Breville Ikon Diecast Blender (Refurbished)

This blender works great. It turns ice into slush with ease. It has a good "quality" feel. The glass jar and base are both quite heavy. There is a digital timer that shows you how long you have been blending. The blender will shut off automatically when the timer reaches 60 seconds. When you select one of the blend functions the timer counts down. The lid has a removable center part through which you can add ingredients while blending. Unfortunately, that removable center part fits loosely and does not lock tightly into place. When I first got it, it did lock into place, but the plastic wore out in short order. Now the center piece can work itself free of its "locked" position then jiggles around while the blender is running. Its a shame that Breville used such a flimsy mechanism on an otherwise 5-star blender. The bottom of the jar can be removed for easy cleaning. To remove the bottom, flip the jar over and place it on a kitchen towel, grab the center part by the grips provided, and twist in a clockwise direction. Normally, to remove a lid on a food jar, or to remove the cap from a soda bottle, or to remove the cap on the radiator in your care we have been conditioned to turn counter-clockwise. We don't even have to think about it. The direction you need to turn in order to loosen or tighten the base is clearly labelled on the bottom so it was just a minor annoyance. Despite the clear labeling, my roommate, who admittedly is not that bright, had to ask me to show her the "trick". She had managed to tighten it so tight that I was worried that I was going to break the grips before I could unscrew it. Pros: 1. Excellent quality 2. Powerful 3. Glass jar 4. Comes apart for easy cleaning 5. Digital timer Cons: 1. The removable center part of the lid (the ingredients hole) wears out and does not lock into place 2. Removal of the base may be beyond the mental capacity of some roommates.

We looked at a bunch of blenders and did research online to finally decide on this blender. It had the best ratings as a casual-use blender. We really wanted a nice blender for smoothies and this one is ideal. There's a Smoothie button on it, which sounds silly, but it's really handy to dump the contents in, hit the smoothie button and walk away as it counts down the seconds and cycles through the different speeds on it's own.There are also 5 speeds that are really tough to mess up. And the counter counts up on these so if you have to blend something for 60 seconds, you don't have to have a separate timer (or just guess, which is what I would most likely do).I have to admit, I'm not the pickiest of blender users and probably don't use the blender to the extent most people would, so if you're a die-hard blender user, my review probably doesn't hold much weight. But, if you want a nice looking, efficient blender that is competitively priced and easy to use, this one is the one for sure!Oh, there's an Ice Crush button too. Haven't thoroughly tested it yet as we already have crushed ice, but from the one time I did use it, it was pretty slick.

I love my blender it's the best one I ever owned. It really works great with ice or food and it's not real noisy. And it's strong it's not weak I would offer it to any one.

This is a very cool blender. My husband likes to make smoothies so we usually use the "smoothie" button. With one-touch, the blender automatically purees and pulses alternately to make the perfect consistency. We were hesitant to buy a "refurbished" product but it looks like brand new and, so far, works like new as well. This is a very sturdy/heavy blender. We are very pleased.