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- Supremely easy to use
- Capable of making amazing coffee
- Excellent milk texturing
- Very expensive
- Auto Dial-In feature needs refinement
- Dual boilers are overkill for most users
The latest addition to Sage’s espresso machine range, the Oracle Dual Boiler, promises nothing less than perfection. The marketing copy is unequivocal: ultimate automation. Ultimate performance. Given the £2,500 price, that’s probably the least you’d expect.
The name gives the biggest upgrade away. Whereas Sage’s £1,799 Oracle Jet shares a single rapid-heating thermojet between coffee brewing and milk steaming duties, which means you can only do one at a time, the Dual Boiler has – yes, you guessed it – two boilers, which means it can simultaneously brew espresso and steam milk to a perfect froth.
The other big news is a new manual mode. Beginners still have the option to use the slick, elegant icon-based interface – albeit now on an even larger 5.7in touchscreen – but a quick upwards swipe reveals the manual mode. Aspiring connoisseurs and coffee experts can take full control of temperature and pre-infusion to dial in a pitch-perfect espresso.
Sage has also debuted its new Auto Dial-In feature. This monitors every shot of espresso and checks that you’re not over– or under-extracting your coffee, adjusting the grind automatically as required.
It all sounds rather exciting. But at £2,500, the question is: who will this machine appeal to? And why wouldn’t they buy a pricey manual espresso machine and high-end grinder, or a snazzy fully automatic machine instead? Let’s take a look.
Sage Oracle Dual Boiler coffee machine: What do you get for the money?
The Oracle Dual Boiler is the most expensive assisted espresso machine we’ve tested to date. With the old Oracle and Oracle Touch models in Sage’s range now entering retirement, the Oracle Dual Boiler is the new top-of-the-range model, and looks down on its slightly smaller, slightly cheaper Oracle Jet sibling.
I mean that quite literally, because the Oracle Dual Boiler is a fairly big thing. At 39cm wide, nearly 38cm deep and almost 46cm tall, it’s basically the Oracle Jet on performance enhancing supplements. It feels like there’s more metal used in the construction, too, and that burlier build sees the weight balloon to 17.24kg: over 5kg heavier than the already weighty Oracle Jet. You’ll want help on hand for prising it out of its recycled cardboard box, and you’ll be very glad of the retractable wheels on the underside. Flip the lever under the front lip, and you can wheel it round on the worktop without flexing your muscles.
For your £2,500, you do get a gorgeous looking machine. Regardless of whether you choose the brushed stainless steel or the moodier black truffle model, Sage has managed to evoke the stripped back, all-metal glimmer of professional manual machines while giving the Oracle Dual Boiler a softer, more kitchen-friendly silhouette.
That approachable exterior continues through to the large, vivid 5.7in touchscreen. Make no bones about it, the Oracle Dual Boiler is almost certainly the most user-friendly assisted machine you’re likely to encounter; you genuinely don’t need to have the foggiest idea how to brew espresso or pour a flat white. As long as you’re happy to prod the touchscreen in the right places, the Oracle Dual Boiler will grind the perfect amount of coffee, tamp it down consistently, ensure that the espresso brews optimally and whip milk into the kind of hot, silky microfoam that will rival the best coffee shops. All you have to do is add the milk to the coffee cup. And drink it, naturally.
As usual, the 340g bean hopper sticks out of the top of the machine, and this funnels beans into an integrated grinder with good quality (and replaceable) Baratza M2 burrs – the same found in Baratza’s excellent £160 Encore ESP and £200 Virtuoso+ grinders.
This is the same grinding mechanism as found on the Oracle Jet – and other Sage assisted machines – but the big change here is that the grind is adjusted internally via the touchscreen rather than by an external knob. As a result, Sage’s new Auto Dial-In system is able to adjust the grind settings automatically rather than simply advise you to grab the knob and do it yourself. This, naturally, goes hand in hand with automatic tamping. The Oracle Dual Boiler’s tamping fan whirrs away and presses down the precisely measured dose of coffee with a perfect amount of pressure.
