It's cheap if you look for a deal and it looks good from an aesthetic standpoint. It has three buttons for automatically timed grinding length - looked like a good feature.
Negative Product Points
Noisy, creates lots of static, grind is very inconsistent and the aforementioned timing feature was useless.
Detailed Commentary
I am trying to introduce a friend to better quality coffee and thought a gift of some home-roasted coffee with a grinder would be a good idea. Spotted this at an outlet store and thought it was too good to be true - a burr grinder with hopper and timer for $20 (reduced from $29). It was too good to be true. The "timed" settings are supposed to grind enough coffee for 4, 8 or 12 cups but they grind far too much. I have a 20 year old Waring electric "spice mill" that I used for years (and still use in the office) to grind for drip coffee. It has a far more consistent particle size than this so-called burr grinder. It's incredibly noisy, gets very hot running even for short time periods and creates so much static that when the hopper is removed and the lid taken off, lots of powdery coffee flies about. After one session, I cleaned it up, returned it and got a $20 Krups blade model with an on/off switch. Stay away from this Mellitta - you'd be better off with a sledgehammer and a mortar and pestle.
Buying Experience
Easy retail purchase and no questions asked when I returned it for different product.
