Best Vitamix Alternative Blender under $200 — 2023 Guide

Recent­ly, a mul­ti­tude of new, real­ly pow­er­ful blenders was intro­duced to the mar­ket. Most of them are made in Chi­na, and each claim per­forms sim­i­lar­ly to Vita­mix, but at a low­er under $200 price, which is half or less than the bud­get Vita­mix mod­el cost. So are there any wor­thy Vita­mix alter­na­tives among these newcomers?

To answer this ques­tion, we will assess a list of blenders against a few cri­te­ria, such as ver­sa­til­i­ty, qual­i­ty per­for­mance, and dura­bil­i­ty. These cri­te­ria have allowed Vita­mix to remain king of the high-end blenders for home use for many years.

Read More: Vita­mix Cer­ti­fied Refur­bished Blenders – Are They Worth Consider?

How the Ratings were Assigned

Ini­tial­ly, we select­ed 25 blenders with pow­er­ful motors with the abil­i­ty to per­form the mul­ti­ple func­tions typ­i­cal for high-end blenders like Vita­mix. These tasks include:

• Mak­ing green smoothies,
• Crush­ing and shav­ing ice,
• Mak­ing frozen desserts such as ice cream or frozen yogurts,
• Prepar­ing hot soups from the cold by heat­ing via friction,
• Pro­cess­ing nut butter
• Milling bak­ing qual­i­ty grain flour.

After eval­u­at­ing the can­di­date blenders against the ver­sa­til­i­ty, per­for­mance qual­i­ty, and dura­bil­i­ty cri­te­ria, we con­clud­ed that only three blenders real­ly could stand as ade­quate sub­sti­tutes for Vita­mix. How­ev­er, for com­par­i­son pur­pos­es in the best blender selec­tion list, we also includ­ed Kitchen Mega Kitchen Sys­tem, Nin­ja Blender Duo with Auto-IQ, and Bre­ville BBL605XL Hemi­sphere Con­trol Blender. Although these machines are not close in per­for­mance to com­mer­cial-type machines, they are so pop­u­lar that many con­sumers gen­uine­ly believe them to be the afford­able Vita­mix alter­na­tives Vitamix.

And we exclude from our list anoth­er few blenders such as Homgeek Pro­fes­sion­al Coun­ter­top Blender, Aicook Pro­fes­sion­al Smooth­ie Blender, Ele­chomes 1600W Coun­ter­top Blender, Bam­boo, HANMEIUS Mul­ti-Speed, Home­leader Pro­fes­sion­al Coun­ter­top, and Salton Harley Paster­nak Pow­er Blenders. Although these machines show very good per­for­mance and have pow­er­ful motors, they are cheap­ly made Vita­mix copy­cats out­sourced to Chi­na with SHORT or NO WARRANTIES that are not like­ly to last longer than one year. Nev­er­the­less, some of these machines may become the real high-end blender com­peti­tors if the man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies will improve their prod­uct con­struc­tion qual­i­ty and pro­vide the appro­pri­ate cus­tomer service.

Read our arti­cle “Best Vita­mix Knock­off blenders for under $100″ to find out more about these blenders.

Dis­clo­sure: As an Ama­zon Asso­ciate, we may earn an affil­i­ate com­mis­sion for pur­chas­es you make when using the links on this page.

#1 Cleanblend Blender

The Clean­blend comes with a very pow­er­ful 1800-watt motor and the appro­pri­ate com­mer­cial blender cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. This is a well-made machine with an all-met­al motor to blade cou­pling, blade shaft, and dri­ve socket.

