Cuisinart PowerEdge 1.3 Horsepower Blender with 64-Ounce BPA Free Review

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I looked at what seemed to be a million blenders. I do a lot of vegan and raw foods but I didn't want to spend upwards of $400. I love this blender! It has handled everything I hoped it would, including frozen fruits for smoothies. It is very quiet for a blender. I like the die-cast base, the simple controls (who really needs 14 settings?), and the pulse setting. The only minor flaw is the difficulty in getting out the last 1/4 cup of whatever I've made. Overall, I very much recommend this blender.

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After my 15th cheap blender in the past 4 years, I decided to quit buying garbage and put my money to better use and bought the cuisinart CBT-1000 poweredge 1000watt Die Cast Blender. Sure it cost $$ compared to the ones I had bought, but I wanted something durable and THIS thing IS durable! It has a really large 64oz jar that's made of a nonbreakable BPA material. Normally I would say glass or nothing, but realizing that a jar that size in glass would be highly unwieldy, I decided to let that slide.

Operation of the blender is simple. There aren't 20 buttons to sift through to try to find the perfect thing. Honestly, how many of us know the difference between puree, cream, and whip functions anyhow?!? It has HIGH, LOW, SMOOTHIE, ICE CRUSH, and Pulse. That's all you need! It also has a tiny digital counter that counts UP how long it's been blending. That's a good thing to know when you are trying to decide the perect consistency of a smoothie or even a frozen margarita.

Our first time out, we deicded to go full steam and make smoothies for the family. Having a family of 7 means that I don't have time to waste making smoothies then cleaning out and making MORE smoothies and cleaning out and making MORE smoothies. So the pitcher size is great! Right now one batch can cover the entire family since all 5 children are 10 or under and that means a happier smoothie making parent! So our first smoothie was a chocolate green protien powder,chocolate milk, and ice. The smoothie came out beautifully. In one cycle, we had perfectly blended smoothies, with no ice chunks. It was so smoothe, it was like a really good milkshake. Although, since I DID use a lot of ice, I chose to go with the ice function over the smoothie function. I'm sure the smoothie function could have handled it, but I think that if something contains large cubes of ice, it automatically means ice function. After a month of near daily smoothies for the family, the machine is STILL cranking them out just as smoothe and delicious as the first time.

We also decided to give our blender a whirl at making several other frozen treats like margaritas! They came out perfectly frozen and blended smoothe as well. I haven't had a really bad experience with this blender yet. The closest thing was that I wanted to make a blizzard type ice cream treat with ice cream and oreos and the blender was so powerful that it turned the cookies into utter dust in a mere 2 secs! In the future, I'll whirl the ice cream and then mix the cookie bits in by hand or something, but even though it didn't look very appetizing, it tastes really good and there were no white spots, to show where it hadn't blended well. Milkshakes come out perfect every time. Even if you like them EXTRA thick and dreamy!

After using the blender, cleanup is a breeze. The entire bottom with the blades screws right off and a simple rinse in soapy water is all it takes to clean. Be warned, don't get your fingers or tongue! anywhere near the blades! They are blood hungry! My husband who NEVER listens when I warn him about the dangers of licking the blades, actually cut his tongue pretty bad on the blades and while washing his dried on bloody mess off after returning from the ER, I actually cut my finger(although no where near as bad)using a scrubber on them. My advice is to first of all(don't bleed on your appliance by doing stupid stuff) but if you do, just put a little warm soap water in the blender and turn it on for a few secs and let the power do the cleaning for you.

All in all, I'd definitely reccomend this blender to anyone who is looking for a good blender with power that gets the job done and who isn't afraid to pay a bit more for it. I love this blender and will probably look to cuisinart for the next tabletop appliance I plan to buy.

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This review is from the standpoint of a smoothie maker. It is all I use it for so my review will be constrained to how it functions as a smoothie maker only.

Every day this blender makes a perfect smoothie for 2 to 3 people in one batch.

It is a high quality, extremely well made and designed, high quality blender.

It is high power and is not one of those that runs very fast.

It does not emit any electrical odors, even when run at high speed.

The blades are very thick and well made.

The plastic jug is made from a high quality, restaurant grade plastic.

It has a smoothie setting. Click it and in less then 30 seconds, this blender easily auto makes a smoothie out of these typical ingredients.

12 oz bag of rock hard frozen strawberries

16 oz of Yogurt

3 bananas

3 oz whole oatmeal (the unprocessed thick kind)

Handful of raw almonds (about 25)

Orange juice

TIP: I add juice last and have to poke a hole through the yogurt to allow the juice to flow down to the blades. Otherwise, they just spin. When done, a perfect smoothie results. I like to blend it on high an extra 8 seconds. 8 seconds in this blender is a long time and a lot of work is done.

