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Oct 17, 2024

The 3 Best Salad Spinners of 2024 | Reviews by Wirecutter

By Abigail Bailey and Anna Perling After a new round of testing, we’ve added a new pick: the OXO Little Salad and Herb Spinner. Pushing aside the milk and the half-full jar of pickles, you reach into

By Abigail Bailey and Anna Perling

After a new round of testing, we’ve added a new pick: the OXO Little Salad and Herb Spinner.

Pushing aside the milk and the half-full jar of pickles, you reach into the back of the fridge, looking for that bag of romaine you bought on your most recent grocery trip. You emerge, produce in hand, only to notice that it’s slimy. The lettuce has gone bad, forgotten behind so many leftovers.

It happens to the best of us. Salad greens seem to last for only a few days before they more closely resemble a third-grade science project. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Enter the salad spinner.

Washing greens won’t make them last longer, but getting them as dry as possible will. You can then keep them fresh in an airtight container, along with a damp paper towel, and since they’ll be ready to go, you may even use them up faster. (Plus, salad dressing sticks better to dry leaves.)

A good salad spinner makes washing and drying easy. We’ve compared dozens of models and tested over 20 spinners since 2014, and the OXO Good Grips Salad Spinner has remained our top pick. Among all of the spinners we’ve tested, the OXO, with its pump spinner and a push brake, is the easiest to operate, and it dries both hardy greens and more-delicate herbs without bruising them. The crystal-clear plastic bowl is big enough to soak a 5-ounce container of spring greens, yet this model is still one of the most compact to store.

The pump made this spinner the easiest to use of all the models we tested. It also stores better than similarly sized spinners.

This model has a nearly identical spin mechanism to our top pick, but it comes with an attractive stainless bowl, which is great for serving. We think it’s worth the extra money only if you don’t already have a good salad bowl (or if you prefer stainless steel to plastic).

This little sibling to our top pick is a smaller alternative that still spins a bunch of cilantro or 2½ ounces of mixed greens.

Most salad spinners are powered by a pump or crank, but what really made our picks stand out was how easy they were to operate.

We looked for spinners that remained stable when spinning. When it came to being able to operate a spinner with one hand, our pick, the OXO, was the closest we got.

Salad spinners need to be the right size for the job. Bigger salads call for a bigger spinner, yet for some people, a smaller spinner will fit their needs.

We didn’t want to wait around for the spinner to stop on its own, so we looked for spinners with brakes that stopped the basket.

The pump made this spinner the easiest to use of all the models we tested. It also stores better than similarly sized spinners.

The OXO Good Grips spinner has been our top pick since 2014. It efficiently cleans and dries a variety of greens, and we’ve found that it’s consistently easy to use and to wash. In recent years, we’ve pitted the Good Grips against a few new models, but this spinner still comes out on top, with one of the best brake mechanisms for slowing spinning.

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This model has a nearly identical spin mechanism to our top pick, but it comes with an attractive stainless bowl, which is great for serving. We think it’s worth the extra money only if you don’t already have a good salad bowl (or if you prefer stainless steel to plastic).

If you want a salad spinner that also doubles as an elegant serving bowl, we recommend the OXO Steel Salad Spinner. It’s more expensive than our top pick, but its spin mechanism and performance are identical (though the tops are not interchangeable), and its stainless steel bowl can double as an attractive server. This model is even more stable than the OXO Good Grips spinner, thanks to the heft of the stainless steel and its rubber-coated base.

This little sibling to our top pick is a smaller alternative that still spins a bunch of cilantro or 2½ ounces of mixed greens.

If you’re the only salad eater in your house, you might not want (or need) a big salad spinner taking up valuable real estate in your kitchen cabinets. OXO’s Little Salad and Herb Spinner offers about half the capacity of its bigger counterparts, but it has an identical spinning mechanism and performs just as well. It did great with raspberries, too, barely squishing any, compared with the performance of other spinners its size. It’s compact, so it’s easy to store, yet it easily fits a bunch of cilantro (stems cut off).

