The Best Cheap Manual Coffee Grinder

Today, we're gonna find out which is the best dirt cheap hand grinder. What do we have here? Well, I went out, I went to Amazon, as you do, and I bought five hand grinders. And I thought they were a nice spread of what's available right now. So we have the Rhino Coffee Gear little hand grinder. We have the Paul X Mini. We've got the classic, probably the best selling sort of cheap hand grinder of all time, which is the Hario Slim. On Amazon, the top search came out for the Henry Charles hand grinder. Never heard of that, no idea what that was. So I picked that up. And then I also went and saw what was very popular in the US, which is the Java Press. Press A? Press. And I picked up one of those as well. What I'm gonna do is break them down into various categories and award them scores. And at the end, wrap up into what I would give as my recommendation of the best cheap hand grinder out there. The sensible place to start would be price. And there's some funny prices here, but that's Amazon for you. So the Rhino Coffee Gear was 31 pounds and 64 pence. The Paul X, relatively expensive at 57 pounds. Now I already owned this Hario Slim, this is mine, but it would cost 28 pounds and 89 pence. The, what is it, Henry Charles thing? Like 25.99. And the Java Press, we're gonna call it the Java Press. That is 70 pounds in the UK. Now here's an important thing I have to talk about right off the bat. I bought these knowing they looked similar, but having had them turn up, they really do appear completely identical. I suspect they're gonna do very similarly in testing. So a little bit frustrating that they are so similar, but they are basically the same. I suspect exactly the same factory put these out with just two different brands on them. But that's what we've got. That's what we're testing today. And we're gonna take the best one of these forwards into the next review of hand grinders, which is the Ultimate Hand Grinder, which is the very best hand grinder that money can buy. And we'll see how a cheap grinder stacks up against the best in the world. Points wise, you know, more points for cheaper in this situation. So I think it would be five, four, three, two, and one point over here. Let's move into the next, and one of the most important categories for me, which is build quality. So starting with the Rhino Coffee Gear, it is well-intentioned, but I would say a little bit sloppy in its execution in its build. Just feels a little cheap. And they've done things that are nice, like instead of just having the stainless steel slide onto another piece of stainless steel, there are these little plastic insert points here. So this should fit nice and snugly. However, down at the bottom here, this feels loose. It just doesn't feel like it's a particularly good fit. So I know you're supposed to grip at the top, but it feels very easy to split the grinder when you're holding it, and that just doesn't feel fantastic. Stainless steel, as most of them are, nice little rubber band, but just a little bit sloppy. And so onto the Paul X, which is pretty well-built, to be honest. Everything fits quite nicely. This just is stainless steel onto stainless steel. The parts fit well. Same with the base, it feels secure. It goes in deep enough that it doesn't feel like it's gonna move around. Overall, yeah, pretty well-built. Now, the Hario is unusual here because it is a plastic construction. For better or worse, is different to the approach of the others. It means this chamber is all see-through. This is a robust plastic. I've traveled with these all around the world. I don't particularly worry about damaging it, but does it feel as nice as stainless steel? Well, actually, to me, it kind of does. Now, if you really prefer stainless steel, that's fine. There's nothing particularly premium to me about that kind of brushed stainless steel, and there's nothing particularly premium about this kind of plastic. It's well-built, it all fits together neatly. This screws into place, I suppose, which is a nice aspect instead of sliding or clicking on. It's much more secure in its build, but it's plastic. Now, the Henry Charles, well, it's okay, it's not bad. It's light, it doesn't feel particularly strong. There's a little plastic insert here. I don't really know why. I don't know why you put a window there, but we'll talk about that when it comes to usability. Overall, yeah, entirely fine. It doesn't feel expensive. It doesn't feel like a particularly thick gauge. This little slidey, I can't imagine it falling off, but it's not secure in that regard. And to be honest, the Java Press is identical in every single way. So for that round, I'll award the Paul X five points, the Hario Slim four, the two identical, the Henry Charles and the Java Press, I'll give them both three points, and the Rhino Gear, I thought was just the sloppiest build, so I'll just give that two. One of the main reasons people buy these things is to travel with them. I certainly had one in my luggage as I've traveled around the world and stayed in Airbnbs and just wanted to make some coffee in the morning. So how do they all do for portability? And so bringing them all back for a second, well, we need to talk