Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I feel guilty for not reviewing this product sooner, having bought it last year. But it deserves all five stars, plus more if I could. I chose the Spiral Ultra from amongst all the spiralizer offerings on Amazon because although the reviews were better, they weren't that much better. And with all the “cooked” reviews on Amazon being so prevalent these days, I was still wary. But the vertical design, with the ability to press down, instead of horizontally, on a harder vegetable, just seemed like a better engineering solution to me. The day I received it, I opened the box after a long day, with the intent to make some spiralized zucchini in place of the pasta for a pasta dish of vegetables with olive oil that I make. The dish normally has sautéed zucchini as one of the ingredients, so I knew I'd like it. I'd read a few things on-line that said to cook the zucchini separately, as it gives up water, but I wasn't concerned for that, and didn’t do it. Anyway, as I pulled the parts out of the box, the blades had safety tape upon them, rather than a mere cover-your-legal-bum reference to their danger in the instructions. I liked that. The preemptive, proactive safety considerations were worth a star to me. I pulled out the wider julienne blade, and remembered that I'd seen on one of the reviews that the blade sets in one of two directions, 90 degrees apart. But even after setting it in correctly, I still felt I needed the directions. And this is the only problem I saw with the product... those directions. The photographs are a nice change from the non-descript and often ineffective line drawings that are so common these days, but the directions were very scanty. I looked again in the box, thinking I had missed a manual, but no, it was just the one sheet of photos with instructions next to them. I thought perhaps a manual was supposed to be there, and missed in the packing of the box? At any rate, I then went on youtube.com, and after a few minutes of a long video of frustration watching a girl flub her way through figuring it out (I had already done that myself, and didn't need to watch any more of hers), I went to the official Mueller Spiral Ultra video, and watched their representative go through using all the attachments. I then promptly got up, did what she did, and made some very satisfactory zucchini spirals. Later, when I finally looked at the email that the seller had sent me, I found out that they sent me several links with instructions for how to use it, along with a lot of other helpful tips. This was worth a star to me. (And by the way, my dinner was delicious!) So, although I might have docked a star for lack of thorough instructions in the box, the easy accessibility of the information on the web, plus the excellent customer service (that I missed at first, but was grateful for later) cancelled that out. So at this point, the product still stood at one star. I've owned appliances that have suction cups for stabilizers before, and honestly, they are hit and miss, and mostly miss. But these must be of a particular material, or manufacture, for they did not slip. Since the day I first received it, I’ve done harder vegetables like carrots and sweet potatoes, and the suction cups still held firm. I attribute this partly to the unique vertical design. I am quite sure that the ability to press down on the side where the suction cups are is why the product doesn’t "walk" on the counter, even when doing these harder vegetables. So, for unusual stability, I had to give another star. The product now stood at two stars. I don't wash certain things in the dishwasher... knives, pots and pans, food processor parts, etc. These are the things that are dulled or otherwise corrupted over time by the harsh chemicals of dishwasher detergents. So, although this product is top shelf dishwasher safe, and thereby convenient to clean, I want to say that the parts are very convenient to wash by hand, as well. Of course, I guard myself with the blades, but this cleanup convenience added another star. The rating now stood at three stars. The small footprint for storage, as demonstrated by the representative in the youtube video, really rates two extra stars in my book. All of the attachments fit together compactly in the collection bin, which stores neatly in the spiralizer. I'm a middle aged homemaker, and I really don't want any more doodads that take up a bunch of storage space. The small footprint for storage is a huge plus for me, and so the rating now stood at 5 stars. I have used the grater and the mandolin, and they are easy to use, as easy as my old mandolin, which I gave away after having used this a few months now. The blades are sharp, the base is stable, and the container that catches the cuttings is ample. And though I haven’t used the other attachments so far, I suspect I will in time. So, since the time of my first use, the rating has gone up to 6 stars. Finally, the very fact of the vertical design is engineering genius. I looked at many spiralizers on Amazon. I looked at ones in my local kitchen stores. I did not see any that had a vertical design besides this one. For this alone, I give another star. That makes 7. Incidentally, this product is made in Austria. They know engineering. Plus, they’re not China. Just sayin’. Not adding a star for that, though I could. So although the rating may go up in the future, the current rating is 7 stars. Or 8 if you count that it’s not from China. But wait… Amazon only does a rating on a scale of 1 to 5. Well, that's not enough numbers for how good this is. Really. Although we order many things from here, I do not do many reviews on Amazon. I hate to review things badly, unless they are very bad and I feel I should warn folks. But very few things are really great anymore, so I don't review most things anymore simply because most things are mediocre. But this Spiral Ultra is one of the few_ very _good products I have gotten in a long time. It is good enough to buy for my two grown daughters. All of that said... not enough stars. 7 out of 5. Or more.