I’m looking to get an electrical coffee grinder suitable to enjoy V60. I see a lot of you guys have Fellow, very cool but that is a bit over my budget rn I would say.

Is there anything you would suggest below 100 bucks?

If you take the title at face value, my job is done. If you need to be convinced, here goes...

With the winter holidays coming up and my Baratza Encore deciding to have electrical issues, I needed a coffee grinder for the few pounds of beans in my kitchen cabinet. Amazon wouldn't get a new Encore to me in time so I went to my local Williams Sonoma and bought a Cuisinart automatic burr grinder. A burr grinder's a burr grinder, I thought, and since it was almost half the price of an Encore I went for it and hoped for the best.

Right out of the box there were issues. Cheap construction, tiny and absurdly inconsistent ceramic burrs, and an automatic "number of cups" dispensing method instead of a toggle or hold switch. "No biggie" I thought, figuring that the flat burrs might perform OK and that I could just slam it to the highest cup setting to make sure all the beans were ground.

On to the brew test. I loaded in 18g of coffee with the grinder set to just under "Medium" which was the recommended setting for auto-drip and usually a good starting point for Aeropress, plugged it in, moved the super cheap feeling slider to 10 cups, and pressed start.

When I tell you that the grinder sounded like a jet turbine winding up on a runway, I am not exaggerating. The only thing keeping it from hitting approximately 500,000rpm was the presence of coffee beans in the hopper, and once there were only a few left, it kept going faster and faster and faster to the point where the last remaining beans didn't have a chance to get in between the burrs without being flung back out into the hopper.

The end result was a ridiculously inconsistent grind and lots of static cling, despite adding water to the beans as recommended by our lord and saviour Hoffman. It did not make a good cup of coffee. I might have been able to get a better result with a blade grinder.

Maybe I'm just spoiled because I got to use the Encore for the past year and a half, but this was a truly abysmal experience. The Baratza was loud but it had torque, a reasonable speed, almost perfect consistency, and a no-frills easy to use interface. Everything about it instilled confidence in a good end result being in my coffee cup, something which Cuisinart is incapable of creating. I intend to return this unit after Thanksgiving and buy another Encore or Virtuoso

Now I know, and I hope my experience can help you know, that some things aren't worth spending less on. If you don't want to shell out for a good conical or flat burr grinder, get a hand grinder. It'll be more work but you'll get a much better cup of coffee than a cheap electric burr grinder can produce.

Tldr; if you're looking at electric burr grinders and can't afford a good one, consider a hand grinder or buying preground coffee from a coffee shop because both of those will give you a much better result than a sub $100 electric grinder.