The research

Why you should trust us

Writer Ciara Murray Jordan covers coffee gear for Wirecutter’s Kitchen team. After pulling dozens of shots while testing espresso machines, she’s become extremely attuned to how coffee grounds affect extraction and flavor.

For this guide:

• We conducted months of research and testing over the years, starting in 2015.
• We spoke to a range of experts, including William Ristenpart, director of the UC Davis Coffee Center; the people who run Counter Culture Coffee’s New York City training center; and a product manager who evaluates grinders for Prima Coffee Equipment.
• We brought the coffee grinder finalists to the Academy at Coffee Project NY, where founder Kaleena Teoh dialed in a pour-over with each one.
• Like all Wirecutter journalists, we review and test products with complete editorial independence. We’re never made aware of any business implications of our editorial recommendations. Read more about our editorial standards.
• In accordance with Wirecutter standards, we return or donate all products we’ve tested once our assessment of them is complete, which may involve longer-term testing by us and our colleagues. We never hang onto “freebies” once testing is done.

Who this is for

If you’re looking to make better coffee at home, the first step is to get a good burr grinder.

When you grind coffee beans, coffee expert Scott Rao told us, “There are going to be dusty little particles we call ‘fines,’ and there are going to be some larger particles we call ‘boulders,’ and a whole bunch of particles in the middle that are going to be the size you want.”

Rao explained that fines will brew too quickly, giving you the bitter, astringent, tannic flavors of over-extracted coffee. Boulders brew too slowly, giving you the weak, or even sour, flavors of under-extracted coffee. Too many of either will yield muddy cups of coffee with unpleasant sour or bitter notes — or both.

If you switch to a quality burr grinder — especially from a budget, blade-style grinder, which cuts coffee randomly, leaving you with a mix of chunks and fines­­ — you’ll notice a difference in the complexity of flavor, sweetness, acidity, and even the body of your coffee.

If you’re curious about the difference a burr grinder might provide, you could try getting your coffee ground-to-order from a quality café, which many experts recommend. If you like the results, getting your own grinder will allow you to grind beans more precisely to your liking, and to suit a range of brewing methods.

We mainly recommend grinders that work well for brewing methods like drip, pour-over, Aeropress, and French press. A few of our picks can grind fine enough for espresso, but if you want more nuance or control, you’ll want a dedicated espresso grinder.

For most households, an electric grinder is the most practical choice. Manual grinders (which you crank by hand) are great for travel, if you don’t have electricity, if you need to be extra quiet in the morning, or if you have a small kitchen. But they require more time and physical effort, and they can usually grind only about 18 to 35 grams at a time.

How we picked and tested


A burr grinder grinds coffee much more evenly than a blade grinder. Michael Hession/NYT Wirecutter

The consistency and quality of the grind is the most important thing to look for in a coffee grinder, which is why we tested only burr grinders. But it’s not the only one. Here’s what else we looked for:

Burr sets: The quality of a grinder’s burr set is the core of the grinder, affecting everything from the consistency of the grind to the longevity of the grinder.

Burr sets consist of a top and bottom piece, which work a little like teeth and can be made of steel, ceramic, or plastic (we prefer steel burrs, as they perform better). They come in a variety of styles and sizes — the wider the burr, the faster it will grind.

Burrs are either flat or conical: Flat burrs consist of two flat, ring-shaped pieces, whereas conical burrs are more of a V shape, with the center burr fitting into the outer one. Both types are lined with sharp-edged grooves that cut the beans as the two burrs press together.

Conical burrs usually produce more fines, which contribute to a roastier and rounder coffee profile, and flat burrs usually produce more particles in your target range, which allows for more clarity of flavor. But many other factors are at play in influencing the flavor profile of your final cup, so we’re wary of generalizing. We tested both flat and conical burrs for this guide.

We recommend avoiding disc burrs (also called block burrs), cheaply-made versions of flat burrs that lack the sharp grooves that real flat burrs have. These burrs chew beans rather than cutting them, resulting in inconsistent grounds.

**Grind settings: **Most electric burr grinders have a range of numerical size selections — from very fine for espresso to very coarse for cold brew or French press coffee. Few grinders do this entire range well, though some of our picks are capable. But if you’re looking for a dedicated espresso grinder, our espresso-specific recommendations will suit you better.

