Compare Our Top 5 Grinders

Best Budget Coffee Grinders

As mentioned above, the best bang for your buck will always be a hand grinder like my favorite, the Kingrinder K6 manual coffee grinder ($100). A precisely machined manual coffee grinder can rival coffee grinders many hundreds of dollars more expensive, both in precision and durability. And so the best manual coffee grinder will also be the budget option that’ll lead to the best coffee. I’ve personally come to love the routine, and the control.

But I get it. You’ll happily grind your pepper with the best pepper grinder, but you draw the line at grinding coffee. Mornings are hard. Electricity helps. These are the budgetiest of budget electric coffee grinder options for each style of brew, all blessedly hands-off. None of these will lead to the clarity of flavors or sweetness or delicacy of our top picks. But they’re the absolute lowest-cost devices we recommend for each category of brew.

Best Budget Coffee Grinder for Drip Coffee

Just when you thought Oxo had already cornered the market on affordable conical burr coffee grinders, they came in at an even lower price with this compact model. This lower-cost compact Oxo Brew is stacked like a wee layer cake. And so the grind cup is housed within the column of the device itself, and can be pulled out when you’re done grinding. But while this is quite clever, neither consistency of grind nor ease of use is quite on par with Oxo’s $110 basic conical burr, which remains my pick for an entry-level coffee grinder. But it’s also very easy to move from the cabinet to the counter, and $30 less is $30 less. This is the lowest-price electric grinder I could actually recommend for Aeropress, drip, pour-over, French press, or cold brew. I wouldn’t attempt espresso, though.

Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

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WIRED

• Portable and affordable
• Grind range encompasses everything from espresso to cold brew
• Stepless adjustment for precise fine-tuning

TIRED

• Grinds slow, at low rpms
• Still not as tasty as top espresso or drip picks

I’m continuing to test this, but for the moment, the lowest-cost electric espresso-capable grinder I can recommend with a clean conscience is the Wirsh Geimori T38 Plus for $130. This portable conical-burr grinder is about the size of a Christmas nutcracker, and looks alarmingly ike Pinocchio’s left leg. But it offers surprisingly low coffee retention, stepless grind adjustments, and far better precision than expected for a grinder of its price. It achieves this by grinding at low rpms—meaning it grinds quite slowly and carefully for an electric grinder. This also means the T38 Plus takes more than 30 seconds to grind enough beans for a double shot of espresso. This is disqualifiyingly slow for batches large enough for drip or French press, and the T38 doesn’t really have the clarity you want for pour-over. Still, it might be the only electric grinder I’ve tested south of $150 that can make decent espresso on non-pressurized baskets. It’s also wee, and great for small kitchens or as a travel coffee grinder. It’s the grinder I’d definitely take with me to a hotel room if I didn’t feel like grinding coffee by hand.

Best Coffee Grinder for $50 or Less

KitchenAid

Blade Coffee Grinder

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WIRED

• Very cheap
• Very small
• Simple and durable

TIRED

• Choppy grind, with too many boulders
• Only marginal improvement over pre-ground coffee
• Bad for light roasts

Look, blade grinders like this KitchenAid won’t offer the powdery fineness and full-bodied coffee pleasures of a great conical burr, nor the precision of WIRED’s top flat burr pick. Blade grinders chop the heck out of beans, offering an uneven grind. But this is a very affordable coffee grinder, it’s simple as pancakes to use, and blade-ground fresh beans are still a little better than the stuff in the supermarket. That said, they’re probably still worse than getting beans fresh-grounda t a cafe and using them within a week. When non-bean-geek friends ask for a grinder that costs less than dinner for two at Arby’s, this is the one I offer up—especially if they’re using darker grinds, and favor French press or a less expressive drip coffee maker. At the very least, it’s enough so you’re not crippled when you get whole-bean coffee as a gift. But let’s be clear. The $75 Oxo Compact burr grinder above is about five times as good for $25 more.

