Jura S8 Automatic Coffee Machine Review 2024

Are you a coffee fanatic? Do you spend more money than you’re comfortable admitting at your friendly neighborhood coffee shop? Have you ever found yourself wishing you could just bring the whole coffee shop home and enjoy whatever specialty coffee drink you wanted, any time, day or night?

If you answered yes to those questions, then you’re going to love almost everything you read in this—our Jura S8 review. This is a magnificent machine by any measure, and even better, it’s offered by one of the titans in the coffee industry. Unfortunately, it does have one flaw that will limit its appeal. It is expensive. Really expensive.

On the one hand, this is definitely a case where you get what you pay for. On the other hand, the steep price is going to put it out of the reach of many who would love to own one. Bear that in mind as we explore the capabilities of this machine.

An Overview of the Jura S8 Fully Automatic Espresso & Coffee Machine

Form Factor, Footprint, & Aesthetic

We’d rate this as a very strong component of our Jura S8 review. While aesthetics aren’t everything, they are important, and the first thing to know about the Jura coffee machine S8 is that it’s a good-looking machine with a sleek, modern design.

It will make an excellent addition to any home kitchen that’s decorated in a modern style, but it also manages to be fairly unobtrusive. So if your kitchen is, say, country blue, it will still be a good addition because it will mostly fade politely into the background.

The fact that it can both serve as a centerpiece and fade into the background depending on your needs is no mean feat, and the design team deserves huge kudos for that!

In addition to that, the S8 Jura has a surprisingly small footprint, considering everything that it can do. With a footprint that measures 11.02” W x 13.7” H x 17.48” D, it won’t be difficult to find a permanent home for the machine, with one caveat.

You’ll want to take a quick measurement of the space between your countertop and the bottom edge of your kitchen cabinets to make sure it can fit beneath them if that’s your plan.

In most home kitchens, it should just fit, but you’ll want to measure to be sure before you part with your hard-earned money. Better to know for certain than to get an unpleasant surprise!

Note, too, that it weighs just over 22 pounds (22.05 pounds, to be exact), so it’s not too much of a chore to move it about if and as you need to. 

Finally, and this is a small thing but something we love, the S8 boasts a power cord that measures 43.3” in length. Too many kitchen appliances these days are saddled with depressingly short power cords, but that’s definitely not the case here. You won’t have any trouble at all finding an outlet you can plug it into.

All in all, a fantastic job by the S8’s design team!

Reservoir Size of the Jura S8 Automatic Coffee Machine

This is another very strong component of our Jura S8 review. The water tank on this machine has an impressive 64.25-ounce capacity.

This is absolutely superb if you live alone or if you’re the only serious coffee drinker in your home.

Even if you live in a larger household with several coffee drinkers, it’s still quite good. Though if everybody is ordering several drinks a day, you’ll invariably have to refill the tank more often than you’d like. Even so, this is not likely to be a genuine issue for many.

The only other thing to mention here is that the reservoir is top loading, so if you are keeping the machine under your kitchen cabinets, you’ll have to move it out each time you want to load the water tank or the bean hopper, which we’ll talk about next. That’s not a dealbreaker by any means, but it is something to bear in mind.

The Bean Hopper of the Jura S8 Coffee Machine

As mentioned in the last section, the S8’s bean hopper is top loading. Like the water tank, it is generously sized and has a capacity of 9.88 ounces. That’s a good pairing with the water tank, and honestly, you don’t want a bean hopper that’s too big anyway because the longer the beans stay in the hopper, the more freshness you’ll lose.

This is true on any machine, but the S8’s designers did incorporate an “aroma preservation cover,” which helps combat the problem. It’s not a perfect solution, and even with the cover, we wouldn’t want the bean hopper to be much—if any—bigger than it is. So again, great job by the folks at Jura!

The bean hopper is paired with an outstanding conical burr grinder that allows you to fine-tune the flavor of your coffee by selecting from six different grind settings. 

