In my never ending quest for a good deal, I wandered by my friendly neighborhood Loblaws (a large grocery chain in my neck of the woods). Along with foodstuffs, they are starting to sell VERY stylish small appliances and other household items for very low prices under the PC (President's Choice) brand.
For instance, I bought a beautiful chrome toaster with bagel sized slots and even a defrost setting for $12. It works great and is on par with a toaster 10x as much. So, needless to say, I was quite excited to see a burr grinder for $29. Well, let's just say that my enthusiasm was a bit misplaced.
The grinder looks good, has nice burrs, but the plastic bits aren't up to snuff. The top hopper area attaches to the metal base with a few plastic prongs. Either while using the hopper to twist the grind settings (like I do on my Gaggia MDF) or just normal regular grinding, the plastic prongs snapped off...and probably got ground into smithereens.
Other than that, the coffee comes out of the chute and sprays coffee all over the counter unless the rubber seal is perfectly seated into the receptacle. I don't know about you, but when I need a cup of coffee in the morning, I'm not exactly in a mood to be messing with aligning plastic bits with rubber bits yada yada.
The coffee that comes out is very nicely ground though, and not simply pulverized as in a whirlyblade grinder. This makes a big difference in the level of silt you get in a cup from using a french press.
I'm thinking of modifying the grinder to accept a glass hopper that is permanently affixed along with a longer chute into a metal coffee catcher. For now, my wife is using it but it is slowly driving me nuts.
Overall, I wouldn't buy the grinder again. Looks great, has great features at a great price....but the performance and durability just isn't there. $29 isn't a bargain in this case, it is money misspent... :-(