Results of Particle Size Analysis of Coffee Grinders

Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

I of course assessed coffee grinders by tasting the resulting coffee, across a number of brew styles and beans. But I also backed up my taste buds with scientific instruments. I analyze the flavor profile and the grind consistency of each of WIRED’s top burr coffee grinder picks using particle analysis by a device called the DiFluid Omni. You can read a broader discussion of that particle analysis here.

Specifically, I tested each of WIRED’s top burr grinders on multiple grind settings using the same medium-grind coffee beans — at both espresso-fine grinds and medium grinds more suitable for drip or pourover coffee. Since September 2025, I also test every grinder I review or consider as a tip pick, including the Moccamaster KM5, whose results are included here. I tested at least 5 times for each grind sample, collating the results into a chracteristic curve for that bean and grinder.

Expand the discussion below for detailed discussion, and bar graphs and such.

Particle Size Analysis of Top Coffee Grinder Picks

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Particle size analysis of coffee grinds is not a cut-and-dried test: It’s more a clue as the the probable character of a brew. Patterns begin to emerge that correlate to the experiences I’ve had tasting coffee from each grinder. Taste is the ultimate test, alongside consistency of finicky espresso pulls. But quantitative analysis helps me (and you) actually trust and maybe understand those sensory test results.

When looking at these bar graph curves below, there are also a few rules of thumb. Big boulders north of a thousand microns will often lead to muddier character. Too many fines below 100 microns might lead to bitterness. A tight particle size distribution is associated with greater clarity of flavor. Look at the standard deviation (SD) for a clue as to overall precision: Smaller numbers indicate likely greater clairty. This said,a broad distribution of coffee ground sizes can also lead to better body, and more perceived sweetness.

Our top pick for most people, the Baratza Encore ESP, proved itself to have quite precise results at very fine grinds—with standard deviation below 200 microns on espresso grinds, and 30 percent of particles concentrated within a single range. At its price range, this is admirable precision matched by very few grinders.

Courtesy of Matthew Korfhage

The same wasn’t as true at pour-over coffee settings for the Baratza Encore ESP (seen here at setting 22), which showed a broader and more heterogeneous particle size distribution—with both small and large particle sizes. In practice, this led to a full-bodied and rounder cup, but with a little bit less of the precise aromatics one can get from our favorite grinder for drip, the Fellow Ode Gen 2.

Courtesy of Matthew Korfhage

The Ode showed a characteristic Bell-curve shape, surrounding a single high peak, which corresponded with the precise aromatics I taste when brewing drip or pour-over coffee using the Ode.

Even greater precision was on display with the Technivorm Moccamaster KM5, a flat burr grinder that showed precise results across the board—rivaling the Encore ESP at fine grinds and the Ode Gen 2 at grinding for drip. It’s not as user-friendly as some of the top-pick devices, and the resulting brews can sometimes feel clinically clean, with a thinner body. But my lord it does offer clarity.

Courtesy of Matthew Korfhage

The Kingrinder K6 hand grinder, our top manual grinder pick,, also showed strong peaks at grind sizes appropriate for pour-over coffee. Shown here are analyses of two medium-fine grinds, at 60 and 70 clicks from zero, respectively. Hand grinders have a secret weapon, which is that they cause you to grind slowly—which works very well at coaxing out more clarity from conical burrs. For pour-over grinds, the Kingrinder showed a higher peak than basically any grinder I tested, meaning grinds are very concentrated in a tight range of sizes: as many as 40 percent of coffee grounds were functionaly the same size, and about 70 percent were grouped tightly around this. This leads to quite pronounced, intense flavor notes.

