Lelit William Grinder Review: A Flawed Diamond?

If you’re serious in your pursuit of the perfect espresso, you’ll quickly find yourself growing out of your entry-level coffee grinder. With that in mind, you might want to keep reading my Lelit William grinder review.

Having tested dozens of the best burr coffee grinders on the market, I can tell you that marketing jargon, tons of functions and prosumer posturing aren’t necessarily useful for every application. With the Lelit William PL72, the Italian manufacturer makes it clear that this grinder isn’t for beginner home baristas. And to be honest, I’m fine with that as long as we’re dealing with an exceptional grinder that can deliver the goods on all fronts.

As it happens, I bought the Lelit William PL72 Espresso Grinder to test out for you. So, keep reading to learn whether Lelit has hit a home run or made something overly complicated.

Compact espresso grinder

Lelit William PL72 Espresso Grinder

Very good, but there are better options

Very consistent results

High-quality build

Virtually no static issues

Good value

Unnecessarily complicated operation

CHECK PRICE

All specifications

Lelit William PL72 Espresso Grinder
Current price on Amazon
All specifications

Lelit William Grinder Review Overview

If you’ve checked out my guide to the best Lelit espresso machines, you’ll know that these guys know what they’re doing. Personally, I love the Lelit Mara X and had a great time playing with the thing. With that said, Lelit focuses on manufacturing high-end prosumer espresso machines, most of which could be too demanding for the average coffee enthusiast.

To that end, it’s no surprise that the Lelit William PL72 has been designed as a true espresso grinder. What’s more, it’s immediately apparent that Lelit is pitting the William against grinders like the Eureka Mignon Silenzio 55. In terms of its design, components and functions, the Lelit William makes a strong case in this regard:

With a grinding speed of 2.8 grams per second, it is about one nose length ahead of the Eureka (1.9 grams per second). Then again, the stainless steel flat burrs are 9 millimeters larger. Aside from anything else, this means that the Lelit William can grind beans even faster and generate less heat.

Personally, I prefer the design language of the Eureka Mignon series of grinders. Still, the Lelit makes every effort to appear classically timeless and modern at the same time. Incidentally, there are two versions of the William on offer:

Personally, I find that matte housing is usually easier to keep clean. With that said, a grinder with shiny stainless steel housing is going to look a lot cooler sitting next to your equally shiny espresso machine.

Lelit William Features

Costing around $500.00, the Lelit William is far from a budget grinder. So, is it worth the money? Let’s continue my Lelit William grinder review by taking a closer look at the most notable features on offer.

Size and Design

I’ve already let on that I’m not a huge fan of the way the Lelit William looks. And while I’m aware that aesthetics have little to do with performance, it is nice to have an attractive grinder sitting next to your fancy home espresso machine. On the other hand, I’m sure that many of you will enjoy the Lelit grinder’s boxy, utilitarian design.

Rising to just over 15 inches (38 centimeters), the Lelit William is on the shorter side, which is no bad thing. What’s more important is the fact that this grinder features sturdy and durable metal construction.

Up top there’s a 1-pound (450-gram) capacity bean hopper that mimics the grinder’s squared-off design. Again, I’d prefer to see something a little more attractive here, but at least the hopper is tinted to prevent damaging UV rays from reaching your best espresso beans.

User Interface

As I mentioned earlier, the Lelit William is equipped with a small OLED display located on the front of the grinder. Elsewhere, there’s a power button on the side and a manual dosing button up top.

In my opinion, as soon as a display comes into play, the coffee grinder must provide clear arguments for why it’s there in the first place. And that goes for entry-level grinders as well as top-of-the-line prosumer models.

In my eyes, the best espresso grinder should send us seamlessly from the dose and grinding degree settings to actually grinding coffee. However, that is not quite the case here, so make sure to have the instruction manual at the ready.

Programmable Dosing

Although the Lelit William PL72 isn’t an authentic single dose espresso grinder, it does offer programmable time-based dosing. And once you’ve set it up, the grinder remembers the desired time for both a single shot and a double shot.

In theory, this is extremely practical and sets the William apart from any simpler coffee grinder and even many ambitious espresso grinders. However, the LCC (Lelit Control Center) touted by the manufacturer is anything but intuitive. Neither the display nor the dose regulation settings can be understood without the operating instructions.

I can’t get rid of the impression that the Lelit LCC display makes things more complicated than they should be. With a fully automatic machine you can be more forgiving, since you usually only set the grinder or the dose once.

However, with a coffee grinder for the discerning barista, you’re constantly adjusting parameters – for every new roast profile, for every batch of beans and for every new espresso recipe. So, let’s just tell it like it is: in this case the Lelit William grinder is just annoying.

I imagine that many folks will program in a specific time then top off their portafilter using the manual button. Alternatively, you could just weigh your beans with a coffee scale and use the Lelit William as a single dose grinder.

