EDITED 2014 - This is a review of the original 3 blade version of this slicer which I far prefer to the newer four blade model. If you are deciding between the two I think there is no comparison. While the newer version looks slicker and is more self contained, it just doesn't handle the veggies near as well as this one does. I've reviewed the other machine if you want to have a look and see my issues with it. But this 3 blade version is phenomenal and a staple in my kitchen. Easily one of the best gadgets ever made in my opinion. Read on.....

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I had to interrupt my cooking to write this review. Believe me, I am not easily moved to write product reviews. This would be my second here on amazon (since the writing of this review three years ago I have added many more product reviews here on amazon).
But, this little turning slicer is amazing. Simply amazing. It makes quick work of everything I throw at it and to date that would include:
radishes
carrots
cucumbers
onions (they work a little differently from the other vegetables)
kohlrabi (makes a fabulous, refreshing salad)
zucchini (I can never remember how many "Ns" are in that vegetable)
apples and,
sweet potatoes
I may even have done a celeriac but I can't recall for sure.
This device never balks.

And it is a pleasure to clean.

I had to give up pasta a few months back and I found myself missing the act of twirling long strands of food on a fork. It was then that I searched for a spiral slicer, not sure if one existed that could meet my fork twirling needs. I bought this little gem because I figured it was inexpensive enough that if I didn't like it all that much, it wouldn't be too much of a hardship.
Honestly, for what this does I would easily pay twice or three times the price.
As I write this I am in the middle of spiralling cucumbers for the old family cucumber salad recipe. Many of the strands that come out of this thing get close to 2 feet long. Food prep doesn't get much more fun than that. The First four (large) cucumbers took all of 4 minutes to break down into perfect, long, spirally strands. I have four more to go when I finish this review.

Okay, some of the reviewers here have complained that you lose about 3/8ths from the center of anything you are spiraling, and this is indeed true. In the case of cucumbers, that means that the device is essentially getting rid of those pesky seeds for you but in the case of a carrot, you lose a bit of viable vegetable. Do I mind this? NO, who cares. Use that center 3/8ths carrot piece for something else, or snack on it while you shred the rest of your veggies. Its not as if the center 3/8ths isn't usable, it just isn't made into long spirally strands. So, it wouldn't make sense to try to shred baby carrots or asparagus because they aren't much larger than 3/8ths of an inch so there wouldn't be much to spiral.

I can't speak to the durability of this slicer because, alas, I've only owned it for two months as of this writing. So far so good however and it does seem durable. It is well designed. The extra blades snap into a holder in the middle of the slicer so you aren't likely to lose them nor are you likely to cut yourself on them inadvertantly. Though lightweight, the whole unit feels fairly sturdy and I can't imagine needing to replace it for a long long time. The whole thing suctions onto your work surface which makes it very manageable. I've started using it in preparations where hitherto I've used a mandolin slicer. This spiral slicer doesn't make it easy to cut off fingertips the way you can with a mandolin.

On a final note before I get back to the cucumber salad.... I do not like kitchen devices that make a job longer than it needs to be and that includes gadgets that take forever to clean or have sharp edges to wash and be careful of. You could hurt yourself with this thing but honestly you would have to try pretty hard to do that. it doesn't want to hurt you and the company seem to have thought of everything so that it would only really injure someone determined to draw blood. it is not a child's toy however and so it requires the same respect you would give any other item with sharp blades.

There is one minor quibble I have with the device and hope that the company reads this and deals with it in a future incarnation of the product... when the spirals come out it is a little bit difficult to manage where they will end up. It would be nice if they design a catch basin type thing for the strands as they fall from the blades. This is a minor quibble because you really can catch all the strands if you're careful but I just don't want to have to be careful all the time.

Okay, that's it, back to my cucumber salad.

EDITED July 2013 -- THOUGHTS AFTER 3 YEARS OF OWNERSHIP:

I still absolutely love this thing. It continues to work flawlessly and fairly effortlessly, breaking down all kinds of vegetables. Admittedly my favorites are cucumbers and zucchini but I have spiralized many others as noted above. In all this time it hasn't stained (as many of these gadgets do) and the blades don't seem to have lost any of their effectiveness. I admit that cleaning it, while still relatively easy, is not child's play. Still, it doesn't take long.

I used to put my zucchini noodles in a vegetable basket on the grill with some spiralized onions and coated with a bit of olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic and they were a crowd pleaser every time. But it has been brutally hot and humid here so I thought I would go for something a little more refreshing. I served the noodles raw (using the smallest blade) and coated them with a homemade "guacamole" sauce. This was another crowd pleaser and rivals the cucumber salad.

3 years later and I can't sing the praises of this thing highly enough. I just really don't understand the naysayers.... particularly the folks who complain about the wasted vegetable "core" Get creative and find something to do with it. Challenge yourself!

Most of all I am impressed by how well this thing has held up.

UPDATE AUGUST 2013....

There seems to be much debate about whether this little unit suctions effectively to the work surface. For me, it does. I have a polished granite countertop. I am going to guess that this suctions much less well (if at all) to some lightly textured formicas. That may well be where the debate stems from.

RECIPES....

UPDATE:
A BLOG AT LAST! I am just starting to blog my recipes. The first four have been posted but am hoping to get many more up and running.....
okay. here's the blog address spelled out.... my website is s n o o t y d o g - dot - c o m. There is a link at the top of the page for my blog. Let me know if you find it useful

Let me begin this review by establishing a bit of credibility. I am a long time proponent of the original Paderno Tri Blade slicer. I have one of the top (5 star) reviews of it here on amazon (http://smile.amazon.com/review/R1WN790YI25X21/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm), use it often, know its strengths and weaknesses, have a small blog of spiralized recipes, and genuinely think it is one of the greatest kitchen gadgets ever invented.