Func­tion­al­i­ty: This gad­get is designed to per­form the fol­low­ing functions:

• It makes the per­fect­ly smooth smooth­ies pul­ver­iz­ing pret­ty well every­thing placed in the jar, no mat­ter whether it is a soft fruit or tougher ingre­di­ents like kale, gin­ger, or car­rots. It can even crush avo­ca­do pits;
• Blends well all types of berry seeds in a smooth­ie with­out residues;
• Crush­es and shaves ice and pro­duces excel­lent qual­i­ty frozen desserts, ice cream, and iced drinks;
• It makes per­fect nut milk;
• Chops veg­gies for sal­ads and coleslaw;
• Han­dles hot ingre­di­ents and will make hot soup with­in 8–10 min from blade fric­tion with­out the need to pre-cook;
• Homog­e­nizes nuts into very smooth and per­fect­ly con­sis­tent nut butter;
• Purees excel­lent qual­i­ty cooked and raw veg­eta­bles and meat; make hum­mus or pesto;
• Makes baby food;
• Mills any grains into bak­ing qual­i­ty flour and grinds herbs or cof­fee beans to the per­fect powder;
• Kneads dough.

How­ev­er, this machine is equipped with quite a high low­est speed and thus has some prob­lems chop­ping. But by using the pulse func­tion, the user can learn the tricks to per­form even this job. How­ev­er, this is the only Vita­mix decent copy­cat blender that will mix the dough.

Using, clean­ing: Clean­blend is easy to use. The user has to fill the jar with ingre­di­ents, pop it on the base, fix the lid to the pitch­er, and be ready to use it. The con­trol pan­el is also quite basic and equipped with a 10-vari­able speed dial knob and two switch­es – on/off and pulse.

Clean­blend set includes a tam­per that is a great help for pro­cess­ing thick mix­tures and remov­ing air pockets.

Clean­ing is also a very sim­ple task for his machine — add soap and water in the jar and run it for some time at high speed, repeat if need­ed. It is not rec­om­mend­ed to clean this gad­get in the dish­wash­er as it may dam­age the pitch­er or blade sys­tem. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, many cus­tomers do not read or sim­ply ignore the user man­u­al, which clear­ly states this, and thus they reduce the dura­bil­i­ty of their machine.

Con­tain­ers, blades: Clean­blend comes with a high-qual­i­ty Tri­tan copoly­ester resin 64 oz. con­tain­er, strong stain­less steel blades built into the con­tain­er, and an all-met­al blade assem­bly. The qual­i­ty of the jar mate­r­i­al and blades are the high­est. How­ev­er, the con­tain­er report­ed­ly has an issue with crack­ing at the bot­tom. This prob­lem seems to be due to a design fault with the retain­er nut, which holds the jar’s blade assembly.

War­ran­ty: Clean­blend has a 5‑year Lim­it­ed War­ran­ty and very help­ful and respon­sive cus­tomer ser­vice, which is always ready to resolve any issues and deliv­er the best ser­vice to its customers.

Sum­ma­ry: Clean­blend copied the best fea­tures from well-known pro­fes­sion­al blenders and deliv­ered the best per­for­mance among the decent Vita­mix copy­cats’ blenders. This is the only blender that per­forms all Vita­mix tasks with 90% qual­i­ty. How­ev­er, it still has a dura­bil­i­ty issue. Although the man­u­fac­tur­er claims a very low fail­ure rate, it seems quite high, but cus­tomer ser­vice will replace faulty units with­out any ques­tions asked.

Weak points – Crack­able pitch­er due to nut retain­er con­struc­tion flaw, rel­a­tive­ly high motor fail­ure com­pared to high-end blenders (but cus­tomer ser­vice will replace the faulty unit with­out any ques­tions asked), the low­est speed is not real­ly low (it is 10,000 RPMs as opposed to Vita­mix 1400rpms for the low­est speed).

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#2 Oster VERSA Pro Performance Blender

Oster Ver­sa (BLSTVB-RV0-000) Pro comes with a pow­er­ful 1400-watt motor with blade rota­tion of 28 RPMs at high speed. In addi­tion, it has an all-met­al dri­ve and blade cou­pling that makes all unit con­struc­tion reli­able and solid.

