Short Comparisson/Review between Benriner BN-95 and Swissmar Borner V5

[GeneParmesan]

A few years back, when I wanted to buy a mandoline slicer I got a Swissmar Borner V5/Börner V5, because my mother had a Börner V3 and was very happy with the model even after years of use.

A week ago I decided to get a Benriner Mandoline because it has the ability to cut very thin slices.
Since now I hove both slicers at home I want to give you my impressions about the two devices.
Maybe there is somebody out there deciding between the two who can profit from this.

First of all both devices do their job. Allthough they are made out of plastik, they feel sturdy.

When cutting slices the results that can be achieved with the benriner are better.
First it is possible to cut slices that are a little thinner then with the Borner.
Although the Borner can cut thin slices that are at good for a cucumber salad, a coleslaw or beets carpaccio it is possible to go a little thinner with the benriner.
Although I don't want this every day for something like a shaved carrot salad this is very usefull. Even though the carrots become only thinner their texture feels very different.
Second the sliced vegetables have a slight V-Shape with my borner with the middle being slightly thinner then the edges.
Although it should be said that there can be some minimal height differences from left to right with the benriner.

Although the beniners blade can be sharpend (although it can be questioned how many people are really doing this) it is a little easier to cut through hard vegetables with the borner.
The blades of the borner are paper thin and much thinner then the blade of the benriner.
It should be said that there is an increased resistence with the borner in the middle where both blades meet.
But even in this are and even with 5 years of use the borner still cuts easier then the benriner.
That being said the benriner is perfectly usable and the differences are not anoying in any way. I just want to note every difference I notice.

When cutting juliens I highly prefere the borner. I've only tried the Benriner once, because the cutting resistance is siginificantly higher then with the borner.
The reasons should be in the siginificantly thinner blades for juliene slicing.
Both pictures where shot with the same lens at the same distance.

Regarding the ease of use I also prefere the borner.
Compared to the benriner where the thickness is controlled by a gigantic screw with the borner you simply have 4 settings for thicknesses to chose from for slices and 2 for the julienes.
This allows for a faster setting of the desired thickness and faster assembly/dissassembly.
To be fair, though, most of the time I use either the two thinnest settings for coleslaw of the 1mm julienne blade.
Also if you have the same profile in using a mandoline you could simply let the benriner as it is without moving to the neutral position and store it in a box and have no disadvantage compared to the borner.
Furthermore I much prefere the hand guard of the borner. The one of benriner feels a bit to small and also, when the vegetable becommes increasinly thin the hand guard increases some noticable drag whenmoving the vegetables because the plasitic pieces that guide the guard along the mandoline are a little to narrow comapred to the width of the mandoline.

I hope you could gain some usefull information from this description.

Overall I prefere the Borner when I want to get things done or cut mandoline slices.
I.e. most of the time, especially during the week.
But if I want perfectly cut slices or want extremly thin slices I prefere the benriner.
The latter makes a noticably difference for me and is woth the additional space the device uses in my kitchen.

 

[stringer]

Do you use the finger guard cup things? And if so, do you have a preference for one design over the other?

 

[MarcelNL]

I actually sharpened the blade of my Benriner two years ago.

 

[Justinv]

I sharpened my Benriner blade recently. It was not hard.

 

[sumis]

there can be some minimal height differences from left to right with the benriner

^ this drives me crazy sometimes. especially with the larger size benriner. why the hell does the plate before the knife wobble at all. why isn't it designed to be like … fixed, rigid?

.

 

[GeneParmesan]

Do you use the finger guard cup things? And if so, do you have a preference for one design over the other?

Yes, I do use both hand guards.
In short, the borner feels safer and I like it a lot. The benriner works only on the last piece of vegetable.
But in this role it gives you a smaller remaining piece of vegetable that is leftover and works better overall.

The long answer, as I can't edit the original post:

The good thing about the borner is that with things like apples of potatoes it is possible to hold the whole vegetable, if you don't slice it lenthwise. Here the metal spikes of the borner come in very handy.
Although it should be said, that the vegetables tend to bend backwards over time due to some cutting resistance.

However, when using vegetables lenthwise the hand guard does not work very well.
As you may can see the spikes in the middle, where you put your vegetable for lengthwise slicing are not very long.

Compared to this the benriner does not feel safe to use with whole vegetables.
What I do is to cut the food without a hand guard until it is thin enough to use the hand guard effectively and then start using it.
This should be at a remaining height of 1 to 3 cm.

