OXO Conical Burr Coffee Grinder Review

Thanks to its consistency and user-friendly design, the OXO Conical Burr Coffee Grinder earned the title of best value pick in our larger tested review of the best coffee grinders. Here's what we love about it.

The OXO Conical Burr Coffee Grinder is the best budget-friendly option you can buy, thanks to its ... [+] user-friendly design and consistency.

So you’ve started getting more into making quality coffee at home, and that means—per every expert’s advice—you need to invest in a burr grinder for the freshest brews. The problem? Many of the best coffee grinders cost upward of $200, and it doesn’t necessarily make sense to shell out hundreds of dollars if you’re not super serious about java. That’s where the OXO Conical Burr Coffee Grinder comes in. After extensively testing 10 popular coffee grinders at a variety of price points, I believe this OXO model to be the top option for coffee drinkers on a budget.

With a retail price of $100, this grinder impressed me with its versatility and consistency, producing mostly uniform grounds at various grind settings—something I can’t say for many of the other budget models I tested. I also love this grinder’s intuitive design and attractive stainless steel exterior—it couldn’t be easier to operate and clean. While the Conical Burr Coffee Grinder isn’t the cheapest on the market, it’s easily the best value; just think of it as an investment in your coffee making habit that’ll pay off in the long term. (Plus, it’s still $100 less than the overall winner of my testing, the Fellow Opus, and it’s about $150 less than my upgrade pick, the Baratza Virtuoso+.)

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Dimensions: 6.8 x 11.8 x 14.8 inches | Weight: 5.6 pounds | Grind settings: 38 | Bean hopper capacity: 12 ounces

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OXO Conical Burr Coffee Grinder Features

With 38 different grind settings, the OXO Conical Burr Coffee Grinder is a versatile machine that can blitz beans into a wide range of sizes. That said, this grinder does its best work in the medium to coarse range, where it produces the uniform grounds that make for smooth, balanced coffee brewed in French presses and standard coffee makers. This model is also great for those who like making pitchers of cold brew, which is best prepared with lots of extra-coarse grounds; plus, the OXO features a roomy 12-ounce bean hopper and can grind coffee for up to 30 seconds at a time.

Who this grinder isn’t for is the espresso drinker. While it has fine grind settings, which is necessary for espresso and Turkish coffee, in my testing, the OXO didn’t produce entirely uniform grounds on the medium-fine settings; at the finest, it was fairly uneven. All that said, I think the majority of coffee drinkers would be more than satisfied with the OXO’s prowess. (And if you’re mostly making espresso at home, it’s probably worth looking into a dedicated espresso grinder.)

If you’re the kind of person who brews the same amount of coffee every day in the same machine, whether that be a coffee maker or a French press, the OXO Conical Burr Coffee Grinder will quickly win you over. Once you determine the grind setting that makes the most sense for your brewing method and you adjust the timer dial accordingly, the OXO can pulverize your ideal amount of beans to the perfect coarseness every time. All you have to do is add your beans in the morning, press the button and let it get to work. When you’re half awake and bleary-eyed, you appreciate that convenience—trust me.

And let’s say you want to streamline the grinding process one step further and store your beans in the grinder so they’re always ready to go. While coffee experts don’t recommend leaving beans in the appliance, let’s be honest: Not everyone follows that advice, and OXO kept that user behavior in mind. Not only is the bean hopper large, but it also has a UV-blocking coating that protects beans from deteriorating in direct sunlight. I’ve long joked that I would follow OXO into any kitchen-appliance-based war, and this machine is a good example of why: It’s easy to use and maintain, and the design is intuitive. For the average coffee lover, that’s hard to beat.

For a coffee grinder, the OXO is extremely neat in operation—it’s largely mess-free, thanks to its thoughtful design. One specific feature I appreciated in testing: The bean hopper has a trapdoor on the bottom that allows you to easily remove the hopper, to swap or pour out the beans. On many other models, you more or less have to grind through all the beans in the hopper because removing them is tricky, if not impossible. Adding to the machine’s overall cleanliness, the grounds bin is made of antistatic stainless steel, which prevents pulverized beans from flying all over the place when you take out the grounds container. One potential downside of the machine is that when it has to work through a large amount of beans, it can vibrate and bounce around the counter, which could lead to a disastrous mess. All things considered, though, that’s pretty minor concern for such a workhorse grinder.

And when it comes time to clean the machine, it couldn’t be easier—simply break it down to wash the pieces individually, wipe down the stainless steel exterior and you’re back in business.

You can’t get a better grinder for a lower price than the OXO Conical Burr Coffee Grinder—at least according to my rigorous testing of some of the most popular options on the market. But if you’re interested in dialing in your coffee grinding options a bit more finely, or if you’re looking for a machine that is quieter and more compact and you don’t mind spending a little more, then I’d point you to my best overall pick, the Fellow Opus. For those who are getting really serious about coffee—especially fans of espresso—I’d recommend the Baratza Virtuoso+.

The best way to test a coffee grinder is to grind a lot of coffee—so that’s what I did. For all my tests, I used Stumptown’s Holler Mountain, which I chose because it’s a solid coffee that’s readily accessible. To start, I put 20 grams of beans each through the machine’s fine, medium-fine, medium and coarse settings. Then, I put the grounds through a Kruve Sifter, a tool that separates irregularly sized coffee grinds from the optimally sized ones, noting how many particles the Kruve filtered out. Next, I brewed those grinds in the appropriate vessel—either an AeroPress, French press or drip coffee maker—and tasted the results. Throughout testing, I observed how easy it was to operate, maneuver and clean the machine.

I’m a food editor and writer, as well as a recipe developer, and my work has appeared in Food & Wine, Food52, New York Magazine and Bon Appétit, among other places. Currently, I work as the deputy food editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Also, like many caffeine-dependent Americans, I make coffee every day—most often in my French press or Chemex, but I sometimes make cold brew and drip coffee. For this piece I also called on some experts to explain the finer points of grinder selection for me: Genevieve Kappler, Roasting Plant Coffee’s director of coffee, and Josey Markiewicz, La Colombe’s senior director of coffee quality/experience.

While the OXO has a fineness setting that would be appropriate for espresso, if you’re a big-time espresso drinker, this grinder probably isn’t your best bet. Instead, consider investing in the versatile Baratza Virtuoso+ or an espresso-specific grinder that allows you to adjust your espresso grinds to a much more precise degree than you can with an all-in-one grinder.

The amount of beans you go through in a week and the frequency that you use the grinder determine how often you should clean it, but a good rule of thumb is to give it a surface cleaning every 2 weeks. That means disassembling the grinder and using a pastry brush to thoroughly remove any errant coffee beans or grounds that have gotten caught in the machine. For this machine in particular, OXO recommends giving the bean hopper, grounds container and their lids a wash in warm water with dish soap (they can’t go in the dishwasher). You can also run grinder cleaner tablets through the machine to give it a deep clean every month or two.

The OXO Conical Burr Coffee Grinder comes with a 2-year warranty, but depending on how much you’re using it, it should last a lot longer than that. A rule of thumb is that burrs need replacing after grinding through about 500 pounds of coffee, so if you go through a pound a week, that’s about a decade. (Though for most machines, you can also simply replace the burrs rather than scrap the entire machine.)