Easy to use, EASY to clean. WORKS as it should!
The shredder came well packaged and quick. The unit goes together pretty straight forward and they did a great job in design to make the "chute" actually pointing down. The clear plastic snaps into the base, and you might have to work the release button a few times to get it to pull back off. Do the assembly a few time and it becomes a lot easier. NOTE: attach the base to a CLEAN wiped down counter top and for my unit, it really sucked down great and held steady. In initial assembly, DO use the suction to hold the base down before adding the clear plastic housing.The individual cutting drums are all assembled with their own plastic body so no need to do an assembly of parts when you change drums. The drum end has an open notch on opposite side, just line up the handle "notch" to one of the drum's open notches and it clicks right in. THIS hold it well in the cutting chamber.I made up hash brown potatoes VERY quick, in just seconds actually. It cuts the potato in small shreds quite easily. Clean up with potatoes was a breeze. Parts come apart easily and easy to merely rinse off under running water. Easy to clean. Potatoes are one thing, but cheese might take just a bit longer due to the nature of cheese.I buy Great Value Shredded Potatoes (hash browns) at Walmart the other day for $3.42 a 26oz bag, which equals $ 0.131/oz (roughly 13 Cents/Oz) I also bought 5 pound bag of potatoes at a cost of $3.77 = 80oz = $0.0471 per oz. So I can make shredded potatoes for hash browns, using potatoes at $ 4.7 cents / oz versus Frozen shredded potatoes at 13 cents/oz. Frozen potatoes would actually cost $10.40 to be the equivalent of 5# of potatoes. If you do the math, and eat a lot of hash browns for breakfast over the weeks and months, this unit pays for itself in saved money.I have only one thought is that if you shred a potato with one of those flat hand held shredders, you can go more "length" way of the potato and get longer shreds. This, because of the limited chute, will only take a potato inserted by it's long end. So you may not get the long shreds (if that is what you are after) but rather short length shreds. My wife does not care :)Bottom line: It saves money and may save you band aids for cut knuckles from using a hand held shredder. It is a LOT safer to use the pusher then to risk cutting your knuckles on a flat shredder.ADDENDUM: The large grater blades are not exceptionally sharp when I got it, but would work. I used my Dremmel Rotary tool with a long stone one uses to sharpen chain saw teeth and went into each hole methodically touching up the cutting edge. It is not razor sharp, but just that increase of sharpness made doing hashbrown potatoes SO much more effortless. It took a very good cutter and Made It Great! Even if you don't improve the cutting edge, it will still work alright. Just if you have the skill or know someone who is skilled with sharpening, you can touch up the edges if they wear down, or even improve the original cutters.