The grinder is great but it creates an absolute mess. The bin it grinds into is plastic and as the grinds pour in they cling to the edge with static. When you remove the bin they fall all over the counter and I'm constantly cleaning all around it with every use. It's annoying.

I purchased this to replace an older burr mill grinder that was starting to fail. This grinder is great! There is a digital display and the coffee grounds container chamber has an LED light, which is a nice feature. You have amazing grind selection control with the Virtuoso+. Two things I like best about this system. 1. there is not a lot of static charge in the chamber. 2. the grinds do not seem to clump. For real coffee nerds, I was using the Ross droplet technique with my old grinder. This system grinds so well, I do not see a need to use the droplet technique. Coffee tastes great!

Got an espresso maker for my birthday, but we only had a hand grinder. So guess what? SORE arms all around. Grinding fine grounds every morning for 20+ mins was really taking its toll on me. I'm lazy. In the AM, I'm tired. I want coffee NOW, not in 20-30 mins. So what'd we do?

We got this baby, after searching high and low for an auto Burr. We ALMOST got the lesser model without the LED display and light, but boyo, this thing is REALLY, REALLY worth every single penny. My arms (though less buff) thank me kindly, and reducing coffee time from 30 mins down to 1 minute? a blessing. Do yourself a favor and get this one for the coffee lover in your life, even if that means YOURSELF. NOW'S THE TIME to TREAT. No tricks.

Pros-
Easy to clean
Extremely fast grinds
STRONG and FAST grinding. CONSISTENT.
Versatile settings
Adjustable times, and pulse mode.

Cons-
*There is a learning curve for grounds! Everyone has different taste. Plus the pamphlet is pretty off in terms of what ground settings go good with each type of coffee. I think the settings say 8 for Espresso.... our first run the machine got completley stopped up when we tried to brew. It was too dense. We adjusted to 10, 9 at the finest and it ran fine, perfect even. This con isnt the machines fault, just the manual's / the company's 'suggested settings'.

* If I could change anything about this grinder, it;d be the way the grind time is entered. You turn the dial clockwise to add seconds, counterclockwise to reduce half (.X) seconds. Which is kind of annoying! You're constantly twisting the dial counter clockwise to like you're winding a clock. MILDLY irritating at worst, but not a dealbreaker.

* The instructions for how to build it are a little bit too vague. Had to go online to watch multiple step by steps, because the manual didnt explain how to put on the (Silicone? Plastic? Rubber?) burr protector. The Manual needs a total rehaul tbth, its not written well, the times are all off, and its missing crucial info. Again, not a huge issue, just irritating if youve never used one of these before.

THATS IT! Once you work out the kinks, its perfect. The grinds are super consistent and beautiful. We've used it for espresso, pour over, and most importantly, cold brew, since we can grind with much higher volumes now. YES, we used to make cold brew with our tiny hand crank, do not reccomend. Now you'll be crushing 100g of coffee in 10 seconds flat.

Pros
1. A high quality grinder that produces a consistent grind. For us, this is by far the most important feature and outweighs the cons.
2. Not as messy as previous models in terms of leaving grinds on the counter
3. Baratza, even after the Breville acquisition, provides outstanding support. They are a bit slower to respond than before, but they do engage.

Cons
1. Rotating the dial to set the number of seconds you want it to grind is awkward and maxes out at 40 seconds. So we have to run it twice to get the coffee that we want.
2. Entering the "pulse" mode requires pushing and holding the dial for 3 seconds and then pulsing. Then you rotate the dial more than "two clicks" to exit pulse mode. Again, kind of a clunky user experience. Not sure the dial is much of an improvement over the previous adjustable self timer but I suppose it may be more reliable.
3. Really noisy.
4. It's a chore to clean, but familiar to anyone who has had a Baratza grinder before.

First off, I come from a professional background having several coffee carts and restaurants over the years. One experience I will always remember is when I had our burrs replaced on our commercial espresso grinder. The technician said, "let me show you something amazing with just changing burrs". He brewed an espresso before the new burrs and one after. It was night and day difference such that these could have been completely different coffees or expresso machines. Burrs do wear out and need to be changed, which by the way is pretty easy on this machine.

I have seen several complaints about the timer. I find it to be extremely useful for measuring output. I tend to brew the same size pot every day and have dialed in my grind time to output the same amount ever time. I have seen some other grinders trying to incorporate scales to measure output which looks to be a PIA. Once you get the time "dialed" in, the output is very consistent. I can see if someone was varying the amount of coffee output regularly, the timer could be a pain but for consistent amounts of grind, it works very well. I also read here about complaints of the white coffee chafe showing. This is common with medium to lighter roast beans and are not an issue. I've used cheaper burr grinders usually don't not show the chafe and this usually means the coffee is being burnt rather than chopped by the grinding process. This has been a very reliable grinder putting out consistent dosed grinds every time. It should be noted that I do not use this grinder for espresso.