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Abigail Bailey, who conducted our 2024 testing, is a member of Wirecutter’s kitchen team, covering ice cream scoops, graters, and more. Previously, she worked at Good Housekeeping, testing products and writing product reviews.

Anna Perling covered kitchen gear for Wirecutter for over three years, writing about a variety of tools, from multi-cookers to mixers. Before that, she wrote for food and lifestyle magazines Saveur and Kinfolk.

For this guide:

This guide also builds on research and testing by writer Jamie Wiebe.

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.

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.

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The pump made this spinner the easiest to use of all the models we tested. It also stores better than similarly sized spinners.

After multiple rounds of testing over the years, the OXO Good Grips Salad Spinner is still the best we’ve found.

The pump mechanism is easy to use. The basket spins when you press down on a large button in the middle of the lid. We preferred this nearly effortless, steady spinning action to the crank spinners on the Cuisinart Salad Spinner or the ratchet spinner on the Kuhn Rikon. Both of those required more exertion to get the basket up to the same speed as the OXO.

Crank models require using two hands—one for operating the crank and one for making sure your spinner doesn’t fly off the counter. And pull-string versions are prone to breakage and buildup on the string.

It spins quickly, but not too quickly. Compared with the Zyliss Swift Dry salad spinner, the Good Grips spinner seemed downright slow. But as we learned in testing, the Good Grips removed the same amount of water as the Zyliss, and due to the lower RPM, our berries didn’t bruise as badly.

It’s steady on the counter when spinning. The Good Grips spinner has a wide, flat base with a circular rubber ring, which helps make it more stable than any other model we tried. It’s much less likely to wobble as you spin your salad, compared with models that have narrower bases or slippery plastic bottoms.

The OXO Steel Salad Spinner uses an identical spin mechanism, and it feels even sturdier than this model, thanks to its all-rubber base. But the difference in stability between the two is slight.

The push-button brake was easy to push and stopped well. It worked as well as or better than those on the other models we tested. It handily outperformed the Kuhn Rikon’s awkward brake, which you have to pinch with two fingers.

It also held up better than the brake on the Zyliss Swift Dry salad spinner (the Zyliss was easier to push than other models we tested, but it wore out quickly over testing, losing its effectiveness).

It’s easy to see your greens as you spin. We like the clear acrylic bowl, which lets you see how dirty your water is and judge whether your greens are truly clean.

Most of the other models we tested had opaque plastic bowls and colorful colanders, so it was a bit trickier to assess how clean our greens and herbs were getting.

It’s (relatively) easy to store. Salad spinners are necessarily bulky, so storage can be an issue in a cramped kitchen. But the Good Grips spinner is by far the easiest to store of all the models we tested. Its pump can be locked in, creating a relatively flat top for stacking and storing.

Though you can also push the lever of the Zyliss flat for storage, releasing it is kind of scary. In testing, it routinely popped up strongly and loudly. The first time we opened it, it scared everyone in the test kitchen, as well as multiple people from our paid testing group.

It’s easy to clean. After the cilantro test, we washed the spinners by hand to see how hard it was to remove leaves from the little gaps in the basket. We found that the Good Grips spinner’s basket wasn’t difficult to clean, as long as we ran it under running water before the leaves had a chance to dry on it (though this is the case for all of the spinners we tested).

Plus, the basket and bowl are both dishwasher-safe, but the lid is not. The lid does come apart, so you can easily clean out any gunk that accumulates between the two pieces.

And it has a good warranty. Like most OXO products, this spinner comes with a satisfaction guarantee. So if you experience defects under normal household use, you can call the company or fill out its warranty form.

It’s large. The colander has a 5-quart capacity, and the bowl has a 6-quart capacity, so this spinner takes up some space. And the lid isn’t completely flat, so it won’t always work to stack on top of it. Still, this spinner was easier to store than every other comparably sized model we tested.

Its push mechanism takes up some room in the bowl. But considering the Good Grips spinner’s large size, it’s still plenty roomy.

