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List Price: $400.00
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After reading the previous reviews, I was a bit leery of buying this blender. I wanted the best, period. First, this is in my opinion the best looking and I leave it on my counter top, replacing a Kitchen Aid which I gave to my sister.
The first thing I did was to fill the jug with ice to the top. I pushed the ice button and within a few minutes, I had finely grated snow with no large chunks at all. It would have been a perfect snow cone. I went on to put in Strawberries, soft tofu, Yogurt, Soy vanilla ice cream, honey and a little non fat milk on top of the shaved ice. It made one of the best smoothies I have ever had. I have had numerous complements from my wife and neighbors on the smoothies this produces.
I also put in a whole large sweet onion quartered and three cups of large skinned tomatoes, some mushrooms, corn and whole garlic cloves, along with some essential seasoning and made a perfect tomato soup. The consistency was creamy and consistently smooth throughout. No chunks of any of the ingredients, including the corn kernels or garlic cloves. It was wonderful.
I have not had this very long. About two weeks now, but it has gotten a lot of use in that time. I can not speak to the long term reliability of the product, but I have had other Breville products and they are consistently top drawer. The one thing I do think that Breville might have misjudged is that the jar is polycarbonate, a fancy word for plastic. It does seem to be a very sturdy jar and perhaps, there is a certain logic to it. When I transport a full jug of soup from the blender to a bowl or what ever, the weight is quite manageable. Not really an issue for me, but I could see it for others, especially elderly or those with physical limitations. The fit of the blade to the base and jar is clean and the design seems to be very well thought out. There is a plastic wrench supplied in the event the blade base is stuck on the jar, but I have not needed it yet for cleaning and there have been no leaks even after storing liquids in the jar for a period with just hand tightening.
It is only a two speed but in doing some research it seems that most multi button blenders have a low speed and 12 high speeds which are the same. This is done for the button loving public who think more is better. The 1000 watts is not really a dependable measure of the power of the motor since it really only tells you the power consumption of the motor and not the output. It seems to have more than enough power for the toughest jobs however and is heavy enough not to move if I do walk away from it to get an ingredient to place in the top opening while it is running.
Breville seems to have come up with a nice design of the blades and bottom of the container since it moves the material from the top to the bottom and vice versa for even cutting quite well on it's own and the hole in the top makes it easy to insert new ingredients with the motor running. I will say that this blender does everything I ask of it and better than my high end Kitchen Aid Blender which left small chunks of things like ice and garlic or corn kernels, etc.
If I have a problem with the motor breaking down as the others had, ( which based on my other Breville appliances, I doubt will be a problem), I will come back and comment on it, but for now, this is the nicest blender I have ever owned and I highly recommend it. In my opinion well worth the extra money.
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I recently picked this blender up when my old blender, a Kitchenaid KSB560OB 5-Speed Ultra Power Series Blender that was about 3 years old died. In defense of the old blender a small piece of chicken bone inadvertantly went in when I was blending homemade dog food so I consider it my fault. However, rather than fixing the broken coupler I decided it was a good opportunity to upgrade to something with more power.
My dream blender was a vitamix since I had heard rave reviews about it from friends who owned one. However after analyzing the cost I realized I didn't need my blender to do as many things as it could promise given I already have a juicer, food processor, immersion blender and spice grinder at home. After reading about this blender it seemed like the perfect alterative. It's still VERY well made and he design of the jar allows it to blend frozen fruit with ease, but it's about half the price of a vitamix.
So far I've used it to make lots of smoothies, pureed dips, and other typical uses and it has performed all very quickly. The only thing that is odd to get used to is that after a certain point the blender turns off automatically but I have found by that point the job is usually done. I even as a test put in frozen chicken and vegetables with a little yogurt and rice to make some homemade dog food and it blended it up perfectly. Typically I would have defrosted the chicken first but with this new blender I didn't have to.
Another plus is that because of the way the jar is designed clean up is very easy. I find that tiny bits of food no longer get stuck under the blade part and I spend much less time cleaning it, even if I leave it in the sink for a couple days without rinsing first.
Overall this is a great blender. I'm not sure if it could handle the range of tasks that a vitamix can do (although I haven't tried) but if you have other appliances on hand you probably will not mention it above. Overall its a great quality blender that is consistent with what I have come to expect by also owning a Breville juicer and immersion blender. Highly recommended.
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As far as the product itself, I'll simply say I've had great experiences with this blender similar to other reviewers here.
Here is what really impressed me: I bought this unit heavily discounted through a bargain internet site. It did everything we asked of it up until just a few days shy of the expiration of the one year warranty. All of a sudden, it wouldn't turn on. I called Breville customer service, wondering what they were going to tell me. After giving them the 3 digit serial number (less then a thousand of these have been made? Really?) off the base, and sending them a cut-and-pasted electronic receipt from my original purchase (I had never registered the product with Breville) they told me that they would be sending me packing materials and emailing me FedEx packing labels. When they receive the defective unit, they're sending me back a new 800BLXL.
You can't beat that.
For what it's worth, the customer service rep I was speaking to told me that this model hardly has any problems, and he'd never seen this particular problem before.
In summary: Great working and looking blender. Quiet for how powerful it is. Excellent customer service. Recommended.
EDIT: It's now 2012 (my review above is from 2009), and the replacement 800BLXL is still going strong!
Honest reviews on Breville 800BLXL Die-Cast Hemisphere 2-Speed Blender with 67-Ounce
Like others, I was skeptical after reading reviews here but decided to give it a try. I have used this blender for 5 months now at my Ice Cream store to make smoothies and have been happy with it since day one. The plastic container is perfect for commercial use as it is very durable and is actually the reason I went for the 1000w over the highly rated 750w model with the glass container. I add all ingredients to the blender and press the smoothie button. This blender has torque sensors on the motor and will adjust the speed and time based on consistency to provide a perfect smoothie every time. It just shuts off when done, about 1 minute. YES, it will start and stop on it's own to chop, mix, and blend as stated in the manual. If you are using ice instead of frozen yogurt just start with the ice button and it will chop your ice into a fine powder. This blender is heavy duty and I highly recommend it.
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I worked in a smoothie shop for a few years in high school (hint: we're the "king" of the frozen fruit concoctions), and made a whole lot of smoothies with the industrial vitamix blenders we had. I picked up one of these a few years ago on woot, and I think it is an ideal blender for home use. The jar is polycarbonate, which allows it to be quite large without being extra heavy. Like all other blenders it can form an air bubble near the blade for mixtures with too much ice or too little dietary fiber, but just knocking on the side of the jar is usually enough to dislodge it. It has only as many settings as you need, and the motor inside never seems to be over-strained. The ice chip makes an awful racket, but produces amazingly fine flakes of ice, comparable to shaved ice. The base removes easily without any tools which makes is very easy to clean.
