Good bargain for light use blender.

Author's Rating:

Pros: Cost-efficient. Works well with light jobs.

Cons: Not for heavy, daily, sustained use.

The Bottom Line: 
Recommended with reservations. For light- to medium-duty or infrequent users. If you want to use this every day for smoothies or ice-crushing drinks, look elsewhere.

Author's Review
I bought this blender on the recommendation of Cook's Illustrated - I wanted a blender that could power through ice for mixed drinks! And... at first, I thought it was about worthless... I would put ice and mixers in and blend and it seemed like it took forever and ever and ever and it STILL had chunks of ice. I tried a few different times and it was always "just okay." So, it sat in the cupboard and I gave up on it.

Then I decided I wanted to make fruit smoothies (I couldn't afford and didn't want to spend the $5 a pop at the local coffee joint) so I drug out the blender, but I didn't have high hopes. And, unsurprisingly, it didn't do well on that, either. I couldn't understand - I had liquid and frozen fruit - and it kept getting bogged down - I had to stick a wooden spoon it and try to break it up to get it to blend. Then it would only blend for 5 seconds, and you could hear the blades just spinning, but nothing was happening. I was ready to chuck the blender and get the KitchenAid a friend has and raves about...but I didn't want to spend $100. So I gave it one more shot - and finally figured out the secret.

[In my experience] YOU ABSOLUTELY CANNOT PUT ALL YOUR INGREDIENTS IN AT THE SAME TIME. Meaning, to make my smoothie, I put in all the liquid and a small handful of frozen blueberries - then blend. When that was smooth, then I could add a frozen strawberry or two - then blend. Then another strawberry or two - then blend... until I had the desired smoothie thickness.

I never got to try this method with pure ice for frozen margaritas, but I imagine it would work the same way, although I imagine you'd have to blend much longer to smooth out ice cubes than frozen fruit. But even if it didn't work quite as well on ice, I drink smoothies way more than I drink frozen margaritas, so for the time being, it was the perfect blender for me, as it paid for itself just in the month I have been making smoothies!

Now, you will notice I said "it was the perfect blender for me."

Why, you ask?

Well, this blender has died. It could not handle making a frozen fruit smoothie every day, and broke down after less than two months of steady use. I am not sure what the technical name of the piece is, but it's the hard plastic "teeth" that join to make the blades spin. It completely broke in half and was irreparable. To replace it would involve buying an entirely new jug, which costs more than buying a brand new blender! So, since I was going to be making smoothies every day, I opted for a professional VitaMix blender (just dump ALL ingredients in and go). But, if you only use this blender for light duty a few times a month, then I would still recommend it. But if you are using it every day, or using it frequently for "hard" jobs, this is probably not the blender for you.