Countertop Blenders

Functional, effective blender for simple uses, January 15, 2010

I’m not a hardcore blender-user nor do I need a blender that crushes ice cubes and whatnot. As such, if you’re a heavy blender user or want to crush ice, maybe this model is not for you. However, if you like to make the occasional fruit smoothie, and have simple needs, this unit might fit the bill.

I bought it from Target in July 2009. I use it about once a week and it has never given me any problems. Every once in a while I need to break up amalgamations at the bottom of the glass pitcher, but that’s rare.

Usually my smoothies consist of oats, soy milk, bananas and some frozen berries. The blender doesn’t haven problems with these ingredients and, because many of the ingredients are already cold or frozen, there’s no need for me to add ice (maybe this is why my blender hasn’t broken down).

If I were in the market for a new blender, I might think twice about Black & Decker if only because all of their models seem to be getting negative reviews. Oster seems to be the blender of choice these days. That said, if you just want a simple machine that looks nice and isn’t too expensive, this one has been good to me.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you?

>Report abuse

| Permalink

Comment

Terrible, December 19, 2009

I wish I had looked at the reviews for this blender on Target and other sites before I bought it.

This does not handle ice at all….and I was using crushed ice with my smoothie.

It just stops and won’t go. Really does not keep running thru anything, not just ice.

Right out of the box, Brand New this blender was a huge disappointment. I am returning it and I am looking for a Professional grade.

I thought this one might be fine for just making shakes, smoothies etc…but it is

just junk. More frustration than my very old Oster.

Avoid this one.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you?

>Report abuse

| Permalink

Comment

Did not last 30 days – avoid, November 2, 2009

By

C. White – See all my reviews

My son used this blender at another house and liked it. He drinks protein smoothies almost daily. Within a few days of use, he said he felt it was losing power. After 3 weeks, it gave out. We put in crushed ice, frozen fruit and fruit juice – he knows he has to add enough juice to not overwhelm the blender. Our last one (Oster) lasted over a year, so it wasn’t a problem with technique. Amazon didn’t have reviews but once it broke down, I found lots of poor reviews on other websites. Best to avoid this blender, IMO.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you?

>Report abuse

| Permalink

Comment

Really, really, really bad., August 6, 2009

By

B. Marye “iRecordU” (Los Angeles) – See all my reviews

I have no idea if they still make this thing, so I may be wasting a review. But, if they do… don’t buy it. It’s absolutely horrible. Controls are funky. Lid fits oddly and is hard to get on and off and most of all, it’s just a terrible blender. Most attempts don’t end with a smoothie, they end up with a soupy liquid with huge chunks of unblended ice. I’m not sure how you design a blender that literally can’t blend, but Black and Decker has done it. I used to own one of the cheap, Oster models from target and that thing blends circles around this piece of junk. Save your money and absolutely do not buy this atrocity.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you?

>Report abuse

| Permalink

Comment

A lot of power but dangerous!, June 29, 2009

By

N. Rice (Lawrence, Kansas United States) – See all my reviews

I purchased this blender because of the power and low cost. However, it screws on to its base strangly and a bit dangerously! While trying to get it on one day I wasn’t doing something correctly and the entire assembly came apart. It was in 7-8 pieces..nuts, bolts, washers, blades, etc. Just now, I plugged it in and it was already on. The clear removable part on the lid fell inside and the blades ripped it to pieces. It was flying like glass all over my kitchen. I had to close my eyes and unplug it from the wall. Though I am impressed with the way it shredded the plastic with the powerful motor, it almost took an eye! And, now I have to have something over the lid so the liquid doesn’t fly out! I wouldn’t recommend this blender unless you want to risk your body for the powerful motor! However, it doesn’t crush ice nearly as well as it did that lid!

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you?

>Report abuse

| Permalink

Comment

It’s a Nightmare, July 12, 2010

By

A. Davis “An Honest Opinion” (Chattanooga, TN) – See all my reviews

I used this blender maybe 40 times. I thew the entire thing in the trash yesterday.

Many times I noticed little black pieces coming off the blender after blending my smoothies. They are PLASTIC pieces that connect to the blades and make the blades spin… how cheap.

Yesterday, while I was attempting to blend my smoothie, the entire bottom of the blender began to violently spin around my kitchen counter as smoothie flooded out of the bottom. I had to unplug it from the wall because I couldn’t reach the buttons.

I should have gotten a new one sooner anyways because it never blended very well either. I always had giant pieces of fruit that couldn’t be blended into the rest of the smoothie.

Don’t buy it. It’s a waste of money.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you?

