I've been using my Rancilio Rocky for a year and a half now, and I want to upgrade. I'm primarily after three things: grinding consistency, speed, and convenience. Having a minimum of coffee retention is a plus as well.

In the name of convenience, I'd love to have a grinder with a proper digital timer. Some of the grinders I'm considering don't have a timer, so with these I'm thinking of either adding an Omron timer, or building my own. This probably means I'd have to add another €100-150 to the price on those grinders.

These are the grinders I'm considering:

Mazzer Super Jolly Electronic + titanium burrs: €940
Mazzer Major Electronic: €1150
Anfim Super Caimano: €730
Casadio Istantaneo: €650
Compak K10 WBC: €1200
Mahlkönig K30: €1700
Elektra Nino: €1900
Mazzer Robur: €2150

Also, I may wait for the following grinders to make it to market before deciding:
Compak K8 Fresh
Compak K10 Fresh
Macap M7D

Obviously, some of these are quite a bit more expensive than others. The Super Jolly looks like a great grinder, but when I add the titanium burrs I'm almost at the price of a Major or a K10. I assume these are quite a bit better than the Super Jolly?

The Anfim and the Casadio really look like great deals, but their build quality do seem to be quite a bit lower than the other grinders. Also, they aren't exactly pretty machines. The Casadio only seems to allow for two preprogrammed timer settings, and doesn't allow for continuous mode. No easy way of purging the old coffee, then.

Another thing that i've considered is that I may be infected with the upgradeitis virus after a few months. In this light, I have considered just going straight for the top brass, a Robur, Nino or a K30. The Nino really looks fantastic, and is my favorite so far. It is rather expensive, though. Would the Robur perhaps be better than the Nino? Are these worth the massive price difference over the cheaper models?

So, any pros/cons to any of the grinders? Any grinder here I should just rule out right away due to some reason or other?

There seem to be loads of threads on the different grinders, some more than other, so it's difficult to condense these thousands of posts into a reasonable decision. I hope someone have some good input.

Your list consists of most of the grinders out there if you have the budget and space for the big guys, why not... There is a lot of comparison and helpful information with the big grinders in the TGP thread.

I have just upgraded to an Anfim Super Caimano with the 75mm titanium burrs and fan cooled motor grinder a month back. My previous setup was a VBM Domobar Super Lever and Compak K3 that I used for 2 years.

The Anfim is well built contrary to what you may say and I have seen it side by side compared with the Mahlkonig K30. The final decision came in the use and taste for my preferences. Now that I have run 7 kgs of beans through it and the burrs bedded in I am enjoying every cup.

My NS Appia Compact 2 group came 2 days ago and now I am really pleased with the combination.

I would seriously look at the Anfim Super Caimano again but the model with the 75 mm titanium burrs and fan cooled motor as it meets all 3 of your parameters. I got the doserless model.

@Aaron
My main hesitation with the big grinders is obviously their prices. They are much more expensive, and I'm not quite sure it's justifiable. I mean, are they really worth ~€1000 more? Or should I put those €1000 in a GS3?

@Phil Liew
I'm sorry, but I think I read somewhere the Anfims weren't as well built. I'll take your word for the build quality. I haven't seen any of these grinders in person, as they are nigh impossible to find in my country. (If I buy domestically, you can double all the prices I quoted in my original post...)

The doserless Anfim looks neat, but it costs the same as the Major Electronic. These are comparable, I would think, though the Major is more powerful and has larger burrs. The Anfim I was considering was the doser version. From what I've read and seen (Youtube), the doser on the Anfim is very nice and drops the coffee pretty much straight down instead of off to one side. Still, doserless looks much more convenient.

After some consideration, I think I'm down to these grinders:
Compak K10 WBC: €1200
Compak K8 Fresh: €1250
Compak K10 Fresh: €1700
Elektra Nino: €1900

(Note, these prices are with 25% VAT.)

The Nino looks great, but it doesn't have any button for continuous grinding. This is a downside, I think. Compared to the Compak Fresh grinders, the K10 WBC and the Nino are tried and true, though.

According to Compak, and one dealer I've been in touch with, the K8 and K10 Fresh are both out on the market now. It seems that the only difference between these is that the K10 is a 68mm conical while the K8 is an 83mm flat burr. (Obviously, the 300 rpm vs 1350 rpm and wattage differ as well.) The grinding times seem to be identical, so there's no real advantage to either one in that respect.

From what I've understood from my correspondence with Compak, the Fresh has a redesigned chute compared to the older models, with the chute being "quite vertical". Apparently, no grind retention in the chute at all, but with conicals there's always some in the grinding chamber. Maybe the difference in grind retention wouldn't be that different to the Nino. The flat burr model should probably be better in this respect, from what I've understood.

As a side note, the optional dynamometric tamper has been scrapped for now. They had issues with the prototypes, but will probably add this as an option at a later time. The Nino has an edge here.

Should I expect any difference in quality or customer service between Elektra and Compak? I must say my general impression is good of both of these brands, but then again I've never owned or seen either.

