In ancient Greece, people in need of advice would seek out their local oracle. The fee for divine guidance would be paid for by animal sacrifice – a goat, or perhaps a sheep for particularly pressing issues. Fast forward to 2026, and inflation has taken its toll. The price of admission to Sage’s Oracle Jet is now closer to that of a cow. For anyone who isn’t a regular at their local livestock markets, that’s about £1,700.
However, the Oracle Jet does exactly what it says on the tin. This is an assisted espresso machine that guides users from coffee bean to espresso cup (hence the “Oracle”), froths milk to silken perfection, and heats up in seconds because of the use of fast-heating ThermoJet technology (yep, “Jet”).
It promises “third-wave specialty coffee” in the comfort of your own kitchen – that’s really good coffee, in other words. A large colour touchscreen leads users through every step, and the level of assistance means mistakes are almost impossible. All the hard bits are automated, and all the fun bits – clunking the portafilter into place, pouring the silky hot milk into the espresso – are left to you.
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What you need to know
The Oracle Jet is a wonderfully approachable reimagining of the manual espresso machine. Where similarly priced fully manual models are all knobs and clunky click switches, Sage has replaced all the controls with a single power button and a 5in colour touchscreen.
The result is it’s unlikely you’ll need to refer to the manual – although it’s there. Imagine an Apple MacBook-esque experience but for coffee: tap the power button and the Oracle Jet comes to life with a jaunty three-note motif. Bright images, annotations and looping videos introduce every aspect of the machine, after which a step-by-step tutorial leads you through brewing your first coffee, one tap at a time.
With the introductions complete, the touchscreen presents a scrolling list of 14 drinks. The list includes (deep breath) flat white, latte, cappuccino, espresso, americano, babyccino, hot chocolate, tea, cafe crema, cold brew, cold espresso, caffe shakerato, milk shakerato and espresso martini (and no – the booze isn’t included).
Keep in mind that the Oracle Jet isn’t a fully automatic – or super-automatic (as they’re sometimes known) – machine. You still need to brew the espresso, then steam the milk and add it to the cup yourself.
Also, since this machine has a single ThermoJet for heating water – unlike its much pricier cousin, the Oracle Dual Boiler – you’ll need to brew coffee and then steam the milk afterwards. Helpfully, though, you won’t have to stand at the machine and wait: you can pop the milk jug into place and tap the milk and coffee icons one after another – it will start steaming the milk the moment the coffee pouring is finished.
Each of the 14 recipes can be customised to your taste – or to ensure that they fill your favourite mug. You can add your own recipes, too. This is just as well: if everyone in your household has a different idea about their perfect coffee, you can create a separate drinks profile for each person.
The Jet displays many lovely little design touches. At 12kg, this is a heavy machine, so it’s handy that there are wheels underneath. Pull the lever under the drip tray to the left and you can taxi the Jet around the worktop. If you don’t have much clearance above the machine, you’ll appreciate being able to slide it out to refill the 340g bean hopper on top. And given that the double baskets hold about 22g of coffee, you’ll need to refill the machine every 15 coffees or so.
The 2.3-litre water tank slots into the back, and while you can top it up via a chute hidden under the panel on the top of the machine, you’ll probably want to empty and refill it with fresh water fairly often. The internal water filter lasts about three months under normal use; replacements are pricey at about £15 a pop.
Given the Jet’s price, it’s nice to see a stainless steel milk jug and a little knock box (for tapping out the used pucks of coffee) included as standard. You also get some tools to clean the grinder and tamping fan, descaling powder, a couple of cleaning tablets, a blanking plate for back flushing, and a poking tool for clearing any steam wand blockages.
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Sage Oracle Jet specifications
Type: fully assisted espresso machine
Dimensions: 38 x 37 x 43cm (WDH)
Water tank: removable 2.3 litre
Replaceable water filter: yes
Accessories supplied: 58mm portafilter, milk jug, cleaning brush, single and double unpressurised baskets, knock box, cleaning kit (two cleaning tablets, one descaling tablet), water hardness test kit
Time to heat up: 6sec
Time to steam milk: 1min 12sec
Grinder included: yes, 45 settings
Noise: 46dB (brew), 58dB (steam)
Weight: 12kg
Warranty: two-year repair or replace
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What we love
When it comes to brewing espresso – both hot and cold – and whipping dairy or plant-based milks into a hot froth, the Oracle Jet is probably the best assisted machine there is.
Feed it with the best-quality coffee beans and you’ll get everything from unctuous shots of espresso to startlingly fine flat whites – and with barely any effort at all. Thanks to its cold brew talents, it’s as happy serving up a refreshingly cold iced coffee as it is an espresso martini.
The automation is just superb. First, you lift the portafilter into place underneath the grinder. A quick twist to the right and the tamping fan whirrs into action; the grinder soon follows suit, and the portafilter fills with the precise volume of coffee required. That done, you simply move the portafilter across to the brewing group and lock it into place with a firm twist. Tap the espresso icon and about 30 seconds later, it’s in your cup. If it pours too fast or too slow, the touchscreen prompts you to adjust the grind size accordingly. The knob on the side provides 45 steps of adjustment, too, which is plenty.
What’s more, it’s incredibly easy to tweak things towards perfection. Whether it’s a shorter or longer shot, or adjusting the brew temperature up or down, a few taps on the touchscreen is all it takes. Just adjust, taste and then save the settings that you feel work best.