Func­tion­al­i­ty: Oster Ver­sa is pow­er­ful enough and equipped with a prop­er range of tru­ly low, medi­um, and high speeds, as well as a pulse func­tion, so it is designed for the fol­low­ing tasks:

• It makes an almost per­fect smooth­ie, even from a tough and fibrous ingredient;
• Crush­es and shaves ice with or with­out liq­uid and pre­pares good qual­i­ty frozen desserts;
• Process­es smooth con­sis­ten­cy nut butter;
• Blends nut milk;
• Heats soup from fric­tion with­in 5–6 mins man­u­al­ly or with pre-set Soup program;
• Chops, minces, and purees cooked and raw veg­eta­bles in prepar­ing good qual­i­ty sal­sas, sal­ad mix­es, hum­mus, and pesto;
• Grinds bak­ing qual­i­ty flour out of a vari­ety of grains and grinds herbs and cof­fee beans effi­cient­ly, but it can­not make the dough.

Using clean­ing: The Oster Ver­sa is very easy to oper­ate: Add ingre­di­ents to the jar, place it on the base unit, and choose the appro­pri­ate speed or pro­gram for run­ning. The blender con­trol pan­el is equipped with 8 vari­able speed knobs, 3 pre-set modes (Smooth­ie, Soup, Dip/Spread), and a pulse func­tion, so it offers flex­i­bil­i­ty to the user for prepar­ing a wide range of recipes. This machine also comes with a tam­per, which is an indis­pens­able tool for pro­cess­ing tough and thick blends.

The self-clean­ing pro­ce­dure is also sim­ple: add a few drops of dish deter­gent to the jar with water, run 45–60 sec­onds, rinse, and let it dry. It is not rec­om­mend­ed to wash the con­tain­er in the dish­wash­er, as it may cause dam­age to the blades and pitcher.

Con­tain­ers, blades: This gad­get comes with the blade per­ma­nent­ly built into the 64 oz pre­mi­um Tri­tan copoly­ester resin con­tain­er. The con­tain­er is made of the same mate­r­i­al as Vita­mix con­tain­ers but is a bit thin­ner and may devel­op cracks in some cas­es. The blades are made of stain­less steel, and the blade assem­bly is all met­al, well-con­struct­ed and durable.

War­ran­ty: The Oster Ver­sa 1400 comes with a good 7‑year Lim­it­ed War­ran­ty that ensures machine dura­bil­i­ty. It also has very good and help­ful cus­tomer ser­vice, which stands by its prod­uct. How­ev­er, a lim­it­ed war­ran­ty means that the user may be required to pay for some replace­ment parts and ship­ping costs.

Sum­ma­ry: Over­all, Oster Ver­sa 1400 Watts Blender is a very well-made machine with quite a low motor fail­ure rate and a sol­id sev­en-year war­ran­ty. It is a mul­ti-task­ing gad­get that pro­duces high-qual­i­ty blend­ing (around 75–85 % of Vita­mix qual­i­ty) and could be a fair sub­sti­tute for the high-end end type blender.

Weak points – A not very durable pitch­er that can crack, quick heat­ing of blend­ed ingre­di­ents, and some units come with a tam­per that is either too short or too long. It also can­not pul­ver­ize berry seeds as effi­cient­ly as Vitamix.

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#3 Dash Chef Series Digital Blender

Dash Chef Series Dig­i­tal has a hefty base unit with a pow­er­ful 1,400-watt motor, which rotates blades with 240MPH and 35,000 RPM speeds. It has a strong motor and an all-met­al dri­ve gear, dri­ve sock­et, and nut retain­er that con­nects the pitch­er with the blade assembly.

