Customer Reviews

OXO Good Grips 32180 Pepper Mill

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Some time ago I was having a tendonitis flare-up. At the time we had a little crystal-clear pepper mill that was fairly stiff when you used it to grind pepper. This was merely annoying when we wanted to grind lots of pepper for a recipe; it was sheer agony when my tendonitis started acting up. So, we decided to try the Oxo pepper mill.

You pull open the little plastic "window" so that it becomes a spout-like opening, and you pour peppercorns inside. You set a wheel on the bottom in order to adjust the grind from coarse to fine. Then you grab the big black knob on the long lever arm and grind your pepper.

Because you get plenty of leverage with that long grind arm, you can very quickly grind large amounts of pepper with little effort - perfect for the home cook! Best of all, it's very easy on the hands. Even at the worst of my tendonitis I've been able to use it.

The clear window makes it very easy to see when you're running out of pepper. Wonderful for people like us, who cook a lot - we go through a lot of pepper! The white color unfortunately does mean that it gets dirty quickly and obviously. You'll need to clean it quite often if you plan to use it at the table.

It's extremely easy to load - nothing to unscrew or pry apart. You just open the window like a drawer and pour stuff in! That's a lot easier to load than our salt shaker, let me tell you.

Like so many things Oxo, unfortunately, we find that this mill doesn't entirely stand up to frequent usage. The grind wheel developed problems pretty quickly. Now, if you want finely-ground pepper, you have to keep dialing the wheel back to the fine side after every few grinds. It seems to work its way back to coarse without help from anyone else. Luckily for us, we don't mind coarsely-ground pepper, so this doesn't bother us too much. If you like your pepper fine, however, you might find this annoying.

Oxo International has a well deserved reputation for the durability and ease of use of their kitchen products--earning them the Tylenol Arthritic award. And this pepper grinder fits that mold perfectly.

My husband collects pepper grinders and this one is his favorite. With its extended arm and comfortable knob grip, he can pepper his salad and sizzling sirloin quickly--and he eats a lot of pepper. So much so that if eating out, the poor server usually ends up just handing him the mill.

I like this grinder for two main reasons: the large capacity can be watched through the clear area and the cap which snaps on the bottom, when not in use, keeps my sponge work to a minimum.

This is a good product at a good price. Paired with a bottle of specialty peppercorns , such as Wedding Blend, it could make a spicy gift for house-warmings, bridal showers or holiday events.

I am a fan of OXO kitchen utensils and devices (with the exception of their corkscrew -- easy extraction but very hard to remove the cork from it), and this little pepper mill is no exception. The comparatively long handle affords the mill excellent leverage, resulting in a smooth and easy grinding action. I particularly like the flip-open plastic door for the intake of peppercorns -- you can see how much peppercorns are left and no more looking for the cap. The quality of the plastic is excellent, not a rough edge anywhere. Highly recommended.

This pepper mill is easy to fill and easy to use. The big handle allows my 4 yaer old to use it. The plate on the bottom also keeps me from having to constantly clean the cabinet where I store the pepper mill.

I bought this at much less than the current price a year ago. I also bought electric and manual William Bounds grinders.

The electric William Bounds is HORRIBLE (the manual grinder is fine for pepper and terrible for sea salt).

This OXO is superlative. I love it...clever design (the base is a nice touch)...

This peppermill is easy to hold, produces LOTS of ground pepper with each turn of the handle, and it rests in a sized-to-fit-tray to prevent particles of pepper from collecting on the table. The grinding adjustment is good,it is very easy to fill and I am completely satisfied with it!

I recently purchased this grinder. The adjustment for course or fine immediately quit working and will now will only grind course. If you want finer ground pepper, this grinder is not for you. You wonder how the rest of mechanism will last. I will be returning this.

After waiting weeks for Amazon to stock this guy, I finally ordered it from oxo.com. It arrived today, and since then I have been grinding up a storm.

Since it uses a grinding mechanism that is the same or similar to the norm, it works about as well as the norm in that respect. In other words, it grinds fairly evenly, and it can make pepper dust or pepper sand, and everything in between. It is true, the coarseness adjustment feels light and easy to dislodge. I am curious to see if I have the same problem another reviewer did, where it won't hold a fine setting and the pepper particles become increasingly coarse as you grind.

