The Bottom Line: If you want a large capacity, highly powerful, attractive blender and don't mind the price, odd quirk or two and your primary purpose isn't making smoothies I'd buy this.
We purchased the stainless version of the blender from Williams Sonoma and paid a premium since we had a hard time finding the stainless elsewhere.
This replaces a 10 year old Krups blender that finally died.
One of my absolute requirements for a new blended was a "seamless" base. Every blended I've owned ends up with brown gunk in the gaps between the buttons and the housing, etc. This unit's controls are covered by a single piece of plastic that is really easy to clean. There is a slight lip around the edge of the plastic, but I have found that it doesn't seem to collect gunk.
The blender is very powerful and does a really good job. The capacity is huge, and this seems to affect how the blender is used. It seems to work better when making larger batches, and required some playing around to make a good smoothie. If I just put all of the ingredients in and turn it on, the frozen berries do not always get pureed as I would like, leaving frozen chunks in the smoothie. I’ve found that putting in the frozen fruit, banana and a littlejuice and run it on high, then add more juice later seems to do the trick.
Very important is to make sure the lid is on tight with the clear center piece in place or it will probably coat you ceiling.
Also, curiously, the blades are not sharp. This may explain the incompletely pureed fruit.
We use this a lot to prepare other things as well, from a quick way to make a batter, milk shakes and scrambled eggs.
I have read about the rubber part that drives the blended failing after a while and I can see how this would happen. I’ve noticed fine black residue on the inner base of the blender that I assume is rubber from this part. It does seem too soft to hold up and I’ll be watching this to see how it does. I have also noticed that the blender seems to occasionally make a grinding noise when there are a lot of frozen chunks being smashed. I think this causes the carafe to move slightly on the base causing a slight misalignment, leading to the noise and to extra wear.
The glass carafe is massive and easy to disassemble and clean. The rubber top looks like it will last forever. The base being stainless and not having any gaps to hold spilled liquid is also very easy to clean.
The blender is quite attractive and is a nice piece to leave on the counter top.
**UPDATE - After using this blender for almost 6 months, I am still happy with my purchase, but not as happy as I could be with the performance when making smoothies that contain frozen fruit, which we do a lot. It takes a long time to properly blend the mixture. I still recommend this blender, but if your primary purpose is making smoothies, you may want to consider something else.
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