about size. Now, this thing, the Rhino Wares is the biggest, which is probably the least desirable in a portable grinder. And the Paul X is by far the smallest. Now, the neat thing about the Paul X is that the rubber band comes with a place for you to store your crank handle, because otherwise that's just gonna float around freely as it would do with every other grinder, right? There's nowhere to put these. When you take them off, you need to take them off for traveling. So that's a bit frustrating. This rubber band is a nice little detail on the Paul X that really ups its portability. Again, plastic construction means I worry a lot less throwing this thing in a bag about what not only is hitting it, but what it might be hitting. I don't really worry about damage that way, where I might worry a little bit more about throwing something stainless steel into a bag with other potentially fragile things. I'm a sloppy and hurried packer of things, I'll admit it. These two, yeah, fine. Perfectly portable. Sort of somewhere in the middle. So probably the most points again are five for the Paul X. I'll go a four for the Slim. Three points apiece here. And again, just two points to our friend, the Rhino coffee grinder. For the next part of testing, we're gonna do the obvious thing. We're gonna grind and brew some coffee. This will let us do both usability testing, how do they feel to use, as well as taste testing at the end of that. We're gonna grind at two different settings. We're gonna grind firstly to brew a 20 to 330 style pour over and I'm gonna go a little finer and in for a faster brew time. There's always an issue with uniformity in hand grinders, especially cheap hand grinders. And going a little finer and faster, by and large for me is a better way to get a better tasting brew than going coarser and dealing with the much, much, much larger pieces that come with that. However, I do wanna grind a bit coarser to see at what point the kind of grind distribution falls to pieces. So now let's grind a lot of coffee. So we brewed five cups of coffee and in that time, it's given me a chance to get my head around these grinders a little bit more from a usability perspective. And there's a few things I wanna talk about. So let's start at the beginning, the Rhino. It's hopper holds around 30 grams of coffee, which isn't the biggest of them. It's actually the second smallest of them. The smallest actually is the Paul X, which held only about 25 grams, which actually might be an issue for me. Now I would brew and traveling up to a half liter batch. So 30 grams to maybe 500. This would frustrate me at 25, which is really kind of where it topped out. However, felt very nice to use. The handles on all of them were fine. The Hario holds up to about 40 grams of coffee in the top hopper. And actually the shape with the wider top makes it much, much, much easier to fill, which is a bonus. However, when you are grinding, it can feel like the beans inside are kind of sloshing around in there. And you're just worrying that the beans aren't kind of funneling down the way that they would do with slimmer grinders. There wasn't a massive issue in grind time, though actually I got stuck a few more times with the Hario that was interesting to me. These two here, as we'll talk about as if they're one, they both hold about 40 grams too. Shape, style, fine. Now, the bottom of these has a little window. I have no idea why you would put a window in. I get that with plastic, it's plastic. I can just see in and that's nice. Why would I not make it see-through if it's plastic? But here, adding in another piece actually is kind of annoying. One, because I don't need to see how much coffee's in there or if there's coffee in there. I'm gonna put all the coffee I need in the top, grind it, and then use it. So I don't get the point of a window. But the way that it's constructed, one, you've got another breakable. Two, something that's a little bit harder to clean. I'd rather just everything be stainless steel if it's gonna be stainless steel or everything be plastic if it's plastic. But also the way that it's mounted inside the stainless steel is this ridge around the edge and coffee was getting stuck in that little ridge like fines would accumulate there. So all in all, I did not like the construction inside of that thing. When you look at them, it looks like they're all using an identical kind of burr set. The burrs look very, very similar in terms of their teeth configuration, the cutting edges. The Hario's is a different color. The rest of them are these kind of white ceramic ones. This is a kind of grayish, darker ceramic color. They all are stepped. They all have clicky adjustments. However, the Rhino's steps were much smaller. So you could be more precise with this one. The rest of them were really pretty similar. And then I brewed them. So like I said, 20 grams to about three, three, three of water in the top. So 60 grams per liter as a ratio. All of them brewed and drew down in a very similar time. The Hario was a little bit quicker, which was interesting because I'd wondered if I was grinding finer on it because I got caught a few more times. I got like a little bit stuck grinding a couple more times on the