As you’d hope given the price, the Dual Boiler comes with all the accessories you could need in the box. You get a stainless steel milk jug, a small knock box for bashing out the spent coffee pucks, unpressurised single (12-13g) and double (19-22g) baskets and a variety of tools for cleaning and maintenance. There are some cleaning products included too, for descaling, cleaning the brewing group and soaking away milk residue buildup on the steam wand. On a machine this expensive, attentive maintenance is an essential habit.
One thing that the Dual Boiler has lost, however, is cold brew coffee options. One benefit of the thermojet boiler in the Oracle Jet is its ability to operate at a wide range of temperatures – something which traditional boiler designs can’t do. The Oracle Dual Boiler does still have an iced coffee option, but it’s up to you to source your own ice and fill your cup with it.
You can wave goodbye to the Oracle Jet’s six second heat-up times, too. The dual boiler design takes around 4 minutes to heat up, and while the simultaneous coffee brewing and milk steaming will save time once it’s up to temperature, you’ll need to be making quite a few coffees to make it actually faster than the cheaper Oracle Jet. If you’re the impatient type, then think carefully before splashing out.
Wi-Fi is still present, and this gives Sage the ability to upgrade the software, fix bugs and refine – or potentially add – various features. For such an expensive machine, this is a reassuring thing to have. It also pairs nicely with a new Sage+ Coffee app. Right now, functionality is very limited, but you can use it to remotely turn on the machine to get the 4-minute heat-up time ticking while you’re still in bed.
You still get a generous range of drink options, with 16 different icons to choose from. All of the standards are here – cappuccino, espresso, long black, cafe crema, latte, cappuccino, flat white, babyccino and cortado – but you also get to pick from latte macchiato, iced latte (if you add your own ice), espresso martini (martini not included), espresso shakerato (again, bring your own ice) and tea (hot water only, in other words). The AutoMilQ function still does what it says on the tin, and you can select the default milk type from dairy, almond, oat and soy-based modes. This ensures the optimal steaming mode for each, and the best possible results.
What’s it like to use?
If you’ve been daunted by the button–laden fascias of manual, or even cheaper automatic machines, then the Oracle Dual Boiler is a breath of freshly ground coffee aroma. All eyes are immediately drawn to the large 5.7in touchscreen – and upgrade from 4.3in on the Oracle Jet – and the setup routine is wonderfully choreographed.
Slick animations and simple onscreen messages lead the user through the process of connecting to Wi-Fi and downloading updates, and anyone who’s used an app on a phone or tablet will be right at home. The combination of little onscreen explainers and looping videos do a great job of familiarising even complete novices with the coffee making process. In 2025, this visual guidance is arguably far more effective and relatable than sitting down with a paper manual. Every part of using the machine from setup to brewing to cleaning is demonstrated directly on the screen itself, so there’s no need to fish out the manual every time you find yourself a bit lost.
It’s fair to say that Sage’s touchscreen interfaces for its assisted machines are the best we’ve used. Unlike the slightly jerky interface on the still-excellent £1,200 Barista Touch Impress with Cold Extraction, Sage has splashed out on a quad-core processor for its Oracle models to match the larger touchscreens, and the result is a fairly smooth and nippy feel to taps and swipes – it’s not perfect, though, as we’ll discuss later. And compared to far cheaper assisted machines from Ninja or De’Longhi, the process is vastly more elegant and refined. Although that’s as you’d expect at four or five times the price.
Despite all the assistance, the coffee making process on the Oracle Dual Boiler is more involved than a super-automatic machine. If you love the idea of simply plonking a cup on the drip tray and prodding a button or touchscreen to create a coffee, then you may find even the Oracle Dual Boiler’s high level of assistance is too labour intensive. It’s not challenging in the slightest, though, and even complete beginners get to feel like they’re part of the process.
Indeed, if you’ve ever had delusions of becoming a professional barista, then the Oracle Dual Boiler lets you slip into your barista apron and get to work. The heavy, well-made portafilter slots nicely into the jaws of the grinder and a firm shove to the right starts the tamping fan spinning. That done, the grinder whirrs into life – after around 45 seconds or so, you can remove the portafilter to find a perfectly smooth, firmly tamped puck of coffee in place. Lock the portafilter onto the group head with a firm twist, and then a tap of the espresso icon starts the brewing process. Thanks to the dual boilers, there’s no need to wait for the coffee to brew before getting started on the milk, either. Shove a half-filled jug under the steam wand, tap the milk jug on screen and the machine whirrs and hums as it brews and steams simultaneously. You can do it manually if you prefer, but given the quality of the milk texturing on offer here, you’re most likely wasting your time.
