Leave a Review IKAWA Home
Love the idea but hate the money grab
I like my machine but my biggest problem is the lack of customization. For something I paid almost $1300 you think I could make a custom roast without paying for a subscription. Simple money grab and it’s my biggest disappointment. While I’ll still use my IKAWA home roaster I recommend alternatives to others who ask me for this simple reason.Show lessCasey721122
Want to be locked into their coffee or pay a monthly subscription?
I had the Ikawa Home Roaster pulled up and was ready to buy it. Thankfully I decided to check the app out before making such a big purchase. There are “recipes” for Ikawa’s coffees, so you’ll be fine as long as you buy from them. But this is the world’s most expensive razor blade handle for those razor blades, and even if their coffee is fairly priced and very good, I would never buy a roaster to be locked in to one store. How easy is it to roast your own coffee? Turns out that you need to pay a monthly subscription to have access. Looking for confirmation? Go to Ikawa’s “Creating your own roast recipes using Graph Editor” blog post. Right now is it at least $34 a month for that subscription, but with all subscriptions, they can raise that price and you have no option to go elsewhere. I went digging for how people are dealing with that. Some posts were from people who had sold their machine. It was great for Ikawa, but they couldn’t replicate great results for other beans using the existing profiles. Some posts were for people who would manually stop the roast a certain period of time after the first crack, removing the benefits of automation this roaster provides. I can’t support a roaster that I don’t own the hardware and software I need to use it, so I’m really glad I didn’t make the mistake of buying this one. I wish Ikawa was more upfront about the cost and need for the subscription. I’m glad I hesitated. This roaster could have been such a cool offering.Show lesspeteer01
Improved
I bought the Ikawa Pro way back from the SCAA in Seattle 2014(?). Enjoyed using it to have more repeatable sample roasts over my 2 barrel Probat. Fast forward 9 years and I’m no longer in the coffee industry but I still love coffee. So, i ended up buying the Ikawa Home Roaster Black Friday 2022. At the time, I didn’t realize that you couldn’t tweak the roasts the way I wanted to without paying the monthly fee. That’s really the only thing stopping me from giving it 5 stars. I’m not experiencing any of the problems other reviewers have had. And, i am paying for the subscription to customize roasts. Hope this review helpsShow lessHonor D
Fails in basic function
I just got my Ikawa Home roaster and scanned the code from one of the bean samples. The app connects to the roaster, but when I go to the bean that I just added to the app, I cannot send the recipe to the roaster. Pressing “send to roaster” crashes the app.
The crash is infinitely repeatable. I turned the roaster on and off, I deleted and reinstalled the app, and I tried re-adding the bean to the coffee list. The app just keeps crashing when you try to send the recipe t the roaster. It fails to accomplish its essential function.Show lessI already have a nickname
Required app extorts fees for roaster functionality you already paid for
The $1,300 roaster has all the hardware needed to precisely adjust the time, inlet air temp, and flow for roasting coffee. However, nothing can be adjusted on the roaster.
You have to use the app to make the adjustments, but the app charges a perpetual fee to provide the ajustments that are built into the $1,300 coffee roaster.
So, it is not a $1,300 coffee roaster. I've used my current roaster for more than 12 years. If the fees don't increase (a big "if") then the app requires a 50% additional cost over the purchase price of the roaster simply to use the roaster's full feature set.
Imagine buying a car where you had to pay a monthly fee to open the back doors! The argument that Ikawa would make is that most people use the front doors on a four door sedan the majority of the time, so they've allowed people who want to use the installed back doors on the car to pay them for the priviledge to use hardware that they already paid for.
The greed here is immense.Show lessLove the roaster, hate the app.
This app Hass to be the most difficult to use, terrible interface, nothing works properly app I’ve ever used. It’s bizarre that you can charge $1300 for great device to roast coffee and spend absolutely no time effort or resources to make the app work properly. I am within the 30 day window to return the roaster and I might have to do that because I am way too frustrated to keep using this application.Show lessJjff11
Garbage
Doesn’t workMfaheid
Just broke
This app works great as long as you don’t log in and use it. Once you do that, it will crash and you can only roast whatever was the last profile you used. The Bluetooth also takes forever to link to the app which is probably unrelated.
On a positive note, the machine itself works and have never had any issues so as long as you roast 1 type of bean for 1 profile it’s the best £1200 you could ever spend.Show lessDisappointed Ikawa Owner
App Doesn’t Work
I am unable to do my very first roast upon receiving the new IKAWA home because the roaster is defaulting to a coffee and roast level I do not desire. The first attempt to edit it to a Light roast kept re-triggering back to Medium. I deleted the app and re-installed it. I then was able to edit the existing Medium template to Light, but it will not save. The loading wheel continues for 10-15 minutes, and restarting the app has not solved the issue. Ready to return this because after being so excited to get this product, it is rendered useless by an app that cannot support the roaster. Perhaps the IKAWA Pro app is better, but from my understanding, it doesn’t not work with the IKAWA Home roaster. What a shame.Show lessjnani93
Not launching after updating ios
ios home app does not launch after ios updates. What is going on?App review 20184977
