Wirecutter supports readers. When you make a purchase through a link on our website, we may receive an affiliate commission. learn more.

Our budget choice, Platinum Grinders Herb Grinder, is in stock. We have moved the SharpStone V2 grinder back to the competition.

After considering 32 grinders and testing 12 of them for more than 20 hours, we found that Santa Cruz Shredder Medium 3-Piece can grind smoothly and evenly, whether it is used in pipes, evaporators, or recipes, and can produce the same Excellent results. The uniquely shaped teeth of this grinder can quickly process the densest flowers and should remain sharp for many years. Its ultra-deep collection chamber contains more material than competitors' collection chambers and is easy to empty.

Due to durable, sharp, and uniquely shaped teeth, this simple three-piece model provides reliable smooth grinding. Its collection chamber is the largest of all the models we have tested, and has rounded sides for easy emptying.

*At the time of publication, the price was $50.

In our tests, the four-pointed teeth on the Santa Cruz Shredder medium 3-piece grinder can quickly and easily break even our stickiest and tightest flowers. The three-piece model we recommend is easily emptied bit by bit due to its rounded bottom-far less messy than dumping a grinder to remove anything stuck in the corner. The parts of this grinder can be screwed together easily, and when you rotate, its top will slide smoothly. "If I could only own one shredder, I would definitely choose the Santa Cruz shredder," VaporizerWizard.com's Buzz told us in an email.

In our tests, the model produced the most fluffy and best results-a plus for many evaporators. Its extra storage bin and an optional coarse grinding disc are unique additional features worth the added cost, but not everyone needs it.

*At the time of publication, the price was $75.

The small, sharp teeth inside the Kannastör Gr8tr V2 smoothly tore through the cannabis without restraint, and threw the best and softest material of any material we tried into its collection room. This is the ideal choice for many evaporators, especially conduction-based models or mixed conduction-convection models. (If you have a convection evaporator, you can unscrew the Kannastör fine grinding plate and replace it with the included coarse grinding option.) Without increasing the volume, the top part of the Gr8tr V2 is sealed with an additional storage compartment In the meantime, we have not considered other grinders including-a good place to store the whole flower you plan to grind later. Not everyone needs additional features, but if you want a high-quality grinder, these features make the Gr8tr V2 worth the money.

Although it is not as well-made as our other options and it is not as smooth to use, the Platinum Grinders Herb Grinder does the job better than all other cheap grinders we have tested.

*At the time of publication, the price was $17.

Given the cost of hemp and vaporizers, we think our first choice is worth the money. However, if you cannot justify the additional costs, please use Platinum Grinders Herb Grinder instead. The price of the platinum grinder model is less than about half of our preferred product, and it can do the job well. The biggest disadvantage of the low-quality structure of this model is the service life: some Amazon customers have noticed failures in weak points such as threads or grinding disc connections. Some customers noticed that metal spots were found in their grinders during the first use, which may be residues from the manufacturing process. We recommend that you clean this budget option with alcohol before using it for the first time.

Due to durable, sharp, and uniquely shaped teeth, this simple three-piece model provides reliable smooth grinding. Its collection chamber is the largest of all the models we have tested, and has rounded sides for easy emptying.

*At the time of publication, the price was $50.

In our tests, the model produced the most fluffy and best results-a plus for many evaporators. Its extra storage bin and an optional coarse grinding disc are unique additional features worth the added cost, but not everyone needs it.

*At the time of publication, the price was $75.

Although it is not as well-made as our other options and it is not as smooth to use, the Platinum Grinders Herb Grinder does the job better than all other cheap grinders we have tested.

*At the time of publication, the price was $17.

For several years, we have introduced the best portable evaporator to most people and listened to a wide range of opinions to decide what to test. We’re doing the same thing with grinders now; we checked the best-selling grinders and user reviews on Amazon, read fan feedback on forums, and even watched video reviews on YouTube. We also got opinions from two expert reviewers in the field, Bud from The Vape Critic and Buzz from VaporizerWizard.com. Both are prolific critics who have given us feedback on dozens of evaporators they have tried in the past. They provide valuable insights on how to get the most from any grinder.

