The Best Salad Spinner for Drying Greens and Prepping Herbs

The case for owning the best salad spinner is simple: A well-made salad starts with clean, thoroughly dry salad greens. Otherwise your dressing is going to drip right off. And as much as we’d love an alternative, there’s simply no better path to getting there than a salad spinner. What are you going to do, line a colander with paper towels?

Are salad spinners perfect? No. They’re bulky single-use gadgets, annoying to clean, and prone to developing mold. Worst of all: Many of them just don’t work very well. But are they essential? Yes. If you’re a salad person then you absolutely need one.

In our collective decades of washing batches of greens and prepping salads, we’ve tried almost every model out there. They all work by harnessing the power of centrifugal force to whisk beads of moisture off your lettuces. (To see the principle in action in the most rudimentary way, bundle your washed greens up in a kitchen towel. Holding it by its corners, whip the bundle around overhead like a lasso — and poof, you’ll have dried greens! It’s best to do this outdoors, FYI.)

Some spinners are operated by hand pumps, others by levers, cranks, or pull strings, but they all combine a basin, a basket insert, and a lid with a spinning mechanism in it.

Besides avoiding soggy lettuce, salad spinners are great for more than just washing lettuce. Tender herbs need to be clean and dry too. A basin for washing small and medium-size vegetables like snap peas, baby potatoes, or beets comes in handy more often than you might think. And salad spinners are terrific for dunking berries, cherry tomatoes, or mushrooms to quickly flush off any dirt or debris too.

The salad spinner field is crowded, and it can be hard to know how to choose. To help sort things out, we stocked up on herbs and salad greens and tested 10 well-reviewed salad spinners to determine the best model on the market today. Scroll on for our top pick, plus details on how we tested, and other spinners we tried.

Plenty of competitors have tried to unseat Oxo's domination in the salad spinner category since the Good Grips model launched in the early 90's, but in our tests the Oxo still reigns supreme. This model is the simplest, the most pleasant to use, and the most effective. Both the outer bowl and inner basket are generously proportioned (it has over a six-quart capacity), easily holding eight to 12 ounces of salad greens or a large bunch of herbs. The clear plastic bowl and basket have a neutral design that makes the contents easy to see. It’s also the sturdiest of all the models we tried, with a thick, solid bowl that never threatens to crack or buckle. A rubber nonslip ring on the bottom of the bowl helps keep the spinner stable and completely wobble-free on the counter—and ensures that even when operating it with only one hand, you never have to worry about flying objects.

Then there's the eponymous “good grip”—the soft push-button on the top of the lid that, once pumped, starts the inner basket spinning quickly and smoothly. According to Oxo, the mechanism was inspired by a child's merry-go-round toy—and compared to the other hand-crank and pulley models we tried, it’s so intuitive, balanced, and easy to use that even a toddler could operate it. Plus the soft "brake" button on top of the lid really works, stopping the spinning motion nearly instantly.

The two-part lid easily disassembles, and the large, evenly spaced basket holes make it easier to clean than any of the others, and unlike much of the competition, the Oxo is dishwasher-safe.

But the true test is how well it holds up over time. If over 20,000 5-star Amazon ratings aren’t convincing enough, know that our own editors can vouch that the Oxo Salad Spinner outlasts the competition: We’ve been using it for years in our own home kitchens.

What we didn’t like about the Oxo Good Grips Salad Spinner

Our complaint with the Oxo is the same as all the other salad spinners: They are fussy to clean! Even with Oxo’s easier-to-clean two-piece lid, there are still crevices inside the spinning contraption that we couldn’t reach with a brush or sponge. Inevitably, some mold will develop at some point using normal cleaning techniques. For best results we recommend letting it thoroughly air dry and then spinning it once more while empty to wick away any bit of moisture still trapped in the lid.

Coming in a close second, this Farberware pump spinner is another great option. Its capacity is ever-so-slightly larger than the Oxo model (6.6 quarts) and its spinning mechanism takes up a bit less space inside the basin when the lid is on, which creates more room for greens. It’s got a comfortable, easy-to-use-with-one-hand pump, and a rubber ring around the base that keeps it stable as it spins. And for what it’s worth, you get more spin for your pump than with the Oxo — a single pump keeps the device going almost twice as long. And most importantly, the greens come out dry.

What we didn’t like about the Farberware Pump-Activated Salad Spinner

The Farberware’s outer bowl is thinner and less sturdy than the Oxo, and while we haven’t experienced any cracking or warping yet, we worry that it’s not quite as durable. It’s also a hand-wash-only salad spinner with a one-piece opaque lid, so you can’t check if there’s any bacteria developing; there’ll always be some concern as to whether or not it’s ever properly cleaned.

People use salad spinners for all kinds of things—rinsing berries, cleaning herbs, washing leafy greens, even drying delicate sweaters—but for the sake of simplicity we stuck to two common kitchen tasks: rinsing and drying a standard bag of baby salad lettuces and cleaning and prepping a bunch of fresh herbs (we chose cilantro).

We filled each one with water, swished the greens or herbs around, lifted the basket out of the spinner and poured out the water. Then we spun them dry, evaluating how many cycles were necessary to get them all the moisture off. Lastly, we washed each spinner, evaluating how easy and thoroughly we could get them cleaned.

