We struggled with the handle on the Chef’n Sleek Slice, which has a collapsable handle but no clear instructions on how to make use of it. After some fiddling, we finally realized that you need to squeeze the green part of the handle to unlock the legs for stability. Overall, though, it just wasn’t as sharp as we would have liked, bruising and tearing more delicate vegetables rather than slicing them.

We found the Swissmar Börner V-Power Mandoline awkward and clunky—changing the blades, mounted on large pieces of plastic, took very steady hands. The blade height adjustment was also tricky, and hard to precisely lock into for the thickness we were looking for. The blade was sharp, however, and it allowed us to get very thin slices of cucumber.

With a minimum setting of 1mm, the Mueller Multi Blade Adjustable Mandoline just couldn’t get thin enough for our liking. And while we appreciated the five blade options, we didn’t think any of them were sharp enough for regular usage. We also didn’t think the grating accessories were necessary—a simple box grater has more blades per square inch of its surface area, making it considerably more efficient and effective. Overall, the Mueller was bulky and didn’t perform as well as our winners.

The Rösle Gourmet Slicer is small, and much better suited for shaving truffles over pasta than slicing vegetables for meal prep. Its narrow slicing plane meant that most foods we tested were wider than the blade itself, making it nearly impossible to use. Still, the blade was sharp, and its adjustment knob was very secure. If you have a black truffle nut in your life, this might be a nice gift for them.

The Dash Safe Slice has real limited utility. Everything you want to cut must fit neatly into a chute before you can cut, leaving this as more of a guillotine than a mandoline. That meant we needed to trim down sweet potatoes and even some thicker cucumbers in order to slice them. It kept our fingers far away from the cutting edge, but most mandolines come with a finger guard, anyway. It also cuts everything on a bias, leading to oblong slices of everything we tested. Its safety design didn’t outweigh its limitations, and for that, we don’t recommend this slicer.

This handheld slicer from Microplane had big safety issues off the bat—the julienne blade attachment consistently dislodged from the back of the mandoline when slicing food with the V-shaped blade. We also found that the blade snagged and tore food, which tended to get stuck right at the point where the two sides of the blade met. Duller than the competition and potentially dangerous, we had to rule out the Microplane as a viable option.

Oxo’s Steel mandoline slicer has a lot of features we loved: an easy-to-grab tab for swapping out blades, a clearly labeled “locked” setting for safety, and julienne slicers that pop up automatically when you select those settings. We also thought it performed well in slicing tests. Ultimately, like the Rösle, it’s just pricey. If you’re looking for a feature-laden mandoline, it’s worth considering. However, if you just care about sharpness, we think our top picks do a better job at nearly half the price.

Though we’re big fans of most of Oxo’s mandoline slicers, this one just didn’t make the cut—literally. We liked its simple design and affordable price point, but everything we tried to cut snagged on the blade and tore apart into chunks. We also saw a fair amount of food get stuck between the blade and the body of the slicer, making it difficult to clean.

This model was big, bulky, and unrefined. Its stainless steel body had a lot of sharp edges, which is the opposite of what you want with a mandoline slicer. Without a safe place to hold the body while slicing, it felt precarious in use. We also didn’t find its blade adjustment intuitive, and struggled to figure out how to use it when setting it up.

We had high hopes for this handheld slicer from de Buyer, but it fell short. Its plastic body felt cheap in the hand—a big problem for a model that’s twice the price of any of our top picks. Its blade also had scalloped teeth, like serrations, and struggled to cut through fibrous sweet potatoes cleanly. When it did make cuts, the food was left with textured lines on the surface, instead of neat, perfect slices.

As the most expensive mandoline we tested, we expected this model to perform better. We loved its features, like a textured slicing plane to prevent food from sticking and a substantial shuttle for safety, but ultimately its blade was, well, just a little weird. Instead of a straight blade, a slanted blade, or a V-shaped blade, de Buyer’s Swing Plus mandoline had a wavy edge that snagged and tore anything we tried to slice with it. At this price point, the Swing Plus really had to impress us. It didn’t.