Func­tion­al­i­ty: This gad­get is built to per­form the fol­low­ing functions:

• Make almost per­fect­ly smooth smooth­ies, includ­ing green ones from fibrous and tough selec­tions like kale and ginger;
• Process quite well-frozen ingre­di­ents in smooth­ies and frozen desserts, or just crush ice up to the snow con­sis­ten­cy; Although the qual­i­ty of ice crush­ing is very good, it is not equal to Vita­mix, and the results some­times may con­tain lit­tle chunks;
• Blends excel­lent qual­i­ty nut milk;
• Able to heat soup via fric­tion the way oth­er com­mer­cial types blenders do; The soup pro­gram runs 8 min­utes and heats it to 170˚F;
• It makes per­fect­ly smooth nut butter;
• Purees well-cooked and raw ingredients;
• Chops and minced veg­eta­bles for sal­ad dress­ing, sal­sa, and others.
• Grinds herbs and cof­fee beans and mills decent grain flour, although the user man­u­al does not men­tion it.
• Not able to make dough.

Using clean­ing: The Dash comes with a very smart con­trol pan­el that includes 6 pre-set pro­grams (Puree, Soup, Smooth­ie, Crush, Frozen, and Rinse), pulse mode, 10 vari­able speeds, and a com­put­er-con­trolled device. The six pre-set func­tions and 10 vari­able speeds are cho­sen with the turn of a dial. Com­put­er-con­trolled but­tons in the cen­ter may be used to set timed oper­a­tion of var­i­ous speeds in addi­tion to dial­ing knob reg­u­la­tion. The timer also shows the time count­down and the speed.

Dash Blender has a lock­ing fea­ture to lock the jar to the unit base. The lid also secure­ly sits in place but is quite dif­fi­cult to remove. It also comes with a tam­per to help remove air pock­ets and process stub­born food.

Clean­ing this machine could not be any eas­i­er — rinse the blender from any left­overs, add soapy water, and run the Rinse mode; the cycle will clean the con­tain­er for the user. The man­u­fac­tur­er does not rec­om­mend wash­ing this machine in a dish­wash­er. How­ev­er, many cus­tomers ignore this man­u­fac­tur­er’s instruc­tions, and this may cause a lifes­pan reduc­tion of the gadget.

Con­tain­ers, blades: The Dash comes with a 64 oz. (2 l) con­tain­er made from Tri­tan copoly­ester mate­r­i­al, which is a pre­mi­um qual­i­ty poly­car­bon­ate. The Con­tain­er design close­ly copies the Vita­mix jar. It is about the same thick­ness, but the Vita­mix jar is a bit firmer and more sub­stan­tial, with a thick band at the pitcher’s top.

The Dash machine has a non-remov­able blade sys­tem, qual­i­ty stain­less steel blades, an all-met­al blade assem­bly, gear parts, and a retain­er nut. It is iden­ti­cal to the Clean­blend blender design and even has a design fault that caus­es the crack at the bot­tom of the jar.

Accord­ing to the box’s infor­ma­tion, Dash has only a 1‑year Lim­it­ed War­ran­ty on all parts and 7 years on the motor. But the man­u­fac­tur­er updat­ed the war­ran­ty recent­ly, and if you reg­is­ter your pur­chase online, it will upgrade the war­ran­ty for all parts to 2 years and the motor to life­time. In addi­tion, dash cus­tomer ser­vice is very help­ful and responsive.

Sum­ma­ry: The Dash Chef Blender is a good copy­cat of Vita­mix. This machine has a tall design and does not fit under the stan­dard kitchen cab­i­net. It can per­form the major­i­ty of com­mer­cial blenders’ tasks with around 80–90% of Vita­mix qual­i­ty, but like the oth­er Vita­mix alter­na­tives, it has some dura­bil­i­ty issues.

Weak points – It has a strong motor, but the faulty bear­ing and nut retain­er design often cause cracks at the bot­tom of the pitcher.

