Zero Genie

It’s hard to break me away from the tried and true. After all, I had a grinder for at least ten years before I even thought about raising the bar and upgrading it. The grinder that I upgraded to is made of ceramic. It’s so smooth and it never gets stuck on anything, stems or an errant seed, although I’d be hard pressed to find one of those. Imagine my trepidation when the Tectonic 9 was delivered to my door. I had a perfectly good grinder, then upgraded to something that I always wanted. Now I was given the opportunity to try the Tectonic9. What should I do?

The best thing that I can recommend in life is to embrace the opportunities as they present themselves. Sure I have a perfectly good grinder, better than most I’d ever used prior. The bar would have to rise more than just a wee bit to get my attention. And as I said, I just replaced my old grinder after ten or so years, which made me a bit concerned for my nerd-self. What did I need a new grinder for? Was this one just an oversized paperweight?

The Tectonic9 excels in all ways. I’m truly impressed by the quality and momentum from this unlikely tech company.

Let me break it down for you. It does have a bit of a learning curve, but it’s not insurmountable. My ambition is for all grinders to be gentle on the wrists upon turning with herbs in the chamber. Some individuals have motion difficulties and they cannot twist their wrists easily. This can be alleviated by making the distance across the top broad enough to fit your hand easily for that specific twisting motion of grinding. The Tectonic9 has something built into it that fluffs the herbs, making them incredibly easy to work with. The interior is ribbed to give the ground herbs some dimension. Twisting the top does yield exceptionally pleasing and visually bemusing ground herbs. I tried it with some Casa Humboldt: Charlie Girl and the dense nugs didn’t bog down the teeth in any way. It’s really nice to be able to maneuver the twisting action without much effort. But what I found to be the most intriguing was the dispensing portion of the equation.

When you push down the little white button and bring the little stainless steel funnel out from the bottom, then opening the sliding metal door aside for a snug fit, the vibration of the internal micro-engine pushes the herbs in a lovely fashion onto your rolling paper, your bong or your pipe. It does weigh a bit more than my ceramic grinder but the elegance of motion makes my experience tough to go back to my manual means. There are a couple things I miss, a kief collection area would be nice, as would a tool to get any herbs out of the funnel. I used a long bamboo skewer, you may find a Q-tip with a bit of ISO on it works better. It’s up to you.

The finish quality of this cannabis (herb) grinding tool is magnificent. Solid, polished aluminum feels really fine in my hand. The weight is a bit more than you might expect for a device of this size, but that comes with the territory for overall quality of this machine. For me this grinder weighs about as much as my Leica M8 camera. That says quality manufacturing to me. I’m pretty sure you could drop this on the hardwood floor without any damage to it, not that I want to try the falling grinder test, I’d probably stub my toe!

There’s a handy little window that offers a view onto the ground cannabis if you are doing large quantities. That’s something I never have enough of, so I couldn’t test out the internal view.

Just like the Cloudious9, the Tectonic9 charms the intellectual head. I’m really impressed by their wit and wisdom with every turn of the wrist. A lovely way to start a conversation about anything pertinent, or not. Cheers!