6 Best Coffee Grinders Reviewed to Make a Great Morning Cup

Even so, it’s frustrating that the Smart Grinder Pro uses presets, which doses out grounds based on the number of cups of coffee or shots of espresso you’re making. It makes it all the harder to toggle between various types of brews and kinds of roasts, since different roasts clock in at different weights. Fussier coffee drinkers can fiddle with the time increments or reprogram individual cup settings based on weights, but we’d suggest this machine primarily for someone who is sticking to the same daily routine and doesn’t have the time or energy to mess with scales. 

The Best Hand Grinder: Porlex Mini Hand Grinder

The Porlex Mini, the best manual coffee grinder we’ve tried, fits into the AeroPress coffee dripper, which makes taking it on camping trips a whole lot easier. Unlike other drippers, adjusting the grind on the Porlex is pretty easy, and the handle is relatively comfortable to use. The tight-fitting lid also prevents coffee from popcorning out of the grinder while you’re grinding, which is a nuisance that lesser-quality hand grinders suffer from. The Porlex is still a forearm workout to get enough beans to make a cup or two, but if you’re only doing it every once in a while, it does actually make you more appreciative of the coffee you drink.

If you’re looking for something that can handle grinding a large volume of coffee to espresso sizes, you’ll have to spend more money than $300. But if you only plan to make espresso drinks occasionally, the Virtuoso+ produces coffee that’s pretty consistent for anything from pour-overs (medium-fine) to cold brew (very coarse). Unlike its younger sibling, the Encore, you can use the Virtuoso’s built-in timer, adjustable to the 10th of a second, to dose your beans pretty accurately. Plus, you get to become a guy who knows about ideal grind times—though as we’ve mentioned, the best way to dose out your coffee is just to weigh it out. 

The one downside of the screen is that it makes the Virtuoso looks significantly dorkier than something like the blacked out Eureka Mignon. It’s also slightly clunkier in appearance than the streamlined Breville, and the Breville seems to produce more consistent grinds.

Bodum’s Bistro burr grinder is a great option if you want something squat that doesn’t look like a big hulking machine in your kitchen. It comes in a stately black (with cheeky red contrast buttons), and also in shades of red and tan if you prefer something poppier pulverizing your beans. We liked the consistency of the grinds (from choppier to finer grounds), but felt that there were less clunky and more precise ways to program that size range from other grinders than the method this one employs—shifting the ticker on the hopper for the beans over. It is very easy to take apart this thing to clean which is something worth noting, user-friendly for beginners, and it’s reasonably affordable, too. There’s even a version of the grinder with a plastic cup for catching grounds that’s much cheaper, but the glass is nicer if you’re looking to cut down on static cling.

The newish Fellow Ode, from the maker’s of Instagram’s favorite gooseneck kettle, is another of Markiewicz’s favorites. Like the Eureka Mignon, it combines super accurate flat burrs with a blacked-out, space-age design. But unlike the Eureka or the Baratza Encore, the Fellow Ode spews chaff all over the place. It’s also got a longer design that takes up to a lot of countertop space. And, thanks to its metal construction and static electricity, tons of grounds get stuck inside its removable hopper when you try to dump them out. The company says it’s working on these issues in a new version, which we’re excited to try. It should be said however: No coffee grinder will look cooler on your countertop.

The Capresso Infinity is cheaper than Oxo Conical Burr, and just as accurate, but the Oxo is a bit easier to use. This is mainly because the numbers on the Caspresso’s timer weirdly correspond to the number of cups of coffee you want to brew, rather than something segmented enough that could be useful.

The best espresso grinder is the Baratza Sette. It is extremely easy to set up and use, offers a lot of adjustability thanks to its step-less wheel (like the Eureka Mignon), and is built to be supremely sturdy. It has a pretty steep price tag, but it’s super versatile. If you’re interested in diving into the wild world of espresso, it’s the best place to start.

Again, a manual coffee grinder is not really a sustainable budget solution to your every day grinding needs. But if you want one that’s cheaper than the Porlex, the Hario Coffee Mill is a decent option with ceramic burrs. Its bulbous design and the fact that the grinder attaches to a hopper you can carry around is nifty, but it makes the Hario a lot less comfortable to use than the Porlex. The silicone lid doesn’t manage to prevent coffee beans from popping out in the middle of grinding, and the entire thing is sort of awkward to hold. Though for half the price of the Porlex, that’s probably an acceptable compromise for most people.

Cuisinart’s grinder is far from perfect, but at its price, it’s easy to forget its flaws. It has an 18-position grind selector, which doesn’t offer the greatest range of grind settings, but there is a timer, which some folks will be interested in. Coffee grounds don’t come out as uniform as more expensive models, but if you’re trying to make great coffee at a budget, this will tide you over until you’ve got the funds to upgrade to something better.