The device is programmable in most of its particulars. By clicking the settings option, coffee geeks are free to create their own custom criteria, modulating the brew temp to an accuracy of a single degree. Other settings adjust the size and time of a pour-over-style bloom, and the flow rate of coffee through a shower-style brew head.
But most people won’t bother. If you press the “brew” button, the device will sense the amount of water in the removable water reservoir and brew accordingly. For small-batch coffee below 20 ounces, you’ll use a conical basket insert and conical paper filters. For larger batches, you’ll use flat-bottom filters and the default flat-bottom brewing basket.
The Breville brews quite well on default settings. According to my wireless thermometer, the brewing temperature curve looks like a broad butte. The shower wets coffee grounds evenly. And the result is smooth, aromatic, tasty coffee—coffee that brings out a lot of the subtle aromatic notes in light or medium roast coffee.
But Breville by default brews a bit fast—less than three minutes for batches less than 4 cups. This is great for convenience, but you may need to grind finer to get fuller-bodied coffee. Still, the beans are lovely and evenly extracted, without off notes or harsh bitterness or astringency. On flavor, it’ll put most other coffee makers on the market to shame.
In all of this, the Luxe is similar to the previous generation Precision Brewer. If you’ve already got that one, there’s little reason to upgrade your whole machine if yours is still working. But for the record, these are the big upgrades.
The biggest deal is that the water tank is now removable for easy filling, excising the most annoying quality of the Precision Brewer. The new thermal carafe—which Breville says keeps the coffee warm for two hours or more—fixes some small issues with leaks in the previous generation device, and is compatible with previous-gen Precision machines. The warming plate for the glass carafe can now be turned on and off at any time.
