OXO Steel Salad Spinner

This is a great salad spinner. I use prepackaged salads that say they are washed, but I always get an upset stomach from them. I open the package, take out the inner package of dressing and then dump the solid mixture into the inner basket to be washed with water or a mixture of vinegar and water. The strainer basket is fine enough so that even with chopped salads 99% of the salad will stay within the basket and maybe only two or three little pieces will get stuck in the strainer so not a problem. There is no problem at all putting the top mechanism onto the strainer basket as some people have indicated, it’s quite easy. I am in my 70s and I have no problem operating the spinner so I can’t imagine why people have said they count under the top on the rotating basket.The bottom plastic piece is a sturdy polycarbonate that I think will wear quite well, and it provides a pivot point for the basket to spin on. Oxo even provided a finger slot so you can easily lift the bottom plastic beats out of the container to drain water. Since the spin mechanism is collapsible, it doesn’t take much room to store so I store it in the refrigerator to keep it cold for the next batch of salad. The brake mechanism works fine despite what some reviews have said, but normally I let the basket come to a stop by itself as I am preparing the dressing. After all, you bought it to spin so let it spin. So again-no problem. It is true, however, that the stainless steel bowl is rather thin and a bit flexible. But this does not inhibit the operation of the unit. I think the stainless steel ball is just engineered to be adequate and not add unnecessary steal an extra weight to the product. It is not built like a 1959 Buick Roadmaster, but more like a completely competent Honda Accord. If you make more salad than you can eat in one sitting, I recommend getting a universal, flexible silicone top to put on the stainless steel base to store your salad for the next meal.