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Appliances›OXO Kitchen Tools

The Best OXO Kitchen Tools

By The Consumer's Guide Research Team·Updated September 1, 2026

Most kitchen tools fail in the same boring way. The handle gets slick when your hands are wet, the joint between head and grip traps a week's worth of garlic, and one summer in a drawer leaves the rubber sticky. You don't notice any of it while shopping. You notice it at 7 p.m. on a Tuesday, wrestling a can of tomatoes with wet fingers. Good tools disappear into the work instead. That's the whole promise of OXO's Good Grips line, and it's why these tools show up in so many kitchens.

No single brand wins every category, and OXO isn't an exception. Its tools are workhorses, not heirlooms — the plastics scratch, a digital thermometer will never survive a dishwasher, and a few of these gadgets do exactly one job. If you already own a decent grater and a sharp knife, some of what follows is a nice-to-have rather than a fix. And nothing here is the fastest or most precise version of the tool that exists. These are the ones that stay easy to use for years.

We picked from the OXO tools that independent reviewers and owners consistently single out, and we weighed how often you'd actually reach for each one. We think that the OXO Good Grips Glass Salad Spinner is the best OXO kitchen tool for most people, and that the OXO Good Grips Smooth Edge Manual Can Opener is the one to buy if safety around sharp lids is your main concern.

How we picked

Grip and comfort. We prioritized tools whose handles stay secure with wet or greasy hands and require less hand force, since that's the design principle the Good Grips line was built on. Tools that owners with weaker grip specifically call out got extra weight.

Cleaning and construction. We favored seamless one-piece heads and self-clearing mechanisms over designs with joints and crevices that trap food. Dishwasher safety mattered, and we noted the tools where it isn't an option.

Independent recommendations. We looked for tools that named review outlets — America's Test Kitchen, Wirecutter, Serious Eats, Good Housekeeping, The Kitchn — had ranked at the top of their categories after comparative testing. A single glowing mention wasn't enough.

Everyday usefulness. We asked whether a tool earns permanent drawer space or comes out twice a year. Specialty gadgets had to be excellent at their one job to make the cut.

Long-term durability. We read owner feedback for patterns of handles cracking, coatings degrading, and mechanisms failing after months rather than days. Consistent complaints about early failure disqualified a tool from a pick.

Top pick

Drier greens with one hand, and a bowl you can serve from

OXO Good Grips Glass Salad Spinner

The pump-and-brake mechanism dries lettuce faster than twist-top or pull-cord spinners, and it works with one hand. The borosilicate glass bowl doubles as a serving bowl, so you're not washing two things after every salad.

$74.95fromAmazon

This is the OXO tool that changes how often you eat salad. Wet greens repel dressing and turn a bowl soggy within minutes. Wirecutter named the OXO Good Grips Large Salad Spinner its best overall pick after comparing it against eight competing models, finding the pump produced noticeably drier greens than twist-top and pull-cord designs. That means no blotting with paper towels. You rinse, pump for a few seconds, and dress.

The one-handed pump is the part you'll appreciate most. Twist-top spinners want two hands — one to hold the bowl steady, one to crank — and the cranking gets tiring fast. Here you press down with your palm while the other hand does something else. The glass bowl's weight keeps it planted on the counter instead of skating across it. Press the brake button and the basket stops instantly.

Owners who cook regularly describe it as a daily tool rather than a occasional one, and the glass version earns extra credit for going straight from sink to table. The basket doubles as a colander for rinsing berries or herbs. The pump locks flush with the lid for storage, and the lid comes apart so you can actually clean inside it. All parts are top-rack dishwasher safe.

The fair question is whether you need a dedicated gadget for this at all. If you buy prewashed bagged greens and never wash herbs, you probably don't. But if you bring home muddy farmers-market lettuce, or you wash and store greens for the week, this earns its cabinet space in about two uses.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

It's bulky. A 6.22-quart spinner takes up real cabinet space, and some owners of the smaller version specifically chose it to avoid that. If your kitchen storage is tight, measure before you commit.

Glass means weight and breakability. The heft is what keeps it steady while you pump, but it also makes this the heaviest tool in the lineup by a wide margin, and a dropped bowl is a dropped bowl. Anyone with limited wrist strength may prefer a plastic-bowl spinner, even though the glass one looks better on a table.

Runner-up

No sharp edges on the lid or the can, ever

OXO Good Grips Smooth Edge Manual Can

It cuts along the outside of the rim instead of through the lid, so nothing you touch afterward is sharp. Built-in pliers lift the lid off without your fingers going anywhere near the metal.

