Jura E6 vs S8: entry milk vs premium

E6 vs S8 at a glance

Head to head

The better result in each row is marked, based on my testing and the manufacturer specs. Rows where the two machines are level have no winner.

Keep in mind that the tally is not my verdict. Some rows matter far more than others, and which ones matter depends on what you drink.

What the E6 and S8 have in common

These two are closer than their place in the range suggests.

Both are fully automatic bean-to-cup machines with Jura’s Pulse Extraction Process✕Pulse Extraction Process (P.E.P.)Instead of pushing water through the coffee in one steady stream, the machine sends it in short, rapid pulses. It helps short drinks like espresso extract more evenly., a thermoblock that recovers quickly and a full-size brew unit of up to about 16 grams. At 16 grams, one pass holds a full double or a 12-ounce mug.

Both have a 64-ounce side tank, a 10-ounce hopper and a grounds bin for about 16 pucks. Both measure about 11 inches wide, 13.8 inches tall and 17.3 inches deep, and both weigh about 22 lb.

So the premium step does not buy more capacity or a bigger brew unit. It buys a more flexible milk system, a much bigger screen and finer strength control.

Whether those are worth it depends almost entirely on how many milk drinks you make.

Design, size and build

Side by side, they share a footprint but not a face.

The Jura E6 has a color screen flanked by chunky physical buttons, two coffee spouts and a center outlet for milk and hot water. Its glossy housing felt solid and wiped clean easily.

The Jura S8 is dominated by its 4.3-inch touchscreen, with the spouts neatly framed below. It looks the more premium machine, and the milk spout and lever feel more substantial.

The S8’s big touchscreen gives it a more premium look in the same footprint as the E6.

Both need a few inches to one side to lift the tank out, about 2 inches above to open the hopper lid and room beside them for a milk container.

In a dark kitchen, the S8’s glowing screen lights the spout area. The E6’s screen is smaller, but its buttons are easy to find by touch.

Our tip: Leave about 2 inches above either machine, so you can lift the hopper lid without sliding it forward.

Both are well built for their level. The S8 feels a step more premium, especially the milk spout, lever and glass screen.

Buttons and Smart Mode vs a big touchscreen

This is the difference you will feel every day.

The Jura E6 uses a color screen with real buttons on both sides. They have a firm press and work with damp fingers. You can show two large or four small drink icons per page.

Its Smart Mode tracks which drinks you make most and moves them to the first page. By the end of my first week, americano and espresso sat at the front.

The Jura S8 has a 4.3-inch touchscreen, one of the clearest I have used. Drinks are big, bright tiles, and changing strength or volume is a tap and a swipe.

Ten strength levels give you fine control for each bean. App control needs an optional adapter.

The E6’s screen sits between real buttons, and Smart Mode moves your usual drink to the front.

Our tip: Turn on Smart Mode on the E6 in the first week, so the menu learns your habits while you are still exploring.

Both screens show maintenance prompts clearly, so you always know when a filter change or cleaning cycle is due.

Guests liked the E6’s buttons because there was nothing to swipe. They liked the S8’s screen because everything was big and obvious.

Grinder and dose

The E6 uses Jura’s Professional Aroma Grinder with six settings on a dial. Its motor sits on rubber mounts, making it one of the quieter grinders I have used.

The S8 uses the multi-level Aroma G3 grinder. Both ground quickly and evenly, and both take up to about 16 grams per brew.

In the cup, I could not reliably tell the grinders apart. Setting 3 at the strongest level on the E6 and strength level seven on the S8 gave me very similar shots.

Our tip: Only change the grind while the grinder is running on either machine, so beans never jam the burrs.

Both are quiet enough for an early morning. The E6’s rubber-mounted grinder was the quieter by a small margin.

Espresso quality

Espresso is a near tie, and that is good news for E6 buyers.

The Jura E6 pulled a heavy-bodied shot with a thick crema✕CremaThe golden, foamy layer on top of a fresh espresso. It forms when pressure pushes oils and gases out of the coffee., dark chocolate and toasted nuts. Each shot starts with a short pre-infusion✕Pre-infusionA short soak of the ground coffee before full pressure starts, so water flows through the puck evenly..

The Jura S8 pulled a shot with real body and caramel notes. Its ten strength levels made it slightly easier to fine-tune for each new bag.

My espresso scores

My scores out of 10 for body, crema, flavor and consistency.

The S8’s espresso was every bit as rich as the E6’s, with finer strength control.

In a blind tasting with the same beans, my partner and I could not consistently tell them apart. Espresso will not decide this matchup.

With lighter roasts, both kept their sweetness on a finer setting. The S8’s strength levels made it a little quicker to find the sweet spot with a new bag.

Americano and long coffee

This is the E6’s best drink, and a real reason black coffee drinkers should look closely at it.