TIP: The blade assembly screws on very tight and seems almost impossible to get off the blender jar by hand. A simple solution I found was to put the entire blender jar and blade assembly on the blender base. Then, turn the blender jar counter clockwise while the blade assembly is securely engaged on the base. The blade assembly then comes right off with little effort.

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***EDITED AFTER 3 MONTHS OF USE***

After 3 months of use I feel like this blender was absolutely not worth the money. I fear that the oil leaking means this will be dead within the next 3 months. Here is my list of cons.

CONS:

I noticed OIL leaking from where the blade connects to the base. This can't be a good sign.

Very loud. The pitcher sits on a plastic base with no vibration dampening. If you don't hold the top down while blending it is even louder.

The pitcher does not lock into the base. I fear if I don't hold the top down while blending then it's going to jump off and spill everywhere.

The o-ring does not form a good seal. No matter how tight the blade is screwed on the o-ring always gets dirty and sometimes leaks onto the base.

The blade and o-ring are difficult to remove, and must be removed after every use for cleaning. It actually looks like they planned on including an accessory to tighten/loosen the blade because there are two slots on either side of the blade. Unfortunately there isn't one.

The grooves on the inside of the pitcher cause large objects to get stuck. For example, frozen bananas will get stuck and rest above the blade because of the grooves. I have to cut frozen bananas into smaller pieces before blending.

Thick frozen smoothies tend to create an air pocket above the blade. When this happens nothing is blending. I have to shake the pitcher while blending to release the air pocket.

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Looking for a blender with great power and finesse, without paying over $300 for a Blendtech / Vitamix monster led me to the Cuisinart CBT-1000. On the whole I'm very satisfied. This blender has excellent power and performs quite well in a wide variety of circumstances. It's also very attractive. However there are few minor issues:

Hots:

* Power within shouting distance of the heavyweights and more than enough power for anything I do with a blender.

* Large high quality plastic jar. I was looking for glass but above 48oz jars you don't see glass anymore. The reason is weight. The jar on the CBT-1000 is a beauty with a large 64oz capacity and excellent engineering for blending liquids.

* Beautiful die cast motor housing. The brushed steel base is heavy and looks awesome on the counter. This unit is probably the most attractive blender in my opinion way more beautiful than the leaders Blendtech and Vitamix at half the price of their intro models.

* 6 razor sharp blades get good action once there's enough liquid down in the narrow neck area (see caveat below).

* Built-in pulse feature. You can turn on pulse at either power level and it will pulse automatically, showing you time elapsed.

Not so hots:

* Cover is a bit difficult to get on and off. This is a dual edged sword. The upside is that it doesn't pop off accidentally.

* The jar / base interface isn't damped, so motor vibration causes the jar to make noise which can be eliminated by holding the jar with your hand. This could have been eliminated with some compliant material where the jar and base meet. I might hack this myself at some point. This is a quibble, but a missed opportunity for some engineering polish by Cuisinart.

* The shape of the jar is wide on top, tapering down to a narrow funnel down near the blades. This concentrates the cyclonic action of the blades in a liquid, but prevents chunks of solids from getting down to where the blades are easily. In practice this means that frozen chunks can have trouble getting down to be blended into the smoothie unless enough liquids are added. Vitamix uses this deep funnel shape, but integrates a tamping paddle to push things down. Blendtech goes with a wider jar, sacrificing some liquid cyclonic action in exchange for chunks integrating more easily. So this design decision on the part of Cuisinart is a dual edged sword too. It means you either use more liquid or stop to tamp down a bit more often. This isn't a big deal. The power of this unit means that once the chunks start moving the whole thing gets integrated very quickly. But the narrow funnel shape at the bottom of the jar can delay the start of the integration if your starting point is mainly solid chunks.

* The way the buttons work is you turn the unit on or off with the power button. Then, once power is on, you select a speed and it starts to blend. Additionally you can select one of the 3 "pre-programmed" buttons (pulse (2 seconds on; 2 seconds off), smoothie, or ice crush). This arrangement means you are pressing a minimum of two buttons to get action sometimes 3. This isn't a big deal either, and enhances safety. However, my preference is for one button operation.

* As another reviewer notes, this unit is 16 1/4" tall, assembled with lid; not 15" tall as the specs say. I have to stow it under my cabinets (15" high) with the lid off in order to fit. I wish they had given the correct dimensions on the site.

Bottom line, all my complaints are fairly minor. In the most important ways, this is an excellent blender and I have been very happy with it.