Everything is inside beans. Nothing will improve the taste of your morning coffee like grinding your beans just before brewing. It doesn’t matter if you have a sleek, liquid-cooled, quantum, AI-powered coffee maker or 30 dollars Mr. Coffee— switching to whole beans will transform your coffee experience. You’ll find tips on finding good whole beans at the end of this article (you can check out our guide to the best coffee subscriptions ). Once you have your beans, it’s time to grind them fresh every day. These are the best coffee grinders we’ve tested.
April 2024 Update: Added Eureka Mignon Filtro, Fellow Tally Pro scale, Honorable Mentions section, and Avoid section.
What is a cone, flat or blade grinder?
Photo: Iryna Veklich/Getty Images
Our list consists mainly of conical grinders. In a conical grinder, coffee beans are crushed and ground between two burr rings. They provide finer and much more even grinding than a classic blade grinder, even the nicest one.
Flat burr grinders they are similar but usually more high-priced. In these grinders, the burrs are stacked on top of each other and the beans pass through them during grinding. The grinder’s action pushes the grounds out of one end rather than relying on gravity like in a conical grinder, and the beans spend more time in contact with the burrs. This produces a more even grind, but for home brewers, conical grinders are just as good – even if they require more maintenance and don’t produce uniform, micron-sized grounds.
Blade grinders they have a cutting blade that rotates like a food processor. But the blades don’t produce uniform results. Some of the coffee will be finely ground at the bottom, and there will be pieces at the top that are too gigantic to even make coffee in a French press. The result is an inconsistent, unpredictable brew. These grinders are budget-friendly and yes, using fresh beans in a blade grinder is much better than buying ground coffee. (You can learn how to shake the beans to get an even grind. Watch World Barista Champion James Hoffmann’s video to learn more blade grinder hacks.)
If you can afford it, we highly recommend purchasing one of the burr grinders we have listed. There’s a reason why they cost a little more than a budget burr grinder. The mechanisms of a high-quality burr grinder are a bit more complicated and are built to withstand greater wear and tear. In budget-friendly burr grinders, the burrs tend to become numb with regular employ, and weaker motors can burn out within a few months.
Announcement: Do not put ground coffee into a burr grinder. Logically, it makes sense. It’s too chunky, so you’ll run it through again, right? NO! With a burr grinder, the pre-ground coffee will get stuck in the burrs and you will need to disassemble them to re-adjust them.
