Total Classic Original Blender - WildSide+ Jar (90 oz) - Professional-Grade Power - 6 Pre-programmed Cycles - 10-speeds - Red

First, I offer a word of caution to buyers out there. This product is the Blendtec Total Blender, the current model on Blendtec's website as of 2012. This is the one you want because of additional programs and other features. Sadly, Amazon is also offering the older HP3A unit for a few dollars less, I made that mistake and ended up returning it. It looks almost identical, and you have to look at the button panel in enlarged view to see the difference. Anyway, I love the Blentec total blender, it is a very reliable tool that has earned its place on my counter daily. I had a Vitamix previously, but I found it to be clumsy to use by comparison. Basically the Vitamix is a manual blender, very rugged, but its lack of automation makes it hard to get consistent repeatable results especially when you are doing multiple batches. The best part of the Blendtec is its programmed buttons provide a repeatable consistent performance, that guarantees the same product each blend. Also, the Wildside jar is my favorite. Not simply because of its large capacity, but with its 4 in. Blade it makes really short work of anything you ask it to blend. It also heats food faster because the tips of the longer blade travel faster through the material than a shorter blade would thereby generating more friction. The key difference in the 2 blenders is the plunger in the Vitamix, and the lack of same in the Blendtec. The major technical difference is that the spinning blades and square jar design in the Blendtec create a downward liquid vortex, sucking your material into the blades and eliminating the need for a plunger, whereas the blades on the Vitamix (and basically every other blender made) tend to blow your blended material upwards away from the blades and it needs a plunger to push the material down into the blades. In a clear vote of confidence for this superior design, a few years ago Vitamix blatantly copied Blendtec's patented square jar design in an effort to get the vortex performance, but they ultimately lost a $24 million lawsuit and were forced to drop the product and square jar concept from their line. [..] So basically, if you see any commercial blender with a square jar, it is a Blendtec or one of their subsidiary companies. An important component of successful, repeatable results with the Blendtec is proper loading order of your ingredients. Liquid and soft ingredients first, then hard or frozen items on top. This allows the blender to quickly liquefy the soft ingredients, thereby immediately forming that strong vortex to suck the other harder material down into the blades. This makes for completely efficient blending, noticeably faster than identical ingredients in the Vitamix. If you do not load the ingredients in this order, grinding the hard items first will not form an efficient vortex, and you may have to stop the machine and tamp down the material. In this scenario, the Vitamix with its plunger will work without stopping. Understanding this may leave you with the impression that the Vitamix is more versatile, allowing the user to throw whatever ingredient they want into the bowl without regard for order or hardness of the item. This is true enough, but in that case it takes manual intervention in either unit to get a blend when you load items outside the recommended liquid/soft to hard order. The great advantage of the Blendtec is that it will allow anyone to get completely consistent results. The programs under the buttons vary time and motor speed precisely, and shut off when the cycle is finished. Vitamix relies on an entirely manual set of analog controls, and therefore require the full attention of the operator, making it nearly impossible to get consistent results realistically. This is especially true when doing long blends, like making hot soups, where the friction of the blades passing through the material generates heat. Having a consistent timed process ensures you do not over process and overheat the soup, killing the raw food value of the ingredients. Using a thermometer, I can get within a degree or two every time with the programmed process buttons of the Blendtec. To do this with the Vitamix is complete babysitting, making it unrealistically difficult. Understand that a Blendtec program button is not a simple timer. It also changes motor speed at predefined points. Trying to do this combination of time and motor speed change with the manual analog controls of the Vitamix is nearly impossible. Certainly not something you want to do when you are making multiple batches of a recipe to serve a large number of people. This is one of the obvious reasons the commercial Blendtec models are the overwhelming choice in restaurants, where you can load it, hit a button and walk away to do some other task, confident that the unit will do it's job with unwavering consistency. Now I cannot speak to all the things each unit is capable of, as I only do smoothies, juices, soups and ice creams. I cannot speak to nut butters or grains, seeds or basically anyone using the alternate jar recipes. I assume that the majority of the people and their uses for the blender will be similar to mine and therefore hope this review was valuable.

