Cuisinart DBM-8P1 Electric Burr Coffee Grinder - Automatic One-Touch Operation with 18-Position Grind Selector, Stainless Steel - Perfect for Fresh Ground Coffee at Home, Office or Cafe

I received this product yesterday and did a taste test this morning. It's a 5 star machine for most people I think, but I gave it 4 stars because the coarse grind setting could go to one or two settings coarser and it's not as precise as my Krups-style grinder for mixing my caff and decaf beans.Pros: +Looks nice enough on the counter although it's a bit big. +Creates a consistent grind. +Pleasantly surprised at the quality of the coffee (objective#1). +The machine seems to be of good quality considering the price I paid. +I think I will be able to use less coffee beans for the same strength of coffee (objective#2).Cons (some of these I knew when I bought it and am willing to deal with): -It's louder than my little Krups. -It's not very portable to bring on vacation. Also, sometimes I would fill my Krups then walk over to the garage with the door closed to grind so I don't wake the household on my early mornings. I can't see doing this with this machine. -It's too big to keep in a cabinet and take out each morning. I don't like cluttered kitchen counters. -My big disappointment is that the most coarse grind is still not coarse enough for what I was looking for. See photo. I do not like any bitterness to my coffee, and my experience has been the more fine the grind, the more bitter the coffee. But as I said, I was pleasantly surprised that the coffee tasted pretty good...as good or better than my usual. I would have liked to do a taste test at a coarser grind though. I use the pour-over method (see photo) to make coffee and have always used a 2-second grind/shake/2-second grind method on my Krups for coarse grinds. Admittedly there are a few coffee beans that would come out whole or just halved with this method, thus my desire for a grinder to give me a consistent grind and hopefully use less coffee for the same strength of coffee. The net result is that I like the consistency of the coffee (I'm projecting here into the future) vs. the unevenness of the Krups grind due to my under- or over-grinding or just the inconsistency of the Krups grinder itself. (Note on the little Krups because my comment sounds negative: It's over 20 years old so maybe it needs a new blade for a better grind. It's been a trooper!) -The number of cups you can set this new machine for starts at 4 so it is assuming I'm using a coffee maker, but it seems fine for one mug of coffee. I would prefer it start at 2 which I think is more accurate for a single mug. When I dumped the hopper upside down to see how much coffee was not ground after using the 4 cup setting, there was about a full scoop left. I had put 5 scoops in because I wasn't sure how much to put in. (The scoop comes with the grinder.)One of my concerns that I'm still unsure about: My boyfriend drinks caffeinated coffee and I drink decaf with about 10 regular caff beans mixed in because I'm very sensitive to caffeine. So we have to grind the beans and make our single-cup coffee separately. Although the instructions tell you to "Fill bean hopper to top", you do not *have* to fill it to the top obviously. (I'm a tech writer and misleading wording like this makes me cringe.) You can put just the right amount of beans for just one cup and press the START bar. It does a fine job with this little amount. (Also, the instructions say "press the power bar to begin grinding". The bar says START on it, so it should be called the START bar. But I digress.) I need to figure out exactly how many beans to put in the hopper for one cup so I don't have to dump the hopper before making my next cup of coffee. One unfortunate side effect I just thought of is that my exact 10 beans of caff beans will never be exact again unless I can figure out exactly how many beans consistently are ground at the 4 cup setting without any left over beans. If I dump the hopper and beans come out, are they caff or decaf beans and what should I do with them? I'll have to slip them into the boyfriend's coffee.In summary, it's not the best design for someone making a single mug of coffee using the pour-over method, but it's good enough. I like the grind consistency and the reduced amount of beans needed. It is also not ideal when two members of the same household use different beans. If I can find a grinder that meets my household's needs, I will gladly replace this one. In the meantime, I'll make due.UPDATE: The "automatic" function broke after 18mths of daily use. There's nothing broken that I can see...it just won't continue grinding based on the setting for numbers of cups. The product is still usable, but I have to "pulse" grind like you do with a food processor and count by seconds to get the right amount of grinding. This makes it useless to me because the whole point was to made it dummy proof so my bf could make me coffee exactly the way I want. For all the reasons above, I think I'll go back to a Krups hand held grinder if I have to count seconds anyway.