$24.95fromAmazon

No other can opener design removes the sharp edge entirely. Conventional openers cut through the top of the lid, which leaves a jagged rim on the can and a blade-like disc floating in your soup. This one cuts along the outside edge instead, so the lid lifts off clean and the can rim stays smooth. That's the mechanism behind its consistent top safety ratings, and no amount of money spent on a standard-design opener replicates it.

The practical upside shows up in small moments. You can reach into the can without thinking. You can put the lid in the recycling bin bare-handed. If you have kids who help in the kitchen, or you're the person who always seems to nick a knuckle on a tuna can, that's the whole argument right there.

The oversized side-wind knob turns smoothly and the handles are soft and non-slip, so you're not gripping hard metal while you crank. The stainless steel cutting wheel never touches the food inside, which also means it stays cleaner between uses — a wipe with a towel usually does it. Built-in pliers handle lid removal so your fingers stay out of it entirely.

Owners describe replacing decade-old openers with this one and buying it again after the first wears out. Several came to it after electric openers rusted or broke. It's a simple mechanical tool with fewer things to fail than a motorized unit, and it doesn't take up counter space.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

The learning curve is real. It grips differently than a top-cutting opener, and the first few cans feel awkward until you find the right angle. Some owners report that the opener holds onto the lid stubbornly at the end, which can mean spilled liquid while prying it loose.

This is also the pick with the most divided owner feedback in the group. Most people love it, but a visible minority never get the hang of the side-cut motion or run into a unit that stops biting cleanly. If you want something that works identically to what you've used your whole life, this isn't that.

Also great

Read the measurement from above, without bending over

OXO Good Grips Angled Measuring Cups with

The angled interior markings let you check a measurement while standing straight, which eliminates the squinting-at-counter-level routine. You get 1-cup, 2-cup, and 4-cup sizes marked in cups, ounces, and milliliters.

$31.95fromAmazon

Bending down to eye level with a measuring cup sounds trivial until you do it forty times during a baking session. America's Test Kitchen ranked this its top pick, noting that the angled interior markings allow accurate readings from directly above. That eliminates parallax error — the misreading you get when you glance at a standard cup from an angle and pour a little too much oil into the batter.

The three-size set is the right call for a working kitchen. A single 2-cup measure means you're measuring a tablespoon of vinegar in a cup built for a quart, which is imprecise and annoying. Here you grab the 1-cup for small pours and the 4-cup for stock. All three are calibrated and marked in cups, ounces, and milliliters, so metric recipes don't require mental math.

They're made from BPA-free Tritan Renew, which is lighter than glass and won't shatter if it slides off the counter. Owners who cook constantly mention preferring these to glass measuring cups for exactly that reason. The non-slip grip holds up when your hands are wet or greasy, which is most of the time when you're actually cooking.

This is also the single most gift-appropriate item in the lineup. It shows up on wedding registries constantly, it costs a fraction of what most registry items do, and the person receiving it will use it every week for years.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

The plastic isn't indestructible. Some owners report the cups feeling fragile compared to glass, and markings on plastic measuring cups generally fade before markings etched into glass do. OXO claims the printing resists wear, but a decade of dishwasher cycles is a lot to ask of any printed scale.

They also nest for storage, which is convenient, but the stack is tall enough to be awkward in a shallow drawer. Most people end up keeping them in a cabinet.

Budget pick

Presses unpeeled cloves and cleans itself between uses

OXO Good Grips Garlic Press

You drop cloves in with the skins on and the press does the rest, then a built-in plate pushes the peels back out. The die-cast zinc body takes very little hand force to squeeze.

$20.80fromAmazon

Skipping the peeling step is the whole point. Most garlic presses want naked cloves, which means the fiddly part of the job — smashing, peeling, picking papery bits off your fingers — still falls to you. This one takes cloves with skins on. Serious Eats named it the best overall garlic press, citing exactly that plus the self-cleaning wiper plate that ejects the skin without manual scraping.

Cleaning a garlic press is the reason most garlic presses live in the back of a drawer. The little holes clog, and picking them out with a toothpick is nobody's idea of a good time. The built-in cleaner here flips over and pushes everything through in one motion. It's dishwasher safe too, but you often won't need that.

The die-cast zinc body is heavy in a reassuring way, and the soft handles absorb the pressure so you're not digging metal into your palm. Owners repeatedly describe replacing more expensive presses that broke at the handle, and several mention this one crushing large amounts of garlic with noticeably less hand force than what they used before. That matters if you cook with a lot of garlic or if your grip isn't what it was.

