My wife bought me a $300 coffee grinder for Christmas. As a coffee ...enthusiast?... I'm quite fond of it. Perfectly consistent grid, very quiet electric operation, small footprint. I could argue that $300 was too much for it, but I'm willing to pay a premium for good product. $1,650 would be utterly insane.

I don’t think it’s a good analogy. With the coffee grinders you can have objective physical measurements for the coffee particle size distribution after the grinding process. Sure, the taste improvement would hit diminishing returns as the grinder price increases, but it would still exist. You as a buyer have to decide for yourself at which point the price stops making sense based on your budget.

The audiophile hardware on the other hand is being sold based on the promises that defy an objective physical reality.

Grinding coffee is hard. It's very easy to get particles that are too fine, overextract, and ruin the taste. So some engineering is required to get a good result.

For these limited-run products, you're paying for the product development to a greater extent than you would for a product that sells in the millions. Software is very similar, someone could use Wordpress off the shelf, but they have a bunch of ideas for how their thing should be different, and so pay artisans $300 an hour to make their very own custom blog. The $1700 coffee grinder is the same effect at play.

At least with coffee grinders you can measure the distribution of particle sizes to see that cheaper grinders are producing something quantitatively different as output, and use blind tests to see if you care. $1650 might still be a bit much, but the way you grind coffee does have a surprising impact on how it tastes.

I’m not a coffee “enthusiast” but we have a grinder at home, and I’m definitely not getting the same coffee as I did in the office when I used their grinders.

hey, juicero at least was electric