Customer Reviews:
 Good BUT August 9, 2008
Ms. K. Durham-diggins (London UK)
Bought one of these a year ago - very hapy with it until one week after the the year's guarantee ran out I put some small cubes of hard cheese in along with some cooked veg and a the jug cracked after about 30 secs - not sure why but no spares and now I have to buy a new one - so mixed feelings about this.
 Nicest blender, but there's a lot we don't know May 9, 2008
A. Mutimer (Essex, England)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
I usd to work in a kitchen and I got to know what good kit is all about. Here's my pre-purchase preview of this product.
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This thing looks great with its stainless steel clothes and its perfect waist and its understated controls, but there's so little info on this site that you are reduced to going elsewhere to find out that (a) the jug is glass (classy yes, but very breakable, and there are *no spares*) and (b) it can crush ice, or so it is said. Quite a few manufacturers say their blender can crush ice but they actually can't really do it, or they do it until the edge is off the blades two weeks after you get the thing.
But here is where I have my real problems buying this, much as I would like to on the basis of its looks.
(i) No push-rod. This is a rod that goes through the lid that can be used to push the ingredients down towards the blades. It is important because without an infinitely variable speed control with which to perform a slow start, or an automatic soft-start function, light, dryish ingredients will get kicked up onto the sides of the jug right at the outset of blending and stay there untouched by the blades. The only way to get them back down again is take the lid off and mess about with a wooden spoon and this is a pain because you may have to do it three or four times before everything gets mushed together enough to stay put. American blenders very often have push rods but not so here in the UK. Why? I suspect it is becuase they look odd and manufacturers are in the business of selling stuff, not troubling people with useful but poorly understood tools.
(ii) Are the blades are set low enough? A lot of belnders have the blades set too high and, as a result, heavy, sticky food, which is not part of a liquid blend, gets stuck on the base of the jug under the blades and is never processed. The problem arises because manufactuers do not test blenders with a wide variety of ingredients.
(iii) Are the seals sound? Very often the seals go on blenders and then they leak, sometimes right into the motor! Like I say, there are no spares for Breville blenders so the seals have to last. Do they?
(iv) does the jug locate easily and is the safety system unintrusive in normal use. Second only to appearance manufacturers are concerned to make their blenders safe. They put these two far above effectiveness and ease of use becuase of the high cost of claims. You have to sell a lot of blenders to pay off a 400k lawsuit, but nobody can prosecute you because your blender is a pain in the... to operate becuase of all the clumsy safety interlocks.
(v) Is the motor tough? In the US you can get blenders of 2000 Watts or more. In the UK we think a big blnder is 800W. This one is 600W, which is pretty weedy, so they question is, can it hack tough usage? Most of them can't. If you check out the reviews on Amazon you will find that the biggest problem with blenders, irrespective of price is that they fail - constantly - and the biggest cause of that is the motor.
The bottom line is that unless you buy a commercial unit you need a shovelful of luck when buying a blender, or you just have to face the fact that it is very unlikely to last and buy on that basis. Home blenders look great and they are as mostly pretty safe, but they do not usually work well and they almost never last.
As to this one, who knows? Any reviewer out there got the goods?
Even knowing all this I'll probably just spend the money anyway on the off-chance the thing is OK for a couple of years...
 Breville 1.8l Blender November 23, 2007
V. Butcher (UK)
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
Brilliant machine. Heavy glass jar very strong. Good seal on lid. Adjustable speed & pulse switch is great for different levels of blending.
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