Brenda—January 15, 2025✓ Verified purchase
I cannot say just how much I enjoy this hand grinder. I have three other brands of hand grinder, all more budget friendly, and the quality between those and this J-ultra is night and day. Let us start off by talking about the build quality. The bearings and springs are clean and well machined. The grinder comes apart easily for cleaning and is a breeze to calibrate afterward. Said bearings are silent when you turn the crank, without beans, and the action is smooth once you do add your coffee beans. The clicks the dial makes are smooth but reassuring. The crank handle is well machined, and the locking mechanism is easy to use. The catch cup magnets are great. Strong enough to not detach accidentally in use but not so much that it hard to take off when you are ready to make your coffee. And finally, the grip is great and feels like it will not slip after a few months of use like I have had happen with other grinders. Moving on to functionality I will say that it is easy to crank this with even lighter roasted beans. Or as much as can be expected from a hand grinder and a light roast coffee at an espresso setting but I digress. While it is easy to crank it is still fast, under 45 seconds for me, on most coffees with an 18 gram dose in 49/51/54mm baskets and a little longer on 58 as I have to grind finer (about 55 seconds). The dial is quite nice and having 8 microns of adjustment is insane. I almost always change settings 3-4 clicks at a time if I am dialing in as I know that I can pull a shot at 30 seconds on one setting and one click may give me a 29 second shot. It is so granular that I might even get another 30 second shot (this could even come down to puck prep or temperature differences in your process). As such this allows you to dial in by taste a lot easier. Say you pull a shot at your desired time (I like 28-32 seconds) but something tastes just a little astringent or a little sour, one click could change the flavor ever so slightly without changing your time or yield by a noticeable amount. This amount of granularity is also nice with manual machines like levers (or picopresso or robot etc). It just makes pulling a shot that is "almost there" that much easier. It is hard to explain but if you run a manual machine, you know that they can be finicky. Flavor profile wise, I find I like this better than some of my electric grinders. It is very good at pulling more traditional shots (think thick and syrupy body) but it produces a lot of fines, so it is great with longer 4:1+ ratios as well as it doesn't encourage channeling like some of my other bur sets do. I do find that even if it is good at pulling traditional shots it does also highlight acidity in those shots. I tend to get good body but more up front acidity than astringency. That is, unless you push it too fine on too light of a roast. No ristrettos on ultra-light filter roast but that isn't a pleasant experience for me anyway. Now, the one thing that I miss about having a screw on catch cup is that it fit in my portafilter/dosing ring better. This cup has a very large diameter. But that is me nit picking. And the grinder, with the handle on, will tip over if you leave it standing up so remove the handle! I can't speak to longevity as I've only put about 3 kilos of coffee through it at this point, but I have other 1zpresso products that haven't given me any issues. If you think this grinder is for you, it is. I wouldn't hesitate. Read more
J Hsu—November 23, 2025✓ Verified purchase
It's a really high quality manual grinder. It's solid, well-made, and it feels like a precision device. It provides repeatable, consistent grind. Adjustment setting and indication is ingenuous. Retention is typically 0.1g or less. Cleaning with the included blower and brushes is easy and quick. Taste profile is typical of traditional conical burr. With medium or more roast, it really brings out the chocolate test in the espresso. For lighter roast, the profile is an orchestra of complex taste as expected from a high quality conical. Read more
b_fizz—August 2, 2023✓ Verified purchase
Quick shot: amazing hand grinder - if you are at all on the fence about getting a hand grinder that can do espresso, this is a great one. Background: I like coffee, a lot. Some people might say too much, but they are wrong. I like coffee in nearly all it's forms and brew methods. I have an espresso machine (a Rancilio Sylvia modded with a PID - I know, it's not end-game quality, but it's been a solid performer for nearly a decade) that has been through a few different grinders (a Rancilio Rocky that was a workhorse as well, then started having electrical problems and a decided to go a different direction) now working with a Baratza Sette 270 (for the espresso) and an Encore for all other (more coarse) brew methods. That's all great when I'm at home, but what about on the road? I have historically used a collapsible pour over and/or Aeropress when traveling (with a collapsible kettle) but grinding has been "hit or miss" with a variety of different portable grinders. I have used some that were "ok" and some that were pretty terrible. My first manual grinder was a Hairo Slim and the quality of grind was ok, but it took forever to grind and it just turned me off to manuals. Enter in the Youtube rabbit hole of coffee afficionados (look up James Hoffman, Lance Hedrick and Kyle Roswell to name a few) and they convinced me to give it another go, given that I recently bought a Picopresso (I know, this isn't a review for that...but WOW - what a great little travel espresso maker) I wanted it to be able to really get into the espresso ranges of grinds, not just pour-over and Aeropress. I received the 1Zpresso J-Max S and there was only a card with links to websites to download the manuals...I might be a little old school, I didn't love it - but it also wasn't the worst thing in the world. After spending a couple minutes reading (it gives you ranges for specific brew methods, that seem pretty spot on in my research thus far). The only problem was that the "zero point" wasn't at zero - it was more like 1.8. It was incredibly easy to fix (maybe a minute). From there I was able to grind away and at a recommended espresso range (which the "clicks" are easy to navigate - if you look online, you'll see references of three numbers, often like: 1,2,3; where the first number is the number of rotations (there's a handy pictorial reference on the device to identify rotations), the second number is represented by the large number on the dial, and the third number is the additional "number of clicks". Very easy. At my espresso setting for the Sylvia 1,4,5 it took me 65 rotations. I did it again at 1,4,0 and it was 70 rotations. That may sound like a lot, but my little Hairo wore me out and I tired of counting; let's just say it was minutes and worth it to give up on espresso and focus on the Aeropress and battery operated grinders. 70 rotations could be done very quickly, but a slow steady pace gets me done in a minute (roughly) and pulled a glorious 1:2 espresso in 27 seconds. I cannot say enough about the build quality, the user-experience, and the production of consistent grind thus far. Worth every penny. Read more
