What makes a blender good

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As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. We are always looking for feedback from our readers. Please send your feedback and queries on this email — contact [at] reviewsworthy. Article Outline What Is a Blender? Why a Blender For Your Home? Does the tasks of many appliances! Cleaner Kitchen Counters Blenders help you make a variety of dishes Step on the healthy food train!

Do you require a hand blender or a countertop blender? What Materials are used to make the containers 3. Space occupied by the blender 5. Budget Bottomline. Save Saved Removed 0. ReviewsWorthy Team. Related Articles. Added to wishlist Removed from wishlist 0. Added to wishlist Removed from wishlist We will be happy to hear your thoughts.

Leave a reply Cancel reply. Earnings Disclaimer. Contact us. Dial controls wipe down easily, but you have to turn through all the settings to reach your desired speed. A flip switch is easy to clean but limits you to a few options.

Blenders may have just two speeds or as many as Three are generally adequate. With a dozen or more, it can start to get difficult to distinguish from one speed to the next. A pulse setting, which eliminates the lag time between when you push the button and when the blender starts or stops, allows for more precision when blending delicate ingredients. Some high-performance blenders also come with convenient preprogrammed settings—say, for smoothies, whole-fruit juice, and hot soup.

The exception is immersion blenders, where higher wattage does tend to deliver more consistent results. Some high-performance blenders have seven- or eight-year warranties, and budget blenders might be covered for only a year. Get a perfect smoothie every time by layering ingredients in this order. If you're using a personal blender cup , reverse the order since you'll be inverting the container onto the motor base. For more on why placing ingredients in the order below is key to a great smoothie every time, see " How to Load Your Blender For the Smoothest Smoothies.

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Need further assistance? Please call Member Services at Sign in or Become a Member. Blender Buying Guide Last updated: July 16, Mix It Up With the Best Blender We test, evaluate, and compare the latest blenders so that you can get the most value for your money.

Video Buying Guide For more, watch our video below. Don't Forget About Storage Some blenders are easier to store than others, which could be a real concern if you have a small kitchen. Illustration: Chris Philpot. Visit Our Blender Ratings for More.

Consider the Features Below are features to consider. Controls No one type of control is best, so the decision is mainly about personal preference. Speed Blenders may have just two speeds or as many as Making a successful blender mayonnaise or hollandaise or Caesar hinges on the blades sitting low enough in the jar that they start whipping the egg yolk before you add a drop of oil.

To see how the motors handled dense purees, we processed raw peanuts into peanut butter. Additionally, we noted how easy or difficult each blender was to clean, how noisy each model was, whether any of them produced a burning smell while the motor ran, whether the jars were difficult to attach to the bases, and how easy the interfaces were to use.

The Vitamix offers the best performance you can get in a home blender. It consistently performed at the top of the pack in our tests, and it came recommended to us by multiple experts because it powerfully purees and pulverizes food more reliably, thoroughly, and elegantly than most blenders. The Vitamix did not make the absolute smoothest smoothies of all the blenders we tested—that prize went to the Blendtec and Cleanblend machines.

But when it came to consistent and graceful performance, the Vitamix won every time. This model was the only blender we tested that smoothly blended peanuts and almonds into butter. Its low is really low, and the blender produces a noticeable shift as you advance through each number. In our tests, this range of speeds made the Vitamix the best blender for hot liquids: You can start blending at a lazy swirl and slowly increase the speed so that the hot liquid is less likely to shoot up toward the lid and risk a volcanic, trip-to-the-burn-unit situation.

The same goes for the Blendtec Designer , which in our tests was so powerful that the soup setting created a cyclone in a jar. When using models without a tamper, we often needed to stop the blender to burst air pockets or scrape ingredients down the sides of the jar with a spatula.

In some cases, we also had to add more water to the smoothie to get all the ingredients to move around the blades without the help of a tamper. For all these reasons, blending in the Vitamix with a tamper took about half the time as it took in the Blendtec with no included tamper.

By keeping the ingredients moving, we were able to whip up a smoothie in about 30 seconds. We also found the tall, narrow, tapered shape of the jar to be ideal for creating a strong vortex that pulled ingredients down toward the blade. That feature helped the Vitamix blend more efficiently than the Oster, with its wider jar, and the result was vastly superior to what we got from the wide, blocky jar of the Blendtec.

Like the jars of most other high-powered blenders, the jar of the Vitamix which has the blade attached is very easy to clean: After you make a smoothie or something similar, you should find it sufficient to just pour in a bit of hot water, add a couple of drops of dish soap, blend for 30 seconds or so, and then rinse out the jar. No high-powered blender we tested could be described as quiet, but we found the noise from the Vitamix to be much less offensive than the high-pitched whine of the Blendtec, and it was quieter than the roar of our runner-up, the Oster Versa.

Should its motor overheat, the Vitamix is equipped with an automatic shutoff feature to keep it from burning out. For an additional fee, you can buy a three-year extended warranty for the You can save some money on a Vitamix if you opt for a certified-refurbished model. Jonathan Cochran of Blender Dude highly recommends them. We used the same Vitamix in our test kitchen for five years with nothing but excellent results. It finally did burn out, but only after we put it through strenuous use over the course of many tests for both this guide and others.

