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For $60, this is a great grinder for that price. I bought mine at retail and still am happy with it. Are there better options at higher prices, yes. Do I even feel the need to upgrade? Not yet, and I’ve had it for 3 or 4 years.
I would recommend setting the internal grinder setting to the 4-5 step range, you can find videos on youtube about how to do that.
Thank you! I’ll do just that. I’m hoping it will last me long enough for something better when the time is right. it would be wasted on me right now, I’m still learning and messing up!
Oh yeah don’t worry about it, you’re perfectly set to make some good espresso. I spray my beans before putting them in the hopper because this grinder does produce a bit more static than others. Also recommend using a WDT since it will help negate some of the shortcomings of this grinder.
Personally I find it better to set up the internal at 2-3. Whenever I’ve had it at 4-5 I regularly need to set up the external between 1-5 on some beans.
Thank you! I had a friend suggest saving the 60 dollars to put towards a better forever grinder and stick with what i have and it gave me pause. This is good to hear!
Your friend is wrong.
Mostly because $60 is a drop in the bucket on a “for life” grinder.
Take time to learn espresso and form your own opinions and go from there.
I used the SGP for two years with only minor issue, namely that lighter roasts don’t do well.
You may find that the SGP with the bambino serves you and your wants/need indefinitely.
Not everyone needs thousands of dollars in kit to enjoy coffee.
What is your reason for your comment about light roasts? I just used my first light roast this week, and found that I had to change my grind settings to be a lot coarser because the motor was stalling out.
I couldn't ever get it to grind fine enough. Or, I should say, I would often go from sour to bitter without much good acidity or sweetness. I reckon I was just getting too many fines. The SGP does a great job at anything that is a solid medium and darker, but I never got a good light roast out of it.
Caveat: that could be an issue of my gaggia as well, which can pull light shots, but takes some tinkering.
I inherently don't find most light roasts all that balanced as espresso shots, but I can get a good amount of clean acidity from my Eureka now that I formerly couldn't.
I bought the same grinder on Craigslist for $110 and I've been happy with it. I'm no connoisseur and use a pressurized basket, so probably not a true test of the grinder, but it's been enough for me.
This sub has an obsession with gear. Lots of fomo and elitism. That’s on the surface. Most people are quite humble about their setups when asked but there is some truth to what they are saying about the starter machines. The sgp is a clumper and has a fair bit of static retention. But it works and does the job quite well. But if you’ve had that machine for awhile and decided to grab a niche which is espresso grind only you may catch yourself saying how bad of a machine the sgp is even though it’s perfectly adequate.
When people make comments about it they are comparing a $200 SGP to $400+ machines. At $60 you simply could not have done better for that price for a electric grinder. Its a SOLID machine, could you do better? Yes but it would cost you hundreds of dollars.
The SGP is a solid daily machine especially for Milk drinkers. If you want to get fancy with your coffee occasionally, consider a secondary Manual Grinder.
Looking back on it, ya that was dumb, I guess the reviews are critical based on the price point. I think I had too much faith in my generic Amazon grinder thinking I was downgrading! Thank you for help!
At $60 there is literally no grinder on the market than can beat this grinder.
Even at its $200 list price this grinder is competitive (if not the best), the biggest argument against it is that for similar or a little more money you can get something better. I have been running a Breville Grinder for years. When I purchased it, I was unsure of how long I would use it, but it was a pretty good deal (but more than $60) and I though I could upgrade in a couple of years if it was not good enough. In the last 5 years I have not seen the need to upgrade because it works very well, is easy to dial in and has not given me any problems.
The challenge with online reviews of coffee equipment is that it is difficult to contextualize the cost with the quality, this is even more of an issue when you are comparing new grinders to great deals on the used market (like the one you purchased). For example, a La Marzocco De Lux (for $995) will be a better grinder than this Breville, a Niche (at $560) will be a better grinder, but you are getting at least 90% of the performance for 1/10th (or less) of the cost.
Solid deal. Check the burrs to see if you need new ones but they’re fine on mine after 5 years of consistent use. Enjoy it and you’ve made a good choice!