We opted not to use salad spinners designed to drain as they spin (they include a hole in the bottom of the basin that allows the water to run out). Since this feature limits the spinner’s use as a basin for washing vegetables and swishing around your lettuces, we found it disqualifying.

For the models with special additional features, we tried those out but didn't weigh them as heavily as the spinner's core functionality.

After unboxing, the first thing we considered was how durable and high-quality the materials felt in our hands. Did the strainer basket feel sturdy? Was the plastic thick or flimsy and prone to buckling? Did it seem like it could hold up to regular use and vigorous washing, preferably in the dishwasher?

Most people are going to want a salad spinner that's big enough to easily accommodate greens for a family of four, multiple days of desk lunches, or a small dinner party. This is not just a matter of convenience, but also one of user experience: if greens are packed too tightly into a small basket, they're more likely to trap water and grit and will take longer to clean.

Once you start pumping a salad spinner, it can get moving at a serious clip. If it's not designed for stability, it's liable to go spinning right off your countertop. In general, spinners with wide-bottomed bowls and a non-slip base that uses a non-stick ring or rubberized "feet" are easier to balance and keep steady on the counter.

A salad spinner is only as good as its spin, so we looked for something that would get turning easily. We wanted a crank or pump that didn’t take too much force to use, and, preferably one that could be used with one hand. A “brake” button, if it worked, that could stop the spinner quickly was a nice bonus that increased ease of use.

By design, salad spinners have a few parts—an inner basket, outer basket, and lid at the very least—that are in constant contact with food and water. Moisture and mildew can be an issue if they are not regularly and properly cleaned. That's why a well-designed spinner should have few, if any, cracks and crevices on the lid, and a generously sized and evenly spaced strainer that makes it simple to rinse greens without damaging them.

This one's a no-brainer. A salad spinner might look and feel great, but if it doesn't reliably get your greens clean and dry, it's hard to justify investing the storage space in one.

In previous years, the  Zyliss Swift Dry Salad Spinner ranked highly in our tests. With a lever pump, solid construction, and a ridged strainer basket—a tweak that is billed by the brand as "aquavent technology" to remove water—it’s a salad spinner that works effectively and efficiently at drying greens. The Zyliss also won points for its large capacity, stability, and easy one-handed operation. But the lever pump is not as durable as we’d hoped; for one of our editors, it snapped in half after about two years of use. The brand now offers the Zyliss Easy Spin Salad Spinner as well, a pull-cord model, which we just don’t find to be as easy to use as the one-handed Oxo pump model.

The Mirloco Salad Sling was a fun one to throw into the mix. Harkening back to the DIY salad spinner made from a  kitchen towel or pillowcase, it’s constructed of a microfiber towel sewn around a waterproof sheet. You simply pile the greens in the center, bundle up the four corners of the sling, and whip it around overhead. This is a great space-saving option since it folds up to the size of a kitchen towel. But since you can only use it twice before it needs to dry, it’s just not a practical choice.

The Oxo Steel Salad Spinner and Oxo Glass Salad Spinner are both nearly the same as our winning Oxo model, with just a few aesthetic differences: Instead of BPA-free plastic, they have stainless steel bowl or glass basin. They performed at the same high level as the winner, but each cost quite a bit more. We don’t think there’s a great reason to have a stainless steel salad spinner rather than a plastic one, but the glass model does double nicely as a serving bowl.

The Gourmia Collapsible Salad Spinner has a smaller capacity than the Oxo and Zyliss, the materials are flimsier, and the crank handle is less comfortable. However, it is a good option for a tiny kitchen with minimal cabinet space. It compresses to about a quarter of its full size to store, so for a minimal investment, it'll (mostly) dry your greens and clean your fragile herbs without bruising or breaking them.

The Cuisinart Salad Spinner lost points for its smaller capacity and for a bowl and strainer basket that felt lightweight and cheaply built. Its crank mechanism was not as comfortable to operate as the pump on the Oxo and the Zyliss, and while herbs emerged from tests clean and unbruised, after 30 seconds of spinning we were disappointed by the amount of visible moisture that was left on our baby greens.

While we appreciated the generous size of the plastic bowl of the Mueller Large Salad Spinner, its pull-out handle was awkward and unpleasant to operate.

This one was identical to the Mueller and so were our feelings about it.

The Joseph Joseph Multi-Prep Salad Spinner was the only model we tested that offered other uses besides greens washing and drying. The spinning panel in the lid is removable and can be replaced with a spiralizer, mandoline slicer, and large grater, so theoretically, you can prep every element of your salad but the salad dressing in one bowl. But the core functionality suffered a bit with this spinner; it took a lot of effort to get the spinner moving, and it required two hands to stabilize on the counter.

If you want the best salad spinner on the market (also the most popular), go with the Oxo Good Grips Salad Spinner. It's a classic kitchen tool for a reason, and is still as intuitive, effective, and simple as it was when it first came out 30 years ago. For a slightly larger capacity spinner that offers a huge spin for your pump, the Farberware Pump-Activated Salad Spinner is another great option.