That being said the benriner leaves a smaller remaining piece of vegetable, that can't be put through the mandoline.
I think the reason for this is that the spikes of the benriner go past the plate that you move on top of the mandoline, while the spikes of the borner are not even comming as close to the blade as this plate.

Left: Remaining piece sliced with benriner using benriner hand guard; Right remaining piece sliced with borner using borner hand guard

Left: Remaining piece sliced with benriner using benriner hand guard; Right remaining piece sliced with borner using benriner hand guard

After your question I wanted to know more and grabbed a measurement stick to compare the height of the remaining pieces.
The thickness of the remaining piece on the benriner with the original hand guard had a thickness of about 5 mm, while the remaining piece with the borner had a thickness of about 8 mm.
When I used the borner with the benriner hand guard I would get down to a thickness of about 4.3mm, though. Although it should be noted that this required some fiddeling, as the remaining piece was hard to fix on the hand guard.

Also it should be noted, that in all cases the remaining piece is no big issue for me. I either cut stripes from the remaing piece by a knife or snack it directly.

 

[GeneParmesan]

@MarcelNL
@Justinv
I rather should have written that it can be questioned how many people outside of this wonderfull community really sharpen their blades.

Especially since there is no contact with a cutting board the wear on the blade is much lower, then with a kitchen knife.

 

[GeneParmesan]

As I was having a closer look on my borner I also had a closer look at the blades. As I can't edit the original post I'll append here what I've found.

Although these are more interesting technical features that shouldn't play to much of a role when deciding which of the mandolines to get.

(1)
Minimal cutting thickness:
When comparing the minimal cutting thickness the borner has a minimal thickness of about 1.07mm and the benriner had a minimal thickness of up to 0.4mm with a kohlrabi.
Please take this measurement with a grain of salt. I tried to measure without me applying any preassure to the measurement stick, but due to the vegetable being soft there is some significant uncertainty with this measurement.

(2)
V-Shape of the cuts:
Regarding the V-Shape of the cuts here are some pictures to give you a feeling about the effect:

Left: apple cut with benriner, right: apple cut with borner

Profile of apple cut with borner

(2)
Mandoline slicers:
When measuring the thickness of the mandoline plades the borner had a thickness of 0.2mm. The benriner blades had with the blades with the biggest gaps a width of about 0.5mm at a distance of about 5mm before the end of the spikes.
The medium wide inserts for the benriner have a similar geometry.

Also as you can see the mandoline blades of the borner have a slight angle.

(3)
Blade geometry:
All measurements should give a rough idea of the geometry. As it is hard to measure the thickness in the mandoline in case of the borner and it is hard to properly align the measuring stick correctly with the highly asymetrical blade of the benriner you should treat the measurement as a rough estimate rather then exact measurements.

At a distance of more then 10mm to the cutting edge the blade strongly bends inwards, while seemingly keeping roughly the same blade thickness. This bending can be seen in the picture above, where it can be seen in the right side of the blade. The profile can also be seen from above but in this case it is very hard to capture with a camera.
In a distance from 10mm to 4mm away from the cutting edge the edge has a constant thickness of 0.5mm. From there it becommes increasingly thin to about 0.15 to about 0.2 mm at 1mm before the cutting edge.

The blade geometry of the benriner is similar to a single bevel knife.
In the area, just before the primary bevel starts the blade has a thickness of 1.5mm. This is about 5mm in front of the cutting edge.
At about 1 in front of the cutting edge it has a thickness of about 0.2 to 0.25mm. Take the last measurement very cautiously, though.

(4)
Cutting edge:

Cutting edge of borner

Cutting edge of benriner

Both pictures where made with an Olympus 60mm, with a Raynox DRC-250 at a magnification setting of 1:1 to 1:2.
The pictures of the benriner look like a blade that was sharpened with a stone.

What is interesting is the cutting edge of the borner.
Here you can see that there is a regular pattern of half circles along the cutting edge.
I remember that borner sais that their blades where laser sharpend.
I think this acts much like a the serated edge of a tomatoe knife and explains why the Borner of my mother works even after 20 years of use still reasonably well.

 

[Jovidah]

Interesting comparison. I vaguely recall the Swissmar Borner won an ATK test of mandalines a long time ago, but at the time the test didn't include the Benriner.