A month or so ago, I decided to buy a new espresso machine, a Lelit Bianca. I thought I could keep my existing Sage/Breville/Gastroback Smart Grinder Pro and upgrade down the line. Of course, I know that the grinder is more important than a machine, but I had paid €250 for it 3 years ago and I would be damned if I didn't give it a chance to do its thing.

One month of frustration and random shots later I decided that enough is enough and it was time to spend some money and buy a proper grinder. My criteria were the following:

1. Use it for single dosing (exclusively).
2. If it's going to retain grounds, retain as little as possible without too much hassle (brushes etc).
3. Fast. And quiet. Preferably fast over quiet if I have to choose.
4. I don't want to upgrade any time soon (5 years would be ideal).
5. I want to be able to service it locally if I have to.

I was between the Ceado E37SD and the Atom 75. I know that these two grinders are very different in terms of purpose and cost but this video convinced me that the Atom is good enough for that purpose.

I ended up with the Atom. I know what you are thinking: Why didn't I go with the Ceado or at least a Niche Zero. The Niche Zero was out of the question because it's an untested proposition for me plus there is no official importer to whom I can go if there is a problem with it. Ceado would've been the best option, but I really could not justify the cost, even when amortised down the five year period.

I bought it from a local shop here in Zurich that also does repairs on espresso machines and I had the chance to set it up (I can give the name via PM if you'd need it). Now, keep in mind that these results are with less than 1kg of coffee gone through the burrs. Feel free to point out the effects of that in any of my observations (I'd appreciate that).

Pros

• It is super fast. And insanely quiet. The SGP sounded like someone violently strangling a cat, this one sounds like said cat sleepily purring on the couch. Honestly, the videos you can watch online don't do justice on how quiet this actually is.
• It is quality made and I can see it lasting for years with proper maintenance. I cannot say that the SGP gives me the same confidence, which is to be expected when considering the price difference.
• The grinds are so fluffy, it almost brought a tear to my eye. I created a 5-needle WDT contraption in order to force the clumpy grounds out of the SGP into submission and it still was hit and miss. I don't have to do that here. Tap the portafilter once or twice on the counter and it's properly distributed. I then use the Jack Leveller to compress the grounds.
• Thanks to the above, shot consistency has reached almost 100%.
• I was afraid it would move around due to its motor, but I am happy to report that it's absolutely stable on the counter.

Cons

• That thing about it being a great single dose grinder? NOPE! Again, no idea if it's due to the brand-new burrs, but the retention is easily around 4 grams. Oh video-I-posted-above, why did I believe your lies?
• I also got the "Blow-Up " hopper and lid, thinking it would help with single dosing. Well, it does, otherwise you lose about 4 grams on the shot with an empty grinder. Problem is, you really have to slam it hard to get the coffee out and it's still not a guaranteed process. You may slam it once, get the motor running and get nothing out and as soon as you stop the motor and slam it again, you will get about 3 of the 4 retained grams.
• What about that last gram? Repeat the above and mumble a prayer to the machine gods. The SGP was pretty stable on its retention being a conical machine (about ~0.3 grams). With this one, I need to weigh both before and after, in order to find out if it needs some extra slamming (...).
• Dispensing on the portafilter and using the blow-up lid gets messy very quickly. I like activating the grinder using the portafilter, but then I cannot use it with a funnel, so the portafilter holder on the grinder has to go (of course, if you are filling the hopper with beans and you purge every day, you don't really have to worry about that).

What about the taste? I didn't mention it because to my palate any difference is still inconclusive. I tend to go for medium-dark brazilian & indian beans and although I think it did become easier to discern flavours in the coffee now, I will have to do an mano-a-mano comparison between the grinders to be certain about the differences.

So, was it worth it? I am not sure. It is a great grinder no matter how you look at it, but it's not really worth it for single dosing*, unless you buy the extra Blow-Up lid, grind to a funnel and spend 5-10 seconds slamming the lid and pulsing the motor to get your coffee out. Am I going to do that? well, yes, I will (plus my other alternative is too expensive for what I am willing to spend). Or I may decide to start weighing my coffee after I grind it and keep the hopper full (I tend to not change beans often anyway).

Thanks for reading!

* Of course the grinder is not advertised as a single dose grinder, but the video from Clive's was very convincing. Please let me know if this is the effect of the yet not-broken-in burrs.

Just out of curiosity, what's the reason for single dosing if you are not changing coffee all the time?

I would actually think the Niche Zero is pretty proven in by now. Sure only a year in, but I don't find some of the manufacturers of espresso gear really want to talk to customers. They mostly only deal with the distributors. And seems like most Niche issues published on HB have been solved by members or Niche.

jpetrow wrote:Just out of curiosity, what's the reason for single dosing if you are not changing coffee all the time?

I don't change coffee, but as I'm the only coffee drinker in my household, I don't want to leave beans in a hopper for days on end and let them go stale, even if it's only 100 g or so. Tried it at first with my Sette 270, and there was a noticeable difference in shot quality from Day 1 and Day 4.