There are two types of grind adjustments: stepped and stepless. Stepped grinders have preset numbers on a dial. With a stepless grinder, you can also select any point in between those settings, which means you can tinker endlessly with the size of your grinds. This is great for obsessive coffee drinkers, but casual coffee drinkers may prefer the clear markings and repeatability of stepped grinders. We include options for both in this guide.

Most grinders include starter guides to grind size, but their recommendations may not match up with your preferences. Be sure to experiment to find the setting that suits your taste.

**Repairs and maintenance: **With proper maintenance, a good grinder should last you many years. To maintain your grinder, it’s essential to be able to easily clean inside the burr chamber, especially with oilier, darker-roast, or flavored coffees.

We looked for machines that had easily removable parts — particularly around the burr set — to allow for regular cleaning and, if necessary, replacement.

We favored grinders with accessible, transparent customer service in the United States. Being able to replace all kinds of parts is also a plus.

Dosage measurements: Some grinders come with features that grind the same amount of coffee — known as the dose — each time, so you don’t have to measure the beans before or after you grind them. (This means you could store your beans in the grinder’s hopper, though most experts don’t recommend it, as they’re more exposed to light and air.)

Machines without these features require you to measure the beans yourself. Although it’s nice not to have to take that extra step, it’s also not a huge inconvenience to do so. Plus, beans are not all the same shape, size, or density, so it’s more precise to weigh them.

Messiness: Every electric burr grinder will create some static or mess, and that’s normal. This can vary depending on the humidity, the type and age of the coffee you’re grinding, the grind setting, the burr type (flat burrs are messier), and even what kind of surface your grinder sits on. We noted any grinders that were excessively messy.

Retention: Most machines retain some grounds after your beans have run through, an issue known as grind retention. Trapped grounds will then be pushed out in the next batch, adding some potentially stale or different-grind-size coffee to your fresh grounds.

The best way to counteract this is to purge your grinder by running a small amount of beans through at your desired grind size, then discarding those before grinding the rest. But a grinder with low retention could help you avoid this step.

Hand grinders: The top-ranked manual grinders are more expensive than even our upgrade electric pick. But there are plenty of excellent options on the lower end. We set out to recommend a good-quality manual grinder that costs less than our top pick, is small enough to carry in a bag, and is comfortable and good enough to use every day.

How we tested

A good coffee grinder should produce a delicious cup of coffee without disturbing your morning flow. With the home kitchen in mind, this is how we evaluated each grinder:

**Grind-size range: **We ground coffee on the finest setting, a medium setting, and the coarsest setting to get a sense of each grinder’s range. We closely measured each set of grounds with the help of the Kruve Brewler.

Consistency and uniformity: For proper extraction, coffee grounds need to be a uniform shape and size. Some variation in size is inevitable, but the majority of the grounds should be a similar size.

We visually analyzed the grounds from each machine on a range of settings. We then used an application developed by astrophysicist and coffee expert Jonathan Gagné to measure the grind-size distribution. We also used a Kruve sifter for further analysis of some grinders.

Noise: Electric grinders are noisy — there’s no getting around it. But some are worse than others. We used the NIOSH Sound Level Meter app to track the decibel output of each grinder. We also listened closely for any high-pitched or uncomfortable sounds.

Time: We timed how long each grinder took to grind 20 grams of beans for fine, medium, and coarse grinds. For grinders with built-in timers, we timed whether those were accurate.

**Retention: **We weighed our coffee before and after grinding to see how much each grinder retained. We then tapped each machine to see how much we could recover. We repeated this step for every grind-size setting we tested.

**Brewing: **We brewed coffee ground with each of our finalist machines using a Technivorm Moccamaster KBT, one of our picks for best drip coffee maker, and tasted the results.

For grinders that claimed they were also capable of an espresso-grind size, we used the Gaggia Classic Evo Pro to dial in a shot of espresso.

We then brought our finalists to Coffee Project NY, where founder Kaleena Teoh used an Origami dripper to dial in a pour-over with each grinder. She then used a refractometer to measure the TDS (total dissolved solids) of each brew, which provides a precise measurement for how much of the coffee grounds are dissolved in the water. This tells us how successful the extraction of the coffee was, reflecting the consistency of the grind.