Incidentally, the factory setting is 3 seconds for a single shot and 5.5 seconds for a double. If you rely on “uncomplicated” roasts with a lot of chocolate notes and low acidity, these starting values are often more than okay.

Grind Adjustments

To be honest, it’s difficult to say exactly how many grind settings the Lelit William has. In my opinion, the marketing department definitely had a legal advisor take a good look at this aspect. That’s because Lelit advertises its burr grinder as offering “micrometric adjustment.” That’s just a clever way of saying, “It’s not really infinitely variable, but of course we don’t want to alienate people.”

With all that said, the Lelit William lets you dial in your grind size with extreme precision. Seriously, during my testing I paid close attention to the difference in grind size between the first and third macro setting, and noticed very little visible difference.

This naturally makes it difficult for newcomers to this or any other grinder to find the optimal grind setting for their preferred beans and espresso recipe. As always in such cases, my advice is:

Start in the middle, check your grind by pulling a shot, then adjust finer or coarser in small increments until you’re happy.

The Lelit William Espresso Grinder In Use

Apart from the programming difficulties, the Lelit William PL72 is truly made for espresso preparation. The workflow is ideal and impressively stable:

The metal forks are height-adjustable and adapt effortlessly to any portafilter. What’s more, you can also easily adjust the angle of the coffee chute so that the coffee falls exactly where it should. Oh, and if something goes wrong, the generous magnetic collection tray does its job perfectly.

I have to hand it to this coffee grinder: it really does keep all its performance promises. The Lelit William works with incredible precision and offers us first-class coffee grounds with exceptional particle uniformity.

​​Static electricity is practically non-existent here. Almost all of what passes from the bean hopper into the burr chamber ends up in your portafilter. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to avoid losing some coffee grounds, but I found the amount to be really negligible during my testing.

How Loud Is the Lelit William PL72 Grinder?

At 74.8 decibels, the noise level of the Lelit William PL72 is on the lower end compared to other electric grinders.

The stainless steel housing clearly reduces noise to a minimum, making the sound very soft and even rather pleasant. Heck, it’s almost a shame that we only run this grinder briefly for espresso and don’t use it to process a larger quantity of beans for a pot of filter coffee.

Lelit William Cleaning

Cleaning the Lelit William PL72 is no different from other electric coffee grinders. In the user manual, Lelit recommends cleaning the burrs after every 9 pounds (4 kilograms) of ground coffee beans. To make this especially easy, you can use coffee grinder cleaning tablets like Urnex Grindz.

On the other hand, if you want to manually clean or maintain components like the burrs and grinder chute, you can do this without any problems:

If something breaks, you can easily find spare parts online. These aren’t exactly cheap, but then again, neither is the coffee grinder. In other words, it’s most often worth replacing a part rather than having to purchase another coffee grinder.

Lelit William PL72 Specifications

Lelit William vs Eureka Mignon Silenzio

As I mentioned earlier, the Lelit William is kind of asking to be compared to a Eureka espresso grinder. And in my opinion, the $N/A Eureka Mignon Silenzio 55 is the most suitable model to turn to.

Based purely on its specifications, the Lelit William PL72 should grind coffee better and faster than other machines thanks to its larger burr set and more powerful motor. And that is certainly the case. But grinding alone is not everything when it comes to espresso grinders.

For me, the Silenzio 55 and most of its siblings are simply better value for money in terms of design and handling. However, that doesn’t mean that the Lelit William doesn’t deliver superb value for money.

See Also: Eureka Mignon Silenzio Review

Lelit William vs Eureka Mignon Silenzio Comparison Chart

Verdict: Lelit William Grinder Review

Compact espresso grinder

Lelit William PL72 Espresso Grinder

Very good, but there are better options

Very consistent results

High-quality build

Virtually no static issues

Good value

Unnecessarily complicated operation

CHECK PRICE

All specifications

Lelit William PL72 Espresso Grinder
Current price on Amazon
All specifications

At the end of the day, the Lelit William PL72 is a top grinder that represents fantastic value for money. It performs like a champ, producing consistent, fluffy coffee grounds for repeatable results. I also appreciate its sturdy build, simple design and streamlined workflow. Finally, the lightning-fast grind time and high-quality 64mm burrs are definitely noticeable in the complex espresso I made during my Lelit William grinder review.

With all that said, I just never really warmed to the Lelit William. This is pretty much exclusively down to the unnecessarily complicated programming and poorly conceived display. Besides, other manufacturers in my coffee grinder reviews offer more elegant solutions. See for example the Eureka Mignon.

However, I am aware that the Lelit grinder objectively has a few more strengths than I give it credit for. This shows that when it comes to coffee grinders for espresso, it’s not just the price, the grinding mechanism and the reviews that matter. It’s also about the vibes.