Breville VBL096 Blend-Active Personal Blender Family Pack - White/Green

Brought one after I had been used my girlfriends for ages. A very very easy fruit blender to use.This set has the luxury of 2 different sized bottles which is worth considering. If you fill up the larger, 600ml, bottle, you are likely to be full afterwards. The smaller, 300ml, bottle, is a lot more manageable as a quick snack / after breakfast. (The 600ml bottle will take 1 banana, 1 apple, 4 strawberries, 2 tbs yoghurt, small handful of spinach and 50ml of water).Cleaning the bottles and metal slicer is super easy as long as you don't let the fruit dry to the inside of the bottle, in which case you will need to let the fruit soften in warm water for a little.The blending power is sound. 300W is more than other on the market, however i haven't found any issues it with being not powerful enough. Sometimes it is worth loading up the bottle with fruit and veg slowly to ensure a nice clean blend. There is only one on/off button, meaning you don't much much control as to how smooth, or not, you want your smoothie blended. For me, this isn't an issue and has always worked well.Biggest Win: Super quick and easy to blend hard and soft fruit.To improve: When blending a full bottle, the fruit at the top can get stuck and take a while to blend. A wider bottle would prevent this, hence understandable why others on the market are like this.

As always, Amazon delivered as promised and I was prompt to unravel this little beauty.For so long I was torn between an expensive slow juicer, a cheap slow juicer and the Philips fast type juicers.I held out for so at least 1 year on this investment, I don't know why but I was just never keen on forking out for big equipment I was unsure I would use.I also do not believe all the hype with juicing, firstly, juicing is expensive despite the cheap costs of vegetables and fruits as you are required to buy a lot more than usual.Secondly, I just have this inkling that quite possibly nature intended for us to eat the entire fruit. I think all the hype surrounding slow juicers is a bit too much, there is officially no evidence to support the notion that juicing is healthier for you, yes it is a fantastic way to consume vitamins and nutrients but this alone does not suggest that drinking just the juice is actually better than eating the entire apple.Up until now, the slow juicing industry has been dominated by a few expensive companies who generally sell there designs to OEM companies. In the last year or so we have seen an evolution of budget juicers come to the market like the Greenis and even the super cheap Vonshef.Having worked in the past with manufacturers from China, I can tell you first hand that the mark up on the materials used to make these slow juicers, is truly outstanding and they have literally been squeezing everyone's wallets and purses.I am not saying slow juicers are bad, but will they work for you?Slow juicers, fast juicers and everything in between all require some cleaning, yes some will be easier than others and some more difficult, but with our hectic daily lives this is just another chore to work on.The first thing I have experienced in the simplicity of the Breville blender, there seems to be minimal working parts and it is really simple to use, even my 2 year old nephew was helping me make some smoothies!After making your blend, only one part requires a quick wash which is the blending part itself. This already has me sold.I just done a variation of blends including frozen berries, nuts, oats, fruits and leafy greens.It has handled it perfectly, the motor is strong enough to the job and every now and then especially with the greens and frozen fruits, it require a little shake to get things flowing again but it does a great job all in all.I see myself using this everyday, not something that could be said about juicers.I also prefer the fact I get to eat all of the fruit including the nutrient rich skin of fruits.The bottles are made of extremely strong material which Breville claim to be shatter proof, crack proof and highly durable, they feel high quality as well.It definitely feels well made and I would highly recommend this to everyone here. This is so versatile and I truly believe most people would use this more than a juicer.Sorry to rant on, I just thought I would share my thoughts and do a quick mental comparison over juicers.For the less than £30 I paid, its fantastic!

I am very wary of the "sandwich toaster"-type of kitchen product - the thing everyone has but never uses. But I am happy to say that we took to using this blender like ducks to water, and have not given up on it.I make fruit smoothies with it, so it generally has to chomp through bananas, strawberries, raspberries, mango, blueberries, grapes, some yoghurt - and 3-4 ice cubes. I load the ingredients so that the ice cubes go in last and get chopped at once. Over about a month of daily usage, the blades have held up well, although I have noticed that their position has shifted slightly (there are 2 blades forming a + shape, well it's now more of an x shape - but it doesn't look like they'll move any further). I don't use nuts and seeds in my smoothies, so can't comment on how well those get chopped. I give it a few initial blasts which pulses the ingredients, and then keep going for about 10 seconds - you can hear and feel the change in tone when it's done chopping all the large bits and achieved a smooth stage.I have also used it to make chipotle paste (highly recommended recipe! - http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/slow_cooker_chipotle_23720) - where it has to chop up roasted tomatoes and raw onions and garlic - again, worked perfectly. Using the smaller bottle is better in this case because the paste sort of separates into two layers in the larger bottle, and the top layer doesn't get drawn into the vortex. So technically you could liquidize soup with it, but I would personally just get a hand-held blender and do it in the saucepan itself. My girlfriend's parents have gone down the route of making vegetable smoothies, yuk, and report that it has chopped those well too, although raw carrots will always remain in little bits and broccoli disintegrates into the little florettes which don't get pulverised further. Each to their own...It really is best to get this model, with 3 bottles. I make a full large bottle and then share it out into the smaller ones for myself and my girlfriend. Also, if you forget to wash one bottle, you always have another knocking around. The large bottle is a bit of a pain to clean - you can't just soak them, you have to rub off the remnants. For this you need either a bottle brush, or you can ram a sponge into the bottle and twist it around using a fork, as I do.What's great about this blender - besides its very affordable price (we got two extra as Christmas presents) is that it's so easy, quick and satisfying to use - and doesn't take up much space in the kitchen at all. This is why it's been really easy to adopt into my daily life and stick with it. I would recommend it to anyone as a way to ensure you get your dose of fruit.