Best Budget Coffee Grinders Under $150

If the C3 above is the best grind at this price and the answer is nonetheless no, this is what you buy. The OXO is the electric grinder that most consistently earns recommendations under $150, and the reason is that it gets the important things right and is honest about the rest. The burrs are stainless steel conical rather than ceramic, which grinds faster and holds up better at the coarse end. The dial runs from espresso to French press with enough usable increments across the filter range that you can actually tune a pour-over rather than choosing between two wrong settings.

Day to day it behaves well. One-touch start with a timer that remembers your last setting means the morning routine is a single button, and the sealed hopper keeps beans from going stale in the open air. OXO's warranty support has a better reputation than most of the category, which matters more than it should at a price where things do fail.

The limits are real and worth knowing before you buy. Coarse settings produce a wider spread of particle sizes than fine ones, which is unfortunate given that French press is exactly where coarse grinding matters. Static is a nuisance in dry air — grounds cling to the container and puff out when you remove it. The timer doses by time rather than weight, and beans change density as they age, so the same eight seconds delivers a different mass in week three than in week one; keep a scale. And while the dial reaches espresso fineness, it does not offer enough steps in that range to dial a shot, which is a different problem covered in our [espresso grinder roundup](/best-espresso-grinders).

The Infinity has been sold in essentially this form for long enough that its reputation is settled rather than speculative, which is worth something in a category full of grinders that fail in year two. What it offers is steel conical burrs and a geared-down motor at a price where the competition is generally ceramic burrs and a fast, hot motor. Turning slowly means less heat into the grounds and less static building up, and the difference in how much coffee ends up on the counter is noticeable.

The control scheme is simple in a useful way. Sixteen settings are grouped into four labelled ranges — from extra fine to coarse — so finding roughly the right neighbourhood takes no expertise, and moving within the range is a small twist. For drip and pour-over, which is what most people buy this grinder for, it does the job without drama.

It is clearly built to a price. Adjustment happens by twisting the hopper against the body, which is awkward when the hopper is full and impossible to do precisely. The timer dial is a rough approximation rather than a dose, so a scale is not optional. Coarse settings are less uniform than the OXO's, so French press is not its strength. And the construction is plastic throughout in a way you feel every time you handle it. Buy it because it is cheap and its burrs are steel, which are the two things that matter most at the bottom of this market.

Static is the most consistently irritating thing about cheap electric grinders. Grounds cling to the plastic container, puff into the air when you pull it out, and end up on the counter rather than in the brewer. The Bistro's answer is a borosilicate glass catcher, and it works — noticeably less clings, and what does is easy to tap loose. If that annoyance is what drives you to replace a grinder, this is the one designed around it.

The rest is sensibly done. Twelve settings are marked on the body where you can read them, which makes returning to a previous setting trivial and puts it ahead of grinders whose adjustment is a matter of counting. The burrs are stainless conical, the timer dial doses in one motion, and the whole thing looks like an object rather than an appliance, which matters in a kitchen where the grinder never goes in a cupboard.

The reservation is durability. Owner reports of gear and motor failures after a year or two appear more often for the Bistro than for the OXO or the Capresso, and that is the reason it sits here rather than higher. Capacity is small at both ends, the glass catcher is breakable in a way plastic is not, coarse grinding is its weakest range, and the rubberised finish does not age gracefully. Buy it for the static and the looks, with clear eyes about the trade.

There is one situation where this grinder is the correct purchase: you currently own a blade grinder, or buy pre-ground, and the budget will not stretch past the bottom of the market. In that comparison it wins clearly, because it has actual burrs and therefore selects a particle size instead of chopping at random. That is the largest single improvement available in coffee, and it is available here for very little.

It has practical virtues too. The hopper and grounds chamber are large for the size, the slide dial spans fine to coarse across eighteen positions, and it is stocked everywhere, which means replacing it when it dies is easy and cheap.

Everything else is where the money went missing. Grind uniformity is the weakest on this page, and it falls apart at coarse settings, which rules out French press as a serious use. The clogging is well documented across years of owner reports — grounds pack into the chute and the chamber, and it needs brushing out regularly to keep working. Static is heavy. The construction is plastic and the expected life is short. Dosing is by cups, which is a volume approximation of a weight measurement and imprecise in both directions. If you can reach the Capresso above, or the C3 at the top, do that instead. If you cannot, this still beats what you are using now.