Product Description
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #936 in Kitchen & Housewares
- Size: Blender
- Color: Stainless Steel
- Brand: Breville
- Model: BBL605XL
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 17.00" h x6.50" w x8.00" l,11.00 pounds
Features
- Permanent hemisphere bowl and blade system with central blades that draw down what's on top and wide sweeping blades hug the bottom of the jug
- Electronic 5 speed control plus pulse featurel ensure that the rpm speed is maintained for consistent results every time
- Made from bpa-free, lightweight, superior clarity and shatter resistant eastman tritan copolyester
- LCD timer counts up on speed settings and down for pre-programmed settings for complete control when blending
- Illuminated buttons for clarity and ease of reading
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
344 of 350 people found the following review helpful.
By John H. Meyer
I grew up in the 1950s and remember when we got the very first "Osterizer." It was all chrome, heavy, with a small glass jar (no handle), and had two speeds.
Since then, I've owned several blenders, including an Oster avocado-green plastic base model (ah, remember the 1970s?), a KitchenAid, and most recently a Cuisinart "Vari-Speed." All of these work, to one degree or another, but they all suffer from one or more of the following problems:
* Extremely noisy
* Hard to clean
* Ingredients don't get to the bottom, so you have to stop and push them down with a stick
* Insufficient blending, even after a long time on high speed
* Insecure lid that lets ingredients burst out when the jar if full
This Breville BBL605XL has none of these problems. It is a remarkably good product. I've owned it for over a month.
Let me tell you about it.
Noise
I have a Radio Shack sound meter. I filled my old blender (the Cuisinart) and the Breville with equal amounts of water and turned them on to their lowest speeds and, with the meter exactly one foot away, measured the sound. I then repeated the test at the highest speeds.
_____________Breville_____Cuisinart
Low___________71dB_________84dB
High___________83dB_________89dB
The dB scale is logarithmic. What this means is that something that is 3dB louder is actually twice as loud, and something that is 10dB louder is ten times as loud. The numbers don't entirely do justice to the amazing difference in sound level because the Breville has a much lower frequency sound (more bass) and therefore is less annoying, even if it were as loud. The fact that it is less than 10% as loud as my old blender is pretty amazing.
Cleaning
Every other blender I've had has a base on the jar that unscrews. You then need to clean the base, the blender blade assembly, and the rubber washer. You then must clean the jar, the lid, and the removable insert on the lid. By contrast, the Breville has the entire blending mechanism semi-permanently attached to the jar (it can be removed with screws, if needed). At first I thought this was a really bad idea because I thought I couldn't get under the blades to clean them. However, because of the wide, sloped design of the bottom of the jar, it is extremely easy to just push the wash cloth to the bottom of the jar, give it one turn, and everything comes clean. The lid is round and therefore wipes clean quickly. By contrast, my old Oster and Cuisinart blenders had square lids, and those four corners were always tough to clean, and there were all sorts of nooks an crannies. The Breville lid has no nooks. The only negative on the Breville lid is that the ridges on the edge of the lid, which provide an incredibly secure seal, do trap food. You need a brush if you really need to get stuff out of these grooves. However, they are quite wide apart, so any common brush easily reaches into the grooves.
It takes me less than half the time to clean this blender compared to how long it took me to clean my previous blenders.
Jar
This isn't listed above, but I should mention that the jar is plastic. Every other blender I have owned had a glass jar, and I always preferred this because plastic often discolors or picks up odors. However, this plastic is some form of polycarbonate, and has so far shown no signs of discoloration and has picked up no odor. I actually now prefer this to glass.
Blending Efficiency
This gets to the heart of what any blender is all about. Every blender I've owned will not pull large lumps of stuff down into the blades, or will pull some lumps, but then when the mixture starts to thicken (especially with smoothies), everything at the bottom just spins around, while all the other stuff just sits at the top of the jar going nowhere. (You know what I'm talking about, don't you?)
Not with this unit. I am truly amazed at how well this design pulls ingredients to the bottom. In addition, there is a "smoothie" button that cycles between a constant blending speed and a series of pulses. I've used this both with smoothies and with various ice mixtures, and have not had one single lump of un-blended ingredient remaining. Very nice.
Lid
The lid does not let ingredients leak out. I mentioned that I owned a KitcheAid (a long time ago). I returned that after one use because as soon as the ingredients hit the lid, they spilled out onto the counter. My old Oster blenders were a little better, but the lid on those were really designed merely to slow down the leakage, not to stop it. As everyone who has used a blender knows, when you hit the "high" speed button, the ingredients forcefully shoot up towards the lid and on some blenders can actually pop the lid off. Not with this unit. In fact, the lid fits so securely that Breville provides a "finger pull" loop to help you remove the lid. Don't get me wrong, it isn't that hard to get off, but it is definitely in there very securely.
