Total Blender

How to get the most out of this blender:1. Half a banana2. ~20 large blueberries3. Frozen yoghurt, 2 scoops.4. 500ml fresh orange juiceCongratulations, you have just made the best smoothie known to man.

A "superblender" was the one thing that my wife and I promised ourselves as a wedding present, and so far we've run up 70 cycles on our blendtec total blender. Like many people, I spent hours online comparing the blendtec to Vitamix, and it quickly becomes clear that there is really very little between them, but miles between either and whatever the next best brand is.Anyway, so far we've been very pleased with it, but a word of warning: there is an awful lot of hype about this blender, aided by the amusing "Will it Blend?" videos. I think this led me to believe it would make every single dish I ever wanted, clean the house and wash my car, all at the flick of the button.The truth is: it's a blender! Is it worth the money? If you can afford it, I would say yes. It's a fantastically powerful machine and will open up avenues of fruit and veg consumption not possible with other blenders. I bought the version with a big jug which really does make light work of pretty much any blending task, but also picked up a smaller jug on eBay, for a reason I will mention.So why 4 stars, not 5?1) Firstly, the slight anti-climax, which is not the blender's fault but mine. I spent so much time hyping this up to myself that it was never going to totally live up to the expectation.2) The lid, which is the reason I bought the smaller (older) jar. The 96oz jar is fantastic, but the new lids with larger hole and funny plastic "plug" are a pain to wash as you need to take the plug out and wash it separately each time. Do note that lids from both size jugs fit either, which is useful - we always use the old style lid.3) To my astonishment and slight disappointment, we *have* actually managed to overload it once! It was in the smaller jug, making a very thick biscotti dough. This isn't a massive problem, and only occurred once and briefly, but just be aware - with very dense, elastic-y mixtures, it is possible.4) Whilst it is largely very good, the accompanying recipe book has some odd ingredients. A few of the smoothies call for "silken tofu", and most of the ice creams call for some kind of "dairy creamer" or powdered milk - not ingredients I have knocking around!Final point - not so much a "con" as a "be aware", there is a bit of learning curve in terms of learning to use this blender. Some of the salesmen for both blendtec and vitamix make out you can throw in a bit of apple and orange and then a load of vegetables and what you'll get is a fruit smoothie with the benefits of "hidden veg". Not so! There is also a bit of a knack to knowing which fruits will work well together in terms of texture as well as flavour, and how to use ice (i.e. ice will quickly thicken a shake or smoothie). I recommend you start with the recipes in the accompanying recipe book and experiment steadily. If you do this, you'll be very happy from the start, as they are truly delicious (strawberry and kiwi is our favourite so far!). If you are over enthusiastic and just throw in whatever you think, you may find yourself a bit underwhelmed by the results.One last final point...! Don't want this to become a BT vs. VM debate because I honestly think both machines are brilliant and there's so little between them it's ridiculous. But regarding the issue of a tamper - or rather, the blendtec's lack of tamper - here is my comment so far:When making thick, pastey recipes like hummous or dough, there's no escaping the fact you have to stop regularly to scrape the sides towards the blade... HOWEVER! I don't think a cylindrical tamper could do this - it's nothing to do with "pushing food down onto the blade" which is NOT necessary as food will fall towards the blade (and in the larger size jug, will do so very quickly). It is simply that with a stiff sticky mixture and fast moving blade, clearly it will stick to the sides - whatever either company say, unless you invent a friction-free surface, that will happen. Jamming a cylindrical tamper down into the middle will do nothing to help that (imagine trying to effectively scrape the sides of a bowl with the end of a rolling pin!), you will need to use a spatula to scrape the sides just like any other container in the world.This sounds like a bit of a negative review - don't be fooled, I'm absolutely delighted with my blender and am still looking for every opportunity to use it. The jug is great to use and the pre-programmed cycles are easy to use (if you don't want to use them, there's always the pulse button or the manual speed setting buttons - I don't know how people could want it to be any more simple). And after wiping it down a few times already, I honestly do think that buttons are a better idea than dials which inevitably attract gunk.But just be realistic about what this is going to do for you!