Customer Reviews

Black & Decker CBM205 Coffee Bean Mill, Stainless Steel

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(18)

 

 

The only good thing I can say about this Black & Decker coffee grinder is the sense of morbid delight one can relish upon learning that all its many flaws are shared by others and exposed here in the Amazon customer reviews. But unless that is what you're buying a coffee grinder for -- in which case you've had WAY TOO MUCH coffee (or perhaps too little) -- it's really not worth it.

Let's review the problems with this product:

* On button must be held down. Moreover, the button is on the side, so unless you're trying to grind coffee while simultaneously thrusting the grinder off the counter, you'll have to hold onto it with your other hand. If you've got large enough hands, you may be able to hold the button down with your thumb while gripping the unit with your palm and fingers, earning a sense of accomplishment which I'm afraid to say is all too little consolation.

* Grinder gets clogged. Every couple weeks I have to take the thing apart and clear out all the coffee grit and dust. If this were the derailleur on my mountain bike, I wouldn't mind; I expect bike parts to get gritty often and need overhauling, plus there's a whole Zen thing going on there which just doesn't carry over to the desperate-for-coffee morning scene where the above scenario plays out.

* Grounds receptacle builds up static charge. This is an amazing thing. I had no idea coffee beans could so convincingly mimic the properties of magnetized iron filaments, as they cling together in a lump on the wall of the plastic container. I am forever scraping them off into the coffee filter. Sometimes they take to flight, perhaps attracted by the magnetic force of the International Space Station, only to settle scatter-shot all over the counter.

* Doesn't grind fine enough for espresso, or course enough for French press. The heavy grind itself isn't so very bad, but it's undercut the the fine powder of grounds that this machine invariably produces, and which causes so much trouble to the machinery and makes such a mess. Yet it doesn't grind quite fine enough for espresso, unless you're inclined to meticulously harvest all the aforementioned "fine powder" produced over the course of several days of grinding regular coffee.

* After a few months, works only intermittently. I've had this thing for several months, and just this past week it decided to quit working from time to time. The thing is a real stickler about having the receptacle seated just right and the lid closed. To get it to run, I have to scrape all the detritus off the base and click it in and out of position a few times, until finally it will chew up some beans for me.

With all these problems, you might ask why I'm still using this thing. I ask myself the same question every morning. Fact is, once I've got my coffee in hand, I forget all about it and carry on with my day. In fact, I've been meaning to write this review for months. For some reason I happened to think about it today while visiting Amazon for something else.

One of these days, I will remember to look for another coffee grinder when I'm at the store. It may take months, but when that happens, with God as my witness, I promise you the sledgehammer is coming out.

Please spare yourself all this anguish. It really is a very poorly designed machine -- so poorly designed, in fact, that I've sworn off ever buying anything by Black & Decker again. If they can screw up something as simple as a coffee grinder this badly, they can't be trusted to do anything right.

I just bought this machine at Target and liked pretty much everything about it for an inexpensive piece.... easy to rinse container, easy to put beans in for grinding, and it grinds pretty quickly. The cons for it is that you have to hold down the button until it finishes grinding (not a big deal). It produces quite a bit of powder which is creating a bitter coffee. I am actually taking mine back as I do not enjoy bitter coffee. You can adjust the courseness of the bean grinding, but the very course seemed pretty fine to me with quite a bit of powder around the sides of the container that catches the grounds.

I really wanted this model to work. $24.95 at Target. Cheapest price for a burr grinder around. However, after 3 (!) that were all DOA's AND NEVER WORKED AT ALL, brand new out of the box, I gave up. Maybe this Target had a bad batch, but after three refunds I can't help but give it the lowest rating.

I would say 60% of the bad reviews for any given mill are because people spend hundreds of dollars on espresso machines and then try to get away with a $40 coffee mill. That is not reasonable in my opinion, I will tell you what this BD mill will do, it will give you a better grind than a grocery store display mill or a blade grinder. I use a Bodum French Press for my coffee and I have less sludge than if I used the mill available at the store and the coffee stays fresh longer because I keep my whole beans in an air tight container in the fridge. I have gotten pretty good grinds when I buy my whole beans from Starbucks, and have them grind the beans for me. But then you have a pound of ground coffee that you have to use pretty quickly because preground does go stale faster. There is definitely some static with the plastic bin to catch the ground coffee but I've found that it works to my advantage it keeps the very fine grounds from getting mixed up in my coarse ground coffee. Bottom line it works for me, the quality of the coffee I drink at home is better because of it and that is all that really matters.

It gets one star because it doesn't function as advertised. It grinds fine enough for drip, but not espresso. There is a fair amount of dust produced too, about the same amount as my blade mill when I shake it while grinding. Also, the collection container is made of brittle plastic that hold a nice static charge which makes pouring the grounds out difficult, and there is only a momentary power button that you need to hold down. Oh well, the price was too good to be true...

I've been using this grinder for about three months. It's an OK grinder for the price and for drip or french press coffee.

Here are my observations:
The Good:
* Realtively quiet
* Inexpensive
* Nice looking

The not so good:
* Won't grind fine enough for espresso, even on the finest setting.
* You must hold down the grind button. You can't lock it down or set a timer. For two cups of espresso that means about thirty seconds. I would imagine that for 10 or 12 cups of coffee it would take a couple of minutes. The button is on the side rather than the top, making it a little inconvenient. And as an added annoyance, the button has a little raised "wart" on it which makes holding it down uncomfortable.

Hey all,
For the price this may be an ok grinder. The problem as I see it, is that the beans will not fall down into the grinder on their own and you need to constantly shake the grinder to gets the beans to fall into the grinding element. Coffee also gets stuck in the space where the coffee transfers from the grinder to the storage container. Over all spend a little more and receive alot more. Would not buy again.

My fairly expensive coffee grinder wore out and I needed something right away. So I went to Target and bought this grinder. I chose it because it was the only grinder they had that used a burr, not choppers.

I was surprised to find that it grinds terrific tasting coffee. You can choose from a very course grind to a very fine grind. It's also quite easy to clean.

I don't like are having to keep my finger on the button while grinding. Not a major thing but it is slightly inconvenient.

In addition, the plastic container can contain static and cause some coffee to remain in the container. My expensive one didn't seem to have that problem. The main bad thing about this is that you get coffee everywhere. There may be a hack around this. But it's a mess.

It's a sturdy, well-made unit and well worth the money. If you love great coffee like I do but want something cheap, this is the grinder for you. You won't be disappointed. In fact, the coffee tastes better than that produced by my more expensive grinder much of the time.

I recommend this grinder.

This mill is seriously flawed because it jams up from all the dust it makes. After a month or so it clogged with coffee dust and the motor seized. I removed the twistoff cleaning plug from the loading funnel and tried to clean the chamber. I got some of it out but it is impossible to get most of it that way, and after a couple more runs it jammed again. The mill is defective by design as there is no way to disassemble it for cleaning. Save your thirty bucks!

Although it's just a B&D product, this mill looks like they used pininfarina for the aesthetics. However, like many fine examples of Italian engineering this mill looks great and that is where the positive features end.

Awkward and frustrating to use, the button must be held down, it blows coffee dust everywhere, it grinds inconsistently and clogs with even slightly oily beans. The receptacle is small, has a cheap and frustrating lid system and is made from a kind of plastic that coffee loves to stick to.

Attractive form and nearly useless function. Much too frustrating to use before you've had your morning coffee!