Breville Barista Touch Impress BES881 vs Breville Oracle Jet BES985

A grinder, assisted tamping and hands-free milk behind one touchscreen

Scores higher on steam power & milk texturing, workflow & ergonomics, value for money.

Cafe-standard espresso and hands-free milk without learning to grind, dose and tamp by hand

Scores higher on shot quality & extraction, build quality & durability.

• +Hands-free milk texturing with settings for dairy, almond, oat and soy.
• +The Impress lever tamps at a set pressure and corrects the next dose.
• +Heats to extraction temperature in 3 seconds, Breville's ThermoJet figure.
• +Thirty grind settings on hardened steel Baratza burrs.
• +A 340 gram hopper, larger than the 227 grams on the Barista Touch.

• −$1,499.95, about $500 more than the Barista Touch listed on this site.
• −Breville publishes no pump pressure, pre-infusion detail, warranty or weight for it.
• −No pressure gauge is listed; the touchscreen is the feedback.
• −54 mm portafilter, not the 58 mm the Oracle Jet uses.

• +Auto grind, dose and tamp into a 58 mm portafilter holding 22 g, the size cafe machines use.
• +Auto MilQ steams microfoam hands-free with 8 texture levels, settings for alternative milks and a temperature range of 104 to 167 F.
• +Barista Guidance detects an over or under extracted shot and helps you correct the grind.
• +Cold Brew in under 3 minutes and Cold Espresso in just over a minute, which almost no home machine offers.
• +Six finishes, from Brushed Stainless Steel to Black Truffle and Damson Blue.

• −Breville's product page does not publish pump pressure, power rating or water tank size; the tank and warranty figures here come from an authorised dealer.
• −At $1,999.95 list it costs more than twice the Barista Touch, which also grinds and steams automatically.
• −Heating is a ThermoJet group head rather than a boiler, and no steam capacity figure is published, so back-to-back milk drinks cannot be compared on paper.
• −It is built to make decisions for you, so someone who wants to learn espresso by feel will get less out of it than out of a semi-automatic machine.