Cole & Mason Manhattan Electronic 7" Pepper or Salt Mill

This is an exceptionally well made device. It has a very solid feel and heft. We are using it for salt because we have a different model already for pepper. However the pepper grinder, a Sharper Image item, is just not in the same category of excellence.

We have owned it for less than two months, but it would appear to me that it will last a long, long time.

The grind size is adjustable. It's very quiet. It is also beautiful, with a cross section that is a rounded square rather than just a plain cylinder.

The top section twists only about 15 degrees, then lifts off to fill and to change batteries. The fit of the lid is satifyingly firm and solid.

I wish I had something negative to add, but I just cannot find any fault with it.

I'd been using manual pepper mills since I started cooking as a youth in the 1960s. A few months ago I had a recipe the called for 2 teaspoons of ground pepper...I stopped after 25 minutes of manual grinding with only 1.5 teaspoons to show for my effort! So I went hunting online and found this electric mill on Amazon.com: it had great customer reviews and the manufacturer's website was great.

The mill arrived, I filled it up with black peppercorns and installed batteries, and I ground a little bit of pepper...all very easy. In the months since, I've used it regularly and it works perfectly. I thought the light was a bit of a hokey idea, but it illuminates the area where the ground pepper is falling -- a great feature!

Perhaps my only quibble is that you have to knock the pepper off the bottom a bit more heavily than with my manual grinders before putting it down. But that is a small nuisance vastly outweighed by how fast and convenient it is...Read more

I've had a pair of these for several years...one for black pepper and one for white pepper. Every time anyone uses them, they want them.