Review: Ninja Coffee Bar Single Serve (CF112)

Why choose Ninja Coffee Bar Single Serve CF112 over others?

In our other Ninja reviews, like for Ninja CP301 and CP307, we found Ninja to be a strong brand for coffee makers. Unlike other typical coffee machines, Ninja brings unparalleled innovation in their products, combining a variety of beverages in one machine.

Again, what I appreciate about this machine is that it comes with great multifunctionality, awesome features, ability to brew coffee in 5 styles of coffee in 4 different sizes. Whether I need a cup of coffee or a full travel mug, Ninja Coffee Bar can do it for me.

Unlike CP301 or CP307, this product does not come with a carafe, but is otherwise very similar.

Who is Ninja Coffee Bar Single Serve CF112 perfect for?

As I was testing the product for this CF112 review, I really wanted to understand who would most likely fall in love with this product.

Again, it appears that this product is gradually phased out. However, there are some advantages to this product:

✓ Flexible and customizable coffee brewing

✓ Ability to control the brewing process (e.g. strength, blooming time)

✓ Desiring a single serve cup, e.g. for a to-go cup of coffee

✓ Cold brew and brew over ice

✓ Ability to experiment with different coffee and tea drinks

✓ Families and individuals who value a strong brand and high quality

Who is Ninja Coffee Bar Single Serve CF112 NOT perfect for?

I would like to remain transparent in this CF112 review. As I noted earlier, this coffee bar seems to be gradually phased out in favor of other, newer and better coffee bars.

✗ Espresso lovers who want very deep and rich espresso flavor – this is not an espresso machine, and it will not yield espresso-like beverage

✗ A machine that allows a user to feel like a professional barista

✗ K-cup, coffee pod or coffee cup compatibility

✗ Quick brewing (but thus sacrificing quality of coffee)

✗ Plastic-free appliance

✗ Low budget

✗ Not easy to find in stores (online and brick and mortar) as the product appears to be phased out

CF112 Review and Evaluation 🕵️

→ Appearance

Ninja Coffee Bar System has a black and silver design that is easy to use and easy to incorporate in my kitchen arrangement. The filter, the control panel and the water tank can all be accessed from the front side of the machine. The control panel consists of a control dial for size selection, 5 buttons for coffee style selection, the Power button and the Clean button, as well as the Drip stop and Pre-heating indicators.

→ Features and technical specs

Voltage: Ninja Coffee Bar Single Serve is made for 120V, and can be used in Canada and the US only.

Basket size: Ninja Coffee Bar has a permanent metal filter. Paper filters can also be used.

Beverage size: Ninja Coffee Bar Single Serve can brew various cup sizes. Basically, I have 4 different beverage sizes that I can choose from:

• Cup about 12oz
• XL Cup about 14oz
• Travel about 16oz
• XL Multi-serve about 22oz

The manufacturer’s manual warns to use a container large enough for volume.

I have found these sizes to be fairly reliable.

However, depending on the style of coffee I chose, these custom sizes gave me different volumes. For instance, a Cup size provided 9.5 oz of coffee with the Classic option, and 8.7 oz of coffee with the Rich option. The Specialty brew yielded 4 oz of coffee, while the Cafe Forte brew yielded 8 oz of coffee (selecting a size is not necessary for these two brew options).

Weight: This Ninja Coffee Bar Single Serve weighs about 12 pounds. This is not the lightest machine, but I found it fairly easy to unpack and place on my counter. The machine comes with a lot of features, so the weight is understandable.

It might be best to place this machine on a counter and let it stand there.

Unit size: This machine is 16.3 inches tall, 12.2 inches wide and 11 inches deep. The machine is arguably very tall, but it fitted okay underneath my top cabinet.

Water reservoir: The water reservoir has a capacity of 43 ounces. It is removable and it has a flip top lid for even faster water filling. The fact that the water tank can be removed is both interesting and surprising, considering that this is a single serve coffee machine, and these machines usually have integrated water tanks.

Carafe: This Ninja Coffee Bar model does not come with a carafe. It does, however, come with a double wall XL Multi-serve tumbler with lid. The tumbler is great to take coffee on-the-go and can be filled by selecting the XL Multi-serve size option.

Additional perks: Unlike regular drip coffee makers, Ninja Coffee Bar Single Serve (CF112) comes with an unparalleled feature set. I was really impressed with what the machine could accomplish. The features made coffee and tea brewing easier, faster and more convenient.