>Report abuse

| Permalink

Comments (2)

Don’t fool yourself into buying a B&D appliance, May 3, 2010

By

J. Carroll “elmopop lover” (baltimore) – See all my reviews

You’re not going to be the lucky one who gets a decent amount of use out of this thing. If you’re like me, using it on an almost daily basis, it will work for a month or two. One day the blade assembly will magically disintegrate and you’ll be looking at a replacement cost, with shipping, of to . That means you could spend 0 to keep this thing running for a year, assuming nothing but the blade breaks on a regular basis. Suddenly an Kitchenaide doesn’t look like such a bad deal.

Dummies like me buy these things because the nice, heavy-looking glass jar gives the illusion of quality. It reminded me of the blender my parents had for years and years when I was a kid. This is not that blender. For shame, for shame, Mssrs. Black and Decker!

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you?

>Report abuse

| Permalink

Comment (1)

great value and good product overall, June 19, 2010

mind you i’ve had the blender less than a week but i’ve been making “ice cream” with it and there’s never any ice chunks or unpleasantries left in the jar after i finish blending it. It works fantastic really, sometimes it gets a bit jammed so i pop the little thing off the lid and add some liquid and blends it right in. The design is sleek and looks great as well. So i’ve used it with ice, frozen fruit, and cottage cheese to make a really thick smoothie and it was great. I’ve used it to blend veggies and broth for soup, not hard, but again it worked well.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you?

>Report abuse

| Permalink

Comment

We love it!, March 21, 2010

We have had our blender for about two months, and we use it all the time. We use it to make smoothies, milkshakes, and we use it for cooking. It is very powerful and can blend anything. The thing we love most about it is how easy it is to clean up. The bottom isn’t cupped so it makes it easy to get a wet rag in and wipe it off. And if something spills it just drips down the side and doesn’t get trapped inside. The price was awesome and it arrived sooner than expected. We would recommend this blender to anyone.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you?

>Report abuse

| Permalink

Comment

Great Value, April 25, 2010

By

Thomas Edward Ledoux “Cooking Enthusiast” (Coppell, TX) – See all my reviews

I purchased this item a few weeks ago and I have been happy overall with it. It was reasonably priced () and looked like it had more power, speeds settings and features than comparable products. I use it primarily for making smoothies/frozen drinks and it performs very well, I also use it to blend food for cooking. I particularly like the heavy glass pitcher which has contours on the inside to guide the contents back down into the blades. Great design there as well as the latching bottom of the pitcher into the base. Very solid and powerful unit when assembled and full. The only thing I don’t like about this is the design of the lid. The clear plastic cap in the middle of the lid does not snap in securely enough to allow you to remove the entire lid assembly (which must be grasped at the outside rim, rather wide for small hands). Overall a great purchase.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you?

>Report abuse

| Permalink

Comment

plastic gear drive broke after third use, June 23, 2010

By

A. Benjamin – See all my reviews

We use our blender 2-4 times a week, and they typically have a lifespan of about 1-3 years, so after doing a ton of research I figured it would be more cost effective to buy a cheap blender every couple of years than shell out several hundred dollars for a really expensive blender that would last up to ten years. However the crush master was just not built well. It left chunks of ice in the jar and did not have enough power to make a “smooth” smoothie. You had to constantly stir to get the contents to blend. The third time using it, one of the plastic gears broke off of the bottom. Amazon was great about the return. I printed out the return label and they sent UPS to pick it up the next day. A week later I got fully refunded for the purchase. So after that we decided to spend a bit more money and went with the oster classic beehive blender (which you can also buy on amazon). It works wonderfully, has a metal gear drive, higher wattage and crushes up magaritas and smoothies in seconds. In the future I will keep our blenders in the 60-80 dollar range as it seems like anything cheaper than that is just not going to work in our household.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you?

>Report abuse

| Permalink

Comment

Buying my 3rd one, grrrrrrr…., March 11, 2009

These plastic jars just don’t last. I don’t know how this even qualifies as a viable product. We have to replace ours every several months. We don’t do anything abnormal with it. Smoothies mainly, and we use our icemaker to pre-crush the ice for it (since we know it’s so sensitive). It doesn’t take long for cracks to appear, and then come the sticky leaks that get all over the blender and the counter. And, it’s so expensive. Unfortunately, our blender (the KSB-580, which is similar to the 560, I think) doesn’t take the standard glass jar. Big mistake on our part. At some point, I guess, we’ll need to buy a new blender so we don’t have to keep replacing the jar. Argh.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you?

>Report abuse

| Permalink

Comments (3)

Cracked after a year of light use, August 18, 2010

By

Timothy Wayne (San Francisco, CA USA) – See all my reviews

I’ve had this blender for about a year. It has two cracks in the bottom that cause leakage whenever it’s used. And they have the nerve to ask for a replacement?

A pox on all their houses.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you?

>Report abuse

| Permalink

Comment

cracks under normal use, August 16, 2010

I purchased a kitchen aid blender thinking I was getting a quality product. After a year of normal use, multiple cracks started to appear in the base of the jar. Food residue gets trapped in the cracks & the jar now leaks from the base. I would like to replace the jar and not have to buy an entire new blender, but I’m not willing to pay 50.00 plus shipping for another poorly made product. A glass replacement would be nice!