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#4 Ninja Mega Kitchen System

Although the Nin­ja Mega Kitchen Sys­tem comes with a pow­er­ful 1500-watt motor, its func­tion­al­i­ty is far from com­pa­ra­ble to high-end blenders. It is avail­able in 4 dif­fer­ent mod­els (BL770, BL771, BL772, and BL773CO), and each includes numer­ous attach­ments that allow this machine to per­form a vari­ety of func­tions. In con­trast, the high-end blenders per­form all func­tions using only the jar and the blade system.

Func­tion­al­i­ty 

Using mul­ti­ple attach­ments, this machine can per­form the fol­low­ing functions:

• Blend only soft ingre­di­ents into drink­able smooth­ies and not suit­able for mak­ing decent green smooth­ies; Only the sin­gle-serve attach­ment can make accept­able qual­i­ty drinks;
• Crush and shave ice well; It is the strong side of this machine;
• Able to pro­duce nut but­ter, although not the silki­est kind;
• Chops and minces veg­eta­bles quite well using the food proces­sor attachments;
• Mills or grinds only soft ingre­di­ents like oats;
• Kneads any type of dough, but only with the spe­cial attach­ment includ­ed in two of the four models.

This machine is not designed to:

• Decent nut milk can be made only with the sin­gle-serve attachment;
• Unable to heat soup with fric­tion or han­dle hot liquids;

Using, clean­ing 

The Nin­ja is not the eas­i­est blender to use.  It comes with a com­pli­cat­ed and sharp blade sys­tem that requires some effort to assem­ble and dis­as­sem­ble. The con­trol pan­el has only 3 speeds and a pulse func­tion, and this is obvi­ous­ly a lim­it­ed choice for a pro­fes­sion­al blender. In addi­tion, it comes with­out a tam­per, which is includ­ed with all high-end blenders, so it requires the user to stop often and scrape the walls of the pitch­er when pro­cess­ing thick ingredients.

The hand clean­ing pro­ce­dure is a very dan­ger­ous task. It has a very sharp and dan­ger­ous blade sys­tem that makes it dif­fi­cult to clean. Clean­ing all of the mul­ti­ple attach­ments is also a time-con­sum­ing task. But, all blender parts are machine wash­able, and clean­ing in the dish­wash­er should not be a problem.

Con­tain­ers, blades

It comes with 3 or 4 dif­fer­ent con­tain­ers depend­ing on the mod­el. This includes a  72 oz. main pitch­er, 16 oz. sin­gle-serve blender attach­ment, 64 oz. food proces­sor attach­ment and 24 oz. extra food proces­sor mini prep bowl. The con­tain­ers are not made of very good qual­i­ty poly­car­bon­ate, which cracks eas­i­ly when exposed to high loads.

The machine also comes with mul­ti­ple remov­able blade assem­blies for each attach­ment. The main pitch­er blade has an unusu­al and not very effi­cient blade design, and it also comes with a food proces­sor blade attach­ment and a dough hook. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, all blade assem­blies are con­struct­ed with too much plas­tic, and that makes them not durable.

War­ran­ty

Nin­ja comes with a very mod­est 1‑year lim­it­ed war­ran­ty com­pa­ra­ble to oth­er Vita­mix com­peti­tors on our list. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this machine also does not have very good cus­tomer service.

Nin­ja Blender Duo with Auto-iQ has a very sim­i­lar con­struc­tion design to the Nin­ja Mega Kitchen Sys­tem. It is equipped with a pow­er­ful 1500-watt motor, comes with a few attach­ments, includ­ing sin­gle-serve cups, and is avail­able in four pack­ages (BL642, BL642Z, BL682, and BL682Z).

Sum­ma­ry

Nin­ja Mega Kitchen Sys­tem can­not make the selec­tion of tasks that high-end blenders usu­al­ly per­form. The blend­ing qual­i­ty is also not the strongest side of this machine. This gad­get comes with many plas­tic parts, includ­ing the blade assem­blies and motor–blade cou­pling, which makes Nin­ja not the stur­di­est gad­get, and it obvi­ous­ly can­not com­pete with the very well-built, high-end blenders like Vita­mix. In addi­tion, the gad­get comes with mul­ti­ple attach­ments that require con­sid­er­able kitchen space to store.

