Breville - Smart Grinder Pro

Do you find it's as hard to adjust as he mentions here? I'm wondering if that's actually a bonus, as I seem to have seen some people saying that the DF64 G2 can 'drift' from the vibration of the motor. I'm currently on a Sage/Breville Smart Grinder Pro, and wondering about upgrading. Mostly drink milk drinks. Trying to decide if I should just get the DF54, or if it's worth it to go to the DF64 G2 and hope to never upgrade my grinder again.

The Breville Smart Grinder Pro is easy to dissamble and clean. We use them at work for pour over only, but they can be capable for espresso too. They are in the 300 - 350USD range

Far too many people here let perfect be the enemy of good. It's a good grinder.

I bought the same grinder on Craigslist for $110 and I've been happy with it. I'm no connoisseur and use a pressurized basket, so probably not a true test of the grinder, but it's been enough for me.

I got a new one of these for $75 and it felt like a steal for that little. You'll enjoy it.

I have had a SGP for over a year and am really happy with it - I did move the internal grinder setting to 4 and it lets me make a really good espresso.

After 3 months, how are you liking it? $60 is an absolute steal. If I ever found one for that price, I'd slam money down as quickly as possible. While my electric grinder can do pour over, ever espresso shot I pull is hand ground. I have had exactly 1 pour over in the past year and I pull 2-5 shots a day (depending on my own intake/dosing and if my wife wants coffee as well), so I'm actually currently thinking about getting one of these in the future

I’ve had mine for 7 years. Working great.

Solid deal. Check the burrs to see if you need new ones but they’re fine on mine after 5 years of consistent use. Enjoy it and you’ve made a good choice!

I’ve only seen where a friend’s grinder would only spit out very little grind and spit up the beans rather than grind them even after a good clean. We couldn’t see any visual difference between that one and mine which was working fine

I still have one along with a Baratza Sette and now a DF64 gen 2. It's a great grinder, especially for the price. There's a lot of Breville hate, but it's not a bad machine. My biggest complaint was that it wasn't stepless and it clumps. You can mod it to be stepless and WDT helps with the clumps. If the burrs wear out, you can change out the burr set. If it ever stops grinding, more times than not it's the burr set or a plastic gear that failed, the gear is replaceable.

DF54 if you're on a budget, DF64 gen 2 if you have the coin. Both will make the same quality coffee, the DF64 is faster. These are durable, overbuilt, and repairable. I've had the standard off the shelf burr grinder from Target, Breville burr grinder, and the Baratza before.

Personally I find it better to set up the internal at 2-3. Whenever I’ve had it at 4-5 I regularly need to set up the external between 1-5 on some beans.

The grinder is fine, but after a year or two your taste buds will out grow it. I'm on year 3 with mine and I think I need more grind variability, but I love it for the price.

That's a shame, I've used one for espresso for years, and I can easily choke my machine way away from zero with 18g of coffee. Maybe the internal adjustment would help?

It’s a jack of all trades, but does those trades averagely. Nice starter grinder, but as your experience increases will leave you wanting more as it can be a little frustrating getting good consistency.

top grinder. And as soon as you upgrade, you can use it for pour over. Thats what I did and I still love it. Gets the job done

Mine struggled to grind Light/Medium roasts to Espresso fine. It would seize up and make this awful noise. Worked fine for everything else. YMMV

It's not amazing, but it's far far far better than what you have and for just 60$ I doubt you could have found much better. It'll do you well until you're ready to drop the 500-9999999$ on a forever grinder c:

Your friend is wrong. Mostly because $60 is a drop in the bucket on a “for life” grinder. Take time to learn espresso and form your own opinions and go from there. I used the SGP for two years with only minor issue, namely that lighter roasts don’t do well. You may find that the SGP with the bambino serves you and your wants/need indefinitely. Not everyone needs thousands of dollars in kit to enjoy coffee.

Well, I loved mine. Have it for an year and never had an single issue

Not even $200 to $400 now, with the DF54 coming out at $229. But I do agree, $60 for an SGP is definitely worth it.

I ran one of these for years with a breville infuser and then a breville dual boiler, wasn’t amazing but was plenty good enough. I still have it and use it with the infuser when camping. Edit to say I mostly run a darker medium roast that my local shop calls “city roast”.

This grinder has worked great for me. I found it helped to adjust the burr down one setting.

I think it's good to learn. It will do all super market coffee beans, medium-dark and dark roast beans well. It might start to struggle if you go lighter roast. Its a good price while you discover if you want to go deeper into the rabbit hole of grinders.