For those who haven't seen the Fresh line in action, here's a demo video of the K8 and K10 Fresh:


So, what should I buy? Is conical really worth the €450 price difference to a flat burr grinder? Will I perhaps regret not spending that €450 extra a couple of years down the road?

The Compak K8, since it has 83mm burrs, would yield results on par with the Mazzer Major.. Both have 83mm flat burrs.

The Mazzer Major, along with the Anfim Super Camaino depending on who you ask, is pretty much considered "the" flat burr grinder. Its a mazzer, so the literal-tank-like build along with the pure simplicity of it, make it a very popular grinder for both home barista's, and cafe's, IF you want a flat burr grinder. I personally have owned 2 mazzer majors, an old school beat up ebay special, and a brand spankin new one I bought late 2010. I really love the mazzer major.

I've also owned a large conical, a Macap MXKR, which does NOT have 68mm conical burrs, rather 63mm.(I've since sold it and gone back to the Major) So its basically the competition for the Mazzer Kony, not the Robur/K10 etc etc. However, it does perform quite admirably, with many of the same traits of its larger brothers. First is ease of use. In that, I mean, dialing in a coffee, and keeping said coffee dialed in, is a cake walk. Not that its hard on a large flat, its just that much easier on a large conical. Second is consistency, which goes with the first. You of course need proper technique to make good espresso, but pulling great shots one after the other is very simple with the large conicals.

You might ask then, why did I sell it for a Major? Well, a number of reasons, but one main one was grounds retention INSIDE the burr chamber. Large Conicals(Nino excluded) hold a large amount of ground coffee inside the burr chamber. You need to do a purge after an idle period to clear it out, and it can become wasteful, especially if you like to keep beans in the hopper. Now, the Major isn't perfect either, but its damn close. The major in particular holds nearly nothing in the burr chamber when you single dose/pulse it clean per shot, and if you keep the hopper full, a tiny purge is plenty to get to the fresh stuff.

Put it this way, looking at titan level grinders, you really can't go wrong. Flat or Conical, it will be wonderful to use. If you asked me, Id get either the Mazzer Major, or the Compak K10. If I didn't buy the Major, I was going to buy the K10.

JmanEspresso wrote:The Compak K8, since it has 83mm burrs, would yield results on par with the Mazzer Major.. Both have 83mm flat burrs.

There is an unstated assumption here that all burr sets of the same diameter are the same and produce the same results. They are not. Some have different alloys, some have special coatings over lower quality base metals, while some have premium alloys through and through. The differences become more pronounced as the burrs are worn. I'm not saying which, if any, is better than the others, just that there is a lot more to it than burr size.

No, I'm not a burr expert, but I hang out with people who are.

Thanks for the thoughts, guys. It almost feels like all the variables and options lead to a decision paralysis...

I managed to track down a barista who had tried the Compak K10 Fresh, and he had some issues with it. First of all he said it retained quite a lot of ground coffee. He had noticed that when adjusting the grind, it took some time before the output reflected the change. This doesn't really bode well for a brand new doserless grinder which has been in development for many years, in my opinion.

Another problematic point was the hopper. When he shut the bean door and lifted the hopper, quite a bit of beans were left. That in itself isn't a problem, but apparently there are gaps between the burr chamber and the chassis, which caused beans to fall into the motor compartment. I have no idea what would happen if beans managed to find their way into the motor somehow, but I doubt it'd be a good thing...

The last issue is probably easy to remedy, though for them to have constructed the grinder this way leads me to think it's intentional. Maybe it's for air circulation? Who knows, but maybe when more reports start rolling in. The issue with the grind retention, on the other hand, is a more serious one. If I have to sweep the chute, I may as well just get a K10 Pro Barista. The K8 Fresh could be better, but who knows. The barista I spoke with had only tried the K10 one.

I should also note that the K10 Fresh will be used in the national barista championship March 31st-April 2nd, which I hope means some more opinions will appear online.

So, my quest is closing in on two grinders: the Elektra Nino and the Mahlkönig K30 Vario. The K30 seems to be a tad cheaper, but people still seem to prefer conicals to flat burr grinders. All in all I think I'm leaning more towards the Nino...

I went through almost the exact same process, and ended up getting the K10 WBC, for 2 reasons:

1. It's a good value for a big grinder, you can pay almost twice as much for another grinder with similar burrs.

2. I decided I could learn to single dose. My old grinder didn't like single dosing so I didn't have much experienc with it, but after some testing I decided that hopper grinding really wasn't a great option for the K10, at least at home there was just wayy too much purging old grinds, especially when adjusting grind.

Single dosing has worked out great, and with a tiny modification it's relatively easy to sweep out the K10's shute, so I've got almost no waste. It probably takes me an extra 10 seconds (which is about how much faster it grinds for a double anyways). And the taste in the cup is noticable immediately, everyone says it, but the grinder upgrade made much more of a difference than the machine.

So how much do you have to purge each time when single dosing? I can't say I'm very keen on doing that whole sweeping ritual each time, but that's just me.