Sage Oracle Dual Boiler review: it's big, it's clever and it makes incredible coffee

In this Sage The Oracle Dual Boiler review, I'll explore the coffee machine's split personality. Sage makes some of the best bean to cup coffee machines you can buy, and this is its new flagship.

On the one hand, the Oracle Dual Boiler is a very powerful, complex and high specification espresso machine that enables you to be your own barista, and it delivers a level of control more typically found in commercial coffee makers. And on the other, it's also a fully automated machine that's ideal for bleary-eyed mornings when you're time-poor and in no mood to mess around, or for shared environments where different people want different drinks.

The USP here is the dual-boiler setup, which features an extraction boiler and a separate steam boiler. That enables the The Oracle to extract the espresso and texture the milk simultaneously, a feature normally reserved for very large, very expensive commercial coffee machines. The boilers are teamed with a heated group head to ensure stable temperatures and consistent flavour.

This is an enormously powerful and capable machine that makes tremendous coffee, and while it's overkill for many people it's an excellent option for people who take their coffee seriously.

Sage Oracle Dual Boiler review: price and availability

The Sage Oracle Dual Boiler launched in the UK in September 2025 with a recommended retail price of £2,499.95. You can choose between the brushed stainless steel model we're reviewing here and a darker, Black Truffle finish.

Sage coffee machines are branded Breville in the US and the Breville The Oracle Dual Boiler, also launched in September 2025, has an MSRP of $2,999.95. At the time of writing, it's only available in the US in its stainless steel version.

Sage Oracle Dual Boiler review: key features

The Sage The Oracle Dual Boiler is a 2.3kW bean to cup espresso machine with 9 bar extraction pressure, 93ºC / 200ºF extraction temperature, a 58mm portafilter, an 18-22g puck size and dual stainless steel boilers. This isn't Sage's first dual boiler model, but it's the first with an integrated grinder. It's based on The Oracle Jet and looks very similar, with the same 45-settings Baratza European Precision Burr grinder that we first saw in that model. It also features Sage's Auto MilQ steam wand, a stainless steel heated cup tray, a dedicated hot water spout and a 2.3L water tank.

Everything is controlled via the large 5.7-inch touch screen or over Wi-Fi via the companion app, and inside there's a quad-core processor for smooth, fast operation without noticeable lag.

The Oracle Dual Boiler comes with 15 presets including espresso, americano, flat white, latte and cappuccino. It's the largest collection of presets in any Sage coffee machine to date, and the selection includes iced coffees and even espresso martini.

Sage Oracle Dual Boiler review: design and build quality

The Oracle Dual Boiler looks and feels like the premium model it is. Everything is beautifully made and feels solid, hefty and precise, and the components – the portafilter, the locking bean hopper and so on – snap into place with the same kind of satisfying thunks and clicks you get when you close the doors on a luxury car. And like modern cars there's a dearth of tactile controls for you to press, pull or rotate: bar the on/off button, everything is controlled via the large touchscreen.

The Sage Oracle Dual Boiler is built like a tank and feels as heavy as one: you'll be glad of its built-in, retractable wheels (whose lever is elegantly hidden beneath the drip tray) when you need to move its 17kg weight around the countertop to access the rear-mounted water tank or top up the hopper.

The design is almost identical to the other high-end models in the Oracle range, and it's very large: 455mm high, 387mm wide and 374mm deep. And it's very different from the previous Dual Boiler model, not just because it has an integrated grinder that makes it a lot larger but because it lacks the buttons and the steam lever of the original.

The Oracle Dual Boiler isn’t completely silent when not in use: there’s a noticeable whirring, presumably from a cooling fan, when it’s not grinding or brewing. The grinder is impressively quiet but the brewing is a bit louder, although not unusually so.

Sage The Oracle Dual Boiler review: setup and ease of use

You can use The Oracle Dual Boiler in two ways: as a fully automatic coffee machine, simply picking the type of coffee you want to make (and tweaking the preset to suit, if you want to); or as a manual one, which you enable by swiping up on the presets list. This takes you into the manual mode where you can adjust the grind, temperature and extraction duration with a few taps. You can set manual mode as the default in The Oracle’s settings menu.

The on-screen user interface is very crisp and clear, and you can choose between light and dark modes. Connecting the Sage app is just a matter of scanning a QR code and you can then remotely power up, warm up and monitor your machine.

Making coffee with The Oracle Dual Boiler feels much like using a phone app thanks to that very large and responsive touchscreen display. It’s just a matter of picking the drink, taking newly ground coffee in the portafilter from the grinder to the brew group, and then letting the machine extract the coffee and, if required, prepare the milk for lattes or flat whites or add extra hot water for americanos.

Sage’s onboarding is superb: when you switch on the machine it takes you step by step through the components, how to put everything together, and everything you need to to do before making your first coffee. The large touchscreen shows everything clearly and the tutorial and drink-making instructions don’t assume any prior knowledge: if you don’t know what a portafilter is, or if you've never made a flat white in your life, The Oracle will happily explain and take you through the relevant steps. The display is a good size and pin-sharp so instruction photos, diagrams and video clips are never unclear.

Everything is easy to set up and move, although the portafilter does require a bit of push when you attach it to the brew group head. Provided you don't push too hard and pack the grounds too tightly you can then dispose of the resulting ground coffee disc post-brewing by turning the portafilter upside down and giving it a whack. The portafilter itself is solid and quite heavy, but removing it from the grinder or from the brew head is effortless.

Sage Oracle Dual Boiler review: performance

The Oracle Dual Boiler is quick, taking around 45 seconds to boot up and a speedy (for this kind of machine) 3.5 minutes to reach an espresso-ready 93ºC from a cold start. And the second simultaneous steam boiler means there’s no waiting around as you can make coffee and froth milk at the same time instead of having to wait for the brewing group to finish extracting your espresso.

With milky drinks the steam wand's ability to be customised by milk type – such as soy and oat as well as animal milks – is really useful, removing the guesswork if you're using unfamiliar alternative milks.

The manual extraction controls enable you to fine-tune every aspect of your drink: not just the brew temperature but the length of the pour and the pre-infusion power. But you don’t need to use them to get great coffee. This is the first Sage coffee machine to feature the firm's new Auto Dial-In System, which monitors every extraction and then automatically adjusts the grind size to get the optimal results. And those results are exceptional.

The coffee this machine makes is definitely professional quality, and The Oracle is a consistent delight across multiple coffee types as it adjusts the grind size, temperature and pour time to get the optimal results for each recipe. With the same beans and water source as more modest coffee makers – we compared The Oracle’s espresso with two fully automatic thermoblock bean-to-cup machines – The Oracle espresso is clearly superior with much deeper, more satisfying flavour, aroma and crema.

Sage Oracle Dual Boiler review: cleaning and maintenance

The Oracle Dual Boiler is easy to keep clean: the design doesn’t have lots of awkward bits where coffee or milk can hide or water can pool and get grotty. Unless you’re very rough with it, removing the portafilter from the grinder or brew group head won’t spill ground coffee grains everywhere. As with other stainless steel Sage products, gentle sponge and spot cleaning is recommended.

Sage have done their best to reduce the amount of cleaning required to keep your The Oracle in tip-top shape, and most of it is automated bar emptying the (very large) drip tray and giving the steam wand a wipe.

The machine will tell you when it’s time to descale, and it comes with a water hardness testing strip and a water filter in order to gauge the water hardness and filter the water effectively. The descaling process has been streamlined with more automation, reducing the time and effort involved.

Sage Oracle Dual Boiler review: verdict

The Sage The Oracle Dual Boiler is the ultimate bean to cup espresso machine if you want quality coffee-shop flavour, intend to drink or make a lot of coffee, and don't make a horrified squeaking noise when you see its price tag. It's very easy to get exceptional results, and Sage has done a superb job of making a potentially terrifying, very powerful and very customisable machine feel as easy to use as an electric kettle.

Achieving that simplicity without sacrificing the power features for advanced coffee connoisseurs is quite the feat, although the entirely touchscreen-based operation may be a turn-off for purists who prefer their machines to be old-school with lots of buttons to press and levers to push. It may not be a tactile treat, but The Oracle Dual Boiler is easy to use, easy to keep clean and delivers consistently great coffee.

Sage Oracle Dual Boiler review: alternatives to consider

If you don't need the dual-boiler setup, the Sage The Oracle Jet has the same design, grinder system and ease of use as its more expensive sibling – and while its £1,699 price tag means it's still very much a premium buy it's still considerably cheaper than the Dual Boiler. I tested this machine last year and raved about it; it's exceptional.

The Sage Barista Touch Impress is another five-star espresso option, and it's more affordable still: at the time of writing it's retailing for around £1,185. My colleague Bethan reckons it's the best coffee machine she's ever used, and like the Jet it offers many of the features of the Dual Boiler in a slightly more compact size for a lot less money.