You’ll definitely want to experiment here to find your flavor sweet spot, and Jura makes it easy.

Some companies require a special tool to adjust the grind setting. Here, adjustments can be made via a simple lever—very convenient.

Another detail you’ll enjoy is the fact that the bean hopper incorporates a bypass doser. So if you run out of beans or just want to use up your pre-ground coffee as you transition into using the S8, you can absolutely do that!

The Boiler and Control System of the S8 Automatic Coffee Machine Chrome

This is yet another very strong component of our Jura S8 review.

The Jura S8 espresso machine features a thermoblock paired with a fifteen-bar pressure pump—a combination that will guarantee you consistent results with minimal waiting. You can expect that the entire drink-making process will take around sixty seconds on average. That’s less time than you’d spend standing in line at your local coffee shop!

Whatever drink you order, the flavor is guaranteed via the P.E.P. pre-infusion system and a wide range of programmable options, including:

The Jura coffee maker S8 also allows you to control the amount of water you use for each drink—from a tiny shot of ristretto that uses just half an ounce of water all the way up to a sixteen-ounce double-long coffee. 

That’s simply superb, but there’s more to talk about here. The S8 allows you to program an auto-shutoff time, selecting from 15 minutes, 30 minutes, or 1-9 hours, at your preference.

Best of all, all of this is placed at the user’s fingertips via a 4.3” high-resolution touchscreen display.

From the screen, in addition to controlling everything we described above, you can also select the drink you want to enjoy, choosing from any of the following options:

While it is possible to find machines that offer even more selection than this, they’re almost always even more expensive than this model is. The Jura Impressa S8 offers tremendous variety for the money. We love it, and we think you will too.

A few final points to make before we leave this section: the coffee spout is height adjustable in a range that spans 2.8” to 4.65”. The cappuccino and water spout are also height adjustable, in a range that spans 4.4” to 6.18”, and the grounds container has a capacity of approximately sixteen servings. All of that is spectacular.

The Milk Frothing System of the S8 Jura Coffee Machine

This is another thing that the Jura S8 coffee maker does exceptionally well. In the world of specialty coffee machines, there are two options: a steam wand or an auto frother.

Steam wands appeal more to coffee purists as it gives you more control over the frothing process, allowing you fine-grained control over the texture and character of the foam.

The downside is that steam wands require practice to use well, and not everyone wants to take the time.

At the other end of the spectrum, auto-frothers emphasize convenience. The frothing process is automated, which is fast and convenient and requires no skill. But also, you turn control over to the machine, and at the end of the day, you get what you get.

The S8’s design team incorporated their Professional Fine Foam Frother G2 into the machine.

It’s an auto-frother, but it’s a rarity in the auto-frother world in that it gives the user a bit of control. The auto-frother comes with a control lever on its front face that allows you to adjust the texture of the foam you get, and you can control the amount of milk used to create each milk-based drink by changing the drink settings on the control panel.

This is essentially the best of both worlds. More flexibility and control than most auto-frothers offer but without the learning curve that steam wands have. It’s simply superb.

The Jura Espresso Machine S8 is Low Maintenance and Doesn’t Have Much of a Learning Curve

Jura has been making specialty coffee machines since 1931. In that time, they’ve gained a tremendous amount of hands-on experience that serves both them and the people who buy from them very well. To put it simply, they have learned what works and what doesn’t.

From a practical perspective, that means that although this machine sports lots of bells and whistles, it’s a lot easier to use and master than you might think. Sure, it will take a bit of time to familiarize yourself with all of the customization options available, but the J8 makes a great cup of coffee with default settings right out of the box.

You can give the generally helpful Jura Capresso Impressa S8 manual a quick read and make your first specialty drink about ten minutes after you take the machine out of its box. As for the finer points, you’ll learn as you go.

In terms of keeping the unit clean, all the usual steps apply. The milk frother should be cleaned daily, the drip tray emptied, the dregs tray emptied as needed, and any part of the machine that comes into contact with water, milk, or coffee should be wiped down after each use.

