Review Insights · App Store
IKAWA Home
IKAWA ltd. · 39 ratings · ★ 1.8
1.8
★★★★★
39 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 17 negative reviews
Recurring phrases mined from 1-2★ reviews. The bigger the percentage, the more users have the same problem. Fix the top 2-3 in your version and you have product-market fit on day one.
1
"roast"
10 negative reviews mention this · 59% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Good Machine, Terrible App. I love the machine itself. Beautiful design and great functionality. The app on the other hand is infuriating. The app does not save roast profiles consistently, even for IKAWA’s own beans. It is difficult to create profiles for beans that …" - WittyCafe
2
"machine"
9 negative reviews mention this · 53% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Good Machine, Terrible App. I love the machine itself. Beautiful design and great functionality. The app on the other hand is infuriating. The app does not save roast profiles consistently, even for IKAWA’s own beans. It is difficult to create profiles for beans that …" - WittyCafe
3
"ikawa"
8 negative reviews mention this · 47% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Good Machine, Terrible App. I love the machine itself. Beautiful design and great functionality. The app on the other hand is infuriating. The app does not save roast profiles consistently, even for IKAWA’s own beans. It is difficult to create profiles for beans that …" - WittyCafe
4
"roaster"
8 negative reviews mention this · 47% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Good Machine, Terrible App. I love the machine itself. Beautiful design and great functionality. The app on the other hand is infuriating. The app does not save roast profiles consistently, even for IKAWA’s own beans. It is difficult to create profiles for beans that …" - WittyCafe
5
"coffee"
7 negative reviews mention this · 41% of all complaints
★★★★★ "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 i…" - peteer01
6
"home"
6 negative reviews mention this · 35% of all complaints
★★★★★ "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’…" - Casey721122
7
"love"
5 negative reviews mention this · 29% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Good Machine, Terrible App. I love the machine itself. Beautiful design and great functionality. The app on the other hand is infuriating. The app does not save roast profiles consistently, even for IKAWA’s own beans. It is difficult to create profiles for beans that …" - WittyCafe
8
"month"
5 negative reviews mention this · 29% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Good Machine, Terrible App. I love the machine itself. Beautiful design and great functionality. The app on the other hand is infuriating. The app does not save roast profiles consistently, even for IKAWA’s own beans. It is difficult to create profiles for beans that …" - WittyCafe
9
"works"
4 negative reviews mention this · 24% of all complaints
★★★★★ "App mostly works, but not well, $5.99 to edit recipes?. I love the IKAWA hardware but the app is pretty mediocre. So so UX, no real grouping sorting or other ways to organize. But charging $6 a month just to be able to get more fine tune control on my roasting for a $1300 machine is just, frankl…" - Garat
10
"recipes"
4 negative reviews mention this · 24% of all complaints
★★★★★ "App mostly works, but not well, $5.99 to edit recipes?. I love the IKAWA hardware but the app is pretty mediocre. So so UX, no real grouping sorting or other ways to organize. But charging $6 a month just to be able to get more fine tune control on my roasting for a $1300 machine is just, frankl…" - Garat
11
"able"
4 negative reviews mention this · 24% of all complaints
★★★★★ "App mostly works, but not well, $5.99 to edit recipes?. I love the IKAWA hardware but the app is pretty mediocre. So so UX, no real grouping sorting or other ways to organize. But charging $6 a month just to be able to get more fine tune control on my roasting for a $1300 machine is just, frankl…" - Garat
12
"1300"
4 negative reviews mention this · 24% of all complaints
★★★★★ "App mostly works, but not well, $5.99 to edit recipes?. I love the IKAWA hardware but the app is pretty mediocre. So so UX, no real grouping sorting or other ways to organize. But charging $6 a month just to be able to get more fine tune control on my roasting for a $1300 machine is just, frankl…" - Garat
📋 All 17 negative reviews
Every 1-2★ review we fetched. Use the copy button to grab them all for your own analysis (paste into ChatGPT/Claude with a prompt like "summarize core user problems, group by theme, ignore bugs, focus on missing features").
Good Machine, Terrible App
I love the machine itself. Beautiful design and great functionality. The app on the other hand is infuriating. The app does not save roast profiles consistently, even for IKAWA’s own beans. It is difficult to create profiles for beans that are not from IKAWA, and the information input allowed is insufficient. The ability to track roasts was a large consideration in purchasing this roaster, and honestly, after 4 months of using the machine and app, I am very disappointed and frustrated. I contacted IKAWA about the roast profiles not being tracked months ago and was told it was a known issue, but nothing has changed.
I can’t even sign in
Just bought my roaster and I can’t even sign into this app. Now I’m reading reviews and dining out my $1300 roaster is a popcorn popper if I don’t pay for a monthly subscription that lets me use it. hahahhahahhahahjajahhahahha Ready to get your roaster back IKAWA?
