Hmmmm, thought this one was the answer...

Author's Rating:

Pros: It's powerful motor makes smooth smoothies, but...

Cons: Gear in jar broke within three months; contents splash through vent holes in lid.

The Bottom Line: 
I cannot recommend this blender at this time. Hopefully the gear issue will be redesigned in future models and replaced for those of us that have this blender already.

Author's Review
I bought the Braun Powermax MX2050 Blender because we make 2-4 fruit smoothies every day, the basis of which are frozen bananas, not ice. This has destroyed a couple of blenders pretty quickly. From experience I trust the Braun brand, so went with this model that has a powerful motor.

That motor does enable it to make smooth smoothies. I especially love the shape of the glass jar. It is very well balanced, large and easy to handle, even when full. It's the best I've used to date.

In less than three months the plastic gear on the bottom of of the glass jar broke. (The gear on the reverse side of the blade that fits to the motor on the base). I called Braun directly and they replaced it under warranty, got it a week later. This evidently has turned out to be a common problem, check Consumer Reports. This flaw concerns me greatly--what's going to happen in a year after the warranty is up?

I also dislike the fact that each time I turn on the machine the hand that's holding the lid ends up splashed with the contents as some liquid almost always splashes out of the vents, especially when you pulse as you need to do with frozen items before blending them smooth. It was a hot surprise when I blended some soup! (Won't do that again.) The jar does this when it's half to 3/4 full, which is where it always is in our household.