Side by Side Comparison of: Swissmar Brner vs Borner vs Swissmar

I have been using this for a couple of years - and I highly recommend it! I use it whenever I need to slice a lot of a particular vegetable or when the uniformity of the slices is important to a recipe. This has not ended up in the back of a cupboard in the "gadget graveyard". It is easy to use, easy to clean and has stayed sharp, despite lots of uses. All the pieces snap together for easy, compact storage. I made a beet, orange and fennel salad tonight, and was reminded what a great device it is - there is no way I could have gotten paper-thin slices of fennel with a knife. I made onion soup gratinee last week, and the recipe calls for 8 thinly-sliced onions - this made quick work of slicing a pot full of uniform slices, and the reduced slicing time means fewer tears. How many of you have been cutting onions with a sharp knife, blinded by your own tears so you can't see what you are doing?! The vegetable grip thing makes this much safer than a knife.

When I saw the latest fad, a vegetable "spiralizer" that makes veggie "spaghetti" out of things like zucchini, I thought veggie sphaghetti was something actually worth giving a try. The problem is that I didn't need another cheaply made, single-purpose gizmo in my kitchen. So I bought this. It doesn't make long "spaghetti" like the spiralizer does, but julienning a zucchini lengthwise works just as well. I then quickly sauté the strips in butter and season with salt and pepper. That's a new family favorite, which is something because zucchini is a vegetable and there aren't many of those on the favorites list. Best of all you can julienne a zucchini with this thing in a couple of seconds; it's way faster than using one of those chintzy spiral gizmos.In fact everything this device does, it does insanely FAST. With it you can slice, dice and julienne your way through a mountain of vegetables far faster than you can with a knife. The only problem is that the speed with which this thing works is slightly terrifying, and I speak as someone who's cooked with *very* sharp knives all my adult life. The safety holder is a good thing, but it works best with spherical stuff like tomatoes. Julienning zucchinis is slightly awkward because the little tines that hold the vegetable secure aren't quite long enough, but it still works. I also wear an anti-cut glove on my working hand, just in case my attention wanders. This thing is beyond razor-sharp; it'd be so easy to julienne the tips of your fingers off in a moment of distraction...Clean-up is another thing that requires some initial thought. Tossing the the blades into a tub of soapy water could be very bad for someone's groping fingers. A quick rise with the sprayer, a dunk in soapy water, followed by another spray does the job. One really thoughtful feature is that the mandoline and auxillary blades fit into a caddy that also doubles as a drainer. So after you give your mandoline and julienne blade their quick cleaning, you pop them into the caddy and put the whole thing in the dish draining rack. That's a really nice touch because ou do not want to leave a mandoline around disassembled.I don't mean to scare you off a mandoline; they're a very useful addition to your kitchen if you already have a good set of knives. You just have to give a little thought about how to approach each task as you're getting used to using one. Figure out what works safely and stick to that. This model in particular has a well-thought out safety features.I still use knives for most small slicing and dicing operations. If I were dicing just two onions, I'd definitely use a knife. It's sitting right there in the knife block and it cleans up in just an instant. If I were dicing four onions I'd definitely take the mandoline out.

This mandolin is the best I have ever used and I love how well it sliced the cucumbers I was preparing for pickling. The slicer made clean even slices down to the small nub at the bottom. I highly recommend that you follow all safety instructions and never use it without the guard that is placed over the food to be sliced. As an added bit of safety for me, as I tend to easily cut myself, I opted to use a cut proof safety glove and I am glad that I did. I like the multiple settings for thickness of your slices and found it moved easily from setting to setting for slicing onions and cucumbers. If you would like a great kitchen tool to make quick work to prepare your foods for canning, this handy little device it perfect. I wish I had bought this first instead of the cheap one from the local box store that I had to return after the first use.

Amazing tool for this newbie chef. I purchased this based on a product review on America's Test Kitchen which rated it highly on performance and safety. Apparently, safety is extremely important with all mandolines since it is so so very easy to slice of a portion of your hand along with the food. ATK rated the Swissmar highly in part because you can change the blades with touching any sharp parts and that you can store it while in a safety position so that you don't accidentally cut yourself while moving it either in or out of the cupboard.

