This is my Jura E8 review.
I own the machine and spent a whole day researching other peoples’ experiences with it online to put together this review.
Let’s dive in.
Should I buy the Jura E8 (Quick Verdict)?
I would strongly recommend buying the Jura E8. The E8 is one of the best value-for-money superautomatic espresso machines on the market and excels in making both black espresso and milk-based espresso drinks.
The Jura E8 is not cheap, but you could easily pay more for an inferior superautomatic espresso machine.
It’s rare that you find an espresso machine that can make both good espressos and can steam and froth milk well.
The Jura E8 ticks both boxes and is why I have named it the best Jura coffee machine and one of the best espresso machines with a grinder outright.
Therefore if you plan on drinking both espresso and milk-based coffee drinks regularly, then this machine would be perfect for you.
Product Overview
The Jura E8 is a superautomatic espresso machine.
This means that all you need to do is fill the top of the machine with your coffee beans and the machine will grind the beans, dose out the coffee, and pull the shot for you.
The E8 also has milk frothing functionalities. The machine can both steam and froth milk, allowing you to make coffee shop specialties like cappuccino and macchiato.
The table below shows the specifications and features of the Jura E8:
| Specification | Jura E8 |
| Machine type | Superautomatic espresso machine |
| Width | 11.0 inches (28.0 centimetres) |
| Depth | 13.6 inches (34.6 centimetres) |
| Height | 17.4 inches (44.4 centimetres) |
| Number of black coffee presets | 7 |
| Number of milk-based coffee drink presets | 7 |
| Milk steamer | Automatic steamer (milk tank not included) |
| Number of milk settings | 2 (steamed and frothed) |
| User Interface | LCD screen with buttons |
| Grinder type | Ceramic conical burr grinder |
| Bean container capacity | 9.9 oz / 280 grams |
| Bypass chute | Yes – can hold up to five servings of coffee |
| Adjustable serving sizes | Yes – can be manually adjusted to the nearest millilitre |
| Adjustable coffee temperature | Yes – two settings |
| Adjustable coffee strength | Yes – eight settings |
| Water tank capacity | 64 oz (1.9 litres) |
| Water filter | Yes – Claris |
| Maximum mug clearance | 6.0 inches (15.2 centimetres) |
| Heating system | Dual Thermoblock |
| Used coffee container capacity | 16 pucks |
| App compatible | Yes |
| Hot water function | Yes |
The machine does not have an in-built milk container (although Jura makes a milk container which you can buy separately). Instead, the machine comes with a rubber tube that attaches to its milk system. Just put the other end of the tube in your milk container.
What Drinks Can You Make with the Jura E8?
The table below shows the following drink presets that the Jura E8 allows you to make. Serving sizes are based on the machine’s default settings and can be customized:
| Drink Type | Description |
| Ristretto | 0.9 oz (25 ml) of water brewed with pressure through one puck of coffee |
| Espresso | 1.5 oz (45 ml) of water brewed with pressure through one puck of coffee |
| Espresso doppio (double espresso) | 3 oz (90 ml) of water brewed with pressure through two pucks of coffee |
| Cafe Creme | 3.5 oz (100 ml) of water brewed with pressure through one puck of coffee |
| Lungo Barista | 4 oz (120 ml) of water brewed with pressure through one puck of coffee, topped with 100 ml of water |
| Cappuccino | Espresso topped with a large amount of foamed milk |
| Flat white | Espresso mixed with steamed milk and topped with a small amount of foamed milk |
| Cortado | Ristretto topped with 0.9 oz (25 ml) of foamed milk |
| Latte | Espresso mixed with steamed milk |
| Macchiato | Espresso topped with a small amount of foamed milk |
| Latte Macchiato | Latte topped with a small amount of foamed milk |
| Caffe Barista | 2.35 oz (70 ml) of water brewed with pressure though one puck of coffee topped with 1.7 oz (50 ml) of water |
In addition to this, the Jura E8 can also be programmed to dispense the following:
- 2x Ristretto
- 2x Espresso
- Hot water
- Plain foamed milk
When the machine is in expert mode you can adjust each coffee in the following ways:
- The coffee dose can be adjusted through the strength setting (eight settings per drink type)
- Temperature can be adjusted through the temperature setting (two settings per drink type)
- Coffee Serving size can be adjusted by the millilitre (maximum and minimum vary by drink type)
- Milk serving size can be adjusted by the second of milk dispensing time (maximum and minimum may vary by drink type).
