I make frozen fruit smoothies every day and I needed a blender that could handle that sort of heavy duty use. I bought one of these at Costco after seriously considering both the Blendtec and The VitaMix machines. I am so glad I bought this one. It has proven to be a great blender. Every morning I toss in frozen strawberries, bananas, pineapple, blueberries, oranges, and other types of fruit. To that I add protein powder and milk, secure the top and use the automatic (this lovely machine shuts itself off) setting to make a pitcher of really great, icey cold, somewhat frozen smoothies. Some days the mixture is so thick that we have to eat the it with spoons! Once in awhile I have to stop the blender and stir the contents because a piece of frozen fruit gets stuck. But that is a rare occurrence (the reversing blades are great at keeping things moving and blending).
So why do I give this blender 4 stars instead of five? It is noisy. In my opinion it is very noisy. I can and do live with the noise because it performs so well. Well enough in fact that, I purchased a second one in case Oster decides to stop making this model. Oster BVCB07-Z 6-Cup Glass Jar 7-Speed Blender, Stainless Steel
I have had this blender for almost 3 years now.
In that time I have made numerous shakes, smoothies
and mixed drinks. The blades to date still do the
jobs I intended them for. I haven't ever had
any problems with the motor or the blades stopping
mid blend. The noise is really loud but after
so many uses I've tuned it out. It is easy to clean
and doesn't look cheap or feel cheap. I don't use
the food chop button as I either chop etc.. myself
or I use my food processor. I didn't buy it for that.
I'm very happy with this purchase then and now.
This blender is exactly what I was looking for. A powerful machine that doesn't cost a fortune. I like to make smoothies for myself and children to have a healthy and yummy snack. This is perfect. We also like to eat "snow", shaved ice, and this machine does the trick. Though at first I thought it wasn't working properly the trick is not to over fill it with the ice. A few pieces at a time are all it can handle. But other than that it works great.
Let me preface this by saying that I tend to destroy blenders. I'm totally jinxed, or maybe they are just such a crummy quality. I have had plastic blender jars literally explode when I put frozen fruit in them and turned them on; I have had blender after blender get stripped where it connects to the machine so that the blade can no longer turn, and have blenders that the motor fizzled and died on . Am I hard on my machines? You bet! I have four kids and make LOTS of smoothies and shakes. I grind my own oat flour as we don't eat wheat, and as a cancer survivor, I blend greens into a shake. All in my Oster. Daily.
I have had my Oster for about almost a year and half and it's still going strong. The metal fittings help reduce the chance of it "stripping" so the blade can't turn. I do EVERYTHING with this blender. I know the raves about Vitamix, etc., and I do own a very expensive high end juicer, which I don't use simply because I hate to clean it. But I can and DO juice in my oster. Yes, you end up with the pulp, but it still does a fabulous job of totally annihilating even raw carrots, kale, sprouts, etc, to the point of where you can drink them. Cleaning is a snap.
If it died tomorrow (I hope not, but a year and a half is pretty good for me and blenders!) I think I would definitely replace it with the same model. I will preface that by saying that I have tried the lesser Oster models and they died. I think this one has the power that a blender is "supposed" to have with a six pronged blade; different than the smaller model with only four points. (I had the "lesser" model and the motor died very quickly.)
The only issue I have had with this model is that the black screw on piece at the bottom cracked. I didn't bother replacing it even though I had a warranty, because I just used the other one I had from my previous Oster. Even though it was a different machine, the black piece is identical.
I bought this to make green smoothies - those addictive fruit and vegetable combinations (for those few of you who haven't heard about them yet). We have an Oster blender from the 1960s that still works great, but we were worried that aggressive daily blending might be too much for its 50 year old motor. We love our old blender's retro look and we are not ready to part with it, so we decided to buy a new blender. The Vitamix and Blendtec units are being pushed for green smoothies, but as we already have lots of food processors to do all that other work (second marriages, two full kitchens...) all we really wanted was a blender. We looked at other makes, but Oster consistently got great reviews, and as we had been so happy with our other Oster, choosing this brand was very easy. We chose this model because it was basic, and was a very good price on Amazon. I don't like pre programmed appliances, so I was a bit put off by the "Frozen Drink" and "Food Chop" buttons. Clearly this is aimed at the margarita-and-salsa crowd. Although it was my intention to ignore the pre programmed settings and just use the manual ones, the "frozen drink" setting turned out to be just great for smoothies. It reverses direction a couple of times which pulls all those fruits and vegetables into the blades. You still need to pack it sensibly so that the blades have something to grab and liquify at the beginning but the reversing feature means you don't have to be quite as concerned. Depending on the ingredients, it sometimes needs to blend a little longer than the frozen drink setting allows, so I use the high speed setting on manual for a few seconds. I have run the motor for a couple of minutes to see what it can do and whether the base unit became warm or started to smell like burning plastic - the signs of poor quality blenders. This has emitted neither heat nor smell as a warning that it was being used too hard. If you let it run on high for a minute or so it will completely pulverize everything, right down to the strawberry seeds. The "food chop" setting is not particularly useful because the shape of the blender jug does not allow enough movement for this to work properly. A food processor or mini-chop does a far better job. If all you want is a basic, reliable, powerful blender, this may be the unit for you. I'll admit that I was almost seduced by the Blendtec demo at Costco, but I know I would never use most of the features (grind flour? Make ice cream?), and all I really needed was a really good blender, which this is, at a fraction of the cost. This one feels very substantial, and has a glass jar.'
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