SHARDOR One Touch Coffee Grinder Electric, Spice, Herb, For Coffee Bean Spices and Seeds with 1 Removable Stainless Steel Bowl, Dry Grinder, Black

Why it's worth it

The SHARDOR is the low-risk way into fresh-ground spice, and it's the quietest option here by the numbers its maker publishes. You get a removable stainless cup, a single press-and-hold button, and a two-year warranty. The small motor is the catch.

It's built to be quiet, and quiet matters more than people expect. SHARDOR rates the average noise around 60 decibels, well under what blade grinders in this class usually produce. If you grind pepper while a toddler sleeps down the hall, or your kitchen opens straight onto the room where everyone else is sitting, that's the difference between a nuisance and a non-event. It also encourages short bursts rather than one long roar.

The stainless cup lifts out and goes in the dishwasher. You fill it away from the base, grind, then pour without tipping the whole machine over a jar. Stainless also shrugs off the pigments that ruin plastic chambers — turmeric and paprika stain almost anything porous, and there's no undoing it once they do.

From our review of 5 electric spice grinders, by David Sinclair, Managing Editor

What we like

• +It's built to be quiet, and quiet matters more than people expect
• +The stainless cup lifts out and goes in the dishwasher
• +One button, nothing to learn
• +The warranty is the longest in this group

What to know

• –The motor is the weak point, and it's the whole story
• –There's no coarseness control at all
• –SHARDOR doesn't have the track record of the others