The Jura ENA 8 Review: Makes a Great, Consistent Cup of Coffee or Espresso with One-Touch Convenience

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The Lowdown

We’ve sincerely enjoyed our time testing the Jura ENA 8. It makes a great, consistent cup of espresso or coffee, and it’s incredibly easy to use. It looks great in our kitchen as well, which is a huge perk. While it’s not inexpensive, if you’re looking for a high-quality automatic espresso machine with one-touch convenience, the Jura ENA 8 is an excellent choice.

Overall
4.5

Pros

  • Elegant design
  • Consistently great coffee
  • Freshly ground beans
  • Perfectly steamed milk and fine foam
  • Customizable drink settings
  • Color screen makes it simple to use

Cons

  • Cleaning the milk system after every milk drink can be annoying, but is a necessary evil
  • The requirement to use Jura’s cleaning products might get frustrating

If you’re looking for a professional-level espresso drink at home without hiring a barista, the Jura ENA 8 is the next best thing. This automatic espresso machine grinds coffee beans fresh for each drink, perfectly steams and froths milk, and makes a heck of a cappuccino. Starting at $1,899, the Ena 8 is available in three accent colors.

Jura ENA 8

The first thing you’ll notice about Jura’s ENA 8 is the vibrant TFT color display, which is a huge selling point. The color display makes it incredibly simple to operate, allowing you to scroll through the 10 available drink choices or customize your drink settings by volume, strength, amount of milk, and more. My wife and I were able to figure out the Ena 8 in less than 5 minutes, which is impressive for such a complex machine.

Check out my video review of the Jura ENA 8 below:

The Jura ENA 8 is fairly compact, coming in at 10.7” wide, 12.7” high, and 17.5” deep; it will fit comfortably in almost any kitchen. The front and top of the ENA 8 are elegant silver, while the color of the side panels will change depending on which color you choose. It comes in Metropolitan Black (as pictured in this review), Nordic White, or Sunset Red for those who want a flash of color.

The top of the unit houses the bean hopper, single-dose slot for pre-ground coffee. To change the grind coarseness, you actually twist the ring surrounding the bean hopper. It’s a simple way to change the grind setting, which is important because you’re only supposed to change the grind setting while the grinder is actually grinding to prevent damaging it. The hopper holds about 4.4 ounces of whole beans, which is slightly low but not a dealbreaker.

Jura ENA 8

All included accessories

On the side of the unit, you’ll find the beautiful, cylindrical 37-ounce water tank, whose design was inspired by premium crystal carafes. Inside the water tank, you’ll install the Clearyl smart filter that comes with the machine. It’s simple to install, and even better, the Ena 8 will alert you when it’s time to change your filter. The water tank lifts right off its base, so refilling is quick and painless.

Jura ENA 8

Jura ENA 8

The Jura ENA 8 features Jura’s pulse extraction process (P.E.P) to create the best possible espresso shots. P.E.P. forces the water through the ground coffee at short, precisely measured intervals to extract the maximum amount of aroma. Also, the ENA 8 uses Jura’s innovative fine foam technology to create a finely textured milk foam that’s consistent from drink to drink.

Jura ENA 8

A look at the top.

Jura ENA 8

Inside the bean hopper

The drip tray is really well designed and easy to clean out. The chrome tray pulls off easily to expose the drip tray top. Lift off the top, and you’ll see where all the coffee water is hiding. It’s incredibly simple to pour out, as you can see in my review video. The spent coffee grounds are dropped into a removable container, so you can lift it out and dump it in the trash. What’s nice is that the screen will tell you to empty your grounds container if it’s been neglected for a while.