Courtesy of Matthew Korfhage

At grind sizes suitable for espresso, the Mazzer Philos bests this precision, with more than 90 percent of coffee grounds huddled in a tight grouping while using the i200D burr set. Nonetheless, while boulders are all but nonxistent, enough coffee fines exist to give each shot an almost syrupy consistency. The result is both body and perceived sweetness, with a surprisingly delicate clarity. While I haven’t tested the i189D burrs also available as an option, reports from the world say that the 189Ds lean even harder into clarity of flavors. But note that at bigger grind sizes more suitable for drip coffee, you’ll get a quite broad distribution. This will lead to a well-rounded cup, but may not offer the clarity of flavor of the Fellow Ode Gen 2 or the Kingrinder K6 for drip and pour-over brews.

Omni via Matthew Korfhage

Omni via Matthew Korfhage

Frequently Asked Questions

How We Test Coffee Grinders

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WIRED tests coffee grinders by grinding a lot of beans, and making a lot of coffee—testing each grinder to see if it can serve well for espresso, Aeropress, drip or pour-over coffee, and coarse-ground cold brew and French Press. I tend to always grind a drip Stumptown Homestead or Single-Origin Colombia as a baseline, because each is readily available at my local supermarket with stamped roast dates, and because I know the flavor well enough I can detect variations. But I’ll also try out a number of flavors and roasts on each grinder, for different brewing methods.

Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

We assess each grinder for decibel level while grinding, ease of cleaning and operation, hopper design, the presence or absence of “popcorning” (where the beans pop around inside the hopper, often leading to more uneven results), messiness and static electrical buildup, grind retention, ease of use, value, and simple aesthetics.

Previous WIRED reviewers assessed grind uniformity visually with the aid of macro lenses, or filtered coffee grounds with sieves. In the most recent round of testing, I re-assessed each top coffee grinder pick using particle grind size analysis, with the help of the DiFluid Omni roast color and particle size analyzer, as well as a data analysis app that’s still in beta testing.

I tested both fine and medium grinds on each grinder, using the same beans for each grinder, roasted within a month of testing. I repeated the particle analysis at least five times for each grinder and setting. I assessed the uniformity of the grind and the overall distribution of particle sizes—paying particular attention to the share of coffee fines (the tiniest particles smaller than 100 microns) and boulders (big coffee bits larger than 1000 microns).

Why Grind Whole Beans Instead of Buying Pre-Ground?

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The reasons are simple: Flavor. Freshness. Aroma.

Whenever you open a vacuum-sealed bag of beans, a little invisible clock starts. Oxidation begins to erode the character of your beans, breaking down organic compounds and degrading them, turning your lovely beans to cardboard. Aromatic flavor compounds also escape from the bean, gassing out into the air where they do no particular good.

When you grind your beans, these processes goes into overdrive. Freshness for whole beans can be measured in weeks. For ground beans, freshness in the open air is a matter of hours or even minutes. That bag of pre-ground beans you got from the supermarket? It’s still coffee, of course, and it’ll taste like coffee. But the vibrancy is gone. As far as true freshness is concerned, that coffee’s been dead for weeks. (Pre-ground beans can be kept airtight for a week or so and maintain their flavor, if you get them ground fresh at a coffee roaster.)

Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

The only reliable way to get truly excellent flavor from your coffee beans, the way you experience it at a café, is to use fresh, whole beans. This is also how you can exercise some control over extraction, and dial in your brewer or espresso maker to get the pefect results for each bean.

Espresso requires a fine grind, pour-over a little coarser, electric drip coffee a little coarser than this. Each grinder should have a guide to the best adjustments for each brewing method. Lighter-roast beans will want a finer grind than dark-roast, to aid in extraction: porous dark-roast beans give up their secrets a lot easier.

It’s all kinda fun to figure out, if you let it be fun. But certainly, when you strike paydirt, you’ll know it: Finding the right marriage of grind and bean, on a good grinder, can turn into the best cup you’ve ever had. It’s like the magical first time you seared a perfect steak, or baked a perfect layer cake. Effort meets reward. It’s marvelous. The grinders in this guide will help you find that moment more often.

What Is a Conical, Flat, or Blade Grinder?

