For the price, a solid grinder. Hefty. Pretty fine adjustment capability. Good grind quality. Will grind directly into a portafilter with no mess.
Negative Product Points
Not quite fine enough on the finest setting.
Detailed Commentary
The fact that they added some heft vs the standard Maestro is nice, the unit just plain feels more solid. The grind produced is pretty even, and it's nice that you can remove the little bin and have coffee dump right into a portafilter basket - there's no long angled chute to capture a few grams of stale coffee after each use as on some other grinders. Also, seems to be very little static charge - the coffee just falls right down where it belongs, instead of jumping/sticking all over the place.
My only complaint is that, even on the finest setting, it's barely fine enough to pull a good shot on my machine (Gaggia). It would be nice to have a little more of a buffer here. With some beans, I find that I'm even a hair coarse. There's a big range of adjustment points and pretty fine control from click to click, but I feel like all that's wasted since I leave it on the finest click pretty much all the time.
Buying Experience
Bought reconditioned on eBay from Aabree. Despite being a reconditioned unit, it came in the original box with all the original packaging, accessories, instructions, etc. If it hadn't been labeled as reconditioned, I would have thought it was brand spanking new. Shipping was prompt, price was good, and everything went smoothly. They seemed to have messed up my billing address pretty badly, causing the credit card company to reject the transaction. It took a few phone calls to straighten this out, but mistakes happen. One slightly annoying thing is that despite me leaving them glowing, positive feedback immediately after the transaction was completed, they haven't reciprocated - and it's been a month or so.