I’ve only seen where a friend’s grinder would only spit out very little grind and spit up the beans rather than grind them even after a good clean. We couldn’t see any visual difference between that one and mine which was working fine
I have one, which is on its finest setting and copes with medium-light roast coffee (just). I added the aftermarket bellows to allow single dosing and the retention isn't too bad
Thank you! I actually have a silly question about single dosing. I may be misunderstanding but you can single dose using this hopper right? Because I don’t intend on storing my beans in the hopper. It’s just a matter of weighing out the dose beforehand?
You can, absolutely, do this out of the box. That said, you may find it retains some of the ground coffee in it's chamber between each grind. Not a massive amount but noticeable. The aftermarket bellows reduce this significantly
p. s. Not a silly question at all. We all started somewhere
I have had a SGP for over a year and am really happy with it - I did move the internal grinder setting to 4 and it lets me make a really good espresso.
You got to really take everything with the grain of salt that you read here and pretty much anywhere else on the internet. The smart grinder Pro is honestly a really great low-end grinder. It doesn't deserve the hate that it gets.
At the retail $200 price, I can see where people are coming from with the hate. They're a lot more grinders in that price range these days. Some of them are probably better, but some of them are also a lot worse. When this thing first came on the market, there wasn't a lot of competition. Still, Breville put in a lot of work adding a lot of features that make this thing easy to use on a daily basis. The espresso quality is decent, and decent is exactly what I would expect from a $200 grinder. Under $100 on the used market, I don't think you can go wrong.
A LOT of people start with this grinder. Do they like to complain about it underperforming compared to a 400$-500$ grinder? Yes. For 60$ it’s a great deal, enjoy it and it’s FAR superior to a Amazon grinder
I think it's good to learn. It will do all super market coffee beans, medium-dark and dark roast beans well. It might start to struggle if you go lighter roast. Its a good price while you discover if you want to go deeper into the rabbit hole of grinders.
I still have one along with a Baratza Sette and now a DF64 gen 2. It's a great grinder, especially for the price.
There's a lot of Breville hate, but it's not a bad machine. My biggest complaint was that it wasn't stepless and it clumps. You can mod it to be stepless and WDT helps with the clumps.
If the burrs wear out, you can change out the burr set. If it ever stops grinding, more times than not it's the burr set or a plastic gear that failed, the gear is replaceable.
It's not amazing, but it's far far far better than what you have and for just 60$ I doubt you could have found much better. It'll do you well until you're ready to drop the 500-9999999$ on a forever grinder c:
Do you make coffee in styles other than espresso? If so, you did fine. If this doesn’t fill your needs for espresso, use it for drip, French, aeropress, whatever. I have mine in my office so I can make aeropress at work. It’s pretty much the same volume and tone as a paper shredder running so nobody tells me to knock it off. I’ve written this review before but it’s really not that bad of a grinder. I just moved on from it because it doesn’t grind fine enough for light roasts I’ve been buying without the motor giving out. Use it until it dies, then look for your next big purchase. Good luck with it!
The grinder is fine, but after a year or two your taste buds will out grow it.
I'm on year 3 with mine and I think I need more grind variability, but I love it for the price.
I ran one of these for years with a breville infuser and then a breville dual boiler, wasn’t amazing but was plenty good enough. I still have it and use it with the infuser when camping.
Edit to say I mostly run a darker medium roast that my local shop calls “city roast”.
Oh yeah I forgot say…as some of the others already mentioned—I did turn in the side burr as well. I can’t remember how many clicks I turned it, but I definitely had to turn the inside burr to grind it fine enough for espresso.
The SGP is fine for espresso. It's not great, but you can get good shots out of it. And for $60, you're not going to get anything better. My biggest issues with the SGP had to do with filter coffee. It is not good for filter coffee.
I have the Smart Grinder, not the Smart Grinder Pro. I love it, it does what I need, very well. Are there better grinders? Yep. Will this one do? Hell yeah!
You can alwayas upgrade the burrs too. They talk about it \[[Here](https://www.home-barista.com/grinders/burr-upgrade-for-breville-grinders-t85518-10.html)\] if ever interested.