If you already mince garlic well with a knife, be honest about whether you'll use this. But a press gives you finer, more evenly distributed garlic than most home knife work, and it's dramatically faster when a recipe calls for six cloves.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

The chamber holds a few cloves at a time, not a head. Owners who cook in volume wish it were bigger, and if you're prepping garlic for a big batch of sauce you'll be pressing in rounds.

Pressed garlic also tastes different from minced garlic — sharper, more pungent, because pressing ruptures more cells. Some cooks prefer that; others find it overpowering in delicate dishes. It's a matter of taste, not a defect, but it's worth knowing before you switch.

Upgrade pick

Four grating surfaces, a removable zester, and a lid for leftovers

OXO Good Grips Etched Box Grater with

Etched stainless surfaces cut faster than stamped ones, and the container underneath catches and measures what you grate. The zester pops out to use over a bowl or cutting board.

$37.95fromAmazon

Grating cheese onto a cutting board means half of it ends up on the counter. The catch container here snaps to the bottom, collects everything, and has measurement markings so you can see when you've hit a cup of shredded cheddar. A lid seals it for the fridge, so grated parmesan goes straight into storage without a second dish.

Etched blades are the meaningful upgrade over a cheap grater. Stamped grating surfaces push food as much as they cut it, which is why an old grater turns celery into stringy shreds and makes hard cheese feel like work. The etched stainless steel here bites cleanly. Owners consistently describe it as noticeably sharper than the grater it replaced, with less pressure required.

The removable zester is the detail that makes this feel like a real upgrade. Most box graters bury a fine-zest side you can barely use, because you're trying to zest a lemon over a tall box. This one lifts out and works directly over a bowl or board, so you get zest where you want it. It stores back in the grater, which means one fewer loose tool in the drawer.

The Good Housekeeping Institute's Kitchen Appliances & Technology Lab named the OXO box grater with removable catch tray its best overall, pointing to the stable base and integrated container as the fixes for the two things that make box graters annoying: slipping and mess. The thick handle stays comfortable through a block of cheese.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

The slicer side is the weak one. Owners report that the single slicing slot is narrow and awkward for anything wider than a small cucumber, so it's not a mandoline substitute.

The catch container is also polarizing. Some owners find it slightly harder to grate with the box attached and just take it off, using it only for storage. It's genuinely useful for cheese and genuinely fussy for bulkier vegetables.

The research

Who this is for

This guide is for anyone stocking a kitchen from scratch or replacing tools that never worked well — a first apartment, a wedding registry, a college kid's first real setup. It's also for cooks with arthritis or reduced grip strength, since that's the constraint the Good Grips line was designed around from the beginning. Sam Farber developed the original swivel peeler in collaboration with his wife Betsey, who had mild arthritis, and the soft Santoprene handle that resulted became the brand's signature. Those handles help everyone, not just people with pain.

If you already own tools you like, don't replace them out of brand loyalty. A working grater is a working grater. This guide covers non-electric hand tools only — no appliances, no cookware, no knives — and it's limited to OXO, so it won't tell you whether a specialist brand makes a better version of any single item. It will tell you which OXO tools are worth your money and which ones you can skip.

How we picked

We weighed five things. Grip and comfort: handles that stay secure when your hands are wet and don't demand a hard squeeze, which is the principle the Good Grips line was built on. Cleaning and construction: seamless heads and self-clearing mechanisms over creviced joints that trap food, plus honest notes on what can't go in the dishwasher. Independent recommendations: top rankings from America's Test Kitchen, Wirecutter, Serious Eats, Good Housekeeping and The Kitchn after comparative testing, not one-off praise. Everyday usefulness: whether a tool earns permanent drawer space or comes out twice a year. Long-term durability: owner feedback patterns around cracked handles, degraded coatings and mechanisms that quit after a few months.

Other oxo kitchen tools worth considering

If you want spatulas that survive high-heat cooking: The OXO Good Grips Silicone Heat Resistant Spatula ($23.95) — These are heat-rated to 600°F, which is well past what you'll hit in a screaming-hot stir-fry, and the seamless one-piece head means there's no seam between blade and handle where batter and bacteria collect. The Kitchn pointed to that construction as the reason the OXO set held up better than rivals over time. The set gives you a small spatula for saucepans, an everyday spatula for mixing, and a spoon spatula for scooping. They're fully dishwasher safe. The trade-off: the heads run smaller than traditional batter scrapers, and some owners find the edges a bit thick for scraping a bowl completely clean.