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Photograph: Iryna Veklich/Getty Images

Most coffee grinders fall into three main types: Conical-burr, flat-burr, and blade grinders. Burr grinders are generally higher quality, and higher cost.

Conical-burr grinders are the category occupied by our top pick, the Baratza Encore ESP, and pretty much all of the most affordable grinders that still make good coffeee. And there’s a reason for this: Conical tends to offer the sweet spot at the intersection of high-performance, cost, and flexibility. In a conical grinder, coffee beans are crushed and ground between two rings of burrs. They deliver a finer, much more consistent grind than you’d get with a traditional blade grinder, even the nicest blade grinder you ever met. Conicals do tend to throw off more fines than a flat burr, but many feel this leads to more body and a more rounded flavor character.

Flat-burr grinders are more precise than conical grinders, but they’re also typically more finicky and also more expensive. Burrs are laid on top of each other, and the beans pass through them as they grind. The grinder action pushes the grounds out of one end, instead of relying on gravity like a conical-burr grinder, which means the beans spend more time in contact with the burrs. This results in a more consistent grind, down to the micron in some cases, which leads to very precise flavors. For this reason, flat-burr grinders are often preferred as a way to elicit very precise flavors form single-origin beans for pour-over, drip, and Aeropress.

Blade grinders have a chopping blade that spins around like a food processor. But blades don’t produce even results. Some of your coffee will be fine powder at the bottom, and at the top you’ll have bits too large for even French press. The result is an inconsistent, unpredictable brew. These grinders are generally quite cheap.

But in case you’re wondering, using fresh beans in a blade grinder is still way better than buying ground coffee. (You can learn how to shake the beans to even your grind just a little. Pulsing the machine often also works. See world barista champion James Hoffmann’s video for some more blade grinder hacks.) Still, if you can afford it, the conical or flat-burr grinders on this list will lead to far better coffee than any blade.

What’s the Difference Between a Cheap and Expensive Burr Grinder?

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The machinery in a high-quality burr grinder is a bit more complicated, and it’s built to withstand greater wear and tear. In cheap burr grinders, the burrs can get blunt from regular use, and flimsier motors may burn out in a matter of months.

But also, coffee grinders have undergone a revolution in technology and consideration in the past decade. Manufacturers have been experimenting with different shapes of burr even on conical burr grinders—pentagonal, hexagonal, heptagonal. And grinders with more precision cuts will cost more money.

Flat burrs also cost more money to manufacture, and are seen as having more precision. The true geeks are swapping out to new generations of flat burr that offer greater precision in machining, and multistage grinds. Grinder makers are experimenting with larger and smaller burrs, and different materials. It’s a hive of invention out there. And these precision parts cost money: Some burr sets might cost hundreds all by themselves.

The end result of all this attention is a greater range or finer adjustment of grind sizes, better and more reliable calibration, and often more precision in the resulting coffee grinds—and thus more precision in the flavor of your coffee or the brew of your espresso.

Can I Run Pre-Ground Beans Through My Burr Grinder to Get Better Coffee?

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No, please don’t do this.

First off, if you’re trying to improve the flavor of store-bought beans, the game’s already lost. One of the main reasons to use fresh-ground whole beans is to avoid oxidation, and pre-ground beans have already been cardboarded up by evil, stale air.

But also, you’ll mostly just muck up your machine. Logically, it might make some sense. Your grind is too coarse, so let’s just run them through again at a finer setting, and perfect coffee results! Alas, on burr grinders, pre-ground coffee will get stuck inside the burrs, gum them up, and cause you to have to take the whole thing apart and clean it with your little brush and put it back together.

What Are the Best Coffee Grinders for Espresso?

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Quite simply, the best coffee grinders for espresso are the ones that offer the finest calibration at the “fine” end of the spectrum. If you want to get super specific, look for coffee grinders that offer a number of fine calibrations at the fine end of the spectrum.

Dialing in individual espresso beans can require quite fine adjustments—and so even if a grinder is technically able to grind fine enough for espresso, it should also be able to make precise enough adjustments within that range to account for different beans, roasts, and machines. (For a real-world counterexample, witness the wall WIRED reviewer Joe Ray ran into when trying to get the (excellent) Wilfa Uniform Coffee Grinder to work for espresso. Without fine adjustments, chances are you’ll fail.)

Otherwise, what you’re looking for is excellent build, a motor that can withstand the higher torque you’ll need to grind finely even on lighter roasts, and a machine that deals well with static electricity: Finer espresso grinds can turn static into a terrible enemy, sending coffee grounds spraying wildly.

The most vaunted espresso grinders can travel upwards into the high hundreds of dollars (see the Timemore Sculptor 064S flat-burr) or the thousands of dollars (see the Zerno Z1).

The Mazzer Philos Coffee Grinder ($1,500) offered maybe the best shots of espresso I’ve pulled at home in the past year. This offers delicate flavor and syrupy shots like the ones you’ll get from a cafe, even on lower-cost espresso machines. (See my full review of the Mazzer Philos.)

But in this guide, we focused mostly on the best espresso grinders for the 90-some percent of people who are trying to gain access to good coffee without spending four figures. For most people and most budgets, our top pick, the Baratza Encore ESP ($200), will be the best choice, with sturdy construction and 30 grind adjustments for espresso alone. If you don’t mind a little elbow grease, you can tune your grinds even finer by using a manual coffee grinder like the Kingrinder K6 ($99).

And then there’s the true budget electric option. The tiny, slow-grinding Wirsh Geimori T38 Plus ($130) is the lowest-cost electric espresso grinder I’ve tried that can actually make good espresso on non-presurized baskets, though I’d probably limit it to medium roasts or darker, lest you strrain the machine. Torque is not a strong suit.

Honorable Mentions and Runners-Up

More Excellent Conical-burr All-rounders:

Fellow Opus for $200: The Fellow Opus is our previous top grinder pick. And it’s forever bound to be compared with our current top pick, the Baratza Encore ESP—a yang and yin among excellent $200 grinders that has caused oddly intense arguments on the WIRED Reviews team about which one’s better. The Opus comes out ahead in simple beauty, a mid-century stylishness that keeps it welcome on your counter. The Opus is among the quietest grinders I’ve tested, about half as loud as most picks on our list. But it’s not as easy to adjust and tune for espresso as our top pick all-rounder, the Encore ESP, and it retains more coffee grounds. And for truly excellent drip, I’d upgrade to the flat-burr Fellow Ode Gen 2 or the Moccamaster KM5 (below).

Baratza Encore for $150: Baratza’s original Encore is the Honda of the conical burr grinder world: easy to maintain, runs great, easy to use, lasts forever, replacement parts easy to find. It’s been on the market largely unchanged for more than a decade. For not much more money, though, our top-pick Encore ESP offers beautiful adjustment on espresso settings, so I tend to recommend paying an extra $50 for the added versatility. But the original Encore remains a solid entry-level choice.

Baratza Virtuoso+ for $250: The Virtuoso+ uses the same burr set as the ESP, but is not quite as optimized for espresso. The biggest upgrade against the Encore ESP is a timer. Both have similar rock-solid but compact builds (although the Virtuoso is a little more stylish with its fitted grounds bin), 40 grind settings, and burr grinders for consistent grounds. The Virtuoso’s digital timer, however, is great for those wanting consistent coffee ground dosings each morning. You’ll have to dial in on your grind time versus coffee grounds output, but once you figure that out, you can walk away from the grinder and multitask if you please. —Tyler Shane

Oxo Brew Conical Burr Grinder With Scale for $299: Making great coffee consistently is all about measuring your variables, and this Oxo model comes with a built-in scale. Set your grind size, select the weight you want, hit Start, and walk away; it shuts itself off when it’s done. This is a great way to streamline your morning ritual, but the device does spray off a few grounds—and at its price range, we tend to prefer the Fellow Opus or Baratza ESP as an all-rounder, or the bare-bones Oxo as a budget pick.

KitchenAid Burr Grinder for $200: This KitchenAid is stylish and easy to clean, and former WIRED reviewer Jaina Grey likes that the burrs are accessible thanks to their placement directly beneath the hopper. It also features precise dose control, with grind size controlled by a dial. For espresso lovers, one excellent feature is that you can swap the little container that catches the grounds with a holder for a portafilter.

Excellent flat burr coffee grinders for drip and pour-over:

Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

Technivorm Moccamaster KM5 Flat Burr Grinder for $329: OK, so this two-year-old Moccamaster sneaked up on me, in part because reviewers for other outlets have assumed that this Moccamaster is a rebuild of the Eureka Filtro (below), based on somewhat similar looks. Moccamaster reps assure me this is not the case. And it turns out the performance on this stepless (read: infinite adjustment) grinder is somewhere between good and damn good. The razor-thin grind size distribution in early testing makes the KM5 a credible rival to the similarly priced Fellow Ode, in fact. And like the Ode, this Moccamaster is made especially for bringing out precise flavors on drip and pour-over. Particle analysis shows this Moccamaster to potentially offer even more precise grinds, leading to an almost clinically clean brew with very light body. The KM5 not overly user-friendly, mind you: It cranks at 90 decibels, you have to hold down its analog switch to grind, and its aesthetics are the same sturdy industrial chic as all Moccamasters. Indeed, it’s designed to sit alongside the classic drip coffee maker that’s been on our buy-it-for-life guide since we’ve had one. If you prefer clarity to ease of use, this gives the Ode a run for the money, for less money.

Eureka Mignon Filtro for $269: The precision on flat burrs is terrific. But usually, so is the price. But this no-frills Filtro from beloved Italian coffee brand Eureka costs $80 less than our top-pick flat-burr, and it’s an absolute metal-clad tank of a machine, says former WIRED reviewer Jaina Grey. It’s as robust as the higher-end models and offers excellent consistency of grind size. Sure, it’s a little loud, and you have to hold the button down when you grind. But life is full of trade-offs.

Wilfa Uniform for $349: This Wilfa has long been on our list as a great flat-burr grinder for pour-overs and drip. It remains such, though the Ode springboarded it as the top pick with its Gen 2 burr update, at about the same price. Like its name suggests, the Wilfa offers a beautifully consistent grind size and will make you a lovely pour-over. That said, it’s fussier to adjust and louder than the Ode.

Courtesy of Breville

Breville Smart Grinder Pro for $200: WIRED has recommended this Breville in the past for its accessible burrs that make it easy to clean. But it’s not really optimized for lighter-roast espresso, and ever since Breville bought Baratza, they’ve slowly been swapping out the grinders in their top-line semi-automatic espresso machines with those excellent Baratza burrs. For a stand-alone grinder at the same price, we give the same advice to you.

Baratza Vario W+ for $600: The Encore has a bigger, beefier, flat burr cousin, the Baratza Vario-W+ (7/10, WIRED Recommends) with a built-in scale and ridiculously granular adjustment (230 settings!). But like a lot of flat burrs, it struggles on finer grinds, according to WIRED contributor Joe Ray. And static is an issue. With price in play, the Ode Gen 2 comes out on top, but Ray was still a big fan of the Vario.

Best coffee grinder for travel and camping:

Courtesy of VSSL

VSSL Java manual grinder for $170: VSSL specializes in ultra-durable camping tools, and it applied this same durable construction to this hardy campsite-ready hand grinder that WIRED reviewer Scott Gilbertson attests to be rugged enough to survive the zombie apocalypse. The handle folds out to provide a lot of leverage while you grind, and you can use it as a hook to hang the device up when you’re done.

