Best Coffee Grinders

The Virtuoso+ is what the Encore becomes when the cost constraints loosen. The burrs step up to commercial-grade M2 conical steel, the top and base become metal, the motor gets quicker, and a 40-second digital timer adjustable in tenths of a second replaces the hold-a-button arrangement. A backlit grounds bin sounds like a gimmick and turns out to be one of those small daily conveniences you notice every morning.

In the cup the improvement is real and modest. Grind uniformity is better, which shows up as filter brews that taste slightly cleaner and vary slightly less between mornings, and the speed difference is obvious if you grind for several cups at a time. Neither is transformative, and anyone expecting the Encore-to-Virtuoso+ step to sound like the blade-to-burr step will be disappointed.

The honest framing is that this is a durability and convenience purchase more than a quality one. If you grind twice a day, every day, the better burrs and metal construction earn their keep over years. If you grind at weekends, the Encore does the same job for meaningfully less. One caution regardless: the timer measures seconds, not grams, and bean density changes as a bag ages, so a preset that delivered 20g in week one will not in week three. Keep using the scale.

OXO's grinder is the one to buy if you want the problem solved rather than studied. The burrs are stainless conical, the adjustment ring offers micro-steps between its main positions, and the operation is a single button that remembers how long you ran it last time. For drip, pour-over, French press and cold brew, the grind it produces is close enough to the Encore's that most people would not reliably tell them apart in a cup.

It is also better presented than its rivals. The body is stainless rather than plastic, the hopper blocks UV to slow staling, and the grounds container is designed to reduce the static cling that makes cheap grinders spray coffee across a counter. It looks like a $200 appliance and costs considerably less, which is a substantial part of why it sells.

The compromises are structural rather than cosmetic. The adjustment steps are coarser than the Baratzas', which is invisible for filter brewing and disqualifying for espresso — this grinder reaches fine settings without offering enough of them to dial a shot. Dosing is timed, so it drifts as beans age and change density. And the drive train uses plastic gearing rather than the serviceable arrangement Baratza builds around, with parts support to match: this is a grinder to replace rather than repair. Judged on the next five years it is the best value here; judged on the next fifteen, the Encore is.

The Smart Grinder Pro's argument is coverage. Sixty settings, grind time programmable in fifth-of-a-second increments, and direct grinding into a portafilter, a sealed container, a gold basket or a paper filter mean it slots into almost any routine without adapters or workarounds. Paired with a Breville espresso machine that lacks a grinder it makes a complete setup, and it will handle the French press on Sunday just as readily.

What it does well is clear the bar in both directions at once. Most grinders at this price cannot make real espresso; this one can, and it still grinds coarse enough for cold brew. For a household that brews across methods, not having to own two grinders is a genuine benefit that specification comparisons tend to miss.

The cost of that coverage is that no part of the range is finely resolved. Sixty settings sound generous until you notice they are spread from espresso to French press, which leaves the espresso region with a fraction of them — fewer usable steps than the Encore ESP provides at a lower price. Retention and static are noticeable and get worse with oily dark roasts, the burrs and motor are a step below the Baratzas, and dosing is timed rather than weighed. Buy it for range, not for excellence at any one thing.

The Infinity has been sold in essentially its current form for around twenty years, which in a category full of annually refreshed models is a recommendation in itself. What keeps it alive is that it puts solid steel conical burrs and a slow gear-reduced motor into a grinder priced against machines that use neither. Slow grinding means less heat and less noise, and it is among the quietest grinders you can buy at any price.

For drip, French press and cold brew it does the job properly. The four labelled ranges — extra fine through coarse — with sixteen positions between them make it easy to use without understanding anything about grinders, which suits its role as a first purchase or a second unit kept loaded with decaf.

The limits arrive quickly if you push it. Sixteen settings is few, and each step is correspondingly large, so fine-tuning a pour-over recipe means choosing between two adjacent settings rather than landing between them. It cannot dial espresso in any meaningful way. Static is a real nuisance — grounds cling to the plastic bin and escape onto the counter — and the housing looks and feels like what it costs. There is no timer and effectively no repair path. Within those limits it is the honest budget answer, and a clear step above every blade grinder ever made.