This is a fully assisted portafilter espresso machine, or what I refer to as a "in between" machine, for short.
It's a portafilter (filter holder) machine, meaning it's a traditional espresso machine, capable of "true" espresso, and great milk (and alternatives) texture, but it has the convenience and ease of use of a fully automatic one touch coffee machine, for the best of both worlds.
Where this kind of machine is concerned, in my opinion the Oracle Jet is the best of the bunch, with a couple of caveats, which I'll explain shortly.
Features and Benefits
• New mechanism with European Etzinger 38mm conical burrs & stepless adjustment
• Auto dosing & tamping via spoked internal distribution tool
• UV protected hopper with gasket
• 58mm portafilter with 1 shot & 2 shot standard baskets
• Quad core powered 4.5" touch screen
• Dual thermojets, one to heat the group, one for espresso & steam
• Automatic & manual milk frothing
• WiFi chip for firmware updates (more exciting than it may sound)
• 2.3L water tank, rear accessed plus front top flap for filling
• Adjustable brew temperature from 86C - 96c in 1c increments
• Pre-set low pressure pre-infusion, manually adjustable in manual shot mode
So when I say that this is the best of this kind of machine but with caveats, the main one is that you need a fairly hefty budget, and a fairly easy going other half, or one who's just as nuts about coffee as you ;-).
The Jet is about £1700, and with it being such a new machine, you're unlikely to get it at a deal either, they don't usually have deals on new machines until they've been out for a couple of years.
The other, is that this is really aimed at people who tend to make a small number of drinks at a time.
If you have quite an ad hoc schedule, which would involve you wanting to make coffee on a whim, rather than set brew times, and the average coffee making session would involve only one or two coffees, this is really the kind of usage the Jet is made for.
You can walk up to the Jet, stone cold, and make a couple of flat whites or cappuccinos within about 5 minutes, which is what makes this Sage's flagship machine for almost instant coffees.
If you have more of a set routine, and you tend to make larger numbers of drinks at a time, then the original Oracle or Oracle Touch might be more suited to you.
The Oracle Touch in particular is great for this kind of use, as it has auto on scheduling as does the Oracle, but it has 4 separate auto on profiles, not just one, which makes it even better in this regard.
The dual boiler Oracles have really fast heat up times compared to most dual boiler espresso machines, officially taking about 10 mins to heat up (6 minutes, usually, according to my stopwatch), but the Jet is ready almost instantly.
Once heated up, though, the Oracle & Oracle Touch will make coffees faster, partly because you can steam milk while the espresso is brewing, and also because there's a 950ml steam boiler and 450ml brew boiler (with the brew boiler fed via a heat exchanger, a pipe running via the steam boiler, so it's warm by the time it gets to the boiler).
Espresso Quality
If you're wondering if the Oracle Jet is as good as the original oracles when it comes to shot quality, the answer is yes, without a doubt, possibly even better.
That's quite a bold statement, but I've used the Oracle a lot, I've now used the Oracle Jet a lot too, and for me the shot potential is very, very similar, but I actually feel like the shot to shot consistency, probably down to the new grinder mechanism, is slightly better, and I feel like I'm getting more precisely dialled in, too.
The new grind assembly is completely stepless, and you have the full range at your disposal via the external adjustment, there's no having to take the top burr out to adjust it in order to go finer.
I'd like more digital settings, there are 40 settings at the moment, but there's quite a big turn of the dial to change by one setting.
They're digital reference points, not physical clicks, so I'm sure they can add more settings if they want to, and I'm hoping they will do in the future, or that they'll add an advanced mode or "home barista mode" with a bigger number of adjustments, and other more nerdy features.
The WiFi Chip
The great thing about the Oracle Jet when it comes to things they may change with the firmware, is that there's no risk with being an early adopter- thanks to the WiFi chip.
They're pushing out firmware updates over Wifi, they've done a few already, including some bug fixes, double tap to purge (for the grinder and the group), and some new drink recipes (espresso martini, espresso shakerato, latter shakerato).
But what this means is that when they fix and update the firmware going forwards, we'll all get the new versions over WiFi.
I've given them a big Wishlist of updates I'd like, some of them might not be possible, but I'm quite hopeful about some of them, as I think they're quite achievable and they really make sense.
For example, there's a load of user data in the debugging menu that we can't get into, only service engineers can, and most users would just be confused by all that.
But if you're an advanced user, imagine if those in the home who just want to tap a screen, can use standard mode, but you can switch into home barista mode, giving you info on the screen such as real time temperatures, and giving you the ability to change brew volume by ratio, and have a greater number of grind adjustments.
Anyway, watch this space. The interface on the Jet is already great, I think it'll just get better as time goes on.
Milk Texture & Temperature
You can steam milk manually or on auto with the Jet, manually - this is definitely one of the best steam wands I've used in terms of ease of use and beginner friendliness.
One of the things I like so much about it is as with the Oracle & Oracle Touch, you can see the temperature on the screen, even when steaming manually, which is really handy.
The wand is cool touch, which is also handy, and it's capable of brilliant texture with dairy or alternatives, at just about any temperature you want.
The automatic frothing isn't quite as it should be just yet, from my experience, but I think they're working on it.
I get outstanding results on auto, just as good as I can do manually, with full fat dairy milk, but with low fat milks and with alternatives, I'm not getting what I'd expect, at all.
This has been reported to Sage, and I know I'm not the only one to report it, I think it's in hand, and from what I can ascertain it's to do with the algorithm controlling the air pump, so I think they'll just be able to fix it over the WiFi.
Queuing
As with the Barista Touch, you can queue up the individual parts of the drink with the Oracle Jet.
So, if you're making a flat white, latte or cappuccino, you'd just start the milk steaming then tap brew, and it'll start pulling the shot once the milk is done - or if you prefer, you can do it the other way around.
For Americano, you can queue it up water first or coffee first, and I prefer water first.
This is simply because the water outlet on the Jet is the type that sprays water in a narrow stream with some force, vs the tap type dispenser on the Oracle & Oracle touch which guides the water in a wider stream, down into the cup.
So this means you get splashing, and if you do it water first, it's just droplets of water, which isn't a big deal, in fact this can help to keep your machine clean, if you give it a wipe after with a clean cloth, as it's just droplets of hot water.
If you do it espresso first, though, you end up with droplets of coffee splashing onto the drip tray and the splashback of the machine.
The Touchscreen
This is a very nice, crisp, clear and responsive touchscreen, with lots of great features.
The favourite thing about it, for me, is how easy it is to save changes to the main menu drinks. You can simply change a setting to the flat white, for example, and then tap save.
With the Barista Touch Impress (they may have fixed this in the meantime so ignore me if I'm wrong, or drop me a message to correct me) you can't do this, which is a bit odd I think, you have to create a new drink option, cluttering up the screen with another version of that drink just for one small tweak.
Also with the Jet, as well as being able to make changes to the menu drinks, you can simply hide any from the home screen that don't interest you, and bring them back easily at any time in the future - to make it as simple and fast as possible to get to the drinks you do expect to make.
You can also click and hold your favourite drinks on the menu and drag them to the front, to position your drinks around in order of importance.
There's loads more to the Jet, but I'll leave it there as I could talk about it all day! In a nutshell, if you only make a few coffees at a time, you need a fast heating machine, and you have the budget, this is probably the best fully assisted machine on the market for you.
For my full in depth review of the Oracle Jet, see: