Dubbed the “Tesla of Coffee Machines” by our Editor-in-Chief, the xBloom is the first-ever coffee machine that introduces an Autopilot feature to the art of making coffee. A pristine machine that looks like something out of a sci-fi future, the xBloom (designed by ex-Apple employees no less) identifies, grinds, dispenses, brews, and pours your coffee for you. It does so with some of the finest beans sourced from top roasters across the world, giving you the finest cup of coffee you can ever get with the press of a single button.
While brewing a cup may theoretically be easy, no other machine gives your coffee beans the connoisseur treatment it deserves like the xBloom, which expertly handles every step of the coffee process. It grinds the coffee into a filter, carries the filter over to a water dispenser, which then pours the precisely heated water in a spiral pour, and gives you a freshly ground, freshly brewed, and freshly served cup of coffee right in front of your eyes. Easily the most advanced coffee machine we’ve seen in a while, the xBloom replicates the authentic experience of having a professional barista make you a cup of coffee. Every aspect of the machine is calibrated and trained to perfection, even down to the xBloom’s pods which come with expertly curated roasted coffee beans and an RFID tag that allows the xBloom to know how to grind and brew those beans immaculately. Here are 6 features that make the xBloom such a game-changer, your inner coffee connoisseur won’t want to go back to the manual pour-over.
Designers: Richard Xu & Zhou Rui
Automated Excellence
Designed to sit elegantly on your countertop, the xBloom is an all-in-one coffee machine that handles grinding, brewing, and dispensing, all within a single device. It’s truly a coffee machine that’s designed to work on autopilot, handling practically every stage with the kind of perfection your high-quality coffee beans deserve. With its expertly tuned automation, the xBloom takes charge, allowing you to sit back and relax while it creates your perfect cup of coffee, doing justice to the premium coffee beans that come with each xBloom pod.
A Pristine, Artful Design
Having won the iF Design Award, as well as the CES 2023 Innovation Award, the xBloom’s overall design is a testament to its exceptional craftsmanship. Standing at 16.9 inches in height, its design is dominated by simple, elegant geometric forms that break down the coffee machine into its separate functions, resulting in a visually stunning piece of equipment. The metallic finish adds a touch of luxury and elegance, elevating the xBloom to something beyond your regular coffee machine, because it’s so much more!
The Power of NFC Technology
To automate the entire process, the xBloom’s coffee beans come in a biodegradable pod that also doubles as a coffee filter that collects the grounds, brews the coffee, and filters the rich, dark liquid into your cup. Each coffee pod contains an NFC tag on its underside, allowing the xBloom to identify the type of coffee bean and brewing recipe instantly. With a simple tap of the pod, the machine sets the grind size, brew temperature, coffee-to-water ratio, and even pouring style. Once the xBloom brews and filters your coffee, the used grounds and the cup can simply be discarded in the trash or even composted. The entire pod is made of sugarcane bagasse, a recycled by-product of sugar production that also biodegrades in 30 days, along with the coffee grounds too. In the end, you’re left with the sweet taste of coffee without the regret of a wasteful carbon footprint.
Precise Grinding and Brewing
The xBloom’s true magic really lies in how it handles each task expertly and with sheer consistency. The coffee machine boasts a professional-grade grinder with 48mm Titanium Nitride coated conical burrs. With 20 automatic grind size adjustments, it delivers the perfect grind for not just pour-over style coffee but also other creative coffee-brewing techniques like cold brew, ice drip, etc. Each step in the grinding process is as precise as 18.75µm, ensuring consistent results every time. The grounds are then dispensed back into the empty pod, which features its own built-in filter lining.
Magical Pouring Patterns
While grinding has mostly been an automated process, the act of pouring the hot water onto the coffee grounds is something baristas prefer doing on their own, with their own flair, pouring styles, and patterns. The xBloom’s extraordinary design can mimic these different pouring patterns, delivering a true barista-like coffee experience that extracts the right notes from each kind of coffee bean. Once the coffee machine grinds and dispenses the coffee back into the pod, the pod moves over to the pouring station, which can mimic a straight pour, a slow spiral pour, or a rapid spiral pour, depending on the roaster’s curated recipe to help extract the best flavor profiles. The laminar water stream, electrostatically controlled by four energized electrodes, creates a curved flow of water that seems almost magical. Meanwhile, a weighing scale built into the pod holder lets the xBloom know when to slow down the pour, just in case the water overflows from the pod. It’s truly a captivating sight that adds a touch of enchantment to your coffee-making ritual.
Expertly Curated Coffee Pods
As it must have been evident by now, the xBloom follows the popular pod-based model, but with a remarkable twist. Instead of pre-ground, pre-flavored coffee powder, each xBloom pod contains 15 grams of actual coffee beans, carefully measured for a single serving. These pods are curated by xBloom’s partner program featuring expert roasters, offering a diverse range of special coffee types from around the world, along with roaster-picked recipes that get activated when you tap your pod on the xBloom… giving you expertly brewed coffee in the comfort of your home or office. xBloom’s Curator Program invites leading roasters and coffee-masters to design their own pods too, offering limited-edition drops that users can occasionally try. You can buy additional pods on the xBloom app, which also lets you customize recipes… or use your own existing coffee beans along with xBloom’s reusable dripper cup that’s compatible with Kalita Wave 155 filters.
The xBloom was created by a team of tech veterans, including former Apple product designers. Every aspect, from its sleek exteriors to its high-quality internals, reflects the same level of sophistication seen in Apple’s own products. This isn’t your average coffee machine… it’s a beautiful symphony of art, technology, and magic!