Despite the increase in the number of concentrates, waxes, foods, and a large number of pre-made cannabis products, most people still buy and use ordinary cannabis flowers-old-fashioned cannabis flowers. Most people who smoke, evaporate or cook with marijuana can benefit from the grinder. Using a grinder, you can quickly and easily turn dense, viscous buds into materials that can be heated evenly and efficiently. If you only participate occasionally, the cheap style is enough for you to enjoy a rare treat. However, if you use a vaporizer frequently, investing in a high-end hemp grinder will not look like an easy task and will pay off in a more exciting form. Although cheap grinders sometimes break down, high-quality grinders are an investment that should last for several years.

Most people who casually reach for a vaporizer from time to time may not have much use in separating kief (the powerful crystal-like dust on the leaves of cannabis plants) from other materials, so we did not focus on attractive features such as the screen.

Be sure to read about the health and legal effects of cannabis use in our portable vaporizer guide. Just like vaporizers, grinders are legal until you use them with illegal substances. They then become personal items and are subject to the corresponding laws of your jurisdiction.

We considered top brands recommended by experts and amateur critics. We focused on medium-sized grinders in the 2-inch diameter range-big enough to grind herbs in multiple stages, but not too big to take up too much space-and looked for three-piece and four-piece grinding materials The one-piece model enters the collection room. Letting gravity do the collection is easier and less time-consuming than picking marijuana from between sharp teeth (just like you need to do with a two-piece grinder).

On Amazon, the best-selling and best-reviewed grinders that meet our original standards start at just $10, but when shopping online, it’s hard to see the difference between cheap grinders and models that cost up to $100. It's easy to cover up claims about sharper teeth or better materials when staring at the picture, but when you turn a high-quality grinder in your hand, the difference will suddenly appear. It can be screwed together easily, and can slide and grind more smoothly. We tested 12 models with prices ranging from $6 to $85 to determine the best value for most people based on four main criteria:

Grinding is not binding: some modern cannabis strains can produce flowers with incredibly dense buds that are difficult to grind. The best grinders have teeth that can cut through the buds instead of binding them when you are trying to force them through. Shape, sharpness, and number of teeth all have an impact on this, but you can’t easily tell which one works best based on individual user reviews. During the testing process, we paid close attention to which design details led to easy and thorough polishing.

Easy to empty: A good three-piece or four-piece grinder should allow most of the material to fall into the collection chamber through the holes between the teeth. It's not fun to sit around and pick out tiny pieces of green leaves between sharp metal teeth. Yes, a tap or two will usually remove stuck buds, but sticky cannabis strains will stick stubbornly to tiny cracks. We are looking for models who do not take herbal medicines as hostages.

Uniform grinding: Ground hemp is usually heated more uniformly (and therefore more effective) than torn into uneven chunks by hand. Buzz on VaporizerWizard.com prefers finer grinding of conductive evaporators, such as the popular Pax series models, or something slightly rougher, which allows air to pass through a convection evaporator like Firefly. However, a slightly coarser grinding is more flexible. To get a finer grinding effect, all you need to do is turn the grinder upside down for some extra twists. This will prevent it from falling into the collection tray through the hole and make finer materials when you turn the grinder back over. Since preferences and uses vary, we focused on smoothing and even grinding instead of particle size in our tests.

Durability and support: A large piece of aluminum is not easy to damage, but accidents can occur. When screwing them together, the acrylic top will crack, and crossing the two threads will damage the threads. The pressure fit and glue magnets fixed to the top grinding plate may pop out. The teeth will become dull and begin to stick together.

In short-term tests, we were unable to replicate the types of use and abuse that grinders might have seen over the years. But in the face-to-face and side-by-side situations, the different architectural qualities are obvious. Some models feel cheap, squeaking and groaning when we unscrew them, and have large, visible seams. However, the best models feel that they have been precision-machined, the seams disappear from sight, and will slip past their lines quietly. You can fairly assume that a well-made grinder should also last longer. In other words, we will monitor the performance of our choices over the long term.

If you are going to spend more than the minimum cost to buy a well-made grinding machine, it is also good to have a company that supports it. We also took note of the warranty and support options of each company.

Due to durable, sharp, and uniquely shaped teeth, this simple three-piece model provides reliable smooth grinding. Its collection chamber is the largest of all the models we have tested, and has rounded sides for easy emptying.

*At the time of publication, the price was $50.

Santa Cruz Shredder Medium 3-Piece uses more than two dozen uniquely shaped teeth to help it smoothly cut the dense flowers, and evenly put the ground material into a huge collection room.