In many ways, the Oracle Dual Boiler is far closer to a proper manual espresso machine. It’s the little things: the ridged area on top of many machines is simply there for show, rarely getting warm enough to really heat up a little assortment of coffee cups, but here it gets scorching. So much so that you’ll want to avoid accidentally leaning on it by mistake. The portafilter gets properly warm, too. Lock it into place while the machine is heating and the metal gets hot enough to ensure that your brews are super consistent.
When it comes to milk, the Oracle Dual Boiler is a bona fide milk texturing expert. You can pick from preset modes for dairy, almond, oat and soya and you can set the machine to default to your preferred type of milk from the outset. Milk temperatures can be adjusted between 45°C to 75°C in 1ºC increments and you get eight froth levels so you can tailor your milk to the drink in question.
What’s the coffee like?
It comes as very little surprise to find that the Oracle Dual Boiler pours a mean cup of coffee – or espresso, or flat white. I filled up the hopper with some single origin, medium roast Guatemalan beans from Craft House Coffee and simply let the machine do the rest.
For anyone used to using a fully automatic machine – or who has struggled to get good results out of a manual espresso machine – the Oracle Dual Boiler will come as something of a revelation. Prod the touchscreen and follow the prompts, and you’ll find that literally anyone can make a coffee that’ll probably put them off spending the best part of a fiver on a tiny paper cup from a coffee shop ever again. As long as you’re willing to feed the machine with superb coffee from your nearest independent coffee roaster, then you’ll get fantastic results from the comfort of your very own kitchen. If you can kick the coffee shop habit, the Oracle Dual Boiler will basically pay for itself after a couple of years. More or less, anyway.
For anyone who’s got a bit of experience, however, it is possible to pick holes in the Oracle Dual Boiler’s performance. For instance, the all-new Auto Dial-In feature still needs work – it doesn’t always do a consistent job of optimising for different coffee types.
Quite understandably, the very first shot from the machine took just under a minute rather than the usual 30 seconds or so, and this was because the grind was too fine. This isn’t a fault per se: it’s impossible for the machine to know the perfect grind size for every coffee bean. Once it recognised the slow pour, however – and the likelihood that the shot would be bitter and overextracted – the screen popped up a little message informing me that the pour was too slow, and it immediately automatically adjusted the grind size a little coarser. So far, so good.
That done, the next shot came through in a more sensible 39 seconds. Again, the machine intervened and increased the grind size one more notch. The result? The third espresso poured in around 32 seconds.
In truth, all three shots were absolutely fine with milk. The first one was very overextracted, so noticeably bitter and harsh on its own, but adding a dollop of hot, creamy milk meant that it was still drinkable. By the time the third espresso had poured, however, the coffee was tasting far closer to the tasting notes: the tart fruit of cherry and blackberry was slowly beginning to come into focus. It still wasn’t absolutely perfect, though.
A little analysis with a set of scales suggested that the Oracle Dual Boiler – or at least this specific review sample with the initial software version – tended to deliver espresso which was a tad too strong. I found that the grinder added a quite consistent 23.8g to the portafilter and poured anything between 30g and 36g of espresso. In non-technical terms, that’s very strong. In coffee terms, that’s what’s known as a ristretto shot – one that’s between 1:1 and a 1:1.5 ratio of ground coffee to espresso – and although that will work with some coffees, and some types of milk-based drinks such as flat whites, it’s a tad too strong as a default shot in my opinion.
In fairness, this was easy to fix. I tapped the espresso settings icon, moved the drink size one notch higher, and repeated the process. The result was a more sensible 45g of espresso in the cup and a more balanced palette of flavour – suddenly the cherry and blackberry were in perfect focus. With that adjustment done, I simply saved the settings to the default profile. That took five taps of the touchscreen, so it wasn’t in any way difficult to get the shot perfectly dialled in. The issue is that I’d expect the Auto Dial-In feature to do a better job of, well, dialling in the shot.
