I get asked about blenders A LOT. So to save myself writing a million emails, and/or sounding like a broken record (to myself), here is a brief summary of my experience with blenders.
I started my raw food journey with a little Sunbeam blender. Nothing fancy at all, just a 600w motor with a glass jug, which cost $80 or $90, from memory. This little thing served me well for my first two years of rawness. It wasn’t amazing, but it did the job – smoothies were relatively smooth, etc.
From there, I upgraded slightly to the Sunbeam Cafe Series blender. I think it was 1000w, and cost around $200-$250. This, compared to the other guy, was awesome. By this time however, I had just started at the Northey St markets, and it just wasn’t quite making the grade for how smooth I wanted my cheeses and cakes to be.
So, I borrowed a friend’s Vitamix while they were overseas, to see if that was what I wanted, and if they were really worth shelling out a grand for. And I fell in love. Quickly. Unfortunately, it wasn’t too long until I found out that it wasn’t the dream blender that it had seemed.
Cracks started to show. Quite literally. I accidentally left a teaspoon in one day, while I was making cheese. A giant hole shot out the side, as well as cheese spraying all over myself and the kitchen. True, this was my fault for leaving a spoon in the jug, and I was looking at another $300 or so to replace the jug – this seemed like a lot, considering it’s only just over 3 times more for the entire thing. Long story short, we just bought a Vitamix, got the broken jug repaired and gave my friend back the new jug. Shortly after this, we were looking at buying two of them. Vitamix Australia were impossible to even talk to. Call me crazy, but I think if someone wants to give you $2000 for your products, you should at least call them back. At least. It’s not that I like to rag on the company, but I want to be honest here – their customer service was, in a word, BULLSHIT.
On top of that, I found the way that the motor would cut out incredibly frustrating. For what is meant to be the be all and end all of blenders, I thought that it should be able to handle heavy usage without shutting down. When it did this, it was usually for 20-40 minutes at a time. ANNOYING. Other points of contention with the Vitamix:

  • LOUD.
  • Many things wouldn’t blend effectively unless I stood there the whole time forcing food down with the tamper, which I don’t think is fantastic for the blades.
  • It’s really heavy (which only matters if you need to move it around a lot), and really tall, which means you can’t put it on part of the bench with a cupboard overhead.
  • The jug. Oh my God, the jug. SO hard to clean. The jug tapers in at the bottom, plus has indentations running all the way down, so it’s near impossible to completely remove all of your yumminess – also bad when you’ve got loads of expensive super foods in there!
  • 7 year warranty is dubious. The drive shaft fell off while I was making a green smoothie. It started making a strange noise, so I immediately turned it off. When I lifted the jug off the motor, the drive shaft just FELL OFF from under the jug. CRAP! And it wasn’t covered, at only 6 months old. Another $40 for another one.

Anyway, in the time that we were waiting to hear back from Vitamix (we’re talking weeks here), we contacted Blendtec to see what they had. And have never looked back. I LOVE LOVE LOVE our Blendtecs! We have two – the super amazing commercial one, and the HP3A Homeblender, which is the one that is most commonly compared to Vitamix. Well, the Vitamix just doesn’t compare, in my opinion. The Blendtec has a more powerful motor, and is cheaper – $879 compared to $1050. More points:

  • BEST. JUG. DESIGN. EVER. It’s square. Simple. Scrape your stuff straight out, no wastage. SO easy to clean. I love this. And it’s BPA free. Side note – I heard Vitamix were sued for copying Blendtec’s jug design some time back. And Blendtec won. VM aren’t allowed to sell this one anymore, which is too bad for anyone that bought that model, should it need repairing or new parts! Imitation is the highest form of flattery.
  • Top notch customer service! We bring cake to our Blendtec lady! So friendly, helpful, and downright awesome. They have an onsite repair thingy too, so if something did ever need repairing, it doesn’t have to go far. Never needed it though.
  • You can program the Blendtec to whatever cycles suit you! Amazing. Never done this though, because the pre-programmed cycles are fine for me. And I do more blending than anyone I know!
  • Doesn’t have a stupid tamper because it doesn’t need one! Better for the health of the blades.
  • Has a 7 year warranty.
  • Blendtec is loud too, but not so much as the VM. Even the commercial one is better in noise comparison.
  • Blendtec has shutdown on rare occasion too, BUT, it gives you a warning to tell you that you’ve overloaded it, or have run it for way too long and it’s overheating. But even then, it just needs a 5 minute rest and it’s back in action.
  • They are funny. Check out ‘Will it Blend?’ on YouTube. Love a company with a sense of humour!
  • Makes the smoothest everythings. Best blenders I’ve ever used and I love them.

May I just add, even though we sell Blendtecs, I am in no way bigging them up to try to sell them. Like anything, I wouldn’t sell it if I didn’t truly believe in it, and even if you do decide to buy one, I don’t care if you buy it from me or anywhere else. I am just providing an honest account of my experience with all of these blenders, because I am asked so frequently – and as I have a lot to say, you can imagine that this takes up quite a lot of time to type into an email!
Happy blender love to you all xx