As I'm writing this, I've just come to the end of testing the Varia VS3 coffee grinder. If you're into espresso or partake in the world of specialty coffee, I've no doubt you'll have heard of this grinder.
Striking in its appearance, and priced at a super attractive price (as espresso grinders go) of $269, the VS3 is a go-to first grinder for many coffee enthusiasts, and often touted as one of the best coffee grinders for beginners.
Despite that, it's no stranger to mixed criticism from the coffee community, and yeah, it has its flaws, which I'll soon be covering in my full review.
The thing is, the VS3 has one feature that has totally transformed my morning espresso routine, and has me overlooking its (admittedly pretty minor flaws).
It all comes down to decibels.
DC for dB
There are two main types of grinder: hand and electric. And I'm sure you can guess the difference between the two.
I'm lazy, so in the morning when I shuffle downstairs to make my coffee, I don't want to go straight into an arm workout grinding 20-odd grams of coffee for an espresso. So my preference is always an electric grinder (although I use the 1Zpresso K-Ultra hand grinder while I travel).
I've used a lot of electric espresso grinders in my time — after all, I get to test them for my job. One of the main problems with electrics are the noise. These things get loud.
I'm not talking 100dB, ear-damage-level noise, but the Baratza Encore ESP averaged 82dB in our testing. According to the Hearing Health Foundation, while not a risk to ear health, that's equivalent to being in a noisy restaurant.
My Eureka Mignon Specialita is a "quiet" grinder, but still averages around 75dB of noise, equivalent to hearing someone running landscaping equipment outside your house. Hardly the kind of noise you want to be making at 6am.
If you're a blade grinder owner (which you shouldn't be; they suck), you're likely in an even worse position. My dad's old blade grinder sounded like a turbojet firing up.
By contrast, thanks to its DC power supply (more on this below), the Varia VS3 is one of the quietest electric grinders I've used, running at an average of 67dB. Don't get me wrong, it's obviously far from silent, but that's a hell of a lot quieter. If fact, it took me by (pleasant) surprise, the first time I used the VS3 for a morning brew at home.
See, while the delta between 67dB and 82dB doesn't sound like much, it is. The decibel scale is logarithmic — a 10dB increase means 10x the sound intensity, while a 20dB increase is 100x the sound intensity.
I'm no good at math (so correct me if I'm wrong), but 15dB as I understand it equates to a 30 fold increase in sound intensity. Or to put it another way, the Varia VS3 is, on average, 30 times quieter than the Baratza Encore ESP, and nearly 10 times quieter than my Eureka Mignon Specialita.
That has made a huge difference to my morning routine. No longer am I wincing as I grind my beans. No longer am I waking one of our dogs (a light sleeper), and making her bark, compounding the issue. I can brew in peace.
What's the catch?
Yeah, there is a catch. The reason why the Varia VS3 is quiet is because of that DC power I mentioned above.
Fed by DC rather than AC mains, the VS3 only spins at 170RPM. The much louder Baratza Encore ESP runs at 550RPM, meaning it'll get through a dose of coffee much quicker.
Does that really matter, though? We're talking 10-20 seconds difference max for an 18g dose. I'd rather have a longer period at lower volumes than a shorter spike. And I reckon my partner would, too, as that's less likely to wake her.
What retention?
And at the end of the day, performance has to play a huge part too. The VS3 is an excellent grinder given its entry-level price tag, scoring very highly in our uniformity and retention testing, as you can see in the tables below.
Grind size | 300μm | 500μm | 800μm | 1100μm | 1400μm |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Super fine | 20% | 90% | 95% | 100% | 100% |
Medium fine | 5% | 95% | 100% | 100% | 100% |
Medium | 0% | 5% | 80% | 95% | 100% |
Medium coarse | 0% | 5% | 50% | 80% | 95% |
Coarse | 0% | 5% | 15% | 50% | 90% |
Our first coffee grinder test is always a uniformity test, where we pass batches of ground coffee through Kruve sifters.
The more uniform, technically speaking, the better. What we want to see here is large swings in variance, from 5% up to 95%. This means very few grounds pass through one sieve, but most pass through the next, showing low variance. The grinder is essentially doing a good job at smushing coffee beans into evenly-sized grounds.
The VS3 performs very strongly in the mid range at medium and medium-fine grinds. At the finest end of the VS3 adjustment range, we see a slight step up in variance, with a 20-90% jump between the finest sifters.
Overall, though, this level of uniformity is very high, which makes the VS3 an excellent grinder for espresso. Coarser grounds are a little less uniform, so if you're looking to make a variety of drinks, including pour overs, it maybe isn't the one. But I'm an espresso drinker first and foremost, so that's what matters to me.
| Header Cell - Column 0 | Coffee in | Grounds out |
|---|---|---|
Retention test 1 | 20.0g | 19.8g |
Retention test 2 | 20.0g | 19.8g |
Retention test 3 | 20.0g | 19.9g |
Retention test 4 | 20.0g | 19.9g |
Arguably the most prominent of the VS3's physical features is its 76.5-degree sloping metal body. This isn't just for style. The pitch of the grinder helps grounds fall from the burrs and through the chute more easily, lowering retention. And it works.
As you can see in the table above, the Varia VS3 averaged 0.15g retention per dose over four 20g doses. That's 0.75% retention. Not bad at all.
Mornings matter
As I mentioned up top, I'll be covering the VS3 fully very soon in a standalone review. This grinder has its flaws (mostly relating to that DC power supply), but for under $300, this is a seriously good espresso grinder.
Sometimes, though, a single feature can make all the difference. And as someone who gets up at 5.45am to head into the office, that feature in my grinders is noise.
I've never owned a properly quiet espresso grinder before, but now that I have, there's no going back.
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