I have a very nice, heavy tamper that I've used for 19 years. Recently I got intrigued with the idea of a spring loaded tamper because I never had any idea what force I was using manually. This particular tamper is costly but well worth it, in my opinion because of how it's made and because it also had 2 springs, as well as a total of 3 inner springs to determine tamp pressure. Beautiful, heavy, solid construction. The 25 lb spring that comes pre-installed works best for me and I don't see myself changing it. The design with the leveling plate makes it all quite easy to press down enough. Some reviews complained about the lack of an audible "click" but that isn't necessary. With the leveling plate on top of the filter basket, you just press down the entire distance that you can push and that's it so no click needed. What I've realized though all this is that I was never tamping hard enough with my manual tamper. In addition, when I would press it down hard the tamp would not be even, and one side would usually end up higher than the other, and this led to channeling. It's important to properly prepare the puck. I measure bean weight and grind into the portafilter basket. I use a funnel collar and and WDT tool to distribute the grinds well and break up clumps. I then use a distribution tool, which smooths everything out before the final tamp. Then comes the tamping which I can now do with a consistent, level pressure. I have my grind fineness pretty dialed in at this point and haven't needed to change that up much. Since implementing the puck prep described above, every single time my coffee has turned out perfect. Before doing things this way and without my new tools (i.e. previously using only finger smoothing and tamping with a manual tamper) I had a lot of misses and wasn't usually happy with the espresso I got. I'll say it again....the quality of your shots depends on good, consistent prep of the puck. This tamper is a very necessary part of that prep, I now realize. I recommend this particular tamper very highly. Last comment: You can get the same tamper with a circular ridged bottom. I can't see there would be much advantage to that, and the ridged bottom would definitely catch coffee in the ridged areas, making cleanup a bit more annoying. With this smooth tamper, all it requires is a quick wipe on the bottom (usually nothing there anyway) and then there is a nice little matching cup to set the tamper in.
