Best Price Waring MBB518 Professional Quality Food & Beverage Blender, Stainless Steel

Compare Price >> 17 new or used available from $54.95

Waring MBB518 The Original Is Still The Best!
I've owned a dozen blenders over the past 30 years. They all had their advantages and disadvantages, as does this one. When I tote up the pro's and con's, Waring still stands on top for me.

My first blender was an Osterizer in the early seventies when I was in college. It was a good machine for drink blending, but was frustrating for foods. If you look closely at the Oster container, the blades sit in an area recessed from the main container. No problem for liquids, but semisolid things such as peanut butter will jam down in there. I found that I constantly had to use a spatula to help dressings, dips, etc. blend.

When the Kitchen Aid blender was first introduced, I bought one. It was a real disappointment from the start. No matter how much I ran items, they never got uniformly smooth! I can remember running canned tomatoes, for instance, for several minutes and still they did not puree evenly. I kept it for about 6 months and gave it to one of my employees.

Roughly 10 years ago I bought my first Waring, a one-speed bar blender. Finally I had a blender that did all I wanted! I think that the trademark cloverleaf Waring design is more than hype. It truly does pull food and heavy mixtures into the blades better than competing designs. If you look at the heavy Waring glass container with its nonremovable blades, you'll see that the bottom of the container is flat and the blades stand up above the bottom. I think this is why it works so well. Incidentally, I've found no problem whatsoever in not being able to take the blades out. Because of the design, a drop of d/w liquid and hot water cleans out the bottom in a second or two. However, the limitation with this machine for kitchen use was its lack of a low speed.

I bought a Cuisinart blender, then recently introduced, as I love my DLC-X food processor. Big mistake. The blender was made in China and was mostly plastic, frame and all. I burned it up making dips one New Year's Eve. Not for heavy duty use.

I bought the Waring MBB518  kitchen model, like this one but with a different design of container with removable blades. I liked the machine but it didn't blend as well as my bar blender. Again, this seemed apparent due to the different container design. I returned it after three weeks.

Finally, I bought a two speed Waring laboratory model with timer, basically the same machine as shown here with a little different front. It has the original style container, a heavy duty motor, and has worked flawlessly for several years. I purchased the stainless steel container as an accessory, but still use the glass one most of the time. As any blender enthusiast will tell you, you only really need a low and a high speed, all the rest is window dressing.

The Waring MBB518 is not only classic retro design, but its simple cylindrical base affords excellent ventilation for the motor. It also makes cleanup from spills and overflows much simpler than more elaborate models. Incidentally, you can find the heavy glass containers all the time for a buck or two at local flea markets; order new blades and lid for a fraction of the purchase price of a new set!

Waring MBB518 is a classic kitchen design that will remain in style for many, many more years to come.