A proper americano✕AmericanoEspresso topped up with hot water. Done properly, the water is added separately instead of pushed through the coffee. is espresso plus hot water added separately. The E6 pulls a concentrated espresso first, then adds hot water through a separate path, so the crema stays on top.

You can change the ratio during a drink, and the machine asks whether to save it. My saved version was about 2 ounces of espresso with 3 ounces of water.

The S8 makes good americanos and long coffees too, and its three temperatures let me run long coffee hot without scorching it.

For americano lovers, though, the E6’s save-on-request routine made it the more satisfying machine every morning.

Milk drinks: what the premium buys

This is the clearest reason to step up.

The Jura E6 makes a one-touch cappuccino, an espresso macchiato and a portion of milk foam. Its foam is dense and good, but it has one fixed texture, so there is no one-touch flat white✕Flat whiteA short milk coffee with a double shot and a thin layer of silky microfoam. Stronger and less foamy than a cappuccino. or latte.

On the E6, I built lattes by pulling a double espresso into a tall glass and adding two portions of foam. It took under two minutes, but it is a manual step every time.

The Jura S8’s milk spout has a lever. One position gives silky latte milk, the other airy cappuccino foam. It pours cappuccinos milk first, so the foam keeps them hot.

For a household that drinks lattes and flat whites daily, that lever changes everything. For a weekend cappuccino, the E6 is perfectly fine.

My milk drink scores

My scores out of 10 for texture, temperature and range.

One lever on the S8’s milk spout switches between silky latte milk and airy foam.

Plant milks behaved similarly on both. Barista-style oat milk foamed well, regular oat and almond made looser foam, and cold whole milk gave the sweetest result.

Our tip: Use cold milk straight from the fridge on both, because warm milk makes big, loose bubbles.

Hot water and tea

The E6 is the more flexible tea machine.

It offers three hot water temperatures. Low suits green and white tea, medium suits herbal tea and high handles black tea. It also comes with a pure hot water spout that swaps in for the milk spout, so tea never picks up milk traces.

The S8 offers a dedicated green-tea temperature as well as hotter water, which covered my partner’s daily green tea well.

Our tip: Fit the E6’s hot water spout whenever you make tea, so you get a clean stream with no trace of milk.

For my partner, who drinks green tea most of the day, both machines worked well. For a house with several kinds of tea, the E6’s three temperatures were genuinely useful.

Cleaning and upkeep

Both have fixed brew unit✕Brew unitThe part that compresses the ground coffee, holds it while water passes through and ejects the used puck.s cleaned with a tablet when prompted, and both track the water filter and stretch the descaling✕DescalingRunning a mild acid through the machine to dissolve the mineral scale that hard water leaves in the heater and pipes. interval.

The E6 prompts a milk rinse after milk drinks, needs a weekly deep milk clean of under four minutes and a new silicone hose every three months.

The S8’s milk spout comes apart easily, and its lever rinsed clean under warm water in about a minute.

My cleaning scores

My scores out of 10 for daily and weekly care.

If you only make black coffee on the E6, its cleaning is very light. The S8 asks for a little more simply because its milk system gets used more.

Over a month, total cleaning time was close. The E6 asked for a bit more weekly, the S8 a bit more daily.

Daily use and noise

My mornings with both settled into a quick rhythm: switch on, let it rinse, make a drink. From button to cup took about a minute.

The E6 felt perfect for a black coffee routine. Smart Mode had my americano on the front page, and one press did the rest.

The S8 felt perfect for a milk routine. A tap, a flick of the lever, and a latte or cappuccino came out exactly as I liked it.

Both were quiet. The E6’s rubber-mounted grinder makes a low, short burst, and the S8’s mechanism felt smooth. Neither woke anyone in my house.

Both heated up quickly from cold and recovered fast between drinks.

For a black-coffee morning, the E6’s one-touch americano is hard to beat.

Which suits which household

During my test, both served the same four people: an americano drinker, an espresso drinker, a latte fan and a green tea drinker.

The Jura E6 pleased the americano drinker, the espresso drinker and the tea drinker. The latte fan built her drink by hand every morning.

The Jura S8 pleased all four, and the latte fan most of all. The americano drinker missed the E6’s saved ratio, but only a little.

If nobody drinks lattes or flat whites daily, the E6 covers you well. If someone does, the S8 avoids a daily compromise.

Guests found both easy. The S8’s big screen explained itself, and the E6’s labeled buttons were obvious after one look.

What a full day of drinks looked like

I logged every drink each machine made on an ordinary Saturday with four adults at home.

The E6 made eleven drinks: four americanos, three espressos, two cappuccinos and two teas. My partner made her latte by hand twice.

The S8 made the same eleven drinks plus two lattes at one touch, and needed one water refill in the evening.