I will now evaluate the Jura E8 across the following four parameters:
- Quality of Coffee
- User Friendliness
- Ease of Cleaning and Maintenance
- Design and Build Quality
Quality of Coffee
The Jura E8 makes good black coffee and excellent milk-based coffee drinks. By superautomatic machine standards, the quality of coffee is very high across the board.
Quality of Espresso (Black Coffee Drinks)
The Jura E8 can make a good espresso so long as you set its grinder to the finest setting.
If the grinder is any coarser than its finest setting, the espresso will be sour. This suggests that the Jura E8 has difficulties in getting its brew extraction levels up to optimal levels.
Brewing Time
The Jura brews a single espresso on its default strength and serving size for around 18.5 seconds.
This is slightly short of the recommended brewing time of 25 seconds for a single espresso.
This may well explain why the Jura E8’s espressos are slightly on the sour side unless you grind the bean as finely as the machine allows you to. Lower brewing times mean lower rates of extraction, and under-extracted espresso is typically sour.
Brewing Ratios
I weighed how much ground coffee the Jura E8 uses for a single espresso by letting one of its used pucks dry out and then weighing it.
It weighed 0.67 oz (19 grams)
Since the Jura E8 brews a single espresso with 1.6 oz (45 ml) of water, this means that it brews with a 1:2.4 coffee-to-water ratio.
This is not far off the traditional 1:2 coffee to water ratio for espresso and explains how the Jura E8 makes a full-flavoured black coffee.
Quality of Milk-Based Drinks
I’m really impressed with how well the Jura E8’s milk system works.
The E8 is consistently able to steam milk to 130 Fahrenheit.
One of my big gripes with milk-based coffee drinks is that they are lukewarm rather than hot, but the Jura E8 always makes these types of drinks hot enough to my liking.
The Jura E8 can make a fine milk foam that easily rivals that of a chain coffee shop.
While you might get a better quality foam from an artisanal coffee shop, it’s unrealistic to expect any superautomatic espresso machine to create milk foam to the quality of a skilled barista.
In short, I am very happy with both the quality of black and milk-based coffee drinks that the Jura E8 can make.
Coffee Customizations
The Jura E8 allows you to customize:
- How much ground coffee is used in your coffee
- Brewing temperature
- How much liquid coffee is in your drink
- How much milk is in your drink
Control over all these variables lets you make coffee exactly how you like it.
The machine does have default settings for all its drinks, but I have found that it tends to make milk-based drinks with too much milk for the amount of coffee that is in it.
The machine allows you to save customizations, so when you find the exact coffee you like you do not need to program it each time.
Quality of Coffee Rating: 8/10
It’s hard to fault the quality of black and milk-based coffee drinks that the Jura E8 makes. Its espresso can be a bit sharp, so just remember to turn the grinder as fine as possible as this really improves the balance of flavor in your espresso.
Ease of Use
The Jura E8 is easy to use once you get used to it. The user interface of the machine’s control panel could be improved, however.
Getting Started
The E8 is really easy to get started from out of the box.
I was able to go from unboxing the machine to being able to make a coffee with it in about ten minutes.
The only area where I had a slight challenge getting the machine started was plugging it in.
The machine’s plug socket is at the very bottom of the back of the machine. You cannot see its socket unless you crouch down so your eye-line is level with the bottom of the machine (see images below).
Unfortunately, the machine’s instruction manual does not make it clear where this socket is and it took me about a minute to find it.
Other than that, setting up the machine was really easy. All you have to do is attach its water tank, do a water hardness test (a testing strip comes with the machine), and then run a water cycle through the machine to flush out its lines.
Once you have done that, you are ready to make your first coffee.
Ease of Making Coffees
You make a coffee with the Jura E8 by selecting one of the coffees on your LCD screen.