The unit will let you know when it needs a descaling, and while that’s a bit more of a process than the other cleaning operations we’ve mentioned thus far, you’ll find full details in the user manual, and it’s not particularly difficult.

The only fly in the ointment lies in the fact that the brew group isn’t detachable. Since you can’t remove it from the unit, you can’t give it a thorough rinse, which means you’ve got to clean it as best you can while it’s still inside the machine. That’s less than optimal from a user perspective, but it’s not likely to be a dealbreaker for anyone.

All in all, then, the Jura S8 touchscreen is about as low maintenance as it gets, and that’s a very good thing.

Extras You Get When You Buy a Jura S8 Fully Automatic Coffee Machine

If you decide to buy a Jura Capresso Impressa S8, in addition to the machine itself, at the time this review was written, we found a bundle deal on Amazon that will give you the following items:

A pair of smart filter cartridges, cleaning tablets, and two espresso cups—basically, everything you need to start enjoying your favorite specialty coffee drinks except the beans themselves. 

In addition to that, the S8 is compatible with Jura’s J.O.E. app, which allows users to brew coffee remotely.

While those are all good “extras,” it’s worth mentioning again that this is a very pricey model. Not to say that the extras on offer don’t add value because they do, but at the end of the day, they’re icing on an expensive cake.

Pros & Cons of Jura S8 Automatic Coffee Machine

There’s a lot to like about this machine, and in our view, the Jura Capresso S8 gets almost everything right. It’s a great-looking, capable machine that offers a lot of drinks that can be made with the touch of a button, and it’s an easy machine to learn to use. It really is like having an entire coffee shop sitting on your kitchen counter, and that’s extremely cool.

Unfortunately, there are some downsides. First, the S8 is made of a mix of plastic and aluminum, whereas a great many machines offered at its price point are stainless steel or at least incorporate stainless steel into their design.

Second, this model doesn’t have Jura’s intelligent pre-heating system incorporated into its design. Its inclusion here would have helped to ensure that the unit didn’t cool down much between drinks brewed.

Third, this model does not include “Smart Mode,” which is found on other Jura models. Smart Mode automatically reorders the drink selection menu based on how often a given drink is selected from the menu, and in a related vein, there are no user profiles available, which would allow different coffee drinkers to save their preferred drink settings individually.

Note: You can, as mentioned above, still adjust your drink settings to taste and save those settings, but if you’ve got more than one coffee drinker in your home, they won’t each be able to save their preferred settings individually. One will overwrite the other.

Even taken together, none of these shortcomings are deal breakers, but the relatively high price of the machine will put it out of reach of some—and perhaps many—who would be interested in owning one.

Jura S8 Review Conclusion

At the end of the day, the only significant negative associated with this machine is the hefty price you’ll pay. Assuming you can afford it, the S8 is a wonder. If you’re a serious specialty coffee aficionado, the Jura S8 belongs on your short list of options to consider. We absolutely recommend it.

Other Options to Consider

If—having reached the end of our Jura S8 review—you reach the conclusion that cool or not, it’s just not for you, here are a couple of comparable options to consider:

If you just can’t afford the S8’s hefty price tag but want something in the same product family and offered by the same company, the D6 is well worth a look. It’s less than half the price, and while it lacks many of the bells and whistles that the more expensive machine offers, it’s a very good model that will serve you well.

This model is several hundred dollars less expensive and can be seen as a middle ground between the D8 we just mentioned and the S8 we just reviewed. While it doesn’t offer as many high-tech flourishes and has a smaller drink selection on offer, it’s less expensive and designed by one of the other giants in the industry. An excellent, high-value option!

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Official Manufacturer Support

Sources & Resources

• Jura, Official Brand Website.
• Jura S8 User Manual.
• Which is the Best Milk for Coffee?, Hotel Chocolat.
• How to Know Good Coffee Bean Quality, Grain Pro.
• 20 Different Types of Coffee, Explained, The Pioneer Woman.