It’s the ease with which the Oracle Jet creates superb coffee that makes it so lovable. The automatic tamping doesn’t save a vast amount of time compared with models that have manual levers – nor simple tampers, for that matter – but removing just one or two steps makes the process feel more immediate. Combined with a heat-up time of mere seconds – six, if you’re counting – it means you’re so much more likely to use it.
Similarly, you don’t need a barista certification to steam milk to a pristine microfoam. Half-fill the supplied stainless steel milk jug, select the type of milk you’re using – there are settings for dairy, oat, almond and soy – and tap the milk jug icon. There are eight adjustable “texture” (AKA froth) levels, and you can adjust the temperature from 40C to 75C. If you predominantly use one type of milk in your household, simply set that as the default.
My best results were with full-fat dairy milk, but barista-centric oat milks were good, too. You can steam the milk manually, but it’s less satisfying than on a proper manual machine – the steam wand only moves back and forth, in contrast to the more adjustable ball joint on manual machines. And, frankly, the automatic results are superb – and a great timesaver: the Oracle Jet steamed 180ml of milk to 65C in a little over a minute in my tests, which is among the fastest of the machines I’ve tested.
If you’re the kind of person who walks into a car showroom and simply has to buy the bigger, faster, better model, then you’ll probably already be striding past the Oracle Jet towards Sage’s £2,250 Oracle Dual Boiler. But for most people reading this, there’s nothing the Dual Boiler does better to justify the additional money. And does it make a markedly better coffee? No, I don’t think it does.
The Oracle Jet’s trump card over its pricier sibling is speed. It heats up in seconds, rather than the five minutes of its sibling, which means you can flick it on and make a couple of coffees in the time it takes the Dual Boiler to get up to temperature. The Jet lacks the manual mode – but the kind of person who cares deeply about such things is probably in the wrong place. If you’re willing to go it alone, then the excellent £1,099.95 Sage Dual Boiler and a separate top-notch grinder would be a far better pairing.
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What we don’t love
It’s great that the Oracle Jet prompts users to adjust the grind size automatically, though its guidance isn’t infallible. On occasion, shots will pour too fast or too slow, and it won’t suggest any changes. With good coffee in the hopper, many won’t care – or potentially notice – but you won’t always be getting the best from the coffee beans at hand.
In fairness, this isn’t a downside that’s unique to the Oracle Jet. Every coffee needs a slightly different grind size, dosage, brew temperature, shot ratio (the ratio of ground coffee to brewed coffee), extraction time or a combination of all five, to be at its best. However, the Oracle Jet gets beginners into the right ballpark without any difficulty. Perhaps it would be nice to see more focus on the beans in the hopper – the roast level, in particular – so it can optimise the settings accordingly.
This is one area where the admittedly excellent interface could go one step further: a barista training mode, or similar. A software upgrade could transform the Oracle Jet into an amazing tool for teaching users how they can translate taste into actions for better coffee.
My final criticism is the lack of a more fully featured manual mode. As this is aimed at beginners, I can see why Sage has hidden away the brewing temperature control in the main settings menu – but an advanced manual mode, like the Dual Boiler’s, could take shots from good to great to life-changing. Given that the Oracle Jet has wifi – and received several firmware updates during my time with it – it’s not an impossible ask.
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Warranty and repairability
You get two years of warranty with the Oracle Jet. As with most manufacturers, Sage will decide whether to repair or replace your machine in the event of an issue.
In the event of an out-of-warranty repair being required, you’ll need an independent engineer. We sought the advice of Radu Bria, who runs a coffee machine repair business in Manchester. According to Bria, there’s a good supply of parts available for Sage machines: they can be sourced via Coffee Classics, which is an authorised repair agent for Sage, Lelit, Baratza and Melitta. You can book out-of-warranty repairs through it directly, or support your local coffee machine engineer, such as Bria.
As ever, regular maintenance is key to a long-lasting machine. A water-hardness test strip is supplied, so you can be made aware when it’s time to descale and clean the Jet. Since ThermoJet designs can be prone to limescale build-up, it’s important to use the manufacturer-recommended cleaning products regularly. Sage includes some to get you started.
There’s a water filter in the box – they usually last for about three months – and you’ll definitely want to keep a spare in the cupboard.
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Sage Oracle Jet: should I buy it?
Whether the Oracle Jet’s talents represent value for money will very much depend on how much you love coffee – and how hands-on you want to be with the coffee-making process. With a cow-sized budget burning a hole in your toga pocket, you’re not exactly short of options.
If you want the best possible coffee, the Oracle Jet absolutely destroys the fully automatic bean-to-cup models on the market. They’re not even close: the Jet’s espresso and milk texturing are a huge cut above. Yes, it’s more effort than a single button press, but the reward is the kind of coffee that would give any top-notch independent coffee shop a good run for its money.
And let me be clear, this machine isn’t daunting to use. For a household with a mixture of coffee obsessives and beginners, it’s a genuine joy. Feed it with superb coffee, and it will make stunning coffee regardless of your skill level. Yes, it is expensive, but if it helps you – and your fellow coffee-lovers – kick an expensive coffee-shop habit, it will pay for itself sooner than you think.
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Sasha Muller is a tech and consumer journalist, avid coffee drinker and craft beer enthusiast with more than two decades of experience in testing products and avoiding deadlines. If he’s not exploring the local woods with his kids, boring people talking about mountain bike tyres or spending ill-advised amounts on classic drum’n’bass vinyl, he’s probably to be found somewhere swearing at an inanimate object