At $60 there is literally no grinder on the market than can beat this grinder. Even at its $200 list price this grinder is competitive (if not the best), the biggest argument against it is that for similar or a little more money you can get something better. I have been running a Breville Grinder for years. When I purchased it, I was unsure of how long I would use it, but it was a pretty good deal (but more than $60) and I though I could upgrade in a couple of years if it was not good enough. In the last 5 years I have not seen the need to upgrade because it works very well, is easy to dial in and has not given me any problems. The challenge with online reviews of coffee equipment is that it is difficult to contextualize the cost with the quality, this is even more of an issue when you are comparing new grinders to great deals on the used market (like the one you purchased). For example, a La Marzocco De Lux (for $995) will be a better grinder than this Breville, a Niche (at $560) will be a better grinder, but you are getting at least 90% of the performance for 1/10th (or less) of the cost.

You got to really take everything with the grain of salt that you read here and pretty much anywhere else on the internet. The smart grinder Pro is honestly a really great low-end grinder. It doesn't deserve the hate that it gets. At the retail $200 price, I can see where people are coming from with the hate. They're a lot more grinders in that price range these days. Some of them are probably better, but some of them are also a lot worse. When this thing first came on the market, there wasn't a lot of competition. Still, Breville put in a lot of work adding a lot of features that make this thing easy to use on a daily basis. The espresso quality is decent, and decent is exactly what I would expect from a $200 grinder. Under $100 on the used market, I don't think you can go wrong.

I have one, it works fine. I keep it and my original Breville for when we go camping. I upgraded to the Mahlkönig and La Marzocco. $60 is a great deal!

I love my SGP! I bought it used for like $150 so $60 is a steal. Works perfectly with my Bambino. I can pull amazing shots using a bottomless portafilter. It does kind of suck that it’s not stepless, but all in all it gets the job done! I can dial in my shots pretty well. I would definitely love to make more micro adjustments, but thats just me being a perfectionist. You can also open it up and adjust the grind to be even finer than the default setting too Edit: I use a doing funnel and take about 30 seconds to work the grounds with a WDT and break up ALL the clumps, after that it’s flawless.

I have this grinder, haven’t had a reason to upgrade yet. $60 well spent—especially starting out

It’s a bad value at MSRP. It’s an amazing value at $60.

I used that grinder with my rancilio Silvia for two years and it was acceptable. For $60 that’s a good price. I would recommend buying cheap beans to help you dial in first. Especially when dialing the internal burrs. Next you should look into buying a single dose bellows system to help with the retention

SGP is infinitely better than your chinesium Amazon grinder. $60 is a good deal.

I have the Smart Grinder, not the Smart Grinder Pro. I love it, it does what I need, very well. Are there better grinders? Yep. Will this one do? Hell yeah!

The SGP is fine for espresso. It's not great, but you can get good shots out of it. And for $60, you're not going to get anything better. My biggest issues with the SGP had to do with filter coffee. It is not good for filter coffee.

Same!

its good that the sgp works for you but frankly, its just not good for espresso in general tbh

I agree. I see it as reducing the probability for retaining grind. I bought a single dose attachment with bellow for the Breville Smartgrinder and it has made a difference with retention.

So I have the breville pro grinder. Totally new to espresso and curious what a better/higher costing grinder gets me? More finite settings?

That’s my thought for now. Unless I get way more into this I could see myself upgrading for it. Good to know the options and the differences for a small price bump for a grinder

If you have it and enjoy it, dont upgrade. Only upgrade when YOU find an issue. i used the breville smart grinder for 5-6 years and didnt upgrade till it wouldnt work for what i wanted.

Baratza Virtuosos or breville smart coffee grinder pro. They are both great but I love my breville more right now. As long as it doesn't break. The baratza is just super reliable, the breville makes slightly more consistent grinds. Manual grinder I would go with a Hario. I have a Hario and I love it but only use it when travelling or camping.

The $200 Breville burr grinder is designed to fail. The impeller blade that spins and pushes out the coffee grounds is cheap plastic that wears out quickly. Mine lasted 2 years. I even tried to buy a replacement impeller but it wouldn’t fit and was a pain in the ass to take apart. I now have a Sette 270 that’s much better.

A LOT of people start with this grinder. Do they like to complain about it underperforming compared to a 400$-500$ grinder? Yes. For 60$ it’s a great deal, enjoy it and it’s FAR superior to a Amazon grinder

When people make comments about it they are comparing a $200 SGP to $400+ machines. At $60 you simply could not have done better for that price for a electric grinder. Its a SOLID machine, could you do better? Yes but it would cost you hundreds of dollars. The SGP is a solid daily machine especially for Milk drinkers. If you want to get fancy with your coffee occasionally, consider a secondary Manual Grinder.

