People use their salad spinners to wash and/or dry all sorts of things: lettuce, berries, spinach, herbs, and even clothing (really!), so it’s important that a salad spinner is easy to use. Here are a few things we considered:
Spinning mechanisms: Spinners come with either a crank at the top, a pump, or a string to turn the inside basket. We preferred models with simple mechanisms, like push buttons, pump levers, or crank handles.
We found pull-cord-based models, like the Zyliss Easy Spin, to be lacking. User reviews are consistently low. And our own experience with this style convinced us that the cords are ultimately too fussy to use and, more importantly, hard to keep clean.
If the casing where the rope is housed doesn’t open (as is the case with most pull-cord models), then when water inevitably gets on the cord and then sucked back up into the casing, it creates a dark, damp, and warm environment. You know what else likes a dark, damp, and warm environment? Gross stuff, that’s what.
The right size for the job: Terry Hope Romero, chef and author of the cookbook Salad Samurai, said a spinner’s size is her top priority. “I always get the biggest salad spinner I can get, because I make a lot of salad. That’s my top requirement,” she explained.
But if you’re the only salad eater in the house, or you just need something to wash herbs, there are smaller salad spinners (such as the OXO Little Salad and Herb Spinner) that make more sense for little jobs and take up less space.
Many manufacturers list the capacity of their salad spinners by the bowl’s capacity, not by the spinning colander inside. Optimally, if you’re serving multiple people, the basket should hold more than 4 quarts. If you overstuff your spinner, it won’t dry the greens very well.
Balance: Once the basket inside is moving, the salad spinner needs to remain steady. The wider the base, the steadier it will be. And the closer the pump, or turn mechanism, is to the center, the more balanced it will feel. Nonslip features, like rubber feet or a rubber ring around a spinner’s base, help with stability, too.
Ease of cleaning: You don’t want to have to poke and pry tiny green bits from the inner basket. Colanders have all sorts of patterns, from diamond-shaped cross-hatching ones to small oval holes. No matter the shape, the colander should rinse clean pretty easily when you run it under a faucet.
Brake mechanisms: You can remove the lid of a spinner and try to grab the flying basket, but a great spinner has a simple and safe brake device that quickly and quietly stops the spinning.
Our tests
For our 2024 test, in each spinner we soaked and spun one 5-ounce container of baby greens. In previous rounds of testing, we’ve used adult spinach, but we wanted to see whether the little leaves of the spring greens would get stuck in the baskets.
Then to test for bruising, we washed and spun raspberries and cilantro (which bruises easily; in previous tests we spun dill).
We also placed a bunch of grapes, still connected, into the baskets, and we spun them to see how easily the spinners toppled or wobbled with a heavy, imbalanced load.
We also tested salad spinners with a group of testers who were paid for their time. The group included folks who use a wheelchair; who have arthritis, limb difference, or limited hand dexterity; who are over 65 years old; or who are over 6 feet tall.
We asked them to operate the spinners dry, with no greens (though we did have greens on hand if they wanted to use them). Testers evaluated spinners based on ease of use and cleaning, and they left comments on whether they’d want to use these spinners at home.