Getting perfectly steamed milk was far more consistent: I tried with both full-fat dairy and Oatly Barista, and the results were superb with both, even though dairy definitely took the edge for absolutely perfect, silky paint-like creaminess. Combining either of the two with the espresso rewarded with gorgeous milk-based coffees. The steaming time is super quick, too. Where most machines I’ve tested take closer to a minute and a half to get fridge-cold milk to a perfect 65°C, the Oracle Dual Boiler whipped 180ml up to temperature in 50 seconds.
The new manual mode is a super cool little addition. Swipe up from the main menu and you get a pressure gauge in the centre of the screen surrounded by little icons giving you access to all the key settings. You can tweak temperature up and down in 1 degree increments between 86°C and 96°C, and tweak the length of the pre-infusion and bloom phases. It’s a bit of a shame that the grinder setting is global, though: if you adjust it to create a more unusual brew profile, then it’ll also adjust the grind size for the assisted mode.
What could be better?
The price is one obvious answer. With a budget of £2,500 at your disposal, you could pick from a wide variety of fairly high end coffee makers.
If you’re the kind of person who is only willing to lift a mug into place and prod a button, then regardless of how much easier the Oracle Dual Boiler is than a manual espresso machine, you’re still going to be much better off with a fully automatic bean-to-cup model. The best bean-to-cup coffee machines will deliver good coffee with no more effort than it takes to occasionally fill a bean hopper with coffee or put a water tank under the tap.
In terms of coffee quality, though, even the very finest fully automatic machines will be left in the shade by a fairly basic manual espresso machine at a fraction of the price. And compared to something exotic like the Oracle Dual Boiler? It’s just not a fair fight.
And it goes without saying that, if you were to buy a separate manual espresso machine and a high-end grinder, you’d be able to get even better results again. The issue there, obviously, is that you – and everyone else in the household – need to have the skills and the knowledge to achieve that.
As good as the Oracle Dual Boiler is, however, it’s fair to expect near-perfection at this price – and that’s one thing it doesn’t quite achieve. Not yet, at least. The Auto Dial-In feature does prevent users from pulling terrible shots, but it doesn’t guarantee the best results. It also doesn’t currently offer any ability to tailor settings to suit different roast types such as light, medium and dark roasts, each of which can benefit from different brewing ratios, pour times and so on. Hopefully this will be fixed – or at least refined – with future Wi-Fi updates, so we’ll be updating this review in the coming weeks. It’ll be interesting to see how the app evolves, too.
The hardware is mostly really good, but I did find that there was a little lag with the touchscreen interface. I didn’t notice it on the first couple of software revisions, but the most recent update seemed a little slower. Again, maybe I just didn’t notice it previously, but there’s a slight but noticeable delay when opening drinks settings or swiping across the menu. Hopefully this will be refined for future updates.
Another issue is that this kind of money is just overkill for many users. Many buyers will be just as happy with the Sage Barista Touch Impress with Cold Extraction (£1,199) at half the price: it might not be quite as good, and it’s nowhere near as adjustable, but it’s still a great assisted machine. And if you just want a slicker, more high-end experience, and are not bothered about the manual mode, you could save £800 and buy the £1,799 Sage Oracle Jet instead.
Should you buy the Sage Oracle Dual Boiler coffee machine?
Despite our quibbles, Sage has done a really impressive job of marrying high end espresso engineering with a modern touchscreen interface. Indeed, if you love the theatre of the coffee shop – the whirr of the grinder, the bang and clunk of the portafilter, the slow drip of espresso, the hiss of steam in a metal jug – then the Oracle Dual Boiler allows you to don your favourite apron and pretend that you’re the star of your own personal little coffee shop.
It gently guides beginners on the journey from coffee bean to cup, and the addition of the manual mode both gives experts full control and encourages wannabe baristas to test their talents when they feel ready. The need to appeal to both camps means that there are some inevitable compromises. But right now, no other machine manages to appeal to both camps as successfully as the Oracle Dual Boiler. Yes, it’s expensive; no, it’s not for everyone – but it’s not hard to see the appeal.