Still, it easily outlasted the Oster, and it made many more and better batches of nut butter and extra-thick smoothies before we pushed it to its limit. Since our Vitamix was still under warranty when it burned out, we contacted customer service, and the representatives promptly replaced it.

Over the years, other Wirecutter staffers have expressed love for their Vitamix blenders. We know that for many people, the biggest issue with the Vitamix is its steep price.

A Vitamix, by contrast, will last you at least seven years and it makes a lot more than smoothies. At more than 20 inches tall, the Vitamix is a big appliance—too big to fit under some kitchen cabinets.

But none of the other high-powered blenders we tested were much smaller. Though the Oster is a couple of inches shorter, it also has a beefier base. If size is an issue for you, Vitamix makes other lines of blenders as mentioned below that have a shorter profile. If you want a good breakdown of the different Vitamix models, Jonathan Cochran of Blender Dude compares them.

We tested the , for example, and found that the base of its short jar was too wide to develop and maintain a vortex for making, say, a thick smoothie for one or two people. Check out the Competition section for more detailed testing notes on the According to owner reviews, the Ascent blenders seem to suffer from some other problems, too, such as a complicated adapter for the personal blending cup and a sensor that shuts off the machine if it detects that the mixture in the jar is too thick.

Our favorite feature of the is its ability to blend absurdly thick concoctions! It also offers features, such as a tamper and overheating protection, that are usually available only on more expensive blenders. The Oster passed almost every challenge we threw at it. As long as the Oster had about 2 cups of nuts to work with, it made a decent nut butter albeit one that was slightly crunchier than the batch we made in the Vitamix.

And it whipped up a velvety puree. The only thing the Oster really struggled to do was make mayonnaise; we were able to make an emulsification only once out of four tries. We found the Oster easier to control than other blenders of a similar price, thanks to its wide range of speeds. Though not as varied as those on the Vitamix, the speeds on the Oster are far more diverse than those on the Cleanblend, which, despite its variable-speed dial, seems to have only two settings: high and higher.

The Oster is the only one of our blender picks to have both manual speed controls and preset programs for soup, dip, and smoothies.

This makes it more versatile than the more expensive entry-level models from Vitamix and Blendtec, which have only variable or preset speeds, respectively. The tamper that comes with the Oster is a little too short and oddly shaped. This Oster model, like other high-performance blenders, is a beefy machine. The base takes up 8 by 9 inches of counter space.

Also, like all the other high-powered blenders we tested, the Oster gets loud when you turn the motor up all the way—much louder than the Vitamix but not as annoying or high-pitched as the Blendtec. For now, this is just the way it is with high-performance blenders. Like the Vitamix, the Oster shuts off if the motor is in danger of overheating.

This procedure reduces the risk of permanent motor burnout. That policy is about the same as the coverage from Blendtec and Vitamix, which offer eight- and seven-year warranties, respectively, on their models.

But Oster honors its seven-year warranty and is quick to send a replacement we got ours in about a week. The blending jar, lid, and controls on the Oster also feel cheaper compared with what you get on the Vitamix.

For three years, we used the Versa twice a week on average to make smoothies and soup, and it never quit on us during that time—although we occasionally detected a faint burning smell from the motor while we were blending thick smoothies.

But the motor permanently died when we formally tested the three-year-old Versa again for our update: One minute into our blending the nut butter, the overload protection cut the motor. However, our blender was still under warranty, and Oster quickly sent a replacement. I mostly use it for smoothies, and it handles ice and greens so well. The Cleanblend made some of the smoothest smoothies in our tests, performing better than the Oster and even the Vitamix in that regard. For blending other things, the Cleanblend has a few limitations.

Like our other picks except the KitchenAid, our budget pick , the Cleanblend comes with a tamper, but the bat is a little short. In our testing, our four-year-old Cleanblend and Vitamix blenders both powered through two rounds of nut butter without quitting. The same test fried our three-year-old Oster. That said, Oster offers a seven-year warranty on the Versa Pro Series Blender, but Cleanblend offers only a five-year total warranty.

Both Vitamix and Oster have a customer service phone number that connects you to a representative. And at 19 inches high to the top of the lid, the Cleanblend is taller than the Oster, but it has just slightly more clearance under most kitchen cabinets than the Vitamix which measures closer to 20 inches. Also, like all of the other high-performance blenders we tested, the Cleanblend is loud.

Senior staff writer Michael Sullivan has used an older version of the Cleanblend at home for about four years and says he has never had an issue with it.

He pulls it out about six times a month to make smoothies, sauces, soup, or occasionally emulsifications like mayonnaise. He has even crushed ice in it a few times, and he says that so far it has never stalled out. Sabrina Imbler, a Wirecutter staff writer at the time of our tests, used the Cleanblend in her home for more than a year. She used it three to four times a week and never experienced stalling or burnout.