As soon as you have selected your coffee, the machine will start grinding your beans and getting your brew ready.
While the beans are grinding and coffee is brewing, you can then select your grind strength, brew temperature and coffee and milk serving sizes.
I have two small issues with the way that this works. They are:
Coffee Types Are Badly Signposted
Firstly, the coffee types that you select are only represented by images. It’s not that obvious what each image represents, so until you’ve learned which coffee is which, it’s not that easy to know what coffee you are selecting.
The machine only tells you the name of the coffee that you have chosen once it starts brewing. You cannot just go back and change it quickly.
I had to learn which coffee is which by their order on the menu before I was confident in making the right selection. The machine is not very beginner friendly in this regard.
The Machine Does Not Give You Enough Time To Make Your Customisations
Since the Jura E8 only gives you options for coffee customizations while it is brewing, you do not have much time to make these selections.
This might make the machine hard to use by beginners who are not expecting to make a rushed decision, and by people with limited mobility in their hands.
Presets
The Jura E8 has a mode called “expert mode” which allows you to adjust the default customizations for each coffee.
This is a nice touch, however, there are cheaper superautomatic machines that allow you to have multiple profiles, each with their own default coffee presents.
This would be a nice addition to the Jura E8, especially if it were being used by a large family or office.
Smart Connect
The Jura E8 can connect to your phone via the Jura app and allow you to brew your coffee from your phone.
Smart Connect is connected by Bluetooth so has a typical Bluetooth range (about 30 feet). This means that in most homes you can make coffee from your bedroom and have it ready when you go downstairs.
The Jura app gives you all the functionalities that the machine gives you on its menu. This means that you can rinse and clean the machine from your phone.
Although the smart connect feature is cool in theory, I do not use it that much. You still have to physically put a cup in your machine to make a coffee, so I will always just make my coffee when I place my cup in the machine.
Ease of Use Rating: 6/10
The machine is easy to use once you know which image represents which coffee, however, it takes a bit of time to learn this. Adding names to the images of coffees on the menu would be an easy fix that would make this machine a lot easier to use.
Ease of Cleaning and Maintenance
The basic cleaning and maintenance of the Jura E8 are super easy, with almost all of it being automated. The fact that you cannot easily open up the machine could make troubleshooting technical issues expensive, as you would probably need a technician to do this.
Messiness of the Machine
The machine does not make much mess when you use it.
All ground coffee is kept inside the machine and is dumped in an internal container. This container comes out with the drip tray when you detach it from the bottom of the machine.
The drip tray is quite shallow, although it has a big lip meaning that you can easily carry it to your sink without much chance of spilling liquid from it.
I make on average one coffee a day from my Jura E8 and have to empty the drip tray about three times a month.
Internal Cleaning of the Machine
The machine has a couple of automated cleaning modes that are available at the press of a button.
The first of these is a very basic clean that will just flush out the milk, coffee and hot water lines with water. You should do this after every coffee that you make.
The second of these is a deeper clean which will flush out all the pipes in the machine for twenty minutes with a cleaning solution. The machine comes with two tablets that you dissolve in water in the machine’s water tank to create this cleaning solution.
You should do this deeper clean about once every three months.
Descaling
The Jura E8 uses Claris filters. If you use these filters then the machines do not need to be descaled.
As great as this sounds, this system essentially swaps out the faff of descaling for a bit of an additional financial cost to you.
The Claris filters cost $25 each and need to be changed every 2-3 months.
This is more expensive than the descaling solution, which typically costs $10-$15 per descale (descaling should also happen every 2-3 months).
Is it worth spending an extra $50 per year to avoid having to descale your machine?
Ease of Troubleshooting the Jura E8
With superautomatic espresso machines, most technical difficulties arise because the machine’s group head is blocked or requires lubrication.
With some superautomatic (the Philips range for example) you can easily open up the side of the machine and remove the group head to clean and lubricate it.
The Jura E8 does not allow you to do this.
This means that if there were an issue caused by a blocked or stiff group head, you would likely have to get a technician in to sort it for you.
I have not had such a problem, and there are not many reports of people having this problem with the Jura E8 online.
However it is a common issue among superautomatic machines, so almost certainly arises at least occasionally with the E8.