Quenthel wrote: [*] That thing about it being a great single dose grinder? NOPE! Again, no idea if it's due to the brand-new burrs, but the retention is easily around 4 grams. Oh video-I-posted-above, why did I believe your lies?

* Of course the grinder is not advertised as a single dose grinder, but the video from Clive's was very convincing. Please let me know if this is the effect of the yet not-broken-in burrs.

Zero retention can either mean "I put in 18g and I will get 18g out", or "All of the beans I put in will be what is ground and dosed". The former may assume that several grams of coffee that is dosed is actually left over from your previous shot. I do think that it's normal for a grinder that's yet to be broken in to retain more grounds than one that's had 5-10 lbs of beans run through it.

Please post your findings after you've run through 5-10 lbs of beans and you still find retention to be high. I've been eyeballing the Atom 75 as an upgrade to my Sette 270, but if its retention is really more than a gram or two, I might just say "screw it" and empty my chequing account into a Monolith Flat Max.

Thanks for your honest review of the Atom 75.

Hey everyone, thanks for the comments.

jpetrow wrote:Just out of curiosity, what's the reason for single dosing if you are not changing coffee all the time?

Similar to what luckydragon said, it was mostly to avoid beans getting stale, but then kind of became a habit. If I change beans this happens usually every week or two weeks, since there are many roasters here and I am still trying out stuff every now and then.

luckydragon wrote:Zero retention can either mean "I put in 18g and I will get 18g out", or "All of the beans I put in will be what is ground and dosed". The former may assume that several grams of coffee that is dosed is actually left over from your previous shot. I do think that it's normal for a grinder that's yet to be broken in to retain more grounds than one that's had 5-10 lbs of beans run through it.

Indeed I assumed the latter which is definitely not true (yet?). The blow-up lid helps but it takes time and effort to minimise coffee loss, otherwise you have to purge a lot (I usually have a flat white in the morning and an espresso in the evening). I will update after I go through 3-4kg of coffee, but since I don't want to wait for too long, I'll buy 2-3kg of cheap beans and get it up to shape.

Bluenoser wrote:I would actually think the Niche Zero is pretty proven in by now. Sure only a year in, but I don't find some of the manufacturers of espresso gear really want to talk to customers. They mostly only deal with the distributors. And seems like most Niche issues published on HB have been solved by members or Niche.

My concern about NIche is that most reviews are for machines that are not even one year old. There is also the question how does the Niche manage to keep costs so low but this might be due to other companies marking up their products. I am not saying that it is necessary a bad grinder (most reviews seem to indicate differently for now), but if I am buying something for a 5-year horizon, I want it to have existed for at least 5 years and have parts and service readily available.

How did you come up with the 4g retention? What kind of beans are you using?

I am using mostly these: https://www.mirocoffee.co/shop/coffee/santarosa/ and these: https://www.mirocoffee.co/shop/coffee/lindavista/ . I measured the retention by trying to get as much out of the grinder as possible (slamming the lid and pulsing the motor for 5 minutes straight; I don't want to open the burr enclosure yet) making sure that no more coffee grinds come out.
I then proceed to grind 18 grams as normal, with standard lid-slamming (2-3 times) and I measured the weight. This misses about 4 grams which I can get back if I get back to slamming the lid and pulsing the motor for a minute or so (sometimes releasing a good amount.

I am gonna buy some supermarket coffee and get it through the grinder this week; I will update you as soon as I do.

I use lighter/medium roasts on my Atom 75 with TiN (Mythos burrs). So far, it did take a while for it to break in and retention went down a bit. It probably took about 10 kg? to settle down. I don't completely remember, but I had a similar experience out of the box. I'm able to single dose now with good results. No RDT or any puffing needed. I'm sure there could be a mix of old grounds in the chute with the new dose in terms of static retention, but I haven't noticed it. I'd like to know how it works out after some seasoning.

I opened up the grinder to clean it. Some grounds escaped the burr chute and managed to attach themselves in other parts of the machine, even in the PCB that holds the monitor. I cleaned that up but I am not sure why that ever happened in the first place and whether it will happen again. I will check tomorrow, perhaps it was a case of a loose screw or something.

When I opened it up, I found out that there were some very highly compacted grounds on the sides of the burrs. Not sure why, but these MIGHT have been caused during my initial dial-in attempts where I started with a very very low grind setting. I cleaned that up, put the thing back together, tried again aaaaand...

... it still kept retaining 4-5 grams. I then tried to RDT and in 2 subsequent attempts it stopped retaining - I put 18 grams in, I'd get ~17.9 out (a result I am very happy with). I slammed the lid hard, and it didn't produce any struggler grinds so either:

1. Some grounds were trapped inside in such a manner that there's no more space for grounds to be retained and I didn't slam hard enough,
2. Older grounds that were retained are freed and new ones are now trapped and I still didn't slam hard enough,
3. The RDT did have an effect and it's now not retaining any grounds.

I'll have one more coffee in the morning in order to get another result and I'll open the grinder again in the evening to see what's what.