Top pick: Baratza Encore


Michael Murtaugh/NYT Wirecutter

Top pick

Year after year, the Baratza Encore continues to prove itself as a solid, quality home grinder. It’s the most affordable grinder that Baratza sells, but it’s also a workhorse that will serve you for a long while.

**It grinds evenly and quickly. **Of the grinders we tested, the Encore had one of the highest quantities of particles in the target range, allowing for a clearer-tasting cup. It did produce a few larger chunks, but not enough to affect a brew.

When the Encore was on a medium setting, it took us about 35 to 40 seconds to grind 68 grams of medium-grind coffee (enough to brew a full pot), on a par with other grinders we tested.

The Encore’s retention is quite low, too, at around half a gram or less. As we continued grinding with the Encore, its retention dropped further.

**It’s not too loud. **The Encore fell in the medium range for noise, but its sound was more tolerable, as opposed to the high whine some others had.

Running empty, the Encore is about 5 decibels quieter than our OXO budget pick, and it’s barely over a decibel louder than the OXO while processing beans.

You can adjust the grind settings on the Encore by twisting the hopper. Michael Murtaugh/NYT Wirecutter

**It’s simple. **The Encore doesn’t have the bells and whistles of a lot of other machines — it only has a push-down pulse button and an on/off switch. And to adjust grind size from 0 to 40 (40 being coarsest), you simply turn the hopper to the preferred tick mark on the base. We found this simplicity makes it supremely easy to produce a great cup of coffee.

It has a broad grind range for its price. It’s broader than many entry-level machines (like the Capresso Infinity), and it’s more than sufficient for the average home coffee drinker and even the budding enthusiast.

The jumps between grind sizes means there’s not as much room for fine-tuning flavors as you’ll find on our upgrade pick, the Baratza Encore ESP Pro, but you’ll still be able to use it for several different brewing methods.


A look inside the conical burrs of the Encore. Michael Murtaugh/NYT Wirecutter

**The company is reliable, and its machines are repairable. **Baratza has a great reputation for durability and customer service. Almost every part of the Baratza grinder is repairable or replaceable, which is rare among grinders designed for home use, and the company has detailed video guides for many fixes.

The Encore — like all Baratza grinders — is covered by a limited one-year warranty, provided that you keep up regular maintenance and cleaning. To clean or repair the machine, just twist off the hopper and remove the top burr.

If your machine does break after the warranty’s up, you can still send it to the company for repairs, which amounts to cleaning, recalibration, testing, and replacing all worn or broken parts except for burrs (you can request a new burr for an extra cost).

To request a repair, you have to fill out a customer support form. Baratza will send you a shipping label and give you a quote once they’ve assessed your machine. According to Baratza, repairs typically take three to five business days.

You can upgrade the Encore with accessories. Baratza sells a single-dose hopper that lets you use the lid to measure out beans with a scale, hopper extenders to hold more beans, and even a slightly better burr set.

How the Baratza Encore has held up


“I bought it in early 2020 and it’s worked perfectly since then. My only complaint is that I wish I knew of a better system for cleaning the grounds out of every nook and cranny. It’s a downside to an otherwise excellent appliance.” — Sarah Witman, Wirecutter senior staff writer, tested from 2020 to 2025. Sarah Witman/NYT Wirecutter

Writer Lesley Stockton has had her Encore for over 10 years and uses it to brew both espresso and drip coffee. She had to replace the plastic holder on the upper burr but says it was a “relatively cheap and easy” fix.

Writer James Austin has had his Encore for about eight years, and even though he didn’t clean it for more than a year (which we don’t recommend!), he said it still works well.

Flaws but not dealbreakers


A small amount of grinder mess. Michael Hession/NYT Wirecutter

**It doesn’t measure your beans. **The Encore doesn’t allow for a timed grind like the Baratza Encore ESP Pro. This means you have to measure the beans yourself. But considering that many of us do that when we make coffee anyway, we don’t consider this to be a big deal. (If a timed grind is a must-have for you, both our budget pick and upgrade pick have integrated timers.)

