The Jura ENA8 Isn’t Exactly the ‘Smartest’ Smart Coffee-Maker
This mid-range smart coffee maker tried, but missed on key areas like touch screen usability and drink selection and temperature.
When you think of high end coffee machines, Jura is a stalwart brand. I’ve encountered their machines in friends’ homes, coworking spaces, and high-end cookware shops for years, and what I remember of them is their ease of use and consistently exceptional coffee. I tested the Jura ENA8 specifically because it is the lowest priced model they offer with smart connectivity, and mostly, I was surprised at how different it felt from other machines from the brand. While it was an attractive machine, and certainly priced better than other options I’ve tried ($1569.95 currently), I was ultimately disappointed by the UX of the interface, the temperature of the drinks, the lack of some obvious drink options and the lack of utility in the smart app. While I don’t want this impression to be what you take away for the whole brand, I wasn’t a fan of the ENA8, which we were loaned in the brand new Metropolitan Black model, specifically for testing.
The Jura ENA8's design
High end coffee machines tend to look high end, with metal and hard lines. The ENA8 had some of those signature details in the dispensing head, but instead offers rounded corners in a beautiful matte black. While I liked the black, I was less a fan of how hefty the machine was, given how small the water reservoir was. At just thirty seven ounces, I often had to refill the tank daily. While your drink likely only uses ten ounces or less, the routine cleaning the machine goes through will use a lot more. This also means you’ll be emptying the drip tray at least once a day. The drip tray does come out easily and the machine demanded to be emptied early enough I didn’t constantly spill it going back and forth to the sink.
The ENA8 comes with a sturdy glass container for milk and a number of connecting tube options to go between the cup siphon and the dispensing head. While there was a silky metal snake option that certainly looked more high end, it didn’t seem to function well, so I simply used the silicone tubing also included. (As a side note, it is easier to be sure the tubing is clean when it’s clear.) You’re also given cleaning materials and an additional plastic container with a siphon for the cleaning solution. The machine came out of the box basically ready to go; the only part needing installation was the wifi module, which I'll describe in more detail below.
Using the ENA8's touch screen
It’s worth noting that I specifically requested the ENA8. I hoped to find a great coffee maker at a lower price point than the Miele we reviewed last month, which made spectacular drinks but was quite confusing and hard to use. I’d anticipated less issues with the ENA8 because it offered a touchscreen. The screen itself was already quite small, but the larger issue was that you advance from screen to screen by touching three tiny dots in the lower right panel instead of, say, swiping. This was often imperfect. The ENA8 offers ten drinks, which is a more abridged menu than many machines, so there were only three screens to flip between—but to do so was often annoyingly painful and will make you feel like a butterfingers.
The only other utility the screen offers is the milk-cleaning function, which should be engaged after each use. This, too, was a bit aggravating as it had a few steps you were required to “OK” at the interface. Generally, I would immediately ask the machine to clean the milk equipment after my drink, and “OK” the first step and then walk away. When I’d walk past an hour or two later, the machine would still be waiting for me to “OK” the next step.
Size and temperature of the drinks
The truth is that I’m hardly a coffee aficionado; I’m just here for the caffeine. I enjoy a strong black coffee or a cafe latte most days, with an occasional cortado boost in the afternoon. Cafe lattes aren’t one of the drinks the ENA8 offers, though—the machine can create a ristretto, espresso, espresso doppio, coffee, macchiato, latte macchiato, cappuccino, flat white, milk foam, and hot water. For a few weeks, I played with various options like the macchiato and doppio to see if I could dial in something approaching a latte. My two notes about the machine are this: First, the drinks were routinely not very hot. Milk foam was consistently just downright chilly, which meant that drinks like the macchiato were unpleasant. The machine often dispensed milk first, before coffee, and I postulated this was for the coffee temperature to compensate for the cold milk, but it rarely did. The second is that the drinks were often watery, and I think this is a result of how you adjust the size. As soon as you choose a drink, you hear the machine grinding away, and you have a few seconds to choose how dark you want the drink and then, as it brews, how much drink you want, in number seconds of dispensing (an imperfect science versus, say, ounces). If you chose a larger coffee, for instance, no matter how dark I said I wanted it, it ended up watery, because the size is disconnected from the coffee grind. I could not find a way to affect the temperature of drinks in the machine. Some drinks, like the ristretto, were enjoyable—rich, with a slight froth—but you'd be unlikely to ask for a larger ristretto; you'd just make a second one.
The one note I did like was that unlike the Miele, where it was very hard to adjust the size of drinks, the ENA8 allowed you to do so while the drink was underway, and it was easy to cancel drinks, using an obvious cancel button on the interface.
The J.O.E. app
Some newer or higher end Jura machines come with wifi connectivity baked in, but wifi can be added on to other machines like the ENA8 via a wifi module you’d purchase separately. Although, in the end, you simply remove the Jura badge on the back of the machine to plug the bolt-on module in, it took watching a number of videos for me to figure that out, as the instructions were unclear. Once it was installed, the machine connected to the company's "J.O.E." app quickly and can do so via bluetooth and wifi. However, in many weeks of use, I never used the app. I certainly tried, but it’s not particularly intuitive. You can’t turn the machine on and off with the app, and the app frequently appeared to be disconnected, even though both the bluetooth and wifi connection were lit green to indicate connection. Even connected, it appeared to offer just an update on machine utilities and the ability to order parts. After conferring with support, they relayed that drinks could be “ordered” from the home panel. While I could see the drinks, every time I attempted to use the app, I received some sort of error message, and since it didn’t appear to include additional functionality and I had to be at the machine to turn it on anyway, I gave up. The goal of an app, to me, is the ability to turn the machine on remotely and have it make a drink from another room so it’s waiting for me when I arrive at the machine.
Other Jura machines
A friend of mine still uses a 16-year-old Jura, and in all those years I’ve been visiting, it remains a great machine I look forward to using each morning; so generally speaking, they do hold value. Jura has seven models above the ENA8, and all of them look to build tremendously in the areas mentioned above, particularly the UX of the screen interface, water capacity, drink selection and, from the reviews, drink temperature. In fact, the Jura E6 is priced at just $1,699.00 and seems to solve many of these problems. I’ll hold my opinion on how effective the J.O.E. app is in those applications until I test higher models, but for coffee, Jura is still a reliable brand. But in terms of smart coffee makers, the ENA8 was neither all that smart or particularly delightful as a coffee maker.