Baratza Encore ESP vs Breville Smart Grinder Pro

The honest short answer

These are the two grinders every espresso beginner gets pointed at, they land around the same money, and they are not really the same product. The Baratza Encore ESP is an espresso specialist: a 40 mm conical grinder with a dual adjustment range, factory-calibrated so its fine end is genuinely tuned for pulling shots. The Breville Smart Grinder Pro is a generalist: a 60-step all-rounder that doses by time, grinds straight into a portafilter, and is just as happy setting up a batch of pour-over or drip. One was built to dial in espresso. The other was built to grind for everything and pair neatly with a Breville machine.

Because they cost roughly the same, price is not the thing deciding this — the way you actually make coffee is. So this page is not a spec-sheet beauty contest. It is a question about your kitchen: do you almost exclusively pull espresso and want the grinder that adjusts finest for it, or do you own a Breville, brew more than one method, and want the convenience of a grinder that fills a portafilter at the push of a button?

If you are still deciding whether either of these is the right first grinder at all, our best grinders for espresso guide places both in the wider field, and the best grinders under a couple of hundred is the budget tier both of these sit in.

What actually matters at this budget

Before we pit them against each other, it is worth being clear about what a grinder in this bracket is even being judged on, because a lot of the marketing points do not matter and a couple of quiet ones matter enormously.

• Fineness and resolution for espresso. Espresso is the least forgiving brew method there is — the whole shot is a fight between pump pressure and a compacted puck, and grind size is the single biggest lever on how that fight goes. A grinder that adjusts in coarse jumps forces you to correct with dose and tamp instead. The finer and more numerous the useful espresso steps, the easier your mornings are.
• Burrs, not blades. Both of these use conical burrs, which is the entry point for espresso — a blade grinder cannot make espresso, full stop, because it cannot produce a consistent particle size. If that distinction is new to you, our burr vs blade explainer is the two-minute version.
• How it doses, and where the grounds land. A grinder that dumps grounds into a bin you then transfer is a different daily ritual from one that grinds straight into your portafilter. Retention — the grounds left stuck inside between shots — and mess are decided here.
• Whether it is a specialist or a generalist. A grinder tuned for espresso will feel cramped if you also love pour-over; a broad all-rounder will feel a touch coarse at the espresso end. Neither is wrong. They are different bets.

Notice what is not on that list: motor wattage, and the number of settings taken in isolation. Sixty settings sounds like more control than forty, and we will explain below why that intuition is misleading for espresso specifically.

Baratza Encore ESP: the espresso specialist

The Encore ESP is Baratza taking the most-recommended beginner grinder in the world, the plain Encore, and re-tuning it for espresso. The important change is the burr set and the gearing: it uses a 40 mm conical burr and a dual adjustment range, where the lower band (settings roughly one through twenty) is dedicated to espresso and the upper band handles filter and everything coarser. That lower band is the whole point — it spreads the espresso window across more of the dial, so small turns make small changes, which is exactly what dialling in a shot demands.

It also ships factory-calibrated, meaning the burr alignment and zero point are set before it leaves the factory rather than being something you fettle yourself. For a first grinder that matters more than it sounds: it means the espresso settings on the dial actually correspond to espresso-range grinds out of the box, so you are dialling in your coffee rather than dialling in the grinder.

The character of the Encore ESP is single-minded. It is a grinder for the person whose coffee life is espresso first and everything else a distant second. Baratza has a long, well earned reputation for repairability and parts support, and the burrs here are a known, respected set. If you own a machine with a 54 mm basket like a Breville, or a 58 mm one like a Gaggia, it will happily feed either — you grind into the supplied bin and transfer to your portafilter. That transfer step is the one ergonomic tax it charges, and we come back to it below.

Breville Smart Grinder Pro: the convenient all-rounder

The Smart Grinder Pro comes at the problem from the opposite direction. It is a stainless conical grinder with 60 stepped settings and a digital brain, and its defining trick is that it grinds straight into your portafilter: the box includes cradles for both 50–54 mm and 58 mm portafilters, so you clamp your basket in, hit start, and the dose lands where it is going to be brewed. No intermediate bin, no transfer, far less mess on the counter.

It doses by time, and the timing is programmable. You set how many seconds the grinder runs, save that as your shot setting, and it repeats it. For someone building a repeatable morning routine on a Breville machine, that is genuinely convenient — and the Smart Grinder Pro is the natural, price-matched partner to a Breville that lacks its own grinder, which is precisely why our grinder guide for Breville owners keeps returning to it.

Its breadth is the selling point. Sixty steps spread across the whole range from Turkish-fine to French-press-coarse means it grinds for espresso, moka, drip, pour-over and press without complaint. If your household brews more than one way — an espresso in the morning, a jug of filter at the weekend — a single grinder that does all of it well is worth a lot. Note that Breville does not publish a burr diameter for it; we do not state one, and our spec table says so rather than repeating a figure from a retailer.