Also Tested

Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

Wirsh Geimori GU38 for $200: The GU38 grinder from Wirsh/Geimori uses an identical burr set to the T38 Plus model I recommend as a budget espresso grinder. It’s also bulkier, and built a little sturdier. But the angled hopper causes more coffee retention, including some coffee beans that just refuse to feed into the grinder. Performance also seems slightly less reliable than the TU38, perhaps because the GU38 grinds faster. Either way, I’d opt for the lower-cost T38 Plus over this quite similar model.

Aarke flat-burr grinder

Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

Aarke Flat-Burr Grinder for $400: This pretty, shiny, stainless steel Aarke grinder contains a unique feature when paired with Aarke’s coffee brewer, detecting the water in the brewer’s tank and grinding the appropriate amount of beans. But this feature wasn’t as calibrated as we’d like, and there have been a lot of online reports of grinder jams. I didn’t have the same problem, but at more than $300 for a grinder that hasn’t been long on the market, prudence is often rewarded.

Hario Skerton Pro for $55: The Hario Skerton was the gateway hand grinder for many a coffee nerd, but it has since given ground to newer entrants. It’s fast and cheap, but it’ll give you a heck of a workout and isn’t as consistent for coarse grinds, plus the silicone handle has a habit of falling off.

Courtesy of Amazon

Hario Mini-Slim Plus for $39: This smaller Hario manual grinder is slower than the Skerton, but its plastic construction makes it good to throw in a travel bag. The low price is its main advertisement.

Cuisinart Burr Grinder for $75: At first, it seems like a good deal. It’s Cuisinart, a known brand, and a conical burr grinder for less than $100! But former WIRED reviewer Jaina Grey found that the low price came with a cost: These things apparently burn out faster than a rock star in the late ’60s.

Bodum Bistro Electric Blade Grinder for $20: This little blade grinder is quite cheap, and the model has served WIRED contributing reviewer Tyler Shane for years. That said, after some inconsistent reports on reliability, we favor the KitchenAid as our ultra-budget pick.

DmofwHi Cordless Grinder for $40: We used to recommend this cordless blade grinder for camping, largely because it can make 15 pots of French press without need of a recharge. It’s out of stock as of February 2026, and we’re monitoring to see whether it returns.

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Layering is not complicated. It’s the process of adding and removing layers of clothing to keep your body comfortable in changing weather and temperature conditions.

Billions of dollars have been spent trying to optimize this process (and sell you stuff), but it’s really very simple: Put clothing on when you’re cold, take clothing off when you’re hot. Which clothing? That’s the rub, as they say. But don’t worry. We’ll walk you through what each layer is, how to layer, and when you’ll want it. Once you’re done here, check out our guides to the Best Base Layers, Best Puffer Jackets, Best Merino Wool, and Best Rain Jackets for more.

Updated February 2026: We’ve updated our advice based on new experiences, and put in a few new picks culled from all the gear we’ve tested in the last year.

Layering Basics

The key to layering is knowing what the layers are for and when to add and remove them. The high level overview looks like this:

• Base layer: The layer that touches your skin. These provide some warmth, but they’re primarily important for wicking sweat away from your skin. Being damp means being cold.
• Mid layer: The layer that’s—wait for it—in the middle. This is the layer where you actually start insulating, or trapping body heat. This is the key to the whole system and should usually be more than one layer (e.g., a lightweight fleece and a puffer jacket).
• Outer layer: The top layer is the waterproof, windproof layer that makes sure that nature does not steal all that precious heat you’ve retained in the mid layer. This is sometimes referred to as a “shell.”

While you won’t always be wearing all of these, especially when you’re exerting yourself while walking, running, et cetera, it’s usually worth carrying all three. If it’s cold, you can start with all three on and peel them off as you get warmer. When it’s hot you can do the opposite, pulling out a shell when you stop on a windy ridge. Obviously there are situations where you don’t need to carry all of them. Hiking the Florida trail in July? Skip the mid layer, ya lunatic.