I find that there are dishes that I now cook on a regular basis which I would never have attempted before because I don't have the knife skills to attempt the recipe in one lifetime. With this mandoline, I am able to very efficiently go through a lot of veg in a small amount of time and that the veg is exactly the same thickness which makes for even cooking times and spectacular presentations. The blades are extemely sharp and will go through the veg like butter. I do find that I have to pause on a very periodic basis to remove the veg from underneath the mandoline. I really dislike placing this at an incline by leaning it against a bowl or placing it on top of the bowl. That just doesn't provide enough stability to make me comfortable because I do sometime have to use a little bit of force at the end of a long stroke when I'm slicing squash of eggplant lengthwise.

As with anything that is extremely sharp, you do have to be very careful. There is a hand guard that is provided that will hold the food as you slice it. I would highly recommend its use especially as you get closer to the end of whatever you're slicing. **** Melissa Clark from the New York Times has an excellent suggestion. Please purchase a cut resistant glove along with the mandoline **** I really really love my mandoline and with this suggestion, intend on using it even more often.

I reviewed so many slicers, it was difficult to pare it down (pun intended) to one to place an order. I weighed the reviews against the price and the frequency with which I anticipated using the slicer. After finally deciding on this one, and having used it several times, I feel I picked the one right for me.The heavy use hasn't occurred yet as that will be as the garden starts giving us an onsalught of produce that needs canned and dried, so that aspect is still to be determined. For regular meal preparation though, it is perfect. I keep it in a drawer under the counter top where I prepare food so pulling it out is convenient. Usually rinse and put in dish rack to dry as most uses are non-greasy, but goes in top rack diswaher too.My only complaint so far, it stains. I bought a white one (seemed traditional and kitchen'y' to me, but slicing carrots (which it did very well) turned it orange. If the staining would be an issue to you, I suggest you purchase the red one, maybe won't be as visible.UPDATE: Still haven't sliced off any fingertips and am as happy with it today as when I first wrote the review. Also, since then, I have used the julienne and square cut blades with success. I don't find it as fast as slicing (which is as fast as you can move that veggie back and forth) because I have to pick up the veggie at the bottom and start it at the top again; you can't just slide it back up to the top because of the additional blades in those attachments. It isn't an issue however and is still infinitely faster than by hand. I'll even use it for one tomato, and I'm pretty good with a knife.While they don't recommend it, I usually start holding the item in my hand and as it wears down and gets closer to the slicing blade I'll use the holder. Just don't wait too long or your fingers'l be shorter. With carrots, I don't see how you can't start by hand, there's just no way fit them in the safety holder. I just slice till I get down towards the end and pitch it (dogs or soup, whatever).

I found putting the attachments in to be more difficult than videos on youtube made it seem. I'm not use to using a mandoline so i feel awkward having to hold it up and i'm still unsure of how much force to apply when going up and down, so i got stuck on the blade a couple of times cutting the onion in the photos. If you haven't used a mandoline before i would suggest getting one that props itself up without needing to be held and comes with knobs to do all the slice/dice/julienne sizes. I'm probably going to have to use it more to like it but as of this review i don't think i like mandolines as much as i thought i would, they seem to be more of a hassle than just a knife

The mandoline is designed well overall. The thickness adjustment is a quick with a push in with a thumb via sliding in/outof the bottom plate. The unit comes with 3 bottom attachments: 1 ) without vertical blade and, 2,3) with small vertical blade in twodifferent size to cut slices into thin cube/rectangle cubes. It also comes with the food pusher which works well, and a case to storethe vertical slice bottom plate.Some of the vegetables that I tried and comments on it.1) Yam ( made YAM hash brown) the pressure required was not as much as I thought. It worked well.2) Apple (did not de-core the apple, nor peel it). There was little resistance felt at the core, but sliced clean.3) Carrot, not problem, little surface area, little resistance, very sharp blades.The food pusher worked remarkably well. After the above test, only sliver of 1/8th inch vegetable wasleft. The food pusher is not designed to ride on the groove on the mandoline, but rather on top of it.The front and back edge of the food pusher has plastic serration to give feedback as to danger beyondthese points.Very good design overall.Through these and more, only thing that I missed was a stand or leg to keep the unit in place. Using this on alarge bowl to collect the sliced veggies, left small vegetable parts all over the kitchen counter top. I wished therewas easier way to hold this in place than by holding it by the handle.Overall a very good design, much better design than the Japanese Mandoline I previously used, as well as severalother brands available locally.