Weak points – The per­for­mance qual­i­ty is too low com­pared to Vita­mix; Crack­able con­tain­ers, poor­ly designed blades, many attach­ments that need to be set up for per­form­ing dif­fer­ent tasks, very short life expectan­cy and war­ran­ty, big and bulky stor­ing the blender.

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#5 Ninja Blender Duo with Auto-IQ

Func­tion­al­i­ty: This machine has a pow­er­ful motor that does not add much to its func­tion­al­i­ty. It is designed in such a way that its ver­sa­til­i­ty is achieved with mul­ti­ple attach­ments. This machine can per­form the fol­low­ing tasks:

• Blends chunky smooth­ies with soft or hard ingre­di­ents; How­ev­er, the sin­gle-serve attach­ment can make decent drinks even from fibrous and tough food;
• Shaves ice into snow con­sis­ten­cy with­out any prob­lem, crush­es the ice with or with­out liq­uid, and makes frozen desserts;
• Able to make nut but­ter, but not the smooth consistency;
• Chops, slices, and purees fruit and veg­eta­bles with the spe­cial food proces­sor attachment;
• Mills and grinds only soft grains and herbs;
• Makes dough only with the attach­ment avail­able with the BL682 and BL682Z models.

This machine is not designed to per­form the following:

• Not able to process decent nut milk;
• It does not heat liq­uid via fric­tion and is not able to han­dle hot liq­uids. Thus it will not pro­duce hot soup like Vitamix;

Using clean­ing: This machine has an iden­ti­cal design to the Nin­ja Mega Kitchen sys­tem, so it is also quite com­pli­cat­ed to assem­ble for use and oper­ate. It requires the user to stop often and to mix the ingre­di­ents man­u­al­ly to cre­ate the prop­er vortex.

The machine has a slight­ly dif­fer­ent con­trol pan­el and comes with an extra pre-set pro­gram (two for the main pitch­er and two for the per­son­al blender attach­ment). These pre-set do not sig­nif­i­cant­ly expand the func­tion­al­i­ty of the machine. This is achieved more with the attach­ment than with the con­struc­tion or speed variety.

The machine is easy to clean using a dish­wash­er. But it is com­pli­cat­ed and even dan­ger­ous for those who will clean it by hand due to the unusu­al blade design.

Con­tain­ers, blades: Nin­ja Duo with Auto-iQ is iden­ti­cal to the Nin­ja Mega Kitchen blender in con­tain­ers and blade design. It comes with select­ing a few con­tain­ers (depend­ing on the pack­age) made from low-qual­i­ty plas­tic, which may devel­op cracks with­in a few months to one year of use. This machine also has a very unusu­al blade sys­tem, which proves to be effi­cient for blend­ing smooth­ies and is fair­ly good at food pro­cess­ing tasks. The only sin­gle-serve attach­ment has typ­i­cal to oth­er per­son­al blenders’ blade assem­bly and can pro­duce decent blend­ing. How­ev­er, the blade sys­tem includes many plas­tic parts, and these are not durable.

War­ran­ty: This machine comes with only a 1‑year Lim­it­ed War­ran­ty and has a bad rep­u­ta­tion for Cus­tomer Service.

Sum­ma­ry: Nin­ja Blender Duo with Auto-iQ can­not per­form tasks like Vita­mix and oth­er com­mer­cial-type blenders, even though it has a very pow­er­ful motor. How­ev­er, some faults in design make this pow­er use­less when it blends.

Weak points – low-qual­i­ty blend­ing, motor-to-blade cou­pling sys­tem is made from plas­tic parts, crack­able con­tain­ers, bad­ly designed blade assem­bly, and it does not include a tamper.

