"---- There are a lot of good reviews for each, but also a lot of complaints about not lasting long, ----"

Perhaps this explains?

Let's say in the old days, in a year they sell 10,000 blenders and they got 1,000 complains.

Now they sell 100,000 blenders in a year , and they are getting 10,000 complains.

That does not mean blenders are getting less quality.

I don't always feel that machines in the old days last longer.

I have found that a hand stick blender works acceptable for simple smoothie making.

dcarch

The problem is, I have been seeing a lot of the same complaints over and over about each one. Anyone have one that you've had a long time and use a lot, is able to crush ice and frozen fruit, and still works really well with no problems?

At that price point, around 50$, options are limited. One of the bullet type small volume blenders seem the best option. like this one...

Read the good reviews as well. Often when a gasket is not seated properly, or fruits are left to dry in the container, it stresses the motor. And yes 10,000 reviews so not too bad overall. If you tend to take care of things you will extend its life. (always the coin-flip chance of getting a lemon).

That said, ten+ years ago I was visiting a work Dept often every morning, (they had a decent expresso machine). Always a bullet type blender on the counter next to the sink. Used 10/12 times a day. That is about 200 times a month. I did ask at one point, "do those things really work?". Yes, and they love them. But they pointed to above the cabinets at the two 'back-ups'. New in the boxes. (the way some businesses work is having expendable accounts per X amount of days.) Any item over a certain amount is a red flag.

The bullets are sold at many office supply chains with the paper, pens, coffee, water coolers, etc...my commercial home system would not be allowed on that account.

They figured going through 2-3 a year was fine even hating disposable appliances. Then once they figured out paying attention to cleaning, they did get a longer life out of them. (one sloppy office mate might destroy one by carelessness working late at night and not cleaning, etc.)

Always best to purchase from a store you like that has a good return policy and convenient to your area. Ask at the service desk, "What if this breaks in 6 months?". Or one year.

I think they work well because of the small jars. Low volume ingredients is less stress on a motor. 'Small batch'. And what you want anyway.

I had a full size (50$) blender that I used once-twice a year for maybe pesto. And that is leaves! lol. (horrible for ice or frozen so I never used it). I think it was year 5 the motor burned out and had been used maybe a dozen times. Looked brand new when it went to the dump.

_i have three stick blenders and they are not for frozen fruits or juicing, Just puree soups/sauces/mayonaise. The Breville does have a 2 cup vessel so maybe it will work for that but I have not tried it.

Remember the adage that it's the people with the bad experiences who are moved to write online reviews. There will be a disproportionate number of bad ones. As to seeing the same complaint occurring, you are forewarned as to what could go wrong, but with a lot of manufactured goods, they can't test each unit. They sample from the line, and try to catch where things are going wrong. Additionally, things happen in shipping.

The question isn't whether those same faults are repeated. Perhaps there's a gizmo in the motor that really doesn't like being dropped on its head, but a whole pallet of them fell off a loader. The question is what did the retailer and/or the manufacturer do to make good on it. That's why they usually give you a year's warranty. Some time to get started using it, and some time to use it enough to have the fault show up. Even after the warranty period, if you can tell a good story about why it didn't have an issue until after the warranty was up, you can usually get them to help you after it's expired. It's good customer service.

Instead, look for the long, positive reviews that talk about having used it for awhile, and go into detail about the pros and cons. Some people like to share, and will write that kind of reviews. Hired guns usually don't because they haven't actually used it enough to have anything detailed to say. Sometimes in the cons, you'll see something that makes you say, "oh, no, not me!" Others, it can help you get a good sense of what using the unit is like.

we have had a bullet for three years and it makes smoothies 5 - 6 days/week ... more when the grands visit. If you only live on smoothies, it should last you at least a year ...

@sleevendog (5a NY 6aNYC NL CA) "Always best to purchase from a store you like that has a good return policy and convenient to your area. Ask at the service desk, "What if this breaks in 6 months?". Or one year."

Have you actually gone to a store and asked these questions? What did the clerk say? Has any store clerk told you that you could return an item to the store -- other than IKEA -- after six months or a year?

