I'm going to start this off, by stating.. I like this product.. I don't LOVE it.. but I really like it, and if it'd been designed a little differently, then I'd love it. So, what do I like? The colander design, on this unit, is fantastic. it drains water well, and the fact that it has a flip out handle is awesome. The blades do a decent job of cutting up everything. The power of the pull string is decent, though I worry about its longevity. It works well... kinda. Here's the thing... everything about this product, I love.. but when you consider the design, from a workflow, it's... broken... Let me explain: When I make a chopped salad, I tend to wash everything first.. so that means putting everything into the colander and rinsing it. So far, so good. Then I move the basket to the spinner, and remove excess water by spinning it. Also, good. However, from there, I need to remove the vegetables, and do the basic cuts, and then put them into the chopper... and this is where things start to fall apart. See.. once you add the items to the chopper, you can't have it TOO packed in there, otherwise the blades will just spin the entire bowl of veggies, without doing any cutting. So, gotta slowly add vegetables in... ok.. fine.. not a big deal. HOWEVER, once you cut up all of the veggies, and it DOES cut them up... you're going to wind up with a bit more juice than you probably wanted.. after all, the blades are plastic, so they don't cut as well as a mezzaluna would.. so you get a bit of a combination of cutting, and ripping. So.. yeah.. it makes things a bit liquidy. Now.. here's the problem.. transferring the smashed/cut up veggies into the colander, to remove the excess juice (I actually recommend adding some pre-shredded lettuce, here, to sort of fill it out)... it's a giant mess. Also, as others have pointed out, it's not very large, overall, so there isn't a lot of room to make a big salad. So.. what could be done to make this a better product? Perhaps metal blades would help make the chopping a little less of a mess... perhaps making a slightly larger product, that could allow you to chop INSIDE the basket? (maybe have a button to hold, that will keep the basket locked in place, while you spin the blades, and then once you remove the blades, and aren't pressing the button, the pull rope will spin it? Less steps, overall.. and less of a mess to clean up, honestly. See, that's the thing.. separately, all of the steps and parts with this chopper and spinner.. work well. It's not until you start adding them together, that the weaknesses start to be visible. All in all, I like it, and will still use it.. but I think for larger salads, I'll stick with simply shaking a large bowl, after chopping everything up in it, with a single or double bladed mezzaluna.