Among some of the most important features, I feel like to highlight the following:

✓ Auto-IQ Intelligence feature allowed me to choose size strength and style of my beverage. Further, the machine technology to ensure a correct amount of water in each drink (in accordance with user’s settings). This machine knows what drink size and drink style I have chosen, and can adjust its functions accordingly.

✓ Advanced thermal extraction technology gave me the ability to extract the full flavor out of the coffee grounds, for a full bodied, rich and flavorful coffee experience.

✓ Ninja Coffee Bar came with a built-in frother able to froth both hot and cold milk. This frother cannot heat up the milk though. If I want to add hot froth to my coffee, the milk will have to be heated up separately, before frothing.

✓ Pre-infusion cycles with varying times allowed me to evenly saturate coffee grounds with water.

→ Performance

Brewing time: When compared with single serve coffee makers, Ninja Coffee Bar Single Serve was quite slow when it came to the brewing time. It took around 5 minutes to brew a drink in the Cup size.

Flavor: This coffee maker brought 5 different brew styles to the table.

• Classic (produces classic coffee or tea quality): a balanced flavor,
• Rich (coffee and tea that is a bit stronger than the classic): a bit stronger and more flavorful,
• Cafe Forte: strong, rich coffee that can be paired with frothed milk to make cappuccino or cafe latte
• Cold Brew (brews coffee and tea over ice at a temperature of 110 degrees Fahrenheit), and
• Specialty (brews half a cup of concentrated coffee or tea).

Temperature: As I was preparing this CF112 review, I also tested the Ninja Coffee Bar Single Serve for brewing temperature. In my multiple tests, the machine reached between 175-185 F degrees at brewing, which was lower than the desired perfect brewing temperature.

Noise levels: The noise levels were really low with Ninja Coffee Bar (and they have to be with a machine that takes quite long to brew a cup of coffee). The only times when the machine gets a bit louder is during the audible reminders (like the beeps letting me know that the brewing is finished).

Cleaning: Ninja recommends that this machine should be cleaned at least once a week. Cleaning could prove to be quite an arduous issue when it comes to this coffee maker. The frothing wand was difficult to clean. Also, descaling this machine took me quite a while as it involved several brew cycles (instructions can be found in the Care and Maintenance manual or on the back of the machine).

Customer-reported technical issues

Ninja Coffee Bar Single Serve came with a 1 year limited warranty, provided the machine is sold by an authorized retailer.

During my tests for a couple of months, I have not experienced any remarkable issues with the machine. It performed as expected from start to finish.

It appears that the vast majority of users are also happy with the machine and its functions. The negative reports are few and far in between. If there were any, they had to do with the following:

• The clean button indicator stops illuminating even after descaling has been performed
• Some users reported that the machine had died after several months of use
• Coffee lacked strength and was not hot enough

→ Health and safety

I was just a bit disappointed with Ninja’s CF112. Ninja officially claims that CF112 are BPA-free. However, the machine has a lot of plastic parts.

The BPA-free status is helpful to know, but it typically does not guarantee that there are no other potentially dangerous substitutes used in the production process.

Reports show that many manufacturers replace BPA with other types of plastic. These types include but are not limited to BHPF (fluorene-9-bisphenol), TPP (triphenyl phosphate), and bisphenol S (BPS). The exact health effects of the BPA substitutes, such as BHPF, TPP and BPS, are unknown at this point.

I was not able to find much detailed information on what kind of materials or chemicals are used, so I am not able to verify. I will be reaching out to Ninja so I can include it in the CF112 review.

→ Price to value: is CF112 worth the money?

Ninja Coffee Bar Single Serve is a nice coffee maker. However, it sells for about $$$$ on the official Shark Ninja website. This seems like a lot considering there are newer and updated Ninja Coffee Bars.

Should I buy Ninja Coffee Bar Single Serve (CF112)? Owly’s verdict! 🔨

This Ninja machine may not be as advanced as other coffee makers in its category, or as other Ninja coffee machines, for that matter, but it is a good entry-level coffee machine. It came packed with quite a lot of settings for different sizes and brew types, and it is easy to use.

However, as this product appears to be phased out and can rarely be found sold by major retailers like Amazon or Walmart, there could be other Ninja Coffee Bars that are worth considering.

What do you think about Ninja Coffee Bar Single Serve? What was your experience with CF112? Let us know your thoughts in the comments, under this CF112 review!