One Saturday, four adults, each machine on a different weekend.

The S8 did not make better black coffee. It removed the manual steps for milk drinks, which mattered to the latte drinker every single day.

On a quiet weekday with two people, the difference shrank. Both made six drinks with no refills and very little cleaning.

Can you live with lattes on the E6?

Because milk is the main difference, I spent a week making every latte and flat white by hand on the E6 to see how much it really costs you.

My routine was simple: a double espresso into a tall glass, then two portions of milk foam on top. It took about two minutes and tasted good.

The catch is texture. The E6 has one foam, so its lattes were foamier than a café latte, and its flat whites never had that thin, glossy layer a proper flat white needs.

For a once-a-week latte, that is fine. For a daily latte drinker, the two-step routine and the foamier texture started to grate by day four.

On the S8, the same drinks were one touch, with silky latte milk that tasted noticeably closer to a café.

My scores out of 10 and timings for a 10 oz latte.

Our tip: On the E6, pour the milk foam slowly onto the espresso from a low height, so the drink layers more like a café latte.

Is the premium step worth it?

The step from E6 to S8 buys you a two-texture milk system, a much bigger and clearer screen, ten strength levels and a more premium feel.

It does not buy better espresso, more capacity or a better americano. In some ways, the E6 is the better black coffee and tea machine.

In my reviews, the S8 scored 8.8 and the E6 8.4. The biggest gain was in milk drinks.

Difference between my S8 and E6 scores out of 10.

My rule of thumb: if a latte or flat white is part of your daily routine, the S8 is worth it. If milk drinks are a weekend treat, the E6 does everything else as well or better.

Think about the next few years too. If you are just discovering milk drinks, the S8 gives you room to explore. If your routine has been americanos for years, the E6 matches it perfectly.

What I would change on each

On the Jura E6, I would add a foam texture setting for a one-touch flat white, and a stainless milk container instead of a hose in a carton.

On the Jura S8, I would include app control without an adapter and let you set milk in volume rather than seconds.

Neither change would alter my verdict. They are refinements to two very good machines.

Both left me satisfied after a month. My wish lists are refinements, and they show how evenly matched these two are outside of milk.

My four weeks with both machines

Living with each machine for a month showed things a quick test never does.

Week one: setup

Both were ready in minutes. The S8’s screen needed no explanation, and the E6’s buttons took a day to learn.

Week two: black coffee

The E6’s saved americano took over my mornings. The S8 made excellent americanos too, without the save-on-request trick.

Week three: milk drinks

Week three was lattes and flat whites. The S8’s lever made them effortless; on the E6, each latte was a two-step job.

Week four: maintenance

The E6 asked for a deep milk clean and reminded me about its hose. The S8’s spout rinse kept daily care simple.

By week four, the S8 had become the default for anyone who wanted milk.

By the end of the month, the pattern was clear. The E6 is a superb black coffee and tea machine that also makes cappuccinos. The S8 is a superb milk machine that also makes great black coffee.

Beans, water and supplies

Both reward fresh whole beans used within a few weeks of roasting. Avoid very oily or flavored beans, which can clog the grinder.

Medium and medium-dark roasts worked best on both. The E6 handled lighter roasts well on setting 2 at the strongest level, and the S8 at a higher strength level.

Fill the tanks with fresh, cold water daily, use the filter if your water is moderately hard and skip distilled water. Check what is included where you buy, because filters and cleaning tablets vary between bundles.

Common mistakes to avoid

All of these become habits within a week, and none is a reason to choose one machine over the other.

Real-life scenarios

Specs only go so far. These are the situations where one machine clearly pulled ahead during my testing.

Lived with side by side, the S8 was the milk machine and the E6 the black coffee and tea machine.

My scorecard

These are my own scores out of 10. The first four come from my single reviews of each machine, and I added two rows that decide this matchup.

Jura E6

Jura S8

Overall, I rate the E6 8.4 and the S8 8.8. The S8 is the better milk machine; the E6 is the better americano and tea machine.

Which one should you buy?

It comes down to milk. Daily lattes and flat whites point to the S8; black coffee and tea point to the E6.

For americano and tea drinkers, the E6 does everything they need.

Jura E6 vs S8 specifications

From manufacturer specifications and my own testing.

How I tested and compared them

I used each machine as my everyday coffee maker for four weeks, making espresso, americanos, long coffee, cappuccinos, lattes, flat whites and tea water.

I ran blind espresso tastings, programmed americano ratios, logged a full day of drinks on each and timed my cleaning.

I then compared my notes with Jura’s specifications, owner documentation and published test data.

• Coffee: dose, crema, body and consistency.
• Milk: foam texture, temperature and drink range.
• Workflow: controls, menus and daily routine.
• Ownership: noise, cleaning, water care and footprint.