Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I got the Oster Wine opener as a Christmas gift. I'm a little leery of electronics taking the place of perfectly useful manual tools. I've used a "waiter's corkscrew" for years, and I'm quite adept at using it. I also found the Oster's design a little faux-modern, like it was trying too hard. So I was surprised at how easily it opened my wine bottle. It's designed to completely pull the cork when pressing the down-arrow button, and then stop (I've read other negative reviews where it seemed like the reviewer reversed the screw direction once the corkscrew was completely inserted, and the cork, of course, never left the bottle). It surprised me that by simply pressing the up-arrow button it neatly, if a little slowly, ejected the cork from the device. It has worked on every kind of cork I tried - American cork, European cork, or synthetic cork. Why only 4-stars? Like a number of reviewers, I noticed that the Oster Wine opener started getting weaker after about three months. I examined the device, and noticed that its charging light (a translucent half-globe on the top) was not lit when I placed it in the charger. I checked the base of the device and, sure enough, one of the contact points was completely covered with black. I scraped the carbon off and applied a little WD-40 with a cotton swab; it has charged perfectly ever since. I should note that this is NOT a device for people with arthritis. You need a firm grip on the bottle, or the Oster just makes the bottle spin. If you have arthritic pain when gripping, or have a weak grip, this device is probably not for you.