The tooth profile of the Santa Cruz Shredder grinder is different from that of all other grinders we have tried: in our tests, we found that its four-pointed teeth are as good as or better than the diamond teeth in most grinders . The teeth easily shred every sample we tried, and the top grinding disc rotated so easily that it almost felt like it was floating. The grinding disc and grinding teeth are made of the same piece of aluminum, and the metal anodizing treatment should be able to withstand wear well. The cheaper model, like our budget choice, usually has an unfinished grinding disc, which will not be as durable in the long run. The holes in the Santa Cruz Shredder grinding discs are of average size. They produce a medium-coarse grinding and are equally suitable for evaporators, recipes or pipes.

Every time we disassemble the grinder and screw it back in place, the threads fit smoothly and do not get tangled together like some competitors' threads.

Because the three-piece set we tried did not have a pollen screen, everything fell into the huge collection room. The plate is nearly an inch deep, two to three times deeper than the collection chambers of other models we have seen, and the corners and sides are very rounded, allowing you to easily pinch out what you need. Even the larger four-piece Santa Cruz Shredder model does not have this collection room, so the extra capacity of our three-piece option stands out from the crowd.

Vape Critic's Bud also recommended the Santa Cruz Shredder grinder: "A lot of people own it and like it. I received almost zero complaints," he wrote. Buzz from VaporizerWizard.com also spoke highly of this grinder. He wrote in an email: "I use my Santa Cruz Shredder more times than my other grinders combined. If I can only own one grinder, I would definitely choose Santa Cruz Shredder. ."

Santa Cruz Shredders are not only highly praised by enthusiasts for their quality, but if the teeth break, the company will provide them with a lifetime warranty.

We focus on the three-piece model without the pollen screen, but if you want to separate your kief, the four-piece model includes a screen and catcher.

In our tests, the model produced the most fluffy and best results-a plus for many evaporators. Its extra storage bin and an optional coarse grinding disc are unique additional features worth the added cost, but not everyone needs it.

*At the time of publication, the price was $75.

If you want extra dedicated storage space in the grinder or the option of changing the grinding thickness, then Kannastör Gr8tr V2 is worth preparing your pot at a higher price. Gr8tr V2 is an update to our previous preferred Gr8tr. The newer model is almost the same internally and is as polished as the original model. It also inherited the superior feel of the high-quality materials and structure that we liked in the first version, adding a facelift to the exterior design. The delicate and fluffy result of Gr8tr sets it apart from any other grinder we have tried at all costs.

The two accompanying grinding discs are outstanding features of Gr8tr V2. The fine grinding plate has nearly 80 holes, which is smaller than our first choice of 15 holes. Buzz from VaporizerWizard.com told us that when he wanted to maximize the steam output of the conduction evaporator, he liked the finer grinding provided by Magic Flight Finishing Grinder. Although we did not consider the Magic Flight grinder because it has only a two-piece design, the holes on the Gr8tr V2 are similar in size. The board in the updated Gr8tr V2 is almost the same as our previous preferred product (the discontinued Gr8tr), so you can expect similar results. As a commenter on Reddit wrote on r/vaporents: “For me, this grinding size turned out to be a perfect all-rounder. I don’t think my convection evaporator will be damaged due to too fine grinding. And my conductive evaporator still produces very large clouds. For me, this is the best of both worlds."

If you don't want such fine grinding, or don't like the larger drill bit and valve stem stuck in the smaller hole, you can quickly unscrew the grinding disc and replace it with the supplied coarse grinding disc. (The spare plate can be screwed into the top of the grinder for storage, or if you want to make the grinder thinner, you can keep it in a safe place.) The hole size of the extra plate is the same as that of most other grinders The sizes are closer and are best suited for convection-based evaporators that benefit from the additional airflow of the coarser ground hemp.

In addition, Gr8tr V2 adds another unique feature: a second storage compartment on the lid. Of all the other grinders we have tried, the only place where you can keep anything is the collection chamber at the bottom. But the free-rotating magnetic top piece of Gr8tr V2 will reveal an extra storage area after unscrewing, which is very suitable for the whole flower. In addition, if you want something more compact on the go, the top and bottom parts can be combined into a slim storage disc.

When you open the Gr8tr V2, you will find that Kannastör pays great attention to detail and quality. However, if any problems arise, the company will provide a lifetime warranty via email support.

If you are an enthusiast who uses various evaporators and smoking accessories, you might consider spending a little more money to purchase the Kannastör Gr8tr V2 solid body with stainless steel easy-to-replaceable screen version. It comes with an additional part with a mesh pollen screen to collect kief.

