Great unit, except ...

Author's Rating:

Pros: Large glass jar with good mixing results, powerful motor

Cons: coupling between jar and motor base breaks easily, form of glass jar improvable

The Bottom Line: 
Great device, expect for smoothies or other frozen drinks.

Author's Review
Reading the positive review at EPINIONS, I decided to go with the Braun MX2050 as replacement for my current Cusinart mixer. I am a freak of Smoothies and blended frozen drinks, and the Cusinart I had before did a very bad job there.

Let's take a closer look on the features:

Motor:
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525W - enough to finish any blending process with good results. The 5 power levels (and a pulse mode) are absolutely enough - I don't understand why some blenders come with 12 or more levels, I doubt that more than 1% of all users of blenders even use all of these levels :-).

Jar:
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The glass jar is formed great for the blending process. With the Cusinart, there was no "flow" given, so the mixing process was kind of "blend - stir by hand - blend - ...". With the Braun, the glass jar has the right form to reduce numbers of the "stir by hand" steps, most of the times you don't need to do that at all. The size of the jar is wonderful - it allows you to prepare multiple shakes at the same time. The only downside is form of the jar for pouring - it would be better if the pouring nose would be a little bit better formed, so that you really get everything into the glass without spilling. But compared with the other jars I saw so far, the Braun is still very good there.

Cleaning:
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Cleaning of the jar is easy - you can rinse it under the water or just put in some water and use the pulse mode to clean it!

The Cons:
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Well, the form of the jar is not really something that worries me, but there is one thing that needs to be brought to attention: the coupling between the jar and the motor base. While the motor and the jar are great, this part needs rework. Within 2 months I had the unit, the coupling broke TWICE!!! Checking back with various web pages reviewing the Braun, I found out that other users had the same problem. The part is made out of plastic, and it is not suitable to transfer the power of the base to the jar. I filled the jar with the limits given by the instruction manual (5 ice cubes max.), but even that is too much for that part.

Conclusion:
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The Braun MX2050 is great, except if you use it for making smoothies or frozen drinks. I had to return it to the dealer for refund, as the coupling, a key part of the whole unit, is "the weakest link". I would have expected Braun to pay more attention to such a key part.