Hario. I wondered if that was because I was going finer, but actually it drew down five or 10 seconds quicker. These have all been sitting, cooling down, getting ready for me to taste. And I'm going to be tasting for a couple of things. Obviously I want it to be good, the coffee that's coming out of these things, but I'm really considering uniformity of grounds, right? And so an uneven extraction from very different particle sizes would manifest in both unpleasant bitterness as well as unpleasant sourness. So the very tiny pieces you might get would contribute tons of bitterness. The very coarse, bouldery pieces will make the brew taste extra sour. They all brewed in a very similar time, as I said. So we should have relatively matching cups. Same bloom, same total pour time. All of those kind of things were consistent. So now it's time to taste. So I'll say now, the range between the best and the worst isn't huge. Not shocking, because the price range isn't particularly wide in these things. But the worst to the best, not an enormous gap. All of these coffees are okay. Nothing is like, wow. Nothing is undrinkably terrible or hugely problematic. These have a sort of souriness from, you know, it tastes like there are a few more kind of bigger pieces that didn't really play the game as much. This is just a little weaker, just a little less extracted than the others. So it would stand to reason that actually, I was maybe a touch coarser than I thought I was on this. It doesn't have that a bunch of it was okay and then a bunch of it was really coarse. It has everything was just a little coarse and actually finding it up would make it okay. Like a good, decent cup of coffee. These are the best two cups for me. I'm aware that tasting in this manner is deeply, deeply unscientific and not particularly good, especially when they taste as close as they do. They're really, really very, very similar cups. I might say this and then you could switch the cups around and I might say that. Really not much in it. Both decent, quite sweet. Not too much sort of sourness. Really not too much bitterness either. Does it compare to an EK43? Does it compare to even the Wilfa Uniform? No, you can definitely tell there's a spread of particle sizes that is somewhat inevitable with cheaper hand grinders. This is where the better coffees were. This was sort of in the middle and then this, these two, this grinder, they're kind of the same thing, right, was the least tasty of them for me. I would be happy to travel with these. I'm certainly happy to travel with this or have been in the past. These, meh, not quite as much. So let's award maximum points, medium points, less points over here. It's summering time. So on paper, the Paul X wins it. On build, on portability, on grind quality. But that capacity, actually it might be a sticking point for me and someone else watching this. It just might be a little too small. The Rhinoware, I liked a lot. The better grind control, the good quality of grinds for the price. Yeah, it's a good little grinder. Again, not huge capacity, but good. A little bit cheaper, the Hario, it's the kind of middle of the road all-rounder. There's a reason this is so incredibly popular. I actually like the plastic construction. There's advantages to the shape. For the money, it grinds pretty well. It's not a surprising popular choice. These two here, if it's at this price, if it's $25.99, and I think in the U.S. it is much cheaper for the JavaPress, then it's just, you kind of get what you pay for. It's not very good. It has a bunch of frustrations for me in terms of the build. It didn't produce great tasting coffee. I'm not an enormous fan of this. I probably wouldn't recommend these. I think there are better options at a cheaper or a higher price. So on paper, probably the Paul X takes it. Little bit more thoughtful, but certainly a little bit more expensive. But I will say that at this kind of price point, there just aren't enormous differences in the quality of grind that you're getting. So you may want to consider some other factors. These were bought thanks to the support of my Patreon. If you want to be involved, I'd love to see you there. The kind of support means I can go and buy these products, not have to rely on manufacturers, and I can tell the truth. I can tell you what I like and what I don't. All of these will be given away now, including the one that actually I bought myself some time ago, but I'll give it away too. These are gonna go to Patreon backers who've entered a little competition, and they'll be getting an email from me very soon, letting them know who's won, and little packages of delight, including these grinders, will be going in the mail to them. What we'll do is we will take the Pole-X forwards to the next round, and the next round is gonna be the ultimate hand grinder kind of showdown. Budget's irrelevant here. We're gonna buy the best hand grinders we can where we compare them, and actually see how they compare to something that wins the cheap category. Let me know your thoughts down in the comments below. Let me know a grinder that I cannot miss in that ultimate hand grinder showdown. As always, thank you so much for watching. Hope you have a great day. Bye.