Although it is not as well-made as our other options and it is not as smooth to use, the Platinum Grinders Herb Grinder does the job better than all other cheap grinders we have tested.

*At the time of publication, the price was $17.

If you cannot or do not want to spend money on our preferred product, please use HPlatinum Grinders Herb Grinder instead. This budget option can get the job done at less than half of the cost we chose. It performed best among all the models we tested for less than $40.

The Platinum Grinder did not cut the material as smoothly as our preferred product, but it was not as often constrained as the other cheap models we tested. Unscrew the threads of various parts can also pass-not as our first choice, but less prone to thread cross-threading than other budget grinders.

In our test, the vanilla grinder was easily emptied. Most of our materials fall into the collection chamber, so we are not trapped in picking out fragments from sharp metal teeth. The thread that connects the top to the chamber is smooth, there is no cross thread when we repeatedly unscrew it and screw it back together. The chamber itself is about a quarter of an inch deep, not like our first choice, but large enough to be average for a grinder of this diameter.

Most of the negative reviews from Amazon customers are related to durability issues. "The teeth on the grinder can no longer hold up. The kief catcher screen is broken" and "It is well ground, but the screen is off" are representative comments. But most budget grinders have similar problems, or worse. Some customers noticed that they saw metal spots when they first received their grinder, which may be a residue from the manufacturing process. We recommend using rubbing alcohol for quick cleaning to avoid any problems.

Our previous first choice Kannastör Gr8tr has been discontinued and replaced by Kannastör Gr8tr V2, which is now our upgrade option.

Lift Innovations offers three-piece grinders at similar prices to our upgrade options, but without the additional storage or modular grinder plates that make the Gr8tr V2 unique. Since Lift's four-piece grinder (with similar functions and additional features to Gr8tr V2) is much more expensive than our upgrade option, we chose not to test it.

Beamer acrylic grinder, Zip Grinder large 4 pieces, and SharpStone V2 grinder 2 inch 4 pieces all have plastic characteristics. When testing them, we immediately noticed that these tend to attract more leaf shapes compared to their all-metal counterparts Fragments. Given the other quality options, this is enough to exclude them. Especially SharpStone is a popular model, but when it is reassembled, it is easy to thread. We found that the smoothness of the grinding and the consistency of the material are OK.

In our test, the Chromium Crusher 2.5-Inch 4-Piece gear takes slightly longer to complete grinding than other gears in the price range. The sharp corners of the collecting tray, combined with the textured interior at the bottom, make it harder to completely empty it without turning it over and knocking out a mess.

The pollen screen that came with the Golden Bell 2-inch 4-piece grinder was torn out of the box, which is always a disturbing sign when trying new equipment. But we tested it anyway and found that the material is often stuck in the small space between the external teeth and the edge of the grinding disc.

The Cali Crusher Homegrown 4-piece hardtop has some unique features that we appreciate. Cali Crusher uses a quarter-turn twist-lock system, which is faster than traditional threading, but equally safe, instead of full thread-requiring you to unscrew the lower part of the grinder. Instead of diamond-shaped teeth, the internal radial blades are well done and can destroy our buds evenly without getting stuck. But the price of the Cali Crusher model is almost twice that of our preferred product.

We also tested the Space Case Medium 4-piece set. Although its performance is stable (and enthusiasts have spoken highly of the company's products), we did not find any outstanding features to justify raising the price for more casual users. But Buzz from VaporizerWizard.com tells us that anyone who likes to collect kief should seriously consider a Space Case: "I haven't found another grinder that produces high-quality kief at the same speed," he said in an email Write. Because we did not pay attention to Keef, this is not enough to affect us. In our tests, the grinding degree of the Space Case grinder is as smooth, consistent or fine as our preferred product, but the corners of the screen and the collecting pan are relatively sharp angles, which are difficult to remove with fingers. We have found that our options provide a better experience at a lower price.

Bud, founder of The Vape Critic, email interview, August 30, 2017

Buzz, founder of VaporizerWizard.com, email interview, September 19, 2017

Mark Smirniotis is the senior editor of Wirecutter's PC, web and mobile coverage. Knowing not to fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy, he gave up his degree in economics in 2015 to review technology for Wirecutter, which included projects such as using weird waving inflatable arms and waving pipes to test generators while running.

You can also send us a note.

© 2021 The New York Times Company Wirecutter, Inc.