Costco has a great return policy and will allow you to return items even long after purchase. Some other stores do as well. Or they do offer extended return periods, if you previously signed up for their loyalty cards. Also, various credit cards have extended warranty programs. Or you could of course buy an extended warranty, but that's frequently of dubious financial advantage. So, yes, repair or replacement after 6 months, a year, or even longer is not unusual. But you do need to check on this up front and plan for it.

In my experience, IKEA is actually one of the stores that is most difficult to deal with. You must have the actual receipt, whereas almost everybody else can look up transactions by credit card number even years later. Also, I find that they often only want to give store credit, whereas almost every other retailer will happily refund to your original form of payment. I wouldn't suggest buying at IKEA, if customer service is important to you.

Coming back to the original question. Bullet blenders are much smaller than countertop models. This has pros and cons. The obvious con is that you need to run the blender multiple times, if you regularly make smoothies for more than one person. It also means that the motor is smaller and some ingredients might simply not blend well in these models. This can mean that ice simply won't work well in your smoothies, or it could mean that you might not want your blender for things like soups, grains, batter, or other non-smoothy recipes.

But the pro is that it probably does a much better job with small items (e.g. grinding spices, blending small quantities of salad dressings, ...). And it also means that you probably never really overload the blender during normal operations. So, even though it is small, it could easily live for a long time.

So, while I am glad I bought my Blendtec many years ago (incidentally, this was at Costco and at a great discount!), I suspect it would be way overengineered for a single-person household that only ever needs smoothies and that always used unproblematic soft ingredients.

I would just like to know peoples experiences with any of them. If you have one you've had for awhile that you really like and does a good job with frozen fruit or if you have had issues with one that I should not consider. I'm not looking for anything expensive. Like I said, I have a small cheap smoothie maker, that I've had for years, that probably cost about $20 and it does an ok job, but I'd like something that does better with frozen fruit and isn't much more or maybe less than $50.

@sleevendog (5a NY 6aNYC NL CA)Thank you for your reply. I check out each of the retailers you mentioned. Zappos and LLBean do not sell small appliances so they are irrelevant to the discussion (though Zappos allows returns of unworn shoes within 365 days). Costco states, "We guarantee your satisfaction on every product we sell, and will refund your purchase price..." though no time period is specified. Bed Bath and Beyond will accept returns of "electrics" within 90 days.

I'm still wondering about "Ask at the service desk, 'What if this breaks in 6 months?. Or one year.'" for small appliances. What have the replies of the service desk to these questions been?

wdccruise ,

----- I'm still wondering about "Ask at the service desk, 'What if this breaks in 6 months?. Or one year.'" for small appliances. What have the replies of the service desk to these questions been?

Wouldn't it be more interesting if you ask those stores' service desk yourself?

dcarch

I am not worried about if it breaks, what will the store do. I hope I get one that lasts for years, but even if it does break, I won't be spending a lot on it, so I'm not worried about that. You are making it sound like no matter what I get, it will break. Yes, any brand could have a lemon, but I'm not concerned with the one out of how many that happens to be a "lemon", if overall it is known to be a really good blender. I'm also not looking to spend a lot, so what to do if it happens to break in a short time is not my concern. I would assume there are people here that own a personal blender, so I would like to hear from those that do and have had one for awhile, maybe even for years, that really like what they have.

Costco's return policy is legendary. People have returned half-eaten pizzas and dried out Christmas trees (in the new year!). I have personally seen somebody trying to return a 30 year old VCR. The Costco sales person was pretty sure that Costco never even carried this brand, but they still tried extremely hard to issue a refund. The only thing that stopped them from doing so was that they couldn't figure out how much the VCR happened to have cost when it was originally purchased.

They have since changed their policy and electronics have a limited return period. This is mostly a response to electronics being so extremely short-lived that every half year a new model appears on the market. Other product categories don't suffer from the same problem and still have unlimited return periods. Also, if this is an older piece of electronics that was bought before the policy change, Costco will generally honor their former policy.

Home Depot is similarly generous. I have heard this chain referred to as the "power tool lending library".

