Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

When something is good, I prefer to get the bad out first. So, you can see my rating here, but I'm still docking it a tiny bit for "ease of cleaning". There's a small hole near the bottom left of where the blade is seated, looking at the appliance, that I can find no way of cleaning out without a screwdriver. I doubt it's going to be a huge problem but a piece of meat did fall in there. Bad for bacteria growth. Otherwise, this thing is quite easy to get clean. The blade, pusher, guide rod and platform all come off without any tools. The back is easy enough to clean with soap and water or a disinfectant wipe. So what's good? Just about everything. First off, the price is beyond reasonable. I thought I'd have to drop a few hundred on a deli slicer, but that's simply not true. $100 or so for something rated so well,I had to get it. It's definitely a great value. Now, keep in mind, 7.5" blade is a lot smaller than what you see at the deli. You're gonna be a bit limited here. That said, a little creative cutting will make the vast majority of stuff manageable with this blade. This is still a great value at this price. Next, the blade: seriously don't touch it. It comes nearly razor-sharp, and with the serrations will likely last me a few years before I need to take it in to get it sharpened professionally. The sharpness is a key factor in the next bit and the reason I wanted one in the first place: thin cut meat. So you're looking at this because you want that paper-thin deli meat, as I was, right? Yeah, you're getting that here. I ended up dialing the thickness up a bit because what I used it for first was jerky. I wanted nice thin planes of meat to dehydrate. Yeah, I tired it on a thinner setting, paper thin in fact, and that just doesn't work. The meat falls out the back into a crumpled mess that will never pick up enough marinade! It does this job too well for jerky, but cooked meats? Oh you better believe I'm going to be making a beef roast and slicing it up with this, and soon. Arby's got nothing on the thinness I'm going to go for. Now, I've seen people whimpering about the volume of this sucker. I was going "of course it's loud, you peanuts! It's basically a circular saw that cuts delicious meat!" I was wrong. They were more wrong. It's quieter than a food processor! I suck with decibels, but, what, ten db quieter? I wouldn't run it with a sleeping baby on the room, but it's better than running a blender. This does, however, mean the blade spins far slower than I thought. I expected this to be a problem, but with nice freezer-chilled meat? Not so much. Fat, though... Watch out for the fat cap on a good roast. It's a good way to get rid of the fat at the ends, but it does not like the white stuff. Overall, I'd say it does a great job. If you need super thin meat or cheese, this is absolutely the way to go. I won't say it's going to save you money, but it's way more convenient than asking the butcher to cut things up thin for you.