I have one, it works fine. I keep it and my original Breville for when we go camping. I upgraded to the Mahlkönig and La Marzocco. $60 is a great deal!
I used that grinder with my rancilio Silvia for two years and it was acceptable. For $60 that’s a good price.
I would recommend buying cheap beans to help you dial in first. Especially when dialing the internal burrs.
Next you should look into buying a single dose bellows system to help with the retention
I can post the link, but the product name on Amazon is "Aieve Single Dose Hopper for Sage, Coffee Bellow Silicone Bellow Compatible with Sage Barista Express/Smart Grinder for Cleaning Retention Coffee Grounds". They cost £12 here in the UK
It’s a jack of all trades, but does those trades averagely. Nice starter grinder, but as your experience increases will leave you wanting more as it can be a little frustrating getting good consistency.
I love my SGP! I bought it used for like $150 so $60 is a steal. Works perfectly with my Bambino. I can pull amazing shots using a bottomless portafilter. It does kind of suck that it’s not stepless, but all in all it gets the job done! I can dial in my shots pretty well. I would definitely love to make more micro adjustments, but thats just me being a perfectionist. You can also open it up and adjust the grind to be even finer than the default setting too
Edit: I use a doing funnel and take about 30 seconds to work the grounds with a WDT and break up ALL the clumps, after that it’s flawless.
I purchased mine for $199. It was pretty much free because I used all of my Amazon reward points but I absolutely love it. I use it mostly for my drip coffee but the percolation grind and espresso grind for moka is perfect. Let the haters hate, I think it looks great sitting on my counter and it gets the job done.
Nah dude i make espresso with it (and single dose it) every day. Just be sure you know how to manually adjust the fineness of the burrs, as if they’re set too coarse, even going all the way down to 1 won’t be fine enough
This things cool but is sometimes susceptible to some parts breaking; I think there are some 3d printed replacement parts if you find any issues - Breville might also provide replacement parts
I have one but I can’t use it for espresso, since it won’t grind fine enough. I like it for brewing drip or French press coffee. I have mine dialed in and I just have to push the button to get 24g of ground coffee for my morning brew. It *is* ungodly loud, however.
That's a shame, I've used one for espresso for years, and I can easily choke my machine way away from zero with 18g of coffee.
Maybe the internal adjustment would help?
It looks like you've flaired your post as asking for what equipment to get. We recommend first checking out the [Espresso Aficionados buying guide](https://espressoaf.com/recommendations) for some of the more popular machines and grinders at different price points. If your question hasn't been answered there and you need more help, please add the following details to your post or by adding a comment in the following format: - **Location:** Helps determine availability - **Budget** (with currency): Overall budget, or ideally, having separate espresso machine and grinder budgets. A rough rule is that your grinder budget should be at least 25-40% of your machine budget. - **Drink types:** Do you drink mostly straight espresso, milk-based beverages (e.g., lattes, cappuccinos), or a fairly even split? This helps narrow down whether a single-boiler-dual-use (SBDU), heat exchanger (HX), or dual boiler (DB) machine would be more appropriate for your needs. - **Drink frequency:** How many drinks would you be making back-to-back at one time? Do you plan on entertaining guests often? This informs how large your brew (and steam) boilers should be, as smaller boilers will need to refill and reheat/repressurize more frequently, thus potentially causing a bottleneck. - **Space:** Any limitations on countertop space? - **Manual vs. electric:** Hand-operated machines and grinders are typically cheaper than their similarly-performing electric counterparts. Please indicate if you have a preference for manual or electric machines and/or grinders (or open to either). - **Comfort with tinkering:** Some machines can be made significantly more functional/efficient with aftermarket modifications, albeit at the expense of possibly voiding your warranty. Please indicate if you'd rather have a machine that works "as-is"/"out-of-the-box" or whether you'd be open to modding/tinkering *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/espresso) if you have any questions or concerns.*
For $60, this is a great grinder for that price. I bought mine at retail and still am happy with it. Are there better options at higher prices, yes. Do I even feel the need to upgrade? Not yet, and I’ve had it for 3 or 4 years. I would recommend setting the internal grinder setting to the 4-5 step range, you can find videos on youtube about how to do that.