The distinctive thing about this grinder is the case and handle which offer particular advantages and disadvantages, so I will focus on that. The grinder's overall shape is a kind of squat, slightly bulging cone, with a flare at the bottom. The flare makes it harder to tip over and easier to set down quickly, which is good, because the sturdy crank arm would otherwise make it tippy. It also means you tend to grab the grinder close to the top, so that my hand (size medium to large; I am a 5'10" man) crowds the crank on top, which is less good. If it were just an inch or so taller, and perhaps had another flare on the top, your grabbing hand wouldn't touch the crank.

The crank arm is another long swelling oval, kind of a leaf shape, with a round black rubber handle on top. (If it were grey-blue, it would look like something from Michael Graves' line for Target.) Since the arm is broad and flat, even if your hand holding the grinder body touches it, the contact is not painful or injurious. (But the contact is there.)

The black crank handle is tacky in a rubbery sort of way (it is not "soft" as Amazon's review says.) It is an attractive matte black sphere, which is nice, but that shape is not especially ergonomic. Your hand tends to grab it close to the arm, so that when you turn the crank, your knuckles touch the spinning arm, which again is not painful, but it is there. The black rubber handle should be shaped in an hourglass or pinched shape, not bulging outwards.

The crank itself is an advantage. It is longer than cranks on other pepper grinders, if they even have them. It makes grinding much faster and easier. As previous reviewers stated, it would be good for the arthritic, elderly, or impatient, since you can really crank out the pepper if you want. (The action is not "smooth" however, as other reviewers have stated. It is a little jerky at first, and even at speed it has a gravelly, grindy feel, which stands to reason and isn't a problem.)

So although you can crank out mounds of pepper easily and quickly, both your hands touch the spinning crank arm, which is a bit disappointing coming from an ergo-conscious outfit like OXO. Just a little more care in design would have eliminated the contact on both hands.

It has a clear door for refilling peppercorns, which is convenient, more so than having to unscrew a little nut and take the top handle off, which is the procedure for most other grinders. When closed, the door merges smoothly with the body. But opening the door requires hooking the tip of your finger on a little bulging lip. It doesn't require a fingernail, but it won't take a full finger. It is fine for me, but it might be difficult for people with trembling hands or poor fine motor control.

The "base" mentioned in the Amazon review is not a base, it is a thin plastic lid that snaps on to the bottom. It does a good job of keeping stray pepper off your countertop, but when you pick up the grinder, you have to snap off the lid, grind, then pick up the lid and snap it back on, then set the grinder down. You can leave the lid on the counter without bothering to snap it back on, but it is light and can skid easily across the counter. It would have been more convenient if it were loose-fitting, had some weight and some non-slip feet, so it acted as a base that one could just pick up the grinder out of and set it back in again. I may figure out some arrangement of that sort, possibly with PVC pipe end caps or some such.

Lastly, the lid and the grinder had very slightly rough edges left from the molding process (a peculiar preoccupation of mine). A few licks with ultra-fine sandpaper cured that problem. There were no other construction quality issues.

So...
Body shape - okay, could be taller to fit the hand
Crank arm - good, sturdy
Crank arm handle - okay, could be shaped to keep knuckles from hitting the arm
Grind adjustment - probably average
Grinding speed - unusually good
Grinding ease - unusually good
Refilling ease - good, though perhaps not for everybody
Lid - okay
Construction - not perfect but good

So I would give this fellow a 4.6 or 4.7, which rounds to a 5.

We received this as a wedding gift a few years ago, and it works perfectly. It is simple to use and holds a good amount of peppercorns. We love it so much we ordered another so we could grind sea salt in the first one and will use the new one for our peppercorns. For those who haven't tried the sea salt idea, you should. It's much better than using standard table salt. We can't say enough about OXO's products. We have yet to find a bad product made by OXO.

For years, I've been using an awkward wooden pepper mill roughly the size and shape of a table leg, a gift from one of my in-laws. The gear finally broke, giving me an excuse to shop for something more ergonomic -- especially since I've developed arthritis in my hands and arms in the past couple of years. This is the easiest pepper machine to operate I've ever used, the long horizontally-rotating arm being very easy on the hands. The large opening for filling means I don't have peppercorns on the floor anymore, nor do I have to shovel them into a tiny hole with the tip of a teaspoon. As other reviewers have noted, it would be nice if it would sit loosely on its lid without the necessity of pulling it off for each use -- but that also means I don't leave a trail of errant pepper between the island and the cooktop. And it took me a few days to discover that you have to press the wheel up into the base to adjust the fineness of the grind (there are no directions), but once I caught on to that, the adjustment seems to stay where I put it -- unlike some other people's experience, apparently. I can only hope this beautifully designed instrument lasts a long, long time.