Breville BBL550XL 5-Speed Blender

Pros: Attractive, (relatively) quiet, presumably durable
Cons: Flimsy and awkward cannister gasket; poor blending performance

Our venerable KitchenAid blender gave up the ghost shortly after my wife plunged into a regimen of twice-daily smoothie making. Fired up with missionary zeal about the benefits of these frozen concoctions, she felt ...

Pros: This blender will do what you want. It is exceptional.
Cons: It is at the high end of the blender price range.

My oldest daughter and I like to make smoothies. However, we were never satisfied with our final product. First of all, our smoothies always had ice chunks. We also noticed that other ingredients never fully mixed up. We started closely watching the ...

Pros: Easy to use, blends well, looks good
Cons: More expensive than some, but worth it

This blender is great, by far the best I've ever used. The last blender I had (a cheaper brand) was basically useless. Unless I just wanted to blend liquids, I was basically out of luck. I wanted to start making smoothies (blending ice) and my blender ...

Pros: Heavy Duty feel. Stainless Steel. 610 watts of power. Hemisphere Technology. Cord keeper.
Cons: Lid is hard to put on.

I initially purchased this due to a commercial I saw. I also really liked how the blender looked. When I actually saw one in person, I was amazed on the feel of the product. It was heavy duty! The blades were very different than any of the other ...

Pros: Looks good on the counter.
Cons: Poorly engineered. Should have a locking mechanism for the blade assembly.

I have a Breville Ikon and it's the worst blender I've ever owned. It's frustrating and aggravating. Whenever you have any frozen ingredients, the bottom of the blender twists loose and the liquid ingredients flow out all over the blender and the counter. Even if you try to retighten the assembly after a short pulse, you often don't catch it soon enough and it makes a big mess. They replaced it once, saying they'd never heard of it happening. The same thing happened with the replacement. Avoid this one if you chop ice or use frozen strawberries or that kind of thing.

Pros: See other reviews.
Cons: See other reviews.

I have been looking for a blender and have read all the reviews on the Breville both the 550XL and the 600XL. I found the reviews are either very very good or very very bad. Finally my wife bought the 600XL at Future Shop because it is on sale for CDN199.99. But when I open the box, I found the one in the box is not of very high quality. When I check the box, the model number is 600XL/B. Then I realize there must be two different models for the 600XL and 550XL. The high quality models are 600XL/A and 550XL/A. The low quality models are 600XL/B and 550XL/B. So make sure you are getting the 600XL/A or 550XL/A models. Don't buy the 600XL/B or 550XL/B models even if it is on sale. I am going to return the 600XL/B that we have bought and will wait for when the 600XL/A is on sale.