Wow, a budget grinder comes up big.

When I was in college and starting to get into coffee, I used a simple and cheap blade grinder, but my espresso was crap for so many reasons that I could never really just blame my scorched uneven grind.

I moved up to a burr grinder that was fantastic for simple drip coffee, but when I racheted down for espresso or up for a French press, it was horrible.  Also, the cheap burr grinder produced a rather random and uneven grind.

I ended up going somewhere where I could test both this Capresso Infinity conical burr grinder and a better $250+ "pro-sumer"grinder.  I was looking for a consistent fine grind for espresso.  Both produced similar results, so being somewhat frugal, I went with the Capresso as it was about a third of the price.

I've been using it for about a month now, and the experience has been universally positive.

The grinder isn't attractive, I'll be honest.  It has sort of a modern food processor look to it; lots of very clear plastic and more expanses of opaque black plastic.  Since we're not a household that leaves the grinder out for looks though, it's relatively small size and light weight are probably more valuable than style anyway though.

Setup and operation are as simple as turning the dial.  It became apparent during the simple set-up, how much easier this was going to be to clean than many other grinders.  The burrs also seemed quite solid and tough.

The output is great, remarkable for the price.  Very consistent, and it goes from pulverizing a la Turkish coffee to a coarse shred and everything in between.  For comparison's sake, I have it set to the coarsest of the four "fine" settings for my pump espresso maker.  The grind setting increments translate to very clear changes in the grind, and the resulting output is consistent no matter where you have it set.

Operation is very quiet compared to other grinders of this type.  I haven't noticed much dust at all, even when the output bin is removed and I'm dispensing directly into the portafilter (which you can do on this machine) or using the burst function (just turn the dial a teeny bit to pulse).

I keep looking for the drawbacks, and to be honest I'm not seeing many (if any), especially given the price.

Yes, the build quality of the housing isn't top shelf (or at least doesn't "seem" like it is), so I am wondering how it will function after a year or two, and while the bean hopper is large, the output bin isn't (although why would you want to grind a large amount of coffee and let it sit there - sort of defeats the purpose huh?).