Breville have produced many gorgeous pieces of equipment that seem to favor form a little over function. They have some great features that we really love, but sometimes the overall performance isn't ideal. However, as with every machine, there are pros and cons and the Smart Grinder has a lot of really great aspects to its design: We love the metal casing, the pull rings, the digital interface and how you dial in the grind. Where it didn't measure up for us, however, was that it indicates you can use it with a traditional non-pressurized extraction and we were not able to do so successfully -- it just doesn't go fine enough right now. We contacted Breville about this and they are working on ways to improve it so we are really hopeful that this will be a great multi-purpose grinder in the future. At present, it's a good choice for drip / press pot and pressurized espresso extraction -- but stay tuned on any future improvements coming down the line. For now, watch Gail take us through this grinder's features and test how it performs.
Update 3/16/11: We were able to meet with Breville and they provided us with shims in order to tweak the burrs on the grinder. Watch Gail install and test here: