can tell they look the same only difference really is the bottoms and how they're mounted on the Bree Express you got two notches and on the Lux Cafe you got three for mounting the bottom bur and as far as the Toppers are concerned these also to me look to be really pretty much the same so yeah I would expect in that case similar results in the espresso pretty much same bottom burs same top burs and also 25 settings on the dial for adjustment and keep in mind when you want to loosen these birds you got to turn actually clockwise to loosen all right enough blabber about espresso Milk Steaming let's go on to milk steaming now as I mentioned you can you can steam automatically with the Lux Cafe but I still prefer to do it uh manually so I'm going to do that yeah just have to pull the steam wand out make sure that you're on the lowest froth setting and then you hold the button in to start it does take a good 15 to 20 seconds so let's go ahead and steam some [Applause] [Music] milk now neither of these are non-burn steam wands which means that as soon as you're done steaming you have got to wipe that wand off immediately or that milk gets caked on there big time but I found a nice spot here to get that Whirlpool going it's getting pretty hot now I'm guessing 55 57° C starts to hurt my hands right around 60 just going to cut it off there and oh that was a minute and 25 in that case so that was a bit longer well well this does have the auto Purge by the way as you see there so that's convenient oh I made that milk pretty thick really thick not really any design but I'm doing it backwards so let's see if I can get a design on this one all right got a good Whirlpool going here as well all right it's getting plenty hot this milk looks a little bit better so we'll see what I can get [Music] there so in this case I did a better job with the bista express impress than I did on the ninja Lux Cafe but that's sometimes a little bit the luck of the draw I'm operating these things from the back and also I'm not the most consistent latte art person so if you want to see how to do a really good latte art you should check out Lance Hedrick or Emily Bryant but I just try to show how I do it as just kind of a home Barista all right Conclusions with all that being said I think that the ninja Lux Cafe is a really excellent compe Editor to what has really been the PowerHouse in home espresso machines all-in-one machines for sure in the bista line the Brea Express Brea Express impress Brea Pro and so on and so forth plus the ninja offers additional features cold press espresso Brew Coffee Rapid cold brew automatic milk frothing which actually does a pretty good job and a really nice consistent grinder with the way so with all that being said it's hard honestly to recommend spending more money for Less functionality unless you like the looks of the Barista line and if you'd like to go with the heritage of that line they've been around a long time there's a ton of stuff on forums on this machine um but yeah the ninjal Lux Cafe just simply offers a whole lot for the price that you're paying so I hope that this video was helpful for you guys you see an actual comparison between these two machines until next time I say happy coffee drinking and happy espresso drinking bye now finally there's one more thing I want to say sorry that this thing was ConEd the whole time during the video I just noticed there in editing supposed to look like that