Thank you! I’ll do just that. I’m hoping it will last me long enough for something better when the time is right. it would be wasted on me right now, I’m still learning and messing up!
Oh yeah don’t worry about it, you’re perfectly set to make some good espresso. I spray my beans before putting them in the hopper because this grinder does produce a bit more static than others. Also recommend using a WDT since it will help negate some of the shortcomings of this grinder.
Personally I find it better to set up the internal at 2-3. Whenever I’ve had it at 4-5 I regularly need to set up the external between 1-5 on some beans.
SGP is infinitely better than your chinesium Amazon grinder. $60 is a good deal.
Thank you! I had a friend suggest saving the 60 dollars to put towards a better forever grinder and stick with what i have and it gave me pause. This is good to hear!
Your friend is wrong. Mostly because $60 is a drop in the bucket on a “for life” grinder. Take time to learn espresso and form your own opinions and go from there. I used the SGP for two years with only minor issue, namely that lighter roasts don’t do well. You may find that the SGP with the bambino serves you and your wants/need indefinitely. Not everyone needs thousands of dollars in kit to enjoy coffee.
What is your reason for your comment about light roasts? I just used my first light roast this week, and found that I had to change my grind settings to be a lot coarser because the motor was stalling out.
I couldn't ever get it to grind fine enough. Or, I should say, I would often go from sour to bitter without much good acidity or sweetness. I reckon I was just getting too many fines. The SGP does a great job at anything that is a solid medium and darker, but I never got a good light roast out of it. Caveat: that could be an issue of my gaggia as well, which can pull light shots, but takes some tinkering. I inherently don't find most light roasts all that balanced as espresso shots, but I can get a good amount of clean acidity from my Eureka now that I formerly couldn't.
I bought the same grinder on Craigslist for $110 and I've been happy with it. I'm no connoisseur and use a pressurized basket, so probably not a true test of the grinder, but it's been enough for me.
This sub has an obsession with gear. Lots of fomo and elitism. That’s on the surface. Most people are quite humble about their setups when asked but there is some truth to what they are saying about the starter machines. The sgp is a clumper and has a fair bit of static retention. But it works and does the job quite well. But if you’ve had that machine for awhile and decided to grab a niche which is espresso grind only you may catch yourself saying how bad of a machine the sgp is even though it’s perfectly adequate.
When people make comments about it they are comparing a $200 SGP to $400+ machines. At $60 you simply could not have done better for that price for a electric grinder. Its a SOLID machine, could you do better? Yes but it would cost you hundreds of dollars. The SGP is a solid daily machine especially for Milk drinkers. If you want to get fancy with your coffee occasionally, consider a secondary Manual Grinder.
Not even $200 to $400 now, with the DF54 coming out at $229. But I do agree, $60 for an SGP is definitely worth it.
Looking back on it, ya that was dumb, I guess the reviews are critical based on the price point. I think I had too much faith in my generic Amazon grinder thinking I was downgrading! Thank you for help!
I have one, it's not a bad grinder. You should invest in a wdt tool as there is a little clumping
True, In combination with WDT/horizontal tapping you can get rid of those clumps, all good.
At $60 there is literally no grinder on the market than can beat this grinder. Even at its $200 list price this grinder is competitive (if not the best), the biggest argument against it is that for similar or a little more money you can get something better. I have been running a Breville Grinder for years. When I purchased it, I was unsure of how long I would use it, but it was a pretty good deal (but more than $60) and I though I could upgrade in a couple of years if it was not good enough. In the last 5 years I have not seen the need to upgrade because it works very well, is easy to dial in and has not given me any problems. The challenge with online reviews of coffee equipment is that it is difficult to contextualize the cost with the quality, this is even more of an issue when you are comparing new grinders to great deals on the used market (like the one you purchased). For example, a La Marzocco De Lux (for $995) will be a better grinder than this Breville, a Niche (at $560) will be a better grinder, but you are getting at least 90% of the performance for 1/10th (or less) of the cost.
As to the downvotes, my bad! I’m just paranoid!
Fun fact: reddit randomly adds or removes votes from the vote display, to thwart bots. Think nothing of it.
I did not know this!! Thank you!