You can’t go wrong with this brand. Love the bigger size jar. Great product!

Totally amazed at the versatility and power of this blender. It shouldn't even be lumped in with most 'blenders' as this machine is way more powerful and rugged. My roommates had one and after 6 years of daily use it still performed like a champ. It comes with an 8 year warranty and is made in Utah. Everything about it is built to the highest standards. The power cord is attached with a block under the base that prevents any stress being transferred into the connection to the motor. My coffee grinder broke and what used to take ten minutes or so to grind a pound of coffee now only takes 10-15 seconds to use in my cold brew machine. It chops ice really fast and easily. My old blender felt like it was fighting to chop ice but this machine overpowers the ice from start to go. Juices really quickly; in fact all of the preset buttons cycles are less than a minute in duration with most in the 30-45 seconds realm. Makes great peanut butter! Love this beast of a machine and it's worth every penny!

I bought this several months ago in the hopes of making smoothies, bread, soup, and ice cream (more like sorbet). I first encountered Blendtec at a road show at a local Costco. I saw that in the demo, the guy working the blender would throw as much stuff as he could into the unit (ostensibly, to show off it's raw power). One time, he even let me toss in some ice ("leave about an inch to the top") when he was making sorbet. My complaint with the unit is that when I tried to emulate this at home, tossing in just as much ingredient as he did at Costco, the blender would attempt to run, then whine, and shut down because it would appear as if the blades couldn't spin. Fair enough, I put in extra water. It would spin longer, but not like it did at Costco (where a single cycle would yield impressive results). For results similar to Costco, I would have to run the ice cream cycle 2-3 times, and have to use a spatula to drive down some of the mush (in a manner similar to a tamper (sp?) from VitaMix). I would follow the directions from the book in regards to order of ingredients and type of ingredients, but would add in more ingredients than the book recommends (because that's what the Blendtec rep at Costco did). I'm not sure if he used a more premium unit (or a "business class" unit) while demo'ing the Blendtecs there, but I just can't see this unit being able to stand up to the rigor of repeated blending (it shuts down for several minutes after attempting to do so with an overheating warning). That being said, I am also not happy with the performance of making pizza dough. After I followed the directions exactly from the provided recipe book, the dough was extremely hard to spread and use on a pizza pan. This is not at all conducive to making pizza and it seems easier to just knead it by hand. Lastly, making smoothies is awesome. I tend to blend them, place them in a freezer-safe container, and freeze them for a day so that I'm eating a frozen smoothie (sorbet?). I don't add sugar or anything else but fruits and a small bit of water (or yogurt). Melts nicely while I'm using the computer and tastes great. I'm glad I have the 6 (I think it was) year warranty because I'm not sure how much abuse that motor can take. Hopefully I'll never need to use it.

Je suis très contente de cette achat. Mon frère en a un depuis plusieurs années et il m’a convaincu de m’en acheter un. J’aime la texture des smothies que le blendtec produit.

Der Mixer wurde erst nach ca. 2 Wochen geliefert. Die Verpackung war nicht professionell und auch ein Umkarton mit dem Produktbild fehlte. Es waren einfach nur zwei einfarbige braume Kartons und ich würde davon ausgehen, es war eine Retour. Damit nucht genug. In der Beschreibung stand etwas von "Glasbehälter". Allerdings war es ein Kunststoffbehälter. Was allerdings gar nicht geht: Es ist tatsächlich ein Mixer ohne kompatiblen Stecker für Europa! Ich habe ihn gleich zurückgeschickt!

Expensive but worth it, blends, chops purée’s it’s awesome

Blendtek. Awesome product.

I bought this blender a year ago and it has had constant issues despite following the owner's manual exactly. Recently it had a 'no-zero crossing' error. It took blendtec customer support weeks to help me, and they failed to follow through on a warranty replacement commitment. I am not sure I could ever recommend this brand.