So it was that I was very eager to get my hands on this brand new Paderno Slicer.

At first glance this looks like an incredible upgrade of the tri blade slicer. While keeping the basic premise the same, Paderno has done a major design overhaul. It truly looks like it would be a huge functional improvement. But looks can be deceiving.

With the original slicer some people complained that they lost too much of the veggie to the center coring blade. Paderno answered this complaint by making the central coring blade significantly thinner. Unfortunately, this thin blade is just not strong enough to hold the softer veggies in place while spiralizing. With the original slicer I was able to effortlessly spiralize 10 cucumbers in less than 15 minutes. With this upgraded version the cucumbers kept popping off the center coring blade and the net result was that instead of cucumber "noodles" I had mangled cucumber bits and short cucumber half circles. That was with the widest noodle blade. I had a tad more success using the flat ribbon blade on the cucumbers, but it still wasn't ideal. The noodle cutting blades didn't seem as sharp, either. As a result of all these changes, it took me longer to spiralize than it had with the original slicer. Far longer.

Onions fared better with the widest noodle blade. I assume this is because of their firmer texture. Likewise carrots, Radishes, Kohlrabi and similar "hard" veggies will fare better than the cucumbers or zucchini. There is a very thin blade which works well with the firmer vegetables and if you want angel hair carrots this updated slicer will do a very good job. In fact, the angel hair blade is a real positive improvement but you have to make sure to use firm veggies. My cucumbers turned to mush with the angel hair blade. In truth, I wouldn't expect this to be a good blade for cucumbers though.

This updated version comes with a little catch basin for the noodles as they come off the spiralizer. It was one of the suggestions I made in my original review. But here we find a design flaw.... first of all, I can't imagine what the engineers at Paderno were spiralizing that would fit in this little "trough." One normal sized cucumber easily will overflow that basin when sent through the spiralizer. Also, the design of the machine leaves a bit of a black hole where all the veggies fall. There is no way to get a plate or bowl under the part of the spiralizer that the veggies fall from. I had more vegetables on my counter than I ever had with the original spiralizer. There was an awful lot to clean up when I was done.

Speaking of cleaning up.... the original spiralizer was very easy to clean. Yes, you had to be careful not to manhandle the blades lest you draw blood, but beyond that, it cleaned and dried fairly effortlessly. This upgraded version has a lot of parts and many more construction nooks and crannies to clean. Cleaning it is not an awful job but it is a bit more cumbersome. It also takes a long time to dry because water finds its way into all the nooks.

Are any of the improvements worthwhile? Yes, I suppose so... because the core cutting blade is significantly smaller, you can now spiralize narrower veggies like the little finger carrots. Also, the "teeth" that hold the vegetables in place are a better and sturdier design. Another plus is the design of the blade storage as well as how it the blade plates now slide in sideways. I liked this sideways design... it seems a bit safer somehow. I like the little door that covers the plates that are not in use, and I kind of like the fact that they labelled the plates with squiggly little graphics to show what size and shape noodle each blade plate will make.

But here's the BOTTOM LINE.... None of these improvements are at all useful if the actual purpose of this gadget can't be achieved and honestly, the machine failed with softer veggies. It seems to me from the feedback I get that the most frequently spiralized veggie is zucchini and for that this machine just doesn't compare to the original. If you're looking for a spiralizer for only carrots, potatos, kohlrabi, radishes, onions and other firm veggies and fruits then this would be an acceptable choice. But for me, I most often like to spiralize cucumbers, zucchini and other softer textured veggies and this spiralizer just can't handle those. For my money I want a spiralizer that can handle all the veggies. I will stick with Paderno's original spiralizer. It has kept me happy all these years. Hopefully Paderno will send their engineers back to the drawing board. I will look forward to their next upgrade.

I am changing my rating from two to three stars because it does work okay with the firmer veggies. I still swear by this company and love the original spiralizer.

I wanted to make my own curly fries. This vegetable slicer does that! I used the 1/4" blade and found that you must use the pressure handle on the unit to produce the best cuts. You do end up with a vegetable core which some people have complained on other reviews that it ends up being waste, but that really was not a big deal to me. I tried cutting up and frying the cores, but I didn't like them so now I just throw the cores away. It's very little waste anyway. I did find that smaller potatoes produced tighter spirals, but the smaller size also produced a lot "waste" where there were just short curved shaves of potato. Larger potatoes produced fewer of the tight spirals and much more of the swooping long spirals, but they also produced less "waste". Using a combination of large and small potatoes produced a good mix of curly fries for me. I fried them in the deep fryer, shook some sea salt on them, and they were YUMMY!

Based on some other reviews, I tried making "zucchini spaghetti", using the 1/8" blade. I found a recipe online at steamykitchen.com where you basically BRIEFLY stir-fry the zucchini noodles and add sauce. The spiral slicer produces very long zucchini spaghetti "noodles" and I did find them to be somewhat difficult to bite off while eating (so just cut them short before cooking) but it really did produce a delicious, low-cal meal!

The extra blades store within the unit, and it's very easy to change them out. Just rinse to clean, and do it sooner rather than later to minimize staining of the white plastic. I paid $29.99 for this slicer and I am very happy with it!