Base Layers

SmartWool

Merino Classic Long-Sleeve

Let’s start with underwear. Whether boxers, briefs, boxer briefs, or bras, go for materials that are going to help move moisture away from your skin. I have found merino wool to be ideal for underwear, but it’s worth trying different fabrics to find which works best for you.

Next comes what we generally think of as base layers: relatively tight-fitting but not overly restrictive pants and shirt with the dual purpose of insulating in cold weather and wicking sweat in hot. Again, there is a wide array of fabrics. If you opt for merino wool here, you benefit from wool’s natural ability to smooth out temperature variation across your skin, keeping you more evenly warm/cool (I call this temperature modulation).

There are also other options for fabric here, which includes Nuyarn. It has much of the benefits of merino (it’s usually more than half merino) but adds some nylon to provide extra strength and durability, as well as speeding up drying times. The latter can be important in very wet climates. In my experience, synthetic base layers do not perform as well at either insulation or moisture removal, though they will often dry faster, last longer, and are often cheaper.

The Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) has published a report outlining an industry-wide perspective for device manufacturers, network operators, enterprise IT and policymakers on how artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) can be integrated across the full Wi-Fi ecosystem.

The AI/ML for Wi-Fi: Enabling scalable, intelligent Wi-Fi ecosystems report was developed by the WBA AI/ML for Wi-Fi Project Group, and led by Intel with Airties, Cisco and HPE.

The founding viewpoint from the WBA is that traditional rule‑based management approaches for Wi‑Fi technology are no longer adequate as they are now asked to support increasingly support demanding applications such as enterprise collaboration, industrial automation, immersive media and AI workloads. The report outlines business benefits including lower operational costs, stronger reliability and security, and an improved user experience.

The report shows how AI and ML are becoming foundational to Wi-Fi, enabling a shift from reactive troubleshooting to predictive, proactive and self-optimising network operations capable of managing dense deployments and real-time performance demands.

In addition, it highlights how intelligent Wi-Fi has clear business value. AI/ML reduces operational costs (OpEx), improves reliability and security, and delivers a more consistent quality of experience (QoE). Moreover, the report argues that AI will not just sit at the router: instead, it will combine client, access point, edge and cloud intelligence to achieve the best performance.

However, it also observed that data is the primary bottleneck, and that achieving continued success and new use cases with AI/ML in networks requires shared datasets, federated learning and strong governance models. Fragmentation also remains a major barrier.

Going forward, WBA advises that standardisation should focus on frameworks and not algorithms. It added that interoperability will need to include data models, telemetry, application programming interfaces and model lifecycle management. WBA also believes that AI/ML-native Wi-Fi is the long-term technological direction and that features of Wi-Fi 8 (IEEE 802.11bn), such DBE and MAPC, will work optimally when driven by an AI/ML engine.

Commenting on the report, Tiago Rodrigues, Wireless Broadband Alliance president and CEO, said: “Wi-Fi is now expected to perform like critical infrastructure across homes, enterprises and cities, yet operational complexity is rising fast. AI and machine learning are becoming essential to keep networks reliable, secure and efficient at scale. The industry must align on common data, interfaces and governance, so that intelligent Wi-Fi can work across real-world multi-vendor environments and deliver value for all who use it.”

Matthew MacPherson, wireless chief technology officer at Cisco, added: “As Wi-Fi becomes the primary connectivity technology for mission-critical enterprise applications, the complexity of managing these environments has outpaced traditional manual methods.

“This report provides a vital framework for the industry to transition from reactive troubleshooting to a proactive, self-optimising architecture,” he said. “By leveraging AI and machine learning through interoperable standards, we are enabling organisations to reduce operational overheads and deliver a more resilient, high-quality experience for every user and device.”

Eric McLaughlin, vice-president and general manager of Intel, said: “AI/ML is transforming the future of Wi-Fi, and it has become a strategic imperative. We are excited to collaborate with our WBA partners and the broader ecosystem to accelerate its advancement to enable self-organising, proactive, and more reliable networks with improved QoE across the industry.”