The range divides into three families that differ mainly in width, and choosing between them is a question about what you actually cut rather than about quality.
The Classic Vegetable Slicer
The compact original, around 12.75 inches long with a runway a little under four inches wide. It weighs very little and fits a standard drawer.
It handles everything a home kitchen normally cuts: potatoes, carrots, cucumbers, onions, radishes, apples. For most households this is the right first purchase and the only one they ever need.
It is also the cheapest, which makes it a low-risk way to find out whether you will use a mandoline at all.
How to Choose
Look at what you cut most and how wide it is.
If the answer is ordinary vegetables, the classic. If you want julienne in several sizes without buying separate tools, the Super. If you regularly cut whole cabbages, the Jumbo.
Catalogues listing runway width and body dimensions per model, of the kind at benriner retailers, make that comparison possible before ordering.
The Super Series
- A wider runway and a longer body than the classic
- Four blades: a fixed flat blade plus three interchangeable toothed inserts
- Fine, medium and coarse julienne in one tool
- A larger open handle and a non-skid base
- The middle option, and the one most people upgrade to
The extra width matters more than it sounds. A vegetable wider than the runway cannot be cut in one pass, and half a courgette is an awkward thing to hold on a guard.
The Jumbo
An extra-wide runway of around five inches, built for produce the smaller models cannot take.
Cabbage, melon, squash and large marrows are the cases. Anyone fermenting sauerkraut or kimchi in quantity, or catering, is the intended buyer.
It is bigger to store and it is not better at small work. A radish on a five-inch runway is not easier than a radish on a four-inch one.
Do Not Buy the Largest
The common mistake. A bigger tool is harder to store, harder to control on small produce, and no sharper.
Width solves one problem and creates two.
Blades Are Not Universal
Replacement blades are model-specific, though some are shared between the larger models.
Checking which blade fits before ordering saves a return, and that information belongs on the product page rather than being assumed.
Start Small
Most people who own two started with the classic and added a wider one later, having learned what they actually cut.