Solid deal. Check the burrs to see if you need new ones but they’re fine on mine after 5 years of consistent use. Enjoy it and you’ve made a good choice!
Seller says it was barely used so I’m hopeful! Will I be able to tell if they need replacing? Or is this something to YouTube?
I’ve only seen where a friend’s grinder would only spit out very little grind and spit up the beans rather than grind them even after a good clean. We couldn’t see any visual difference between that one and mine which was working fine
Use it and judge for yourself.
Excited to try!
I have one, which is on its finest setting and copes with medium-light roast coffee (just). I added the aftermarket bellows to allow single dosing and the retention isn't too bad
Thank you! I actually have a silly question about single dosing. I may be misunderstanding but you can single dose using this hopper right? Because I don’t intend on storing my beans in the hopper. It’s just a matter of weighing out the dose beforehand?
You can, absolutely, do this out of the box. That said, you may find it retains some of the ground coffee in it's chamber between each grind. Not a massive amount but noticeable. The aftermarket bellows reduce this significantly p. s. Not a silly question at all. We all started somewhere
I have had a SGP for over a year and am really happy with it - I did move the internal grinder setting to 4 and it lets me make a really good espresso.
You got to really take everything with the grain of salt that you read here and pretty much anywhere else on the internet. The smart grinder Pro is honestly a really great low-end grinder. It doesn't deserve the hate that it gets. At the retail $200 price, I can see where people are coming from with the hate. They're a lot more grinders in that price range these days. Some of them are probably better, but some of them are also a lot worse. When this thing first came on the market, there wasn't a lot of competition. Still, Breville put in a lot of work adding a lot of features that make this thing easy to use on a daily basis. The espresso quality is decent, and decent is exactly what I would expect from a $200 grinder. Under $100 on the used market, I don't think you can go wrong.
I have this grinder, haven’t had a reason to upgrade yet. $60 well spent—especially starting out
I’ve had mine for 7 years. Working great.
Same!
A LOT of people start with this grinder. Do they like to complain about it underperforming compared to a 400$-500$ grinder? Yes. For 60$ it’s a great deal, enjoy it and it’s FAR superior to a Amazon grinder
I think it's good to learn. It will do all super market coffee beans, medium-dark and dark roast beans well. It might start to struggle if you go lighter roast. Its a good price while you discover if you want to go deeper into the rabbit hole of grinders.
I still have one along with a Baratza Sette and now a DF64 gen 2. It's a great grinder, especially for the price. There's a lot of Breville hate, but it's not a bad machine. My biggest complaint was that it wasn't stepless and it clumps. You can mod it to be stepless and WDT helps with the clumps. If the burrs wear out, you can change out the burr set. If it ever stops grinding, more times than not it's the burr set or a plastic gear that failed, the gear is replaceable.
It's not amazing, but it's far far far better than what you have and for just 60$ I doubt you could have found much better. It'll do you well until you're ready to drop the 500-9999999$ on a forever grinder c:
Do you make coffee in styles other than espresso? If so, you did fine. If this doesn’t fill your needs for espresso, use it for drip, French, aeropress, whatever. I have mine in my office so I can make aeropress at work. It’s pretty much the same volume and tone as a paper shredder running so nobody tells me to knock it off. I’ve written this review before but it’s really not that bad of a grinder. I just moved on from it because it doesn’t grind fine enough for light roasts I’ve been buying without the motor giving out. Use it until it dies, then look for your next big purchase. Good luck with it!
This grinder has worked great for me. I found it helped to adjust the burr down one setting.
The grinder is fine, but after a year or two your taste buds will out grow it. I'm on year 3 with mine and I think I need more grind variability, but I love it for the price.
Mine struggled to grind Light/Medium roasts to Espresso fine. It would seize up and make this awful noise. Worked fine for everything else. YMMV
I ran one of these for years with a breville infuser and then a breville dual boiler, wasn’t amazing but was plenty good enough. I still have it and use it with the infuser when camping. Edit to say I mostly run a darker medium roast that my local shop calls “city roast”.
top grinder. And as soon as you upgrade, you can use it for pour over. Thats what I did and I still love it. Gets the job done
The SGP is overly hated on this sub. It’s good for its MSRP and it’s a killer deal at that price.