So far have only used it a few times to slice zucchini for chips and apples. Very easy to use, adjust, and clean. Lots of safety built in with the locking blade and the wide food holder. Sometimes a bit hard to keep the food on the holder's prongs. Easy to change to alternate blades. Recommend wearing safety gloves to avoid chance encounters with the blade which is very sharp. The food handler makes it virtually impossible to accidentally touch the blade while slicing foods.

If I could add half a star more I definitely would! This is a great product to have in the kitchen. So far it has done a spectacular job cutting tomatoes, onions (almost no more crying) and peppers, making uniform slices quickly and easily without any problems. It was more difficult cutting sweet potatoes into fries since they are harder to cut through due to their density, but it did a nice job when there was enough momentum to cut through them thoroughly. Cleaning the unit is very easy, and changing the cutting attachments is as simple as pushing a button and sliding them into place. Note: I find it very easy to do, but my wife still has difficulty with changing cutting attachments and putting it together for storage after about a dozen or so uses ... She will figure it out soon enough, she's just not very good at things like this I guess. It stores fairly easily if you have space, but it is a little on the bulky side when trying to store the unit and the vegetable holder together. We keep it with our cutting board and the pots and pans since it takes a little too much space elsewhere, but that is not a problem when considering how much we have used it and how well it has performed to now. I would definitely recommend this to friends and family!

I'm still learning how to use it. I read ALL of the reviews before I bought this. You are supposed to put the extra 2 blades into a holder and stick the holder onto the back of the main piece. It doesn't go in very well. I wanted it for making julienne veggies, and it's fine as long as the veggie is short. The holder doesn't hold a long vegetable, like carrot or zuccini. I held each of them with my hand until it got closer to the machine, and then tried the holder. But the holder keeps coming out on harder veggies also.It's fabulous for making shoestring fries, which I sprayed with a little oil spray and made in the oven. On the widest setting, the fries are still VERY thin. It slices potatoes, onions, and all sorts of things into round or oval slices, depending on the shape of the veggie.The holder is shaped weirdly and doesn't seem to be made for the mandoline, since it's hard to figure out which way it goes and it has no guides on it.The blades are VERY sharp. Many other reviewers said use a glove with it. Of course, I had my first cut - a tiny one on the side of the palm, and now use the glove ALL the time.It was not packed well. The box was a little crinkled, which is annoying, because I am storing it in the box, so nobody can get cut from it when it's on the shelf.It works quickly and well, and I'm glad I got it.

Very sharp, lots of settings. I use it frequently when I need to cut more than one carrot / potato / etc. The thin potato slices are PERFECT for homemade potato chips! The blades are very sharp so we pay close attention when we clean it. It doesn't seem to have little nooks for food pieces to get caught, so the cleaning is easy. It does have the ability to cube foods, too.....but it is not entirely easy. (I haven't found anything that can cube well.) Sometimes I try the cubing technique (which was not explained well in the literature, but I figured it out), and sometimes I just slice things into "sticks" and just use a knife to cube them where they fall on the cutting board. If I were doing cups and cups of items, I would have to stop frequently to pick up the slices from under the mandolin. It does about one large potato in slices before being filled underneath. I purchased this to make thin potato slices for chips, but love it when I am making soups or any other recipe which needs lots of slices, strips or cubes. I have not tried fruit, cheese or meats on this. It is well made...I have not felt that I was close to breaking it. If something were to happen to it, I would definitely buy another one.

This is the first mandoline I have and while it can be a great time saver I am not very happy with the design here.You need to rest the mandolin on a cutting board / bowl when using the mandoline. The angles you have to hold the mandoline is pretty awkward and every so often you have to pause, clear out the space below the mandoline so you can keep slicing. Something like extending feet or a specifically designed larger basket would have been helpful.While the knives are pretty sharp onions still won't slice through very easily in one movement, sometime it starts slicing fine and then gets stuck halfway through the slice and you have to apply a lot more pressure.

I used to have this before. But nowadays there are more efficient tools for the same purpose. I regret getting it in a way but kept it. It is hard to put it back, a bit cumbersome and bulky.