**Fine grinds take a while. **Like many machines, the Encore takes a longer time to grind on a very fine, espresso-like setting. But we don’t recommend this machine for serious espresso makers, because its range just isn’t nuanced enough to allow you to really refine a shot.

If you want a multi-purpose machine that is better suited for espresso, we’d recommend the Baratza Encore ESP Pro, which has a wide range of settings for fine grinding.

**Removing beans from the hopper is a hassle. **The hopper has no closure at the bottom. So to remove beans, you’ll have to invert the entire grinder to empty it out, or just grind through what’s left. If you don’t store beans in the hopper or if you always use the same kind of beans, this isn’t a big deal.

**It’s a bit messy. **Both the Encore and the ESP Pro (our upgrade pick) throw off more chaff and stray grounds than our budget pick. Some people suggest gently slapping the hopper’s lid before you remove the bin, or placing the machine on a tray. But no method of making coffee is completely mess-free, so this isn’t a dealbreaker.

Upgrade pick: Baratza Encore ESP Pro


Michael Murtaugh/NYT Wirecutter

Upgrade pick

The Baratza Encore ESP Pro is Baratza’s latest riff on our long-standing pick, the Baratza Encore. The ESP Pro is twice the price of the Encore, but it’s a significant upgrade.

It has a stepless grind adjustment. This the Encore ESP Pro’s standout feature: Instead of clicking to preset grind sizes, it has a dial that slides smoothly between grind sizes and allows for near-infinite adjustments (the ESP Pro’s digital display will show the closest half-step).


The grind-size adjustment is stepless, allowing for more control over grind size. Michael Murtaugh/NYT Wirecutter

It has an auto shutoff function. There are two grinding modes on the ESP Pro: single-dose mode and timer mode. You can toggle between these by pressing on the dial for three seconds.

The single-dose mode will grind through all the beans in the grinder until it can’t sense any more, after which it will stop grinding. This means you can throw in however many grams of coffee you’d like, turn it on, and walk away, without worrying about leaving an empty grinder running.

But you’ll likely still want to weigh your grounds if you’re single-dosing. We found the ESP Pro retained only a small amount of coffee, usually under half a gram. Some tapping of the sides or the lid will help push out most of the grounds. Though the difference was slight, the ESP Pro had lower retention than the Encore from the get-go, which is a feat considering how fine it can grind.

The timer is accurate. If you like to keep your hopper full, the timer setting allows you to grind close to the same amount of coffee repeatedly (assuming you stick to the same grind size). We found the timer to be accurate to a tenth of a second.

The timer is easy to set with the dial, which increases or decreases the time by one-tenths of a second. This is an improvement over the Virtuoso+, which jumped around if you turned it too fast and would increase by a whole second and decrease by one-tenths of a second.


Michael Murtaugh/NYT Wirecutter

**The bright LED screen is easy to read. **It displays the grind size as you adjust it and shows symbols for whichever mode you’re on (timer or single-dose). It’s pretty intuitive to adjust your settings. When inactive, the screen turns off, so it won’t illuminate your kitchen all day.

**The hopper closes at the bottom. **One of our gripes with the Baratza Encore is that the hopper doesn’t close at the bottom, so you can’t easily remove it while it’s full of beans. This is not an issue on the ESP Pro, as the mechanism that unlocks the hopper from the grinder collar also closes the bottom of the hopper.

It includes a wide range of espresso-grind sizes. With 40 grind sizes for espresso and a half-step in between each, the Encore ESP Pro offers 80 settings for espresso. While in the espresso range (the LED screen will indicate “ESP”), each adjustment moves the burrs by only 2.2 microns, which is quite precise.

It can still grind coarser for filter coffee, and it made one of our favorite cups of pour-over.

Like all Baratza grinders, the Encore ESP Pro is covered by a limited one-year warranty, and, with the help of Baratza’s standout customer service and replacement parts, should last you a long while.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

It’s a little messy. Despite the addition of an ionizer, which reduces the static electricity behind grinder mess and retention, the ESP Pro is still a somewhat messy grinder.

The grounds bin keeps all the grounds contained, but it’s fitted tightly to the grinder, creating a slight vacuum. Pulling it out sends chaff into the air.