Did you try adjusting the Inner Burr? I've gotten it so fine it chokes the SGP. I'm half deaf and do agree its pretty loud ha.

This sub has an obsession with gear. Lots of fomo and elitism. That’s on the surface. Most people are quite humble about their setups when asked but there is some truth to what they are saying about the starter machines. The sgp is a clumper and has a fair bit of static retention. But it works and does the job quite well. But if you’ve had that machine for awhile and decided to grab a niche which is espresso grind only you may catch yourself saying how bad of a machine the sgp is even though it’s perfectly adequate.

I have one, which is on its finest setting and copes with medium-light roast coffee (just). I added the aftermarket bellows to allow single dosing and the retention isn't too bad

You can, absolutely, do this out of the box. That said, you may find it retains some of the ground coffee in it's chamber between each grind. Not a massive amount but noticeable. The aftermarket bellows reduce this significantly p. s. Not a silly question at all. We all started somewhere

For $60, this is a great grinder for that price. I bought mine at retail and still am happy with it. Are there better options at higher prices, yes. Do I even feel the need to upgrade? Not yet, and I’ve had it for 3 or 4 years. I would recommend setting the internal grinder setting to the 4-5 step range, you can find videos on youtube about how to do that.

Oh yeah don’t worry about it, you’re perfectly set to make some good espresso. I spray my beans before putting them in the hopper because this grinder does produce a bit more static than others. Also recommend using a WDT since it will help negate some of the shortcomings of this grinder.

Do you make coffee in styles other than espresso? If so, you did fine. If this doesn’t fill your needs for espresso, use it for drip, French, aeropress, whatever. I have mine in my office so I can make aeropress at work. It’s pretty much the same volume and tone as a paper shredder running so nobody tells me to knock it off. I’ve written this review before but it’s really not that bad of a grinder. I just moved on from it because it doesn’t grind fine enough for light roasts I’ve been buying without the motor giving out. Use it until it dies, then look for your next big purchase. Good luck with it!

I have this one and so far so good!

Oh yeah I forgot say…as some of the others already mentioned—I did turn in the side burr as well. I can’t remember how many clicks I turned it, but I definitely had to turn the inside burr to grind it fine enough for espresso.

I have one but I can’t use it for espresso, since it won’t grind fine enough. I like it for brewing drip or French press coffee. I have mine dialed in and I just have to push the button to get 24g of ground coffee for my morning brew. It *is* ungodly loud, however.

I purchased mine for $199. It was pretty much free because I used all of my Amazon reward points but I absolutely love it. I use it mostly for my drip coffee but the percolation grind and espresso grind for moka is perfect. Let the haters hate, I think it looks great sitting on my counter and it gets the job done.

SGP is a POS. I had an old one lying around that I tried to use with my Bambino, zero consistency. Ended up with a Sette 270wi that has been great - prob out of your price range but def recommend you look for a good grinder as it will make a huge difference with the bambino.

Smart grinder pro should be avoided if you want to use it for espresso. The motor is weak, and the teeth on the main gear eventually will break if you try to grind anything on the lighter side of medium. Breville don’t sell spares and it’s difficult to replace if you find aftermarket replacements. You can even hear it straining in the video, it’s not strong enough to properly grind for espresso.

i’m not as knowledgeable as most people on this sub, but i have the bambino paired with the breville smart grinder pro and have no complaints. it’s only half of your budget. the only thing you might need to do is adjust the top grinder then you’re golden 👍

Been very happy with the Breville Smart Pro.

Thats a nice little espresso machine, it actually is very similar to old school gaggia. The espresso machine can produce excellent espresso you just need to invest a little bit around it. Grinder. Look for some used deals on eBay, or Facebook market place things like the SD40 SK40 SMART GRINDER PRO will be good beginner options, second you want to get a non pressurized porta filter from Amazon from eBay anything compatible with the gaggia will work 58mm is the right size. With just those 2 things once dialed in you'll notice it makes excellent coffee.

I mean, not true at all. You can get really decent espresso with a Breville Bambino ($300usd) and something like a smart grinder pro ($200usd) or a df64 ($400usd) and that will be enough for MOST people. Hell, even a sub $100 hand grinder and the Bambino will get someone by. Nobody has to spend over $1000.

I have a breville bambino that I have a nicer portafilter for, a breville smart grinder pro & a moccamaster. 😵‍💫 I think there’s kind of a learning curve, but with a machine like the bambino you only really need to learn how to dial in the coffee grounds since it does the water part for you. There are a lot of people on YouTube that do demos!

