10 out of 10 people found this review helpful.
Flimsy Blade/Drive Assembly
Date of Review: Jul 6, 2008
The Bottom Line: Not recommended due to high failure rates making Ice Drinks.
Our unit has broken twice, the second time, we chose to not repair it and get another blender.
The first break was the Coupler that mates with the bottom of the blender jar. The threads stripped so the coupler would just spin when the motor was turned on.
The second time the shaft mounting the blade inside the Jar stripped.
In my opinion, this unit is not engineered correctly. The motor is powerful enough to do the job, but the flimsy drive train (coupler, blade assembly) are too weak for that level of power. Instead of stalling, blowing a circuit breaker, etc. the drive train is destroyed if there is too much resistance from ice in the Jar.
When the unit was working, it had reasonable power, did a great job of blending ice drinks - no chunks left and was VERY easy to clean thanks to it's three part Jar design (Jar, Lid & Cap).
The only downside to this design is that if you are making something thick, like Pesto, it's hard to get the last bits of it out of the jar. Even with a skinny, long-handled spatula. However, for those applications, we now use a stick blender.
Our primary application is ice drinks, primarily fruit smoothies and Margaritas.
What we look for in a blender to make our frozen drinks:
* Powerful action - must deal with frozen ingredients
* Easy Cleanup - A one piece jar design without gaskets
* Complete mixing action - must not leave chunks of frozen ingredients in the results
* Reliability - we've had blenders that burn out, strip the blades or coupler, and with a leaking jar.
* Affordable - shouldn't be around or under $100 and not $200!
We're still looking for the perfect one and haven't found it yet!