Several Wirecutter staffers have been using the OXO Good Grips spinner since at least 2016. They report that the spinner’s pump and brake both continue to work well, compared with those on flimsier models that have stopped working. The bowl on the spinner remains sturdy, and we’ve yet to see one crack, which can happen to salad spinners made of thinner plastic.

Our staffers have also had good experiences with OXO’s customer care. One staffer accidentally melted his spinner’s basket on a burner (thanks to a jump-scare from his cat), and he called in to see whether he could buy the basket separately. After having a laugh about the cat, the OXO representative asked for his address and sent a replacement basket at no cost. As is true of all customer care, experiences may vary, but we’ve had good ones.

Our only complaint is one that would probably plague any salad spinner: The two-part lid and colander start to look dingy over time. A run through the dishwasher would likely do a better job than hand-washing all of the pieces.

This model has a nearly identical spin mechanism to our top pick, but it comes with an attractive stainless bowl, which is great for serving. We think it’s worth the extra money only if you don’t already have a good salad bowl (or if you prefer stainless steel to plastic).

If you’re looking for a salad spinner that also serves as an attractive serving bowl, consider the OXO Steel Salad Spinner. Both its design and drying performance are nearly identical to those of the plastic OXO Good Grips Salad Spinner, and this one is even more stable on the counter. But it costs roughly twice as much.

The bowl does double duty. With the colander removed, the spinner can double as a nicer-looking serving bowl than the Good Grips’ plastic bowl. If that appeals to you, you’re not losing any functionality by opting for this version—just paying a bit more money.

The stainless steel bowl could also serve as an acceptable mixing bowl, particularly given the rubber-coated non-slip bottom. But we’d take care not to be too rough with it (by, say, using an electric hand mixer in it), lest you bang it out of shape so the lid no longer fits.

It’s stable on the counter. The bottom of the OXO stainless steel bowl is entirely coated in a grippy rubber, so it didn’t slide around as much as other bowls when we used it one-handed—even when we purposely threw it off-balance with a bunch of grapes.

The OXO Steel spinner’s bowl was a little more stable than the plastic Good Grips bowl (which has a minimal non-slip ring around the foot of the bowl). And it’s way more stable than the bowl on a model like the Cuisinart (which was unmanageable to use one-handed, with the three small rubber feet doing little or, debatably, nothing to help keep it stable). Only the OXO Glass Salad Spinner was more stable. But that had more to do with the weight of the glass bowl (there are no grippers on the bottom of the glass bowl), which was a downside in other ways.

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This little sibling to our top pick is a smaller alternative that still spins a bunch of cilantro or 2½ ounces of mixed greens.

If you’re making salad for just one or two people, or if you cook with a lot of fresh herbs that need washing, you might not want either of our other picks hogging cabinet space in your kitchen. The OXO Little Salad and Herb Spinner performed just as well as its larger counterparts, and it still fit a bunch of cilantro and did the least amount of damage to our raspberries.

It’s got a smaller footprint. This little spinner’s bowl is about half the capacity of the bowls of our other picks—about 3 quarts versus the larger spinners’ 6 quarts. We found that the Little Salad and Herb model fit about half of a standard 5-ounce carton of greens or one bunch of cilantro with the stems cut off. If you plan on regularly serving three or more people, you’ll have to spin greens in multiple batches.

It’s gentle on delicate produce. Out of all the spinners we tested, the Little Salad and Herb model was the most gentle during our raspberry test. After a 5-second spin, our berries were nearly intact, and they left behind the least amount of juice when we spread them onto paper towels. By comparison, our larger spinner picks caused some damage to some of the berries, leaving red juice behind on the paper towel.

According to OXO, all of its spinners are dishwasher-safe. Even so, we recommend hand-washing the top half of the lid that houses the spinning mechanism, so it doesn’t fill with water. If you don’t have a dishwasher, you may want to use a scrub brush on the colander, since it can collect grime over time if you’re only rinsing.

We recommend washing greens in the bowl itself, separating the leaves and soaking them in water for a few minutes to remove sand and dirt before spinning. For more information, Colorado State University has a detailed guide to cleaning different kinds of produce.