When you use the included dosing cup, some fines will land on your counter. It’s not much, and any frequent espresso drinker is well-acquainted with brushing fines off the counter, but it isn’t an entirely contained process.

Budget pick: OXO Brew Conical Burr Coffee Grinder


Michael Murtaugh/NYT Wirecutter

Budget pick

For those willing to trade a little consistency and longevity for convenience — or those who simply don’t want to spend much more than $100 — we recommend the OXO Brew Conical Burr Coffee Grinder.

Though it doesn’t grind as well as our top or upgrade pick, it’s a capable grinder with good grind quality and a simple, intuitive design.

**It’s faster and quieter, but shrill. **The OXO is slightly faster (grinding 10 grams more than the Encore in 15 seconds) and a bit quieter than the Baratza machines when grinding through beans — though the motor sounds higher and whinier.

It grinded consistently at medium settings. But the OXO was less consistent at the high and low end of its range. And on the whole, it produces more fines than our other picks, so coffee brewed with its grounds leans toward more traditional, roasty coffee flavors.

The range of grinds, from coarsest (top) to finest (bottom) produced by the Baratza Encore (left), OXO Brew (center), and Capresso Infinity (our former budget pick, right). Sarah Kobos/NYT Wirecutter

**It’s straightforward. **The markers on this machine are easy to use — the timer times (more or less) in actual seconds marked, and the grind-setting markers offer a wide span of easy-to-read increments, making adjustments uncomplicated.

**It’s less messy than other grinders. **The OXO Brew’s canister sits snugly below the exit chute, neatly catching all of the grounds, and the shape makes it easy to pour fresh-ground coffee into your filter.

You can remove the OXO’s hopper with most of the beans still inside (just a handful remain around the burrs). Sarah Kobos/NYT Wirecutter

The steel grounds container touches a grounded steel tab, supposedly reducing static buildup. This didn’t completely eliminate static or mess, but the OXO was noticeably tidier than the Baratza Encore.

The OXO comes with a timer that’s easy to use, and it has a wide range of clearly marked grind settings. Michael Murtaugh/NYT Wirecutter

The OXO grinder comes with a two-year warranty, during which time OXO will repair or replace your machine. OXO sells a replacement top burr but no other parts.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

It’s still expensive. We realize that for a budget grinder, the OXO still isn’t all that cheap. It doesn’t offer an enormous cost savings over the Baratza Encore, which outperformed it. But if you’re looking for a balance among convenience, quality, and price, this is your best bet.

**It can occasionally clog. **This machine can gunk up if you grind dark and oily roasted beans, especially if you don’t regularly clean the burrs or its chute. This isn’t unexpected — the OXO retains about 1 gram on average (which is half a gram more than we saw from the Baratza machines), though we could get at least half of that out with some shaking.

In 2022, a representative from OXO told us that they revamped the chute to try and mitigate the clogging issue. We ran several pounds of dark-roast, oily beans through the newest iteration of the grinder in peak August heat and humidity, and we didn’t experience any clogging.

Most experts recommend fully cleaning your grinder every two weeks if you grind oily beans. Oilier roasts can stick in the hopper and may require a push to get them started. This issue tends to be even worse with cheaper machines, which have less powerful motors and burr sets.

How the OXO has held up


“It’s so practical to have it just sitting on the counter already filled with beans as opposed to scooping it out each morning. You can skip the step of measuring your coffee and all that entails — the timer does that for you once you figure it out.” — Polina Grinbaum, Wirecutter senior engineering manager, testing from 2020 to 2025. Polina Grinbaum/NYT Wirecutter

Senior engineering manager Polina Grinbaum has been using the OXO grinder every day since 2020. She had one clogging issue, which she resolved by taking out the burr and cleaning the machine. The numbers on the dial have since worn down, but she fixed them with a paint pen.

Alejandra Matos, a Wirecutter contributor, also had issues with clogging after using darker-roasted, oily beans, despite regular cleanings. Since her grinder was within its two-year warranty, OXO sent her a new machine, and she switched to a lighter roast.

Best for manual use: Timemore Chestnut C5 Pro Manual Hand Grinder

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