If you want a fast, accurate thermometer without paying for a Thermapen: The OXO Good Grips Chef's Precision Digital Instant ($25.95) — It reads from –40°F to 450°F in roughly five to seven seconds, with a head that pivots 90 degrees so you can read it at any angle, and an ultra-thin tip that leaves a small hole in a steak. The probe cover carries a chef and USDA temperature chart, which is genuinely handy when you can't remember the safe temperature for pork. Owners describe it as their default brand for speed. The catch: it's electronics in a kitchen, and it does not survive water. A meaningful minority of owners report early failures, and one common way to kill it is dropping it in the dishwater.

The competition

This is what our research surfaced across OXO's Good Grips line, not a survey of every kitchen tool on the market. The tool below is a good product that fills a narrower role than our picks.

The OXO Good Grips 3-in-1 Avocado Slicer ($11.97) — The OXO Good Grips 3-in-1 Avocado Slicer splits, pits, and slices in one tool, and it does all three well — a stainless pitter that pulls the pit with a twist, and a slicer that lifts the flesh out in seven even pieces. It's one of the highest-rated single-purpose gadgets you'll find, and owners who eat avocado several times a week describe it as a genuine time-saver that keeps the mess down. It lost to our picks on one count: it does exactly one job, and a knife and spoon do that job acceptably. Owners also note it's hand-wash only in practice, despite the top-rack claim, and that similar-looking tools sell for much less elsewhere. If avocado toast is a daily habit or you're nervous about the knife-into-the-pit maneuver, it's worth the drawer space. Otherwise, skip it.

Care and keeping

Most of these go in the dishwasher, but read the exceptions. The salad spinner's parts are top-rack only, and the lid comes apart so you can actually get inside it — do that occasionally, because the pump housing collects water. The garlic press is dishwasher safe, though flipping the cleaner plate right after use usually beats waiting. The thermometer never goes near water; wipe the probe and store it in its sleeve. Soft Santoprene handles last for years, but heat and oil degrade rubber over time, so keep handles off hot pan rims and out of direct dishwasher heating elements when you can. If a handle does crack or a mechanism quits, OXO's satisfaction guarantee covers replacement or a refund — contact the company directly rather than tossing the tool.

Questions we get

Are OXO tools worth it compared with cheap generic versions?

For the tools where design does real work — the smooth-edge can opener, the angled measuring cups, the self-clearing garlic press — yes, because the mechanism itself is different, not just nicer. For basic items, the gap narrows. The reliable argument for OXO is that the handles stay comfortable and the tools keep working for years, which is where cheap tools usually fail first.

Which OXO tool is best if you have arthritis or a weak grip?

The salad spinner and the garlic press are the two that most directly reduce hand effort. The spinner's pump works with a palm press instead of a sustained twist, and the garlic press needs noticeably less squeeze than most. The whole line was designed around reduced grip strength from the start, so the handles help across the board.

Does OXO have a warranty or guarantee?

OXO offers a 100% satisfaction guarantee across the Good Grips line. If you're unhappy for any reason, you contact OXO directly for a replacement or a full refund. That's a rare policy at this end of the market, and it's worth using rather than throwing out a failed tool.

Can these go in the dishwasher?

Most can, but check each one. The salad spinner parts are top-rack safe, the garlic press and measuring cups are dishwasher safe, and the silicone spatulas are fully dishwasher safe. The instant-read thermometer must never go in — water kills it, and that's the most common way owners lose theirs.

How is the smooth-edge can opener different from a regular one?

A standard opener drives a wheel through the top of the lid, leaving a sharp rim on the can and a sharp disc in your food. This one cuts along the outside edge of the rim instead, so the lid separates cleanly and nothing you touch is sharp. Built-in pliers lift the lid off so your fingers stay clear.

Which OXO tools make the best housewarming or wedding gift?

The angled measuring cup set is the easy answer — it's a registry staple, it costs little, and the recipient will use it weekly. The salad spinner is the better gift if you want something with presence, since the glass bowl serves as a serving bowl. The can opener is the most useful gift for someone setting up a first kitchen.

Why you should trust us

For this guide:

We read published rankings and comparative reviews from America's Test Kitchen, Wirecutter, Serious Eats, Good Housekeeping and The Kitchn to see which OXO tools professionals put at the top of their categories.
We compared manufacturer specifications across the lineup for materials, heat ratings, temperature ranges and dishwasher guidance.
We read through owner feedback looking for repeated themes — which tools people replace, which mechanisms fail, and where a design frustrates people after the first week.
We read owner reviews on every listing, weighted toward the critical ones, because that is where the recurring failures show up.
We have a systematic way of automatically fetching the latest prices, so the numbers on this page stay current.
This is a research-focused guide, so the team may not own every product listed — though we often do own the top winners, which gives us extra context for the recommendations.
We don't accept free products, and the retailer commission never changes which product we recommend.