Adjustment: where they really part ways

This is the heart of the comparison, and it is where the raw setting count misleads people. The Smart Grinder Pro has 60 settings and the Encore ESP has 40, so the Breville must be finer for espresso, right? Not for espresso, no.

The Encore ESP devotes its lower band — around half its total dial — specifically to the espresso range. That concentrates the grinder's resolution where you need it, so the gap between one espresso setting and the next is small. The Smart Grinder Pro spreads its 60 steps across every brew method, from the coarsest press grind to the finest, which means the slice of its dial that lands in espresso territory is a handful of steps, and the jump between two adjacent espresso settings can feel coarse — you occasionally want a grind that sits between two clicks and cannot get there. Both grinders are stepped rather than stepless, so neither offers infinite adjustment; if that distinction matters to you, stepped vs stepless explains what you gain and give up.

The practical upshot: for a pure espresso user, the Encore ESP is the finer-feeling grinder of the two despite having fewer total settings, because more of those settings are the ones you will actually use. For a multi-method user, the Smart Grinder Pro's breadth is the right trade, because you are spending settings on grinds the Encore ESP's upper band handles more coarsely anyway.

Dosing: by time, by eye, and into a portafilter

The other real difference is how each grinder measures a dose, and it is a genuine trade-off rather than a win for either side.

The Smart Grinder Pro doses by time: it runs for the number of seconds you programmed. That is repeatable and convenient, but time is a proxy for weight, not weight itself — as your beans age, as the hopper empties, as the grind setting changes, the grams that come out in the same number of seconds drift. Serious dialling-in is done by weight on a scale, so many Smart Grinder Pro owners end up grinding into a portafilter that sits on a scale and treating the timer as a rough starting point rather than gospel.

The Encore ESP does not time your dose at all — you run it, catch the grounds, and weigh them, which is more manual but arguably more honest, because it never pretends seconds equal grams. Neither approach removes the scale from a proper espresso workflow. What the Breville buys you is the grind-into-portafilter convenience and a programmable starting point; what the Baratza buys you is a finer espresso dial and Baratza's repair ethos. Pick the convenience or pick the resolution — you do not really get both at this budget.

Where each one frustrates you

Both of these are good grinders that thousands of people are happy with. Both also have honest flaws, and you should hear them before you buy.

Baratza Encore ESP

• It can feel single-purpose. The espresso tuning that makes its lower band so good also makes it feel like a specialist — if half your brewing is filter or press, you are living mostly in its upper band and paying for espresso resolution you use less.
• It is stepped, not stepless. Even with the dedicated espresso band, the finest dial-in is stepped, so the occasional coffee will sit fractionally between two settings and you finish the dial-in with dose and tamp.
• You transfer the grounds. It grinds into a bin, not into your portafilter, so there is a transfer step and a little static-driven mess to manage — the ergonomic tax the Breville does not charge.

Breville Smart Grinder Pro

• Its espresso steps can feel coarse. Because 60 settings cover every method, the espresso portion is a few clicks, and you can want a grind that lives between two of them and be unable to reach it.
• It is timed, not weight-based. Dosing by seconds drifts as beans age and the hopper empties, so you still need a scale for consistent espresso — the timer is a convenience, not a substitute for weighing.
• It is a generalist by design. If you only ever pull espresso, some of what you are paying for — the breadth, the wide setting range — is capability you will never touch, and a dedicated espresso grinder would put that money into resolution instead.

Which one for which buyer

The verdict

For the buyer whose coffee is espresso first and everything else an afterthought, the Baratza Encore ESPis the better grinder. Its dedicated espresso band gives it the finer, more useful dial-in of the two despite the lower headline setting count, the factory calibration means you are tuning your coffee rather than your grinder, and Baratza's parts-and-repair ethos is a real reason to trust it for years. It is the finest-adjusting entry electric espresso grinder we would point a shot-focused beginner at.

For the buyer who owns a Breville, brews more than one way, and wants the tidiest daily ritual, the Breville Smart Grinder Pro is the better buy — not because it beats the Encore ESP at espresso, but because it does not try to. It grinds into your portafilter, doses on a programmable timer, and handles filter, press and pour-over from the same box, and for a Breville owner that convenience and breadth are worth more than the last increment of espresso resolution. Just go in knowing its espresso steps can feel coarse between two settings, and that a scale still belongs on your counter.

Either way you are buying the right kind of grinder — a burr grinder tuned for espresso — which already puts you ahead of anyone feeding a good machine with pre-ground. See both in the wider field on the best grinders for espresso, and if you own a Breville, our best grinder for the Barista Express page settles where the Smart Grinder Pro sits among the alternatives.