Jennifer Chandler, author of the cookbook Simply Salads and a seasoned salad spinner, uses hers for dual purposes. “For storage, I immediately put lettuce in the salad spinner to store,” she said. This also helps prolong the life of her greens. “Lettuce, in order to stay fresh, needs air circulation,” Chandler said. “If you put it in a [zip-top] bag, it’s going to wilt faster because it doesn’t have air. With the prepacked salad greens, the bags are designed to be breathable; [zip-top] bags are not.”

Market greens or herbs (and those you pick from your garden) are more apt to come with creepy crawlies and more dirt than the “triple-washed” versions from the grocery store. “To clean organic and homegrown lettuce or lettuce from the farmers’ market, I cut the head off and put it upside down in the spinner in the fridge for a few hours,” Chandler said. “The ladybugs and other creatures freeze and drop to the bottom of the spinner.”

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This is not a comprehensive list of all the salad spinners we’ve tested. We have removed any spinners that have been discontinued or no longer meet our criteria.

The Zyliss Swift Dry was promising—the kitchen team’s senior editor Marguerite Preston has been using one in her home for years. But not long into testing, one of the teeth of the inner gears snapped off, resulting in an awful snapping sound every time we used it. While the lever did lie flat for storage, releasing it was alarming; it snapped up so quickly and loudly that it made us jump virtually every time we released the lock. The brake also seemed to wear down quickly, becoming less effective the more we used it.

The OXO Glass Salad Spinner was hands-down the hardest on this list to clean by hand. It performed similarly to every other OXO spinner we tested. But this spinner’s outer glass bowl was so heavy—and its sides were so vertical—that it became unmanageable when we washed it with soap and water, even with rubber gloves on.

The Cuisinart Salad Spinner has a confounding hole in the lid that allows your finger to get down into the spinning mechanism (I did this, and it was not fun). We later found out that the purpose of this hole is so you can run water in the bowl without having to take the lid off. This seemed handy only because the latched lid was so hard to remove and replace. Overall, we found this spinner fussy and even a little dangerous.

The Joseph Joseph Salad Prep Bowl didn’t even make it to testing; it broke during our first inspection, when we were trying to replace the spinner insert onto the lid.

The Joseph Joseph Spindola looks like you just took the basket of a salad spinner and added a pump to the top. There’s no outer bowl, so you’re forced to spin in the sink. So to spin your greens, you either have to clean out your sink or spin them among whatever dirty dishes are in there. Neither option appealed to us. Plus, after a few rounds of testing, the Spindola gave off an awful squeak when it was pushed. That said, it works well enough, and it’s extremely lightweight. In our group of paid testers, one person who has nerve damage in her hands and limited grip strength loved this spinner for its lightness and simplicity.

The Dreamfarm Spinna is effectively the same spinner as the Joseph Joseph Spindola. But the spinning push bar could rotate to the top and push down, or it could rotate to the side so it operated like the handle for a strainer. It was hard to rotate the push bar, and several testers either couldn’t manage it or pinched their fingers in the process.

In our original tests, we eliminated the Norpro practically out of the box, due to its extremely difficult-to-spin handle. Considering this model’s average performance in nearly every test, we clearly made the right decision.

This article was edited by Marilyn Ong and Marguerite Preston.

Jennifer Chandler, author of Simply Salads, phone interview, April 2015

Terry Hope Romero, author of Salad Samurai, phone interview, April 2015

Abigail Bailey

Abigail Bailey is the updates writer for Wirecutter’s kitchen team. She has an MS in publishing digital and print media from NYU and previously worked for Good Housekeeping. She spent four years in Louisiana perfecting her gumbo recipe and always looks for a reason to make it.

Anna Perling

Anna Perling is a former staff writer covering kitchen gear at Wirecutter. During her time at Wirecutter, she reported on various topics including sports bras, board games, and light bulbs. Previously she wrote food and lifestyle pieces for Saveur and Kinfolk magazines. Anna is a mentor at Girls Write Now and a member of the Online News Association.

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