I bought this mandoline a little over 6 months ago and recently tossed it. When the mandoline worked, it worked well. The problem is the inserts. Lining up the insert with the arrows and pushing forward did not always succeed, which can be frustrating when you're trying to cook. I felt when trying to get the insert installed I was putting my fingers at risk if my hand slipped off of the insert. Releasing the insert by pushing the colored button also did not always work. I'm going with the much simpler Swissmar Borner V-1001 V-Slicer Plus Mandoline.

I got this because of a review on a popular cooking show on PBS. The exact product they reviewed however was no longer manufactured. This is the newer model that has replaced it. You would think that since this was a newer model it would be as good or better right? That was my thinking in spite of the way it looked in the picture. I should have taken the picture into more careful consideration. The original was long like this one, but the "V" was higher up nearer the center. This model has it lower toward the bottom. This causes whatever you cut to come off the ramp just after you slice through. Not easy to use. The old model had a blade you dropped in and slid to the setting you wanted, and it was secure until you slid the blade out. The new model has a button you press in to let the blade slide to a setting and lock it in place. The problem is that the inserting position is one of the cutting positions. If the inserting position happens to be the setting that you need to use for slicing, that can be a problem, since it will not lock in place in the insert position. Instead as you try to slice, the blade can act like a teeter totter and rock up and down with the movement of the food item, creating an annoying and dangerous slicing condition around a set of sharpened blades. In another position the blade is locked in and doesn't teeter up and down, but that wasn't the position I wished to use at the moment. Another thing, it appears to have notches underneath to like rest on a rim of a bowl when slicing, but this is not the case. These notches are totally of no use to keep the slicer in place on top of a bowl, so everything slides all around creating more of a problem and an unstable slicing situation. It does cut good so I gave it 3 stars, but every reason why the old model was recommended was totally ABSENT on this later model. It is German made, but clearly the design is not well thought out at all. I am a tool maker by trade and have modified my slicer to make it more stable for my use, but I would not advise anyone to get this as is more trouble to use than it is worth.

I like to use this for onions and other vegetables for cubing, I really have found a million uses for it... but I love it for onions (once I figured out how to turn it 90 degrees every swipe) because I don't cry anymore. You have to be careful not to buy things that are too wide for the slicers or it won't cut them... and there is a lot of wasted vegetable because it gets suck underneath the machine... and you don't want to get you fingers too close to those extra sharp blades... I like it... just don't love it... if it could chop and do spiral cut too... I would be in love with it... and the blades are scary sharp!

I like it because its very sharp and slices through foods easily. I also like the variety of blades. However, im giving it 3 stars because the little red button thats supposed to keep the blade in place falls out easily and constantly in any blade position. It has fallen out numerous times while using it and also when putting it away. This is very dangerous because you may think you have the blade in the safe closed position but then all of a sudden the little red button falls out and the blade opens and you have been sliced. So be very careful when handling it even if you have it in the closed position.

I moved and recently sold my Bron mandoline, which I loved. So I googled reviews on the best mandoline and in the majority of sites, saw this model as highly rated (I didn't even see the Bron in any reviews). So I thought I'd get one, as the price was right as well.Initial impressions of the item was how "cheap" it appeared, (the plastic doesn't seem too sturdy) and the difficulty in figuring the thing out, especially with the poorly written manual. We both kept trying to figure how to attach the food holder so it ran in the track (as did the Bron) but finally realized it doesn't! There is no guide or track: it's just free moving.I first tried using it on parsnips with the julienne insert. I found the instruction manual useless but thought I figured out how to attach the plate and started slicing. Yes, the blades are very sharp BUT as I pushed the parsnip over the blades, the insert kept dropping down to the thinner setting, which I didn't want. It would not stay locked at the desired thickness as any pressure changed the adjustment.Also, you can only cut in one direction, because the backstroke brings it over the julienne blades again. This makes it impossible to use the safety holder as you have to lift the veggie off the slicer to start a new stroke, so it keeps falling off.I'm getting rid of this and ordering another Bron! That was solid stainless steel with a holder that ran on a track and you can move over the blade in both directions.

The products does not come with any instructions and I have no idea how to use it. I would have been better off purchasing a food processor. I purchase the product to make crinkle cut chips but have no idea which plate should be used. It is hard to get the place on and off. I got so frustrated I just threw the dang thing in the garbage. I do not recommend this product for anyone. Pissed a waste of my money.

