This is oversimplifying it a little. Yes Baratzas are great grinders but they are not one-size-fits-all depending on what kind of coffee you make. For example

This is oversimplifying it a little. Yes Baratzas are great grinders but they are not one-size-fits-all depending on what kind of coffee you make. For example Baratza Encore is everyone’s darling with good reason (I have one and I use it for espresso every day!) but it’s not a great espresso grinder because fundamentally speaking its tiny motor just doesn’t have enough torque to drive big burrs, so it has small ones. Which means when you grind at espresso sizes it’s going to lose its tight spread and it’ll output some grains that are too big for espresso, some are too small and some are just right. Since espresso is very dense coffee, this is something that is very clearly tastable even to a skeptical non-expert like me. This spread of grain sizes is something to some degree any grinder does, but grinders designed for espresso have tighter spreads, so they provide much more of the size you want (so your water can actually pass through) and much less of what you don’t want. Incidentally this is something I like about specialty coffee industry compared to other connoisseur stuff like wine. Wine experts walk around talking about the earthy aromas, if some coffee ‘expert’ tries to do the same, someone in the audience busts out a refractometer and says ‘aight, let’s see’. It’s still a money pit, but it’s at least on a much more scientifically solid ground.