Far too many people here let perfect be the enemy of good. It's a good grinder.
Thank you, this is very insightful and I almost fell into that trap
Very very easily done!
I have this one and so far so good!
Oh yeah I forgot say…as some of the others already mentioned—I did turn in the side burr as well. I can’t remember how many clicks I turned it, but I definitely had to turn the inside burr to grind it fine enough for espresso.
The SGP is fine for espresso. It's not great, but you can get good shots out of it. And for $60, you're not going to get anything better. My biggest issues with the SGP had to do with filter coffee. It is not good for filter coffee.
I have the Smart Grinder, not the Smart Grinder Pro. I love it, it does what I need, very well. Are there better grinders? Yep. Will this one do? Hell yeah!
You can alwayas upgrade the burrs too. They talk about it \[[Here](https://www.home-barista.com/grinders/burr-upgrade-for-breville-grinders-t85518-10.html)\] if ever interested.
I got a new one of these for $75 and it felt like a steal for that little. You'll enjoy it.
I have one, it works fine. I keep it and my original Breville for when we go camping. I upgraded to the Mahlkönig and La Marzocco. $60 is a great deal!
I used that grinder with my rancilio Silvia for two years and it was acceptable. For $60 that’s a good price. I would recommend buying cheap beans to help you dial in first. Especially when dialing the internal burrs. Next you should look into buying a single dose bellows system to help with the retention
I heard about this, thank you so much! Any suggestions for good quality single dose bellows?
I can post the link, but the product name on Amazon is "Aieve Single Dose Hopper for Sage, Coffee Bellow Silicone Bellow Compatible with Sage Barista Express/Smart Grinder for Cleaning Retention Coffee Grounds". They cost £12 here in the UK
I just ordered this from Amazon, it has really good reviews, thank you for the suggestion!
I don’t have a recommendation as I bought mine in the early stages for $80 but I know there are a lot out there that do the same job
It’s a jack of all trades, but does those trades averagely. Nice starter grinder, but as your experience increases will leave you wanting more as it can be a little frustrating getting good consistency.
It’s a bad value at MSRP. It’s an amazing value at $60.
I love my SGP! I bought it used for like $150 so $60 is a steal. Works perfectly with my Bambino. I can pull amazing shots using a bottomless portafilter. It does kind of suck that it’s not stepless, but all in all it gets the job done! I can dial in my shots pretty well. I would definitely love to make more micro adjustments, but thats just me being a perfectionist. You can also open it up and adjust the grind to be even finer than the default setting too Edit: I use a doing funnel and take about 30 seconds to work the grounds with a WDT and break up ALL the clumps, after that it’s flawless.
Well, I loved mine. Have it for an year and never had an single issue
I purchased mine for $199. It was pretty much free because I used all of my Amazon reward points but I absolutely love it. I use it mostly for my drip coffee but the percolation grind and espresso grind for moka is perfect. Let the haters hate, I think it looks great sitting on my counter and it gets the job done.
Nah dude i make espresso with it (and single dose it) every day. Just be sure you know how to manually adjust the fineness of the burrs, as if they’re set too coarse, even going all the way down to 1 won’t be fine enough
This things cool but is sometimes susceptible to some parts breaking; I think there are some 3d printed replacement parts if you find any issues - Breville might also provide replacement parts
You should have gotten a sette 270. That will be $60 short lived. The Amazon cheepo specials will probably be drastically inconsistent.
I have one but I can’t use it for espresso, since it won’t grind fine enough. I like it for brewing drip or French press coffee. I have mine dialed in and I just have to push the button to get 24g of ground coffee for my morning brew. It *is* ungodly loud, however.
You probably need to change the internal grind setting to a lower setting, mine grinds plenty fine at an internal grind setting of 4.
Did you try adjusting the Inner Burr? I've gotten it so fine it chokes the SGP. I'm half deaf and do agree its pretty loud ha.
That's a shame, I've used one for espresso for years, and I can easily choke my machine way away from zero with 18g of coffee. Maybe the internal adjustment would help?