Ease of Cleaning and Maintenance Rating: 9/10
The Jura E8 does an excellent job of automating its cleaning and maintenance. I would like it if you could open up the machine to troubleshoot it though.
Design and Build Quality
The Jura E8 is reliably built and rarely succumbs to technical issues. However, some parts of the machine’s exterior do feel cheaply made, especially considering its price.
Quality of Grinder
The Jura E8 uses a stainless steel conical burr grinder.
This is a decent quality grinder, but the best quality grinders are made out of ceramic rather than stainless steel. Stainless steel grinders get very hot when grinding and this heat can burn away some of the desirable flavor compounds in the coffee beans
The espresso that the Jura E8 makes gets better as the grinder settings get finer.
This makes me think that the machine might be able to make even better espresso if its grinder could grind more finely than its finest setting.
Control Panel
The Jura E8 has an LCD screen with plastic buttons on either side of it to control it.
The buttons work perfectly well, but are very cheap looking and feeling. They do not illuminate and when you first use the machine it is not at all obvious that they are buttons.
There is no give when you press them, meaning that it is hard to feel when you have actually pressed the button or when you have merely touched it.
Internal Build Quality
The Jura E8’s internal build quality is high, with the machine rarely succumbing to technical problems.
The machine works quickly and quietly and can make many coffees in a row. This is further testament to its high internal build quality.
Any Design Flaws or Known Technical Issues
The only glaring design flaw that I have found with this machine was that its menu does not display drink names.
I have scoured the internet to see if there are any recurring technical issues with the machine, but I could not find any.
Design and Build Quality Rating: 8/10
What Other Users Say About the Jura E8
The Jura E8 only has 27 reviews on Amazon as of August 2022. It has an average rating of 4.3 out of 5 stars. You can find a full breakdown of these reviews here.
Positive reviews of the machine often reference how well it makes milk-based coffee drinks:
February 2021 review: “My husband and I love good coffee and this machine is doing a phenomenal job. We tried almost all variations of coffee except the flat white. All came out superb”
Negative reviews tend to point to specific technical issues that the machine has suffered and their lack of customer support:
July 2021 review: “The coffee it makes is fine, but their technical support sucks, and they are rude and unhelpful to their customers. My 2-month-old coffee maker stopped working after I changed the filter. It is in a never-ending loop of “System filling” – you can hear the pump going but not water flows.”
Obviously, if Jura’s customer support sucks, then this is negative for all the machines, the E8 included.
I have not seen that many reports online of the Jura E8 having technical issues, which makes me think that the reports in these negative reviews are the exceptions rather than the rule.
Product Alternatives
Two alternatives that I would recommend are the Jura ENA 8 and the Philips 5400 LatteGo.
Jura ENA 8 – Best for Smaller Kitchens
The ENA 8 is essentially just a smaller and slightly stripped-back version of the Jura E8
The machine has a smaller footprint, making it a good option if you have less space in your kitchen.
The ENA 8’s water tank is half the size of the E8’s (32 oz v 64 oz) and it can only make 10 drinks compared to the E8’s 12.
The ENA 8 still has the same milk frothing functionalities and coffee customizations as the E8.
Philips 5400 LatteGo – Best Value for Money
The Philips 5400 Lattego is a cheaper machine than the Jura but performs close to as well as it.
The Philips 5400 LatteGo also has an automatic milk frother, although you attach the milk container to the machine rather than connecting it via a tube.
The 5400 can make 13 common coffee drinks (compared to the E8’s 12) although it has slightly fewer levels of coffee customization.
The machine is slightly more hands-on to clean and maintain, although the fact that you can open the machine up and remove its group head means that it will be cheaper to fix if it suffers a major technical problem.
If you want to find out more about this machine please see my Philips 5400 LatteGo review.
Final Verdict
I would highly recommend the Jura E8 to anyone looking to buy a semiautomatic espresso machine with milk frothing capabilities.
The machine makes excellent coffee, especially milk-based coffee drinks, and is a breeze to use.
It’s not the cheapest machine (although not the most expensive either) but it has so few faults that it still represents good value for money.