Best Price Cuisinart BFP-703CH SmartPower Duet Blender/Food Processor, Chrome

Compare Price >> 10 new or used available from $73.49

I have been shopping for a new blender to replace my 1985 Osterizer, which has been leaving big chunks of ice in frozen drinks. I saw a really interesting consumer-oriented cooking show on the local PBS station one Saturday afternoon - they taste test their recipes on the public and test kitchen equipment. They had a test segment on blenders and claimed the fiftydollar Osterizer unit was the best, had the strongest motor and did a better job than even the hundredplusdollar blenders. I went out and bought one (actually, I got the Oster version of the Duet, with the blender and a food processor attachment). I quickly returned the Oster unit because 1) It could not a crush ice in frozen drinks and was actually worse than my 17 year old, worn out blender - it's pretty hard to suck a 3/4" ice rock up a straw; 2) Did not circulate thick liquids well unless stirred with a spoon through the hole in the top cover; 3) It was loud as heck; and 4) the food processor attachment was nearly useless because it was very small, only had a chopping blade and had no feeder - you unlatch the processor, empty out the one cup or so of chopped food, put more food inside, re-latch the processor lid and put back on the blender base.
After reading some of the reviews here, I was pretty much set on the similarly priced (one c-note) Kitchen Aid so I went to my local department store to look around and a bright and bubbly teenage sales clerk came up and asked me if I needed help. I almost said no (I can read the box myself) but instead decided not to exercise age discrimination and asked if she had any recommendations for blenders. Surprisingly, she said "Yes, I tested a bunch of them for a Christmas present for my dad a few months ago and the Cuisinart was definitely the best. It does the best job of crushing ice, is easy to clean up and my dad loves his!" Given that it came with a small food processor attachment for the same price as the Kitchen Aid and I had a 30 day return policy if I didn't like it, I decided to give it a shot. Here's my observations:
1) It blends great. It has as much power as you would ever need and frozen drinks come out smooth and frosty, they way they should. No more small icebergs clogging up the straws. You can dump a tray full of ice cubes into the blender, hit the "Ice Crusher" button, and it will give you a pitcher of finely crushed ice in about 30 seconds. Thick liquids still circulate well in the wide pitcher body.
2) It's quiet. I would say this blender puts out only about half the volume of noise that my old Oster unit or the newer one I returned did. Maybe there is a quieter unit on the market, but for the other reviewers complaining about the noise, I have to ask what they expect when blending ice cubes. No doubt, it makes more noise turning ice cubes into a liquid form than, say, a pot on the stove, but it is easily quiet enough to make a smoothie or margarita after midnight in an apartment without waking the neighbors.
3) The food processor works great. Sure it is smaller, at a 3-4 cup capacity, than the big 11 cup processors, but otherwise, it works exactly like its bigger brothers that made Cuisinart famous for the past several decades. I think the reviewer complaining about the processor must have had a few too many dacquiris or margaritas from his/her machine when he/she criticized this accessory. The feeding tube is a complete necessity for chopping more than a cup of food or using the grating and slicing blades (which work extremely well). So what if it sticks out a few inches? I used the processor to make hash browns for eight people for Easter brunch, and it did a great job of chopping the onions and shredding the potatoes; I did have to empty the moderately sized processor container twice while shredding the potatoes, but it only took about two minutes to turn eight medium-large potatoes into uniformly shredded hash browns.
4) It's easy to clean. The base unit just wipes clean, with no protruding buttons or difficult channels to clean out. The pitcher is also easy to rinse clean.
A big caveat: the reliability. I did not read the reviews here about the easily breakable plastic motor locking ring on the blender base until after my 30 day return period ended. So far, so good (I'm giving it a ***** rating based on my own experiences and am not going to let other reviewers' experiences change my score) but I really hope, knock-on-wood-fingers-crossed, that Cuisinart cured that defect by the time it got around to manufacturing my unit. It does have a heavy, very steady base and feels like a well made unit.
I hope I get many years of happy use out of my Duet, but will report back if I suffer the same problem that others have experienced.
EDIT 3/07:
Eventually, my Duet's blender unit failed, perhaps somewhat differently than others have reported. After about six years of frequent use, the black plastic gear ring on the bottom of the blender container that meshes with the drive unit in the base locked up on me and would not turn on the bottom of the blender, meaning the blade inside the blender to which it is attached would not turn. I contacted Cuisinart and bought a new one for around $10 or $12 shipped, took the old one off, installed the new one and in a few minutes had it running again good as new. I still really like the unit and think it is terrific. Spending a dozen dollars on a simple replacement part for an item we use so frequently is not unreasonable and I'm not lowering my score as a result of that temporary problem. In 2007 there are now a lot more higher end blenders available than there were when I bought this Cuisinart in 2001 and I'm sure some of them have even stronger motors and are slightly more quiet. However, this is still a very good unit and the hundred bucks I spent on it was money very well spent. Nowadays, I've seen this blender-food processor combo available for as low as half what I paid on sale and as low as fortybucks refurbished, so I doubt that there's anything on the market that is even close to being as good of a value.

Hamilton Beach 500 Watt Metal Countertop Blender

Solid Metal Construction Chassis and Stainless Steel Ice-Crushing Blades, Powerful 500 watt motor makes the most demanding blending jobs easy. 2 Speed Dial With Pulse Offers maximum versatility for everything from shakes to smoothies Metal chrome-plated dial improves blending control and adds style - Large 48 Oz. Glass Jar - The perfect size for entertaining and everyday blending needs Sure Rest base sits flat on your countertop or table for easy serving

Features Include:

• Stainless Steel Ice-Crushing Blades
• Finely crush ice, frozen fruit, and other ingredients for the smoothest results
• Powerful 500 watt motor makes the most demanding blending jobs easy
• 2 Speed Dial With Pulse
• Offers maximum versatility for everything from shakes to smoothies
• Metal chrome-plated dial improves blending control and adds style
• Large 48 Oz. Glass Jar
• The perfect size for entertaining and everyday blending needs
• Sure RestT base sits flat on your countertop or table for easy serving

Hamilton Beach/Proctor-Silex, Inc. is the country's number one distributor of small kitchen appliances, selling over 35 million appliances every year. The company's most famous brands (Hamilton Beach, Eclectrics, Proctor Silex, and TrueAir) are found in households across America, Canada, and Mexico, yet are expanding into areas beyond these traditional borders. HB/PS's product quality, breadth of product line, superior customer service, and brand name strength continue to earn it the number one standing with consumers for small electric appliances.