Do I have any negatives about this blender? Actually, no. This is one of those rare purchases where everything is great, and nothing is bad.
427 of 437 people found the following review helpful.
By PT Cruiser
The things I like best about this blender are its wide bottom hugging blade design and the wide based BPA-free jar that makes easier to get blended concoctions out of the container. The unique blade system means that you won't have to stop the blender and resituate the ingredients often if at all like with a lot of other blenders. I make green smoothies with about a half pound of fresh spinach, a cup of water, a few ice cubes, frozen berries, a few leaves of kale, a couple cups of cabbage, a peeled banana and lemon and flax seed. Before getting this blender, the only one that could handle this type of smoothie is the Vitamix 4500. But with the Vitamix I had to use the tamper several times or turn it off and rearrange the ingredients that were stuck down at the bottom to get it to start blending again. With the Breville, I don't have to use a tamper and don't have to resituate the ingredients because they don't have a tendency to get stuck.
This blender has a smart, sturdy looking design that looks good on my kitchen counter. It feels substantial and you can tell that a lot of thought went into the design. It is a 750-Watt blender with LCD timer. It has a 48 oz. BPA-free jug. There are 5 speed buttons: Snow, Mix, Blend, Liquefy, and Puree, plus Pulse, Ice Crush and Smoothie buttons. The Ice Crush and Smoothie buttons are minute long pre-programmed blender settings which include a variety of speeds to optimize the process of crushing ice or making smoothies. The first time I used this blender I just used the #5 or Purify button and it did a good job of making all the fruits and veggies into a smooth icy drink. In subsequent trials, I used the Smoothie button and found it to work well, but I used the Purify button afterwards to make my drinks really smooth being that I use so much spinach and other leafy greens.
The instructions advise that when blending a heavy load, to run the blender in 10 second increments to keep it from overheating. I thought that "heavy" meant ingredients like those in my smoothie, but a call to customer service indicated that those ingredients weren't "heavy" and by heavy they meant something like cake mixes or peanuts that you're making into peanut butter. They also told me that the machine would show a warning and turn off if it was really overheated. I have not been able to produce that warning with anything I've tried so far.
This blender is relatively quiet when making blended drinks or blending soft foods. It can be really noise when using ice or harder foods. I would say it comes pretty close to the noise level of my Vitamix on ice or hard foods but much quieter on soft ingredients. This is expected. It will crush a cup or two of ice into snow and make great slushies or snow cones. When I tried to put several cups of ice into the machine at a time it left some chunks of ice in the bowl. The instructions say not to put hot foods into the blender but warm foods are OK. The blender will run in 60 second increments and then stop as a safety feature and to restrict wear on the motor. I didn't find this to be a problem; I just started it again a minute or so after it stopped. I rather like this feature because I'm usually multitasking when it comes to meal preparation and there have been times when I forgot about the Vitamix and left it going much longer than necessary when I left the room to get something.
I'm impressed with this blender and am giving it 5 stars because I think at this price point it is a good deal. It is much better than your average inexpensive blender and can do many of the jobs of the super-premium high priced ones. It does some things, like keeping the ingredients moving without getting stuck in the bottom of the container better. It comes with a 1 year warranty.
218 of 226 people found the following review helpful.
By W. L. Holder
Ok, Im not a blender snob, but I use my blender daily. Dont know what Id do without it. I have had some good ones, couple great ones, and a lot of junk ones. This one fits in with the greats (so far).
I have been using a Waring blender until this arrived. Now that is awaiting a new home with the first friend who wants to take it. This blender is great. The pitcher is large, a nice change as most 'good' blenders have figured out it is easier to make it work well with a smaller pitcher, so they all come with smaller pitchers now. This one is BIG. The blade design allows for a big pitcher with a wide base, and still blends properly and keeps ingredients from clumping around the bottom. The blade has an extra set that "sweep" around the bottom of the pitcher and keep ingredients from hiding there, forcing them back up into the other blades to be crushed with the rest.
I usually start my day with a fruit smoothie. We put fruit and basic ingredients into freezer bags and store them in the freezer. That way you just dump the bag in the blender, add some juice, and blend. A minute later Im out the door with my breakfast in hand. Many blenders have a hard time with frozen fruits, basically making a frosty mess that sticks inside the blender. This one powers right on through.
The unit itself is heavy and sturdy. No wobble. Doesnt feel like it may tip over if you dont hold your hand on the top while blending. The lid is VERY secure, even the cap in the lid to add ingredients is a snug fit.
BEST OF ALL... the base even has a keeper to wrap the cord and keeps it secure and out of the way. No more blender cords everywhere, tangling under the cabinets, or excess coiled on the counter. Just uncoil what you want, the rest stays hidden. Entier cord coils nices when stored too! Its the little things that make a good product great.
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