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you?

>Report abuse

| Permalink

Comment

Top Rate Blender, April 27, 2010

We were looking for a blender that would make smoothies on a daily basis, last longer than 90-days and not cost us a fortune. This blender easily crushes the ice and blends the frozen fruits into a delicious smoothie without problem. It does not over heat or stall and the 4-level blade prevents air pockets common with other blenders. It is somewhat loud but that is to be expected from a motor powerful enough to easily crush ice in seconds. We recommend this blender to anyone looking for quality at a reasonable price.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you?

>Report abuse

| Permalink

Comment

No complain!!, July 20, 2010

Before I bought this I checked many reviews. I chose the glass jar over polycarbonate one that would be nice, if there in no leaking possibility.

Cleaning and assembling are easier than other brand that I owned before since it is built well.

Primary purpose of this is making smoothy and ice crush. This is doing better than I expected. Especially, for ice crushing, it does crush and pulse and it is very effective. I recommend it with 5 star.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you?

>Report abuse

| Permalink

Comment

Very good blender., May 25, 2010

I’ve only had the blender for a couple of weeks, but it is working well. The base (that the blender fits into) is metal, but the piece that goes into the base is made of plastic. It does ice very well. It is very noisy.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you?

>Report abuse

| Permalink

Comment

We like to buy things that last, April 23, 2009

So, after 30 years, we needed a new blender. Hmmm. My wife and I hadn’t a clue where to start nor what was out there. On my first two internet searches all I found were the two extremes: small fractional Hp motors or the ridiculously priced 0 to 0 unit.

And yes, of course we want to crush ice – who doesn’t? I have enough engineering background to know that a 0.2 to 0.5 Hp motor is NOT going to crush ice. Finally, we found the KitchenAid models! Some were 0.9 Hp, which is more like it. The pitcher (I call it) was a larger diameter and a little squat – perfect design for better blending, not to mention storage.

We decided that two speeds just wasn’t enough, 3 speeds would be borderline and we certainly didn’t want anything ridiculous like 10 or 15 speeds. (That’s what they do when the motor is underpowered to do the job.) We settled on the KitchenAid KSB465Wh 4-speed with 48 ounce jar and 0.9 Hp motor. The weight wasn’t given but the appearance gave you the idea that the base was good and heavy – a prerequisite.

We’ve used it several times starting about a month ago – it’s perfect. It’s even better than the one that lasted 30 yrs. The pitcher is dishwasher safe, it has something they call “intelli-speed” which adjusts the horsepower as needed to deliver constant speed. This is something where most blenders fall short, you put something heavy in it and the motors just slows down. The base is good and heavy – hurray, no more tipping over. The ad doesn’t mention this but you do NOT dissasemble the pitcher for cleaning! Another big plus.

By the way those to blenders don’t work and don’t last. This one is priced around and you get what you pay for. A very solid unit with a decent motor and good features. And yes, it does a marvelous job grinding ice – a whole tray at a time. And, if you let it go for about 10 seconds you have ice “powder” – it’s better than our ice shaver for snow cones.

Blending is far superior to our old blender. It digests even the tough stuff easily. We haven’t yet really needed to use it but it has pulsed speeds for those really tough materials. I’d recommend THIS blender to anyone who doesn’t need to grind nails.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you?

>Report abuse

| Permalink

Comment

A clear winner!, May 26, 2009

By

B. D. Earthcare “Not quite retired” (Seabrook Island, SC United States) – See all my reviews

After doing more blender research than I care to admit to myself, I narrowed my search to three blenders. I selected this model after speaking to a most informed and helpful Kitchenaid customer service rep who answered my remainding questions one Saturday afternoon. Since, they staffed their customer serviced department on the weekends, I was already impressed. This blender replaced a just out-of-warranty Cuisinart blender which I loved, until it died a premature death, I can say without hestiattion this model is far better. Since I use our blender daily to make breakfast smoothies, some with ice, I thought my blender needs were simple. Quite to the contrary, I discovered. There is no middle ground when it comes to chopping ice and this blender does a superb and lighin’ quick job. I add very frozen berries to the morning mix and this blender handles them beautifully. The performance, design, ease of operation and cleaning each have exceeded my expectations.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you?

>Report abuse

| Permalink

Comment

Best blender ever., September 26, 2009

By

William J. Kelly – See all my reviews

I have only used about four blenders in my life but this is by far the best I have come across. I picked it up by chance on the clearance end cap at Target but if I knew how well it worked I would have gladly paid full price. I have never seen a blender crush ice so well, in fact my fiancee and myself are eating snow cones we just made with it as I type. It makes the smoothest smoothies ever, I can’t wait to find more uses for it!

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you?

>Report abuse

| Permalink

Comment