Eureka Notte vs Crono

Grinders are one of the keys to exceptional espresso. Discuss them here.
Santi
Posts: 30
Joined: 5 years ago

#1: Post by Santi »

I purchased a Eureka Mignon Crono a while back and love the grinder, but at the time I had a hard time finding information on how it was different from the more espresso focused Notte (and similar Mignons, e.g. Manuale, Facile). The local espresso supply store advertises the Crono as a brew grinder, although Eureka's website at the time also listed it for espresso use (but doesn't now?). The salesperson I spoke with said the Crono used a different 50mm burr design.

Well, the Crono lists for $80 less than the Notte and let's be honest, I'm cheap. So I bought the Crono anyway, ditched the grinds bin, set the front button actuated timer to the lowest settings (5 seconds), and single dose directly into the portafilter. The other day a Notte came by for a visit, so I did a little comparison to see what differences I could spot.

The Notte has a portafilter fork, the Crono has a timer dial:


Should have cleaned these before the pic, but the burrs appear to be the same:




Crono:


Notte:


Crono:


Notte:


Conclusion:
The burrs, motor, grind path, etc. appear identical between the two. Is it annoying that the Crono has a minimum ON time of 5 seconds? Yes. Very. With the portafilter pressed against the button for more than 5 seconds though the grinder stops as soon as the button is released. Portafilter fork? I don't miss that much. I was hoping I could bypass the timer in the Crono to make it function like the Notte, but it's all in the PCB. Same PCB between the two, but different components soldered on. Not going to mess with that.
Also worth noting, but I take it as coincidence, is that the burr alignment on the Notte is better than the Crono out of the box.

Truth be told I'm not quite that cheap and I'd buy the Notte because of the flexibility to fill the hopper when I'm making a bunch of drinks. Hope the info helps someone. If not, just enjoy my terrible photography.

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klee11mtl
Posts: 123
Joined: 4 years ago

#2: Post by klee11mtl »

Thanks for sharing. I can relate to cheap and bad photography, and I've been looking at the Notte and hadn't considered the Crono as an espresso option.

2 questions:
- how have you found the retention on either grinder? Specifically, how much is left behind when you open up for a cleaning?
- are the noise levels identical between the 2?

MemPast
Posts: 200
Joined: 7 years ago

#3: Post by MemPast »

How about the adjustment, do you think if you make one number adjustment, the resulting shot times are very close or not?

Santi (original poster)
Posts: 30
Joined: 5 years ago

#4: Post by Santi (original poster) »

I didn't do any quantitative measure of retention, but besides what you can see in the grind chamber grounds back up between the grind chamber and the static screen. Maybe 2 grams? See area in red. Both grinders behaved similarly.

The noise level is the same, as is the grind adjustment. With my beans I ended up in the 1.25 region on both.


jones3000
Posts: 2
Joined: 3 years ago

#5: Post by jones3000 »

Very underrated comparison !


Whats interesting about the models cheaper than the Silenzio, is they all the share the same internals. The exception being the Filtro and Crono after May 2021 with different burrs made for drip coffee and not fine enough for Espresso.

I managed to get the Crono as it was $320 brand new where the Notte was $500. This along with another post I saw showing the internals really are the same except the fork. That can be had for about $10 online as its the same one used for the Manuale [Crono w/o timer].


It's an odd design choice to make the Notte $200 more for the fork.. :lol:

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yakster
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#6: Post by yakster »

Tiered offerings using the same internal hardware is very common in Electronics, and in this case grinders. Using the same internals will reduce the cost by reducing the number of variations and increasing the volume and offering different priced tiers will capture different segments of the market instead of just one.
-Chris

LMWDP # 272

jones3000
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Joined: 3 years ago

#7: Post by jones3000 replying to yakster »

Happens actually far less than you think. The compromises in those tiered models usually make the difference to validate the extra price.. in this case it's not even clear from Eureka that the models share the same internals.

Hence why we have this post, hundreds of others asking the same thing. And to make matters even more convoluted, they actually did change the burrs after 04/2021 so now the models really do have big differences.

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jallish
Posts: 1
Joined: 2 years ago

#8: Post by jallish »

So....are these machines the same, or was this experiment performed prior to the burr size changing back in April 2021? Thanks!

Santi (original poster)
Posts: 30
Joined: 5 years ago

#9: Post by Santi (original poster) »

These were substantially the same, although I understand the Crono manufactured now does have different burrs less/not suitable for espresso.