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#6 Breville BL620 Fresh & Furious Blender

Bre­ville BL620 Fresh & Furi­ous Blender comes with a rather mod­est 1100 watts motor pow­er motor. So, despite all of the rep­utable rec­om­men­da­tions and claims that it has the same func­tion­al­i­ty as Vita­mix, this machine is unable to per­form close to the Vita­mix and is much less pow­er­ful than the typ­i­cal, high-end com­mer­cial gadget.

Func­tion­al­i­ty

Here are the tasks this machine is designed to per­form, with var­i­ous degrees of success:

• It blends fair­ly good drinks from soft ingre­di­ents, but it can­not make smooth smooth­ies from tough ingre­di­ents and fibrous greens even after run­ning sev­er­al pre-set cycles. It also does not pul­ver­ize nuts, figs, and straw­ber­ry seeds in drinks;
• Process­es ice and frozen fruits but requires a lot of liq­uid to do this job;
• Shaves ice but may leave chunks, and the qual­i­ty of the ice and frozen ingre­di­ent pro­cess­ing is not com­pa­ra­ble to Vita­mix, despite the prais­es from Amer­i­ca’s Test Kitchen;
• Purees hard­ly cooked veg­eta­bles, but with a lot of effort;
• Makes excel­lent sauces, mari­nades, and dressings;
• It makes nut milk but leaves a lot of fiber unprocessed;

This machine is not designed for per­form­ing the fol­low­ing tasks, which are typ­i­cal for com­mer­cial-type blenders:

• Hard­ly can process nut but­ter, as the machine quick­ly gets over­heat­ed from a thick mixture;
• Not able to han­dle hot ingre­di­ents or heat liq­uid from friction
• Milling and grind­ing herbs and grains are not what this machine was designed for;
• Not able to knead the dough.

Bre­ville motor over­heats eas­i­ly if exposed to high loads. In addi­tion, accord­ing to the user man­u­al instruc­tions, this machine can­not run longer than 1 minute. Thus, it is sim­ply not designed for a heavy-duty job.

Using, clean­ing: Bre­ville has a per­ma­nent, non-remov­able blade that makes this blender very easy to use and sim­ple to set up for run­ning. It comes with 5 speeds and four pre-set pro­grams — AUTO CLEAN, GREEN SMOOTHIE, AUTO PULSE/ICE CRUSH. LCD timer shows the time left for pre-pro­grammed set­tings. How­ev­er, this machine does not include a tam­per, so the user must stop the machine dur­ing pro­cess­ing to push the ingre­di­ents down and help remove air pockets.

This machine is very easy to clean in a self-clean­ing pro­ce­dure, and it is all dish­wash­er safe.

Con­tain­ers, blades: Bre­ville blender comes with a 50 oz. Tri­tan copoly­ester jar is a pre­mi­um qual­i­ty poly­car­bon­ate with an inbuilt con­tain­er blade that is strong­ly made of stain­less steel. The jar, stain­less steel blade, and all-met­al motor blade cou­pling are well-made. How­ev­er, the dri­ve sock­et made of some type of hard­ened plas­tic or resin could eas­i­ly break easily.

War­ran­ty: The unit has a very mod­est 1‑year Lim­it­ed War­ran­ty, and the man­u­fac­tur­er will charge an extra fee for some replace­ment parts and ship­ping. If the cus­tomer decides to return the unit for a refund with­in 30 days, the man­u­fac­tur­er will charge a $40.00 return pro­cess­ing fee.

The cus­tomer ser­vice is hard to reach and not very friend­ly or helpful.

Sum­ma­ry: Over­all, Bre­ville BBL602 Fresh & Furi­ous Blender is not at all what it claims to be. It is a fair­ly expen­sive, under­per­form­ing gad­get for $200. It does not even come close to being able to show the func­tion­al­i­ty of high-end blenders and comes with a motor pow­er that is not near­ly enough to be called the com­peti­tor of Vitamix.

