Russell Hobbs 10934 - classic grinder Review

Overall Rating

Cheap
Cheap
Did I say cheap already?
Nice timed operation
FAIRLY quiet
Good quality finish

Not fine enough for espresso without some serious tweaking
Uneven grind size
Heats up beans in hopper
Ground coffee comes out hot

I got this Russell Hobbs 10934 - Classic as a bit of an experiment in finding a cheap coffee grinder. The Amazon reviews have details on how to tweak it to get a finer grind, which I followed (although not before checking that the finest grind at factory setting is nowhere NEAR fine enough for espresso). The tweaking is quite easy, but there is no way of knowing when the burrs are touching, which is unnerving.

The operation is fairly quiet, but you'd hear it from the next door room. The look of the thing is very nice. The design is OK, apart from the ejection chute for the ground coffee, which is (inexplicably) horizontal and so gets a pile of coffee stuck in it after every grind.

Both before and after tweaking, the grind size was inconsistent. When left on at the plug, the transformer in the base of the machine heats up the coffee beans in the hopper, which is very bad for freshness. During grinding, the beans get surprisingly hot (I noticed no difference between the heat in the ground beans from this and from my old blade grinder).

My opinion is that it's been interesting to have. And for £20, it's not really that much of a problem to have to upgrade after a couple of months' use, but I would have gone for a Gaggia MM if I'd known this wasn't going to work as a medium-term solution. If you don't need very fine grinds (as a guide, the finest factory setting is about the size I use in my cafetiere), this is an OK cheap solution and a big step up from comparably-priced blade grinders, but don't get it for espresso-making.