I don't like that a small number of consumer abuse these policies. But companies have discovered that a small amount of loss is acceptable, when it overall results in more customer satisfaction and more return business. And it works. Places like Costco have many happy regular customers who do most of their shopping there. In fact, even Amazon has partially adopted some of these tenets. They don't have the same overly generous return policy, but overall their customer service is pretty amazing. It's one of the reasons why I buy so much from them (and why I usually try to avoid buying from their third-party market place vendors).

kathy6421 , I can suggest the following:

1. You know if you buy a new car, in the owner's manual it tells you to go easy for the first 500 miles. You should do the same with most motorized appliances. Most of these appliances use what's known as "universal" motors. Those motors need time to "seat" the carbon brushes inside the motor, or they would last long.

2. You will have a hard time finding a small blender which can blend ice regularly without breaking down. You can consider getting an Italian ice maker. They are not expensive. Use that to shave the ice first than use the shaved ice for your smoothie.

dcarch

I will not be using ice very often, but would like it to be able to handle ice. I will use frozen fruit more than ice. I will also use it for green drinks(all soft ingredients). If my $20 smoothie maker can handle frozen fruit, only has a 200 watt motor and still works, there must be better ones out there with more power that will work well with frozen fruit and last.

My DH made smoothies every morning for years and years. He also went thru' many blenders. At a chef's recommendation, he bought a big Vita-mix. That blender is still making daily smoohties 15 years later. I gave it to my daughter and her family a couple of years ago; missed it; bought myself another, smaller one last year when they were on sale at Wm-Sonoma.

I haven't mentioned it until now because the cost is far above your $50 mark, but sometimes your get what you pay for. In our case, the big expense paid off in years of use.

Ice is really tricky. It's not only hard, but it also has an awkward bulky shape. I used to own a basic Osterizer blender that probably was in the price range that you mention. It worked fine. And in fact, it probably still works fine, if I can find the moving box that it has been in for the last couple of years. It could handle ice. But it never blended it evenly. There always were big grains or even chunks of ice left.N The shape of the jar and the blades just wasn't ideal. Now, my Blendtec has absolutely no trouble with making the most evenly smooth blended ice. But it also costs significantly more and is much bigger. It's a tank. I expect it to last a few decades.

So, make sure you adjust your expectations to match what you are asking for. A small personal-size blender is great for some tasks. But it has very obvious limitations. And at ~$50, manufacturers have to very carefully design around cheaper materials. It doesn't mean that a $250 blender is guaranteed to be better. But it certainly makes it much easier to build a sturdy product.

I suggest you read reviews on Amazon and pick the model that has the least-severe negative comments. Every product has negative reviews. In fact, if it doesn't then I doubt the accuracy of the reviews. But if the negative reviews only mention minor nuisances and if there is no strong pattern of everybody mentioning the same problem, then you are probably good to go. Try to buy with a credit card that extends your warranty.

For your convenience regarding Costco: We guarantee your satisfaction on every product we sell, and will refund your purchase price, with the following exceptions: Electronics: Costco will accept returns within 90 days (from the date the member received the merchandise) for Televisions, Tuner-Free Displays, Projectors, Major Appliances (refrigerators above 10 cu. ft., freezers, ranges, cooktops, over-the-range microwaves, dishwashers, washers and dryers), Computers, Touchscreen Tablets, Smart Watches, Cameras, Aerial Cameras (drones), Camcorders, MP3 players and Cellular Phones (return details will vary by carrier service contract).

Thus, they will accept returns on small appliances, though check at time of sale. People have said that they like a particular product, such as a toaster oven or blender, that isn't built for durability but otherwise perfect. So they just return to Costco when it quits and get a new one. Have done so half a dozen times....

Does anyone even own a small personal blender? If I just want to make a smoothie or green drink for myself, it's far easier to use the small blender instead of getting out the big blender. I just want something that works a bit better with frozen fruit than my $20 smoothie maker and is known to be a good blender that hopefully will last for awhile.

Anyone own a small personal blender?

I'm confused as others. It was answered above multiple times. Are you 14yrs old or 70? (it dose matter BTW). And not a joke or making fun.

An entire work department I posted uses the bullet...bragu uses the bullet.

Why disregard personal use. it is right above in the postings.

50$ price point will never guarantee years of happy blending.

I have Bledtec commercial. I expect a lifetime of extreme grinding. you cannot afford that. But purchasing from a local store you can try the bullet and return if it does not perform like you want.