How do you improve the best coffee machine T3 has ever used? Our current pick of the best coffee makers is the Sage Barista Touch Impress – and now Sage (Breville in the US) has taken that five-star machine and made it even better with some key upgrades.
The headline features here are a new ThermoJet heating system – previous Oracle models were dual-boiler – and a higher spec grinder. There's also a more powerful processor. But the main selling point here is that the Sage the Oracle Jet delivers exceptional customisability without sacrificing ease of use.
Sage the Oracle Jet review: price and availability
The Sage the Oracle Jet was launched in August 2024. In the UK, it's £1,699.95 and in the US, where it's sold under the Breville brand, it's $1,999.95. It's available from the usual retailers and directly from Sage in the UK and Breville in the US.
The Oracle comes in two colours for the UK market, Truffle Black and Stainless Steel; US customers get a third option, a white called Sea Salt. It's a good-looking thing but I must apologise for some of the photos: my review unit arrived after appearing to suffer some in-transit knocks, and there were a couple of small dents around the lower touchscreen that are visible in some of the pics. Of course, if you buy one it'll be factory-fresh and won't have suffered such treatment.
Sage the Oracle Jet review: design and features
This is a large machine, almost 15 inches deep and wide, although it's a little smaller than the dual-boiler Oracle models. It's very heavy too. However there's a little lever underneath the drip tray that lifts the coffee machine up on wheels so you can easily move it. That's typical of the thought that's gone into the Oracle Jet's design.
The design is very similar to that of the Touch Impress, with a large touchscreen taking care of most of the controls. There's a solid-feeling grind adjustment knob at the left of the machine, a bean hopper on top and a water tank round the back. Below the touch screen you'll find the grinder output, the brewing head and the steam wand.
There are two key upgrades in the Oracle Jet. The first is that unlike previous Oracle models this uses a ThermoJet (like the Touch Impress) rather than a dual boiler; there are two ThermoJets, one of them on the brew group head, to ensure consistent temperature. The big advantage here is warm-up speed, which is very fast compared to an Oracle Touch or similar dual-boiler, and Sage says it's also up to 32% more energy efficient than a thermoblock.
The second key upgrade is the grinder. The large bean hopper feeds into a Baratza European Precision Burr grinder, made of carbon-hardened steel, with 45 grind settings. If the Oracle finds your brews are going too fast or too slow it'll tell you on the touchscreen and encourage you to adjust your grind settings accordingly. The portafilter is 58mm/18-22g with its large surface area delivering more consistent extraction. The ThermoJet delivers a consistent 93ºC temperature for optimum results.
The Oracle Jet gets Sage's Auto MilQ system for creating silky microfoam, something we've also seen in the Touch Impress, and understands that there are more milks than cow's milk. It enables you to specify soy, almond and oat too, and it adjusts automatically for each type. And the touchscreen enables you to choose from and customise a wide range of presets from the usual black coffee suspects to milky drinks and cold brew. Temperature is adjustable from 40ºC to 75ºC and there are eight levels of texture to choose from.
Given the range of options available to you, this could have been a very intimidating device. But it's very sensibly thought out, with excellent software. There's even a video app to show you how to set up and use it.
The touchscreen interface is fast and responsive and very clear; you can set dark or light modes, create custom drinks and tweak the settings with ease. For the first time there's also Wi-Fi in order to download firmware updates, and there's more horsepower in the processor to deliver a smoother response.
Sage the Oracle Jet review: performance
The Oracle Jet's aim is to automate as much of the actual coffee making process as possible while delivering proper barista coffee, and to that end it performs spectacularly. The grinding process delivers beautifully uniform and well tamped grounds thanks to the integrated tamp fan, and the resulting coffee is exceptional, delivering beautifully aromatic espresso without unwanted bitterness.
It's interesting to compare that with the Touch Impress, which as we said in our review "takes a few tries to get the best results." I found that the Oracle Jet delivered great coffee out of the box with the default settings, and while many of the people who'll be considering this machine will be interested in the adjustable temperatures, grind settings and so on, that's optional rather than necessary.
With cold brew, the results are still great but the labelling is a little misleading: as with other supposed cold brew coffee machine options it's a cooler brew over more finely ground coffee that you then pour over ice. Genuine cold brew is of course an overnight effort, but that's hardly convenient.
It's worth noting that the 45 grinding settings is a bit of a fib, because the grind adjuster is stepless and delivers much more than 45 stops; the 45 settings are stops on the digital dial rather than discrete steps in the grinder's gearing.
You can't rush great coffee, but Sage has found a way to speed the process up without cutting corners. What Sage calls Auto Queue reduces the overall time involved. For example if you're making Americano it'll get the water ready while you're grinding the beans; if you're making a flat white it'll get the espresso brewing once the milk is ready. It's very clever.
One area where some otherwise clever coffee machines fall down is in keeping them clean, but the Oracle Jet is very clean in use and largely self-cleaning afterwards. All you really need to do manually is rinse out the portafilter between drinks and give the steam wand a wipe when you're done each day.
It's worth noting that unlike some coffee machines, attaching or removing the portafilter before or after extraction doesn't require serious strength – something your reviewer's RSI-weakened hands really appreciated. The weight of the main unit contributes to that, keeping the coffee machine steady while you attach or detach the filter one-handed, but there's high quality engineering here too.
Sage the Oracle Jet review: verdict
This is a five-star coffee machine that makes the kind of coffee you want to write songs about. But the same firm already makes a five-star coffee machine, the Touch Impress, and that's considerably less expensive: that model's launch price was £1,199 but we've seen it discounted for events such as Prime Day, which took £250 off the price earlier this year; we're writing this review with Black Friday only a few weeks away, and similar deals seem likely. With the Oracle Jet coming in at £1,699 that's potentially a very huge price difference.
The Oracle Jet is without a doubt better than the Touch Impress. It has higher quality grinders, it's even easier to use and it requires even less user effort to make really great coffee. And the inclusion of Wi-Fi for future firmware updates, a first for Sage, means that it could become even more fun for coffee machine fiddlers in the months and years to come. If that's important to you and money's no object, this is an exceptional machine that'll make every day start more brightly.
Sage the Oracle Jet review: alternatives to consider
Surprise! I'm going to recommend the Sage Barista Touch Impress: it's almost as good and it's more affordable. If you're not fussed about automation but want something that's still easy to use the Beem Espresso Grind Profession is a phenomenal machine for a phenomenally low price.