I've got the Breville Smart Grinder Pro, probably not as trendy as others mentioned but I've had it for about 3 months and works really well for me.

Certainly seems to me that the actual grinding is a tight race. I'm hoping to see improvements in things like retention and static. I have the Sage/Breville smart grinder pro. It's a bit of a relic in those terms. It's got a hopper for about a lb of beans where more modern use cases would prefer single dosing. It will accumulate ground coffee in the burr that I wouldn't count on being exchanged. You can get aftermarket gaskets to fill some of that space, and an aftermarket bellows based single dose hopper (or an aftermarket bellows that fits on the existing hopper if that somehow doesn't seem ridiculous). The chute outputs either into a portafilter that has its downside, or into a container I'm not thrilled about; I hate the metal and plastic lid, and the container itself is a little wide to pour from. I had been looking at possibly upgrading, but instead I think I'll just focus on quality of life improvement, like one of those nice green bean dosing vessels, or maybe a grounds dosing cup.

I’m not familiar with this specific grinder but it looks like it’s a conical burr grinder? It should be good enough to enjoy many, many coffees. I started with something similar, Breville Smart Grinder, and used it for years. Upgrading to a higher end grinder absolutely will make a big difference, but you can still get good cups of coffee with most conical burr grinders. You’ll probably have the best results with a more forgiving brew method like immersion (ie. A Hario Switch, French Press, or Clever Dripper) if you stick with that grinder.

I just upgraded from a Breville smart grinder pro to a eureka mignon silenzio 55mm (approx $600 CAD if you shop around), and I’ve noticed a significant difference in the quality of my espressos…. Really good value for money and also just looks really cool imo.  I’m currently using Breville dual boiler espresso machine.  The upgrade from conical burrs in the smart grinder pro to 55mm flat burrs in the silenzio has resulted in noticeably softer/fluffy and uniform grinds.  The adjustment on the silenzio allows you to really dial in your shots, and while the analog timer isn’t the greatest, it saved me ~$150 for the next model up (eureka specialita).  Just make sure you use a scale to measure your grinds and espresso pulls to get the right ratio!   The only real downside with the silenzio is if you want to switch from espresso to a much more coarse grind (ex: French press), it’s a big pain in the a$ with the dial… the Breville smart grinder pro is much easier with its digital display and adjuster.  I’m only making espresso these days though, so I will only make minor adjustments to the silenzio when changing to a different bean. Best of luck!

Ive got a Casa brews 4700Gense-02 plus a breville coffee grinder pro plus bottomless porta filter a good tamper and wdt tool. Puck screen or paper filters - atlas coffee subscription for always fresh beans - the 4700 is more automated than my prevous delongi and find it really nice. I usually do americano with touch of almond cream - perfect - and latte on this are perfect as well.

I've got a little breville one that works well for grinding. It's half price at briscoes now ($65)

Your suggestion for a "budget" option, for someone getting their first grinder, just starting out in coffee, is a $450 grinder? Not an affordable but quite good hand grinder like something from 1zEspresso? Not a breville for 1/3 the price? Not something off marketplace.

I think the opposite as a person with a lot of gear and home coffee roaster. You don't know if you want to delve into it as a big hobby when you first start out. Basic but good gear is a much better place to start than a $500 grinder and $2000 espresso machine. Hand grinder from 1zespresso and an aeropress makes fantastic coffee for about a $150 total investment. Not such a loss if then find you're not that into it. I agree that ultra budget stuff, especially espresso machines, can be a waste of money as they can't actually make espresso. But there are lots of excellent very cheap ways to get into making good coffee at home before you drop big bucks. $450 for a grinder is a lot of money to most people. I rock a hand grinder for work. It's not that much time or effort to grind 20g of coffee. You could also get something like a flair royal hand grinder to start and upgrade by getting the power tower to electrify it later if you're actually keen to delve more or produce more coffee and you'll have an excellent quality set up without dropping as much of an initial investment. Or a $150 Breville grinder off marketplace if you really can't be bothered hand grinding or need to make bigger quantities and pair it with a French press or a steep and release brewer and you'll be around $200 total spend and making great coffee for less than you're saying they should start on just a grinder. But to each their own.

FWIW, I seem to remember breville making a decent entry level conical grinder. But yeah, for how long will I be able to get parts? For right now there are some parts available, including the chassis and the board. And also, this says nothing of how the product will be built in the future. I was fortunate, and I think I bought around the time they were bought, so I got one of the last official Baratzas with the Italian burr. https://www.baratza.com/landing/product/parts