Jura ENA 8

As mentioned, the Jura ENA 8 makes 10 drinks, one for almost every taste, including:

  • Ristretto
  • Espresso
  • Coffee
  • Cappuccino
  • Espresso doppio
  • Macchiato
  • Latte macchiato
  • Flat white
  • Milk foam
  • Hot water

Check out the drink options as shown on the ENA 8 display:

We tried just about all of them, and I’m happy to report that the Jura ENA 8 makes an incredibly delicious coffee drink, whether it’s espresso, cappuccino, or a regular old coffee. What’s possibly more important is that the ENA 8 makes a consistently great cup of coffee at the touch of a button. We had fun testing out each drink and customizing the settings to our liking. Once you confirm your drink settings and make the drink, the Jura ENA 8 saves those settings, so the next time you bring up that drink, it’ll follow that recipe.

Jura ENA 8

Inside of the drip tray

On top of the one-touch convenience of the Jura ENA 8, it’s surprisingly quiet, which is great for a home kitchen. No more needing to warn my young kids to cover their ears because they’re scared of loud noises. Also, the adjustable-height spout is a great feature, allowing me to use a small shot glass for a single shot of espresso or a tall pint glass for a large latte. Speaking of the spout, it actually has three different spouts built-in, including one for coffee, one for milk, and another for just hot water so that your tea doesn’t taste like coffee.

Jura ENA 8

Set up for a milk drink

As mentioned with the drip tray, the daily cleaning is really easy; you just pour out the water and spent grounds. We don’t use the ENA 8 every day, so we can empty it about once a week. When we do that, we rinse out and wipe the tray’s bottom, which is easy enough. To clean out the brew group or the machine’s interior, you’ll need to use Jura’s cleaning tablets. The color screen makes it easy to do through the menus, and you’ll drop one of the cleaning tablets through the pre-ground coffee chute on the top of the machine, and the ENA 8 will do the rest.

Jura ENA 8

A cappuccino

After making a milk drink, cleaning the milk system is also fairly simple using Jura’s milk system cleaner in conjunction with the included container for milk system cleaning. You put some of the Jura milk system cleaner in the front compartment and fill the rest with water, then plug the milk tube into the container, and the machine cleans itself out. You’ll need to put more fresh water in the container in the middle of the process, so it’s not entirely hands-free. Cleaning the milk system is not as simple as the Philips LatteGo we previously reviewed, but the Jura ENA 8 is a much more complex and better-performing machine. One big plus is that the machine will remind you to clean the milk system by displaying a red icon on the home screen.

Jura ENA 8

A plain old coffee

We’ve sincerely enjoyed our time testing the Jura ENA 8. It makes a great, consistent cup of espresso or coffee, and it’s incredibly easy to use. It looks great in our kitchen as well, which is a huge perk. While it’s not inexpensive, if you’re looking for a high-quality automatic espresso machine with one-touch convenience, the Jura ENA 8 is an excellent choice.

The Jura ENA 8 sells for $1899.00; It Is available directly from the manufacturer and from other retailers, including Amazon.

Source: Manufacturer supplied review sample

What I Like: Elegant design; Consistently great coffee; Freshly ground beans; Perfectly steamed milk and fine foam; Customizable drink settings; Color screen makes it simple to use

What Needs Improvement: Cleaning the milk system after every milk drink can be annoying but is a necessary evil; The requirement to use Jura’s cleaning products might get frustrating

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About the Author

Perry Brauner
I'm an architect by trade, but the overarching theme of my life has always been trying to keep up with the newest, coolest technology. Ever since I picked up an NES controller, I've been hooked on the latest and greatest gadgets, gizmos, and toys. Whether it's gaming, mobile phones, and accessories, or PCs and Apple products, I'm interested. I use many Apple products in my daily life, such as the iPhone, iPad, and my MacBook Pro. I've also built a few PCs in my day, so I'd like to say that I'm a pretty well-rounded techie.

1 Comment on "The Jura ENA 8 Review: Makes a Great, Consistent Cup of Coffee or Espresso with One-Touch Convenience"

  1. Aqua Velvaman | December 31, 2021 at 3:57 am |

    Very helpful, thanks! I hadn’t seen anything about cleaning the milk system in other reviews I had read.

Comments are closed.