I bought this based on a glowing review from America's Test Kitchen. I have been looking for a slicer that got high marks for making julienne slices. My current mandoline does not do this well.This was a disappointment from the minute I took it out of the box. The package it came in was poorly packed and the V-Slicer box was broken and flattened, but the mandoline was intact.First, this is a very flimsy tool. The plastic feels cheap and thin. While the blades are sharp, the handguard does not fit securely and this is dangerous and unsafe. Second, the handguard is also cheaply made with many fewer prongs than my 25-year-old mandoline.I find this to be a dangerous and unsafe piece of kitchen equipment and I am returning it. This is hardly the quality expected from a $40 kitchen tool.

What can I say...I read all the reviews before purchasing and had high hopes. Unfortunately, I was extremely disappointed in the quality of this V-Slicer. It's cheap plastic and cumbersome to use. You get what you pay for on this mandoline. It's being returned.

I'm disappointed, maybe I'm just naïve. I wanted a mandolin to make nice thin slices of cucumber, tomato, onion, etc, like they have at good sandwich shops. The thinnest setting on the Swissmar makes (what I consider) very thick slices. Maybe all mandolins do this, and they are better for French fries than salads? It seems like it's put together well. It doesn't have legs so you have to hold the end in the air with one hand while slicing with the other. It won't be as useful to me as I was hoping.

I'm sure this is a good product! But our main purpose was to make sweet potato fries ..... There was no way it was going to do that for us. ..... Plastic just bowed and it never made the cut. We were so disappointed since we had done our research and felt this was the mandoline for us.

Bunch of cheap bells & whistles that do not work. I should have bought a simple, robust, integral mandolin. The mechanisms for adjusting are poorly designed. I cannot get them to work. Cheap Chinese plastic. I wanted a mandolin slicer. This one doesn't work

I purchased the Swissmar Borner V-1001 Swissmar Borner V-1001 V-Slicer Plus Mandoline 5 Piece Set in Sept 2015 and it works fine but I wanted a green mandoline to match the color of my other kitchen gadgets. I have been considering buying this one for awhile now and when I finally made the purchase it, it didn't work for me. The V-7000 (aka Borner V5) is bulkier and the length of the mandoline below the blade is shorter than the V-1001 so the smooth glide is hampered when I slice food onto a cutting board. I thought having better control of the thickness of slices would be ideal but getting the blade inserts to fit properly became a chore and not worth the effort. Also, the blade inserts would not align themselves into the caddy slots properly; they kept going in lopsided and then slipping out; unfortunately during one of the slips my hand was in the way and if I hadn't been wearing a cutting glove I could have gotten a nasty cut instead of a little nick. I purchased this as a used like new item and, although it has never been a problem before, I think in this case it may be defective. I've decided to return the V-7000 and continue using my Borner V-1001. If you decided to buy this item, be very careful because the V-7000 is very sharp. It's always a good idea to use a cutting glove and of course use the food safety holder.

There are three reasons why I regret purchasing this mandoline and would not recommend it.1. It slices unevenly. The blade attachment actually goes in slightly askew, producing uneven slices. See the picture of the sweet potato.2. It is very low quality in both materials and construction. The various blade attachments do not lock in. At times while using the product they would just change position (in terms of the depth of the cut) or fall out. The plastic is thin and flexible.3. The hand protector has sharp ridges right where my wrist rest while slicing. I had to put a small towel over the ridges to use it.

Found that the food tended to hang up on the blades. Stopped using it when I cut myself through puncture resistant gloves. Would have been worse without the gloves, but still had a deep cut. I find a knife safer and faster

Julienne blades frequently got stuck making me nervous and knicking myself several times while attempting to use this mandoline. For the price I was not impressed, and cannot recommend this product. Returned.

I actually loved it when I first got it and started using it. I even have recommended it to others. However, just a couple of months after purchasing this mandolin, it has fallen apart! I've never machine washed it, only hand washed it. I'm careful when I change out the blades and only use it a few times a week. When I picked it up off my drying towel last night, the part that helps the blades slide in and out had completely fallen off, and there's no way to put it back on and fit.I went with this mandolin, though it was quite a bit cheaper than my current mandolin, because of it's great reviews. The only thing I can think is that the reviews re coming in quickly after the purchase and not after months of use. I am very disappointed and will purchase a quality mandolin from the bad experience.