1. Posted: Nov 1 2007

   The Mega Mix was impossible to find in retail stores and it is the most powerful for heavy fruit smoothies and such. I wish it had a retractable cord to take up less counter space; also the base feet are never quite level causing it to teeter a litte. Despite those things, if you want the best blender for power and one you'll probably never throw out, this is it.

2. Posted: Sep 21 2007

   I have had this blender around 3 years. My wife and I use it primarily for soups, smoothies, and crushing ice. It is used at least once per week and we consider it a necessary part of the kitchen. It was my 4th blender and the first one I was happy with. The first three broke down during crushing ice. I had seen several smoothie shops were using this model or the very similar Waring "Margarita Madness?" model, which was available before they released this model to the home market. It is everything you would expect in a commercial/home crossover model. This device is LOUD. You can not carry on a conversation when blending, however, it is fast. It will produce an ice based smoothie that is smooth with no ice chunks quickly, which is where most blenders fail. It is robustly constructed with a SS housing. Several people have added reviews complaining about the container being plastic, too fragile, or poor quality. It should be plastic or metal and not glass. Commercial blenders almost never use glass because it is too heavy and fragile. I do not miss glass at all. It is not a cheap plastic. It looks like a heavy polycarbonate and it holds up well to abuse including dropping and banging it into things. The replacement is $50 so it is a little pricey. After about 2 years the first container started to leak around the seal in the base and I replaced it. Previously my wife washed it in the dishwasher but now we just put some water in the container and a drop of dishwashing liquid and "blend" for 30 seconds until clean, and then rinse it out. Because of the shape of the container, it blends liquids very well but if the liquid to ice ratio falls too low it has a tendency to stop blending and the blades just spin in the bottom. This is a problem with blenders in general but I find it is slightly aggravated by the design here. Starting with the liquids and adding ice from the top until the desired consistency is reached usually works around this issue. If you routinely have tasks that require a blender then you want to use one that does the job. Way too many blenders are wedding presents that sit on a shelf so I do not think performance is always much of an issue. I would recommend this blender. Waring now makes a 3Hp model also which is probably effective and I like the VitaMix device also. Those are both significantly more expensive than this model.

3. Posted: Sep 11 2007

   I got this blender to crush ice, and it does that easily. It is good looking and very high powered, but it is also very noisy, and unpleasant to use. When I turn it on, the lights dim, and even with only water in the carafe it is extremely loud. The motor also emits an unpleasant odor with even the lightest use. Overall the blender is sturdy and powerful, it's just no fun to use. I don't feel comfortable using it in the morning for fear of waking up everyone in the building. I like the plastic carafe, since it seems pretty indestructible, I've dropped it on the ground and into the porcelain sink with no visible damage to it.

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