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.
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.
Love 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.
Garbage
Doesn’t work
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.
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.
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.
Not launching after updating ios
ios home app does not launch after ios updates. What is going on?
New update
I can’t add IKAWA coffee recipe and my own coffee recipe
Bait and switch, untrustworthy, poor business practice, buggy software
So you wanted an Ikawa roaster, well they have changed their business model for hobby users. If you want to build your own roast profile like you’ve been able to go since the roaster was first released, you will now have to pay $33 per month. Talk about bait and switch. I suspect they are trying to deter professionals from using the home version which is a quarter of the cost of the pro roaster, by crippling the software. In addition, the software is extremely buggy. There is no response from their developers. The in app reporting system dumps the logs into the ether, you find even get a confirmation email, and no one responds. Except for the sales department, they are happy to take your call. I wanted to like this company, their tag line is “here for you”, should be more like “here for your money”. Be critical with who you choose to do business with, it matters.
Update: 5/12/2022 it took Ikawa 6 months to fix the temperature for each node not displaying because it was cut off of the left side. I like how they call this an “improvement” in the update log.
Update: 5/12/2022 it took Ikawa 6 months to fix the temperature for each node not displaying because it was cut off of the left side. I like how they call this an “improvement” in the update log.
Great machine, terrible app experience
I’ve had this machine for almost half a year now and while it’s been amazing for roasting at home, the app is downright terrible. It crashes every time I go into my recipes, unless I create a new one. It doesn’t detect my machine like 90% of the time causing me to have to restart the machine or reconnect my bluetooth over and over again. I filed multiple bug reports within the app and no-one has ever gotten back to me. This is a $1000 machine, y’all really need to do better.
Machine Good, App Bad
What a horrible experience this is. Almost nothing works. My roasts don’t get saved, there’s essentially no reason to add a coffee to my list. It doesn’t -do- anything.
DO NOT PAY $34 for the graph editor!! It’s useless. Recipes are almost non-existent. I wanted to love this product so much, all I can say is the app is TRULY a ripoff but the machine is nice.
DO NOT PAY $34 for the graph editor!! It’s useless. Recipes are almost non-existent. I wanted to love this product so much, all I can say is the app is TRULY a ripoff but the machine is nice.
App mostly works, but not well, $5.99 to edit recipes?
I love the IKAWA hardware but the app is pretty mediocre. So so UX, no real grouping sorting or other ways to organize. But charging $6 a month just to be able to get more fine tune control on my roasting for a $1300 machine is just, frankly, greed. The app is not nearly good enough to warrant spending money on it. Making my purchase of the machine pretty questionable. Since the app is literally the only way to roast with it.
Buggier than a tropical rainforest
This app is good when it decides it wants to work. But that’s rare. Paying the high price of this machine and not even being able to roast coffee creates an awful experience. Each time I purchase a new bag, the app will not let me send the new roast to the machine. It takes an hour or two of reinstalling the app, turning the machine back on and off.. it’s a nightmare. Extremely buggy and has difficulty performing a simple function, sending a coffee roast to the machine! I’m ready to return my machine.
$34 to edit your own recipe or keep buying beans from them.
First of all, this unit is not cheap, it’s over $1000, however, for the money, it’s very well built, well engineered and has great esthetics.
After committing to buying the roaster, you scan the QR code on beans they provide you, and you roast away, it’s easy, simple, and quick. But then you decide you want to roast differently, or you may want to roast your own beans, well, that’s going to cost you $34 a month, that’s an extra $408 a year just on having the ability to use one function of their app and edit your own roast. Don’t like it? Keep buying their beans and keep scanning those QR codes.
If you want to learn to scan a QR code and press a button, and you don’t want to learn to roast at all, this is the roaster for you. It’s basically the equivalent of a Nespresso machine to brewing coffee, but if you want to use this machine to it’s maximum potential, be prepared for the additional costs.
After committing to buying the roaster, you scan the QR code on beans they provide you, and you roast away, it’s easy, simple, and quick. But then you decide you want to roast differently, or you may want to roast your own beans, well, that’s going to cost you $34 a month, that’s an extra $408 a year just on having the ability to use one function of their app and edit your own roast. Don’t like it? Keep buying their beans and keep scanning those QR codes.
If you want to learn to scan a QR code and press a button, and you don’t want to learn to roast at all, this is the roaster for you. It’s basically the equivalent of a Nespresso machine to brewing coffee, but if you want to use this machine to it’s maximum potential, be prepared for the additional costs.
Too expensive for graph editor.
It cost $ 34 a month to use the graph editor, too expensive!!! Not very happy about that.
Sentiment summary
13%
Positive (4-5★)
8%
Neutral (3★)
79%
Negative (1-2★)