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Summary

The Clean­blend is the best high-end per­for­mance blender under $200. It has a strong motor, wide func­tion­al­i­ty (the only blender in our selec­tion that is able to knead dough), and bet­ter per­for­mance than Oster Ver­sa. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it had in the past dura­bil­i­ty issues and showed a high­er motor fail­ure rate than Oster Ver­sa. But the man­u­fac­tur­er made a lot of effort to resolve the prob­lem. Besides, the man­u­fac­tur­er deals bril­liant­ly with qual­i­ty issues and imme­di­ate­ly replaces the unit. This blender still has some reli­a­bil­i­ty issues; nev­er­the­less, it is the best that the mar­ket offers for this machine range. There is a great chance that Clean­blend is seri­ous about tak­ing a lead­ing mar­ket posi­tion and, in the future, will resolve all the issues con­cern­ing blender dura­bil­i­ty and will cor­rect the faults in the blender design.

The Oster Ver­sa 1400 watts is the sec­ond-best option in our list of bud­get alter­na­tives to com­mer­cial-type blenders like Vita­mix or Blendtec. It has a strong and pow­er­ful motor, per­forms all the func­tions high pow­er blenders can (exclud­ing dough knead­ing), and out­puts decent qual­i­ty blend­ing (around 75–85% of the Vita­mix per­for­mance). The Oster is a rep­utable man­u­fac­tur­er that has pro­duced blends for many years. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the qual­i­ty of this machine has kept decreas­ing in recent years. Unless the pro­duc­er looks close­ly at the prob­lem, it risks los­ing the reli­able blender man­u­fac­tur­er’s reputation.

Dash blender takes the third posi­tion since it equals the Oster Ver­sa in per­for­mance. Still, it has the same Clean­blend dura­bil­i­ty prob­lems. Over­all it is a fair­ly good choice, espe­cial­ly for peo­ple who are attract­ed to the blender’s unusu­al design and mul­ti­ple colors.

The Nin­ja Mega Kitchen Sys­tem and Nin­ja Blender Duo with Auto-iQ can­not com­pete with high-pow­er blenders like Vita­mix. They have a design con­cept sim­i­lar to a food proces­sor and achieve func­tion­al­i­ty only with mul­ti­ple attach­ments. More­over, these machines can­not per­form the tasks that are typ­i­cal of com­mer­cial-type blenders, like heat­ing liq­uids and milling bak­ing qual­i­ty flour from hard grains. Besides, they are poor­ly built with low-qual­i­ty com­po­nents and have quite a short life expectan­cy (on aver­age 1- 1.5 years).

Bre­ville BBL605XL Hemi­sphere Con­trol Blender was just sym­bol­i­cal­ly includ­ed on our list since many cus­tomers wrong­ly believe Bre­ville can com­pete with Vita­mix because it has great rec­om­men­da­tions from Con­sumer Reports, Cooks Illus­trat­ed, and Amer­i­ca’s Test Kitchen. In fact, it has very low motor pow­er and is suit­ed only for light-duty tasks, and even medi­um loads over­heat this machine. Bre­ville’s per­for­mance abil­i­ties are more com­pa­ra­ble with the under $100 blender, and it is absolute­ly over­priced for what it is priced.

Bot­tom line. Is there a tru­ly afford­able alter­na­tive to Vita­mix for under $200? Some blenders can per­form the same tasks with com­pa­ra­ble qual­i­ty, but all of them have dura­bil­i­ty issues. On aver­age, these alter­na­tives will have a 3–5 year ser­vice life. How­ev­er, if you want to pur­chase a blender that will last for years and you can stretch your bud­get a bit, you can often grab the Blendtec Design­er 625 Blender at a very good price. Alter­na­tive­ly, con­sid­er the Blendtec Fit, Vita­mix Explo­ri­an E320, or Blendtec Total Clas­sic Orig­i­nal blender, which are also often avail­able at a dis­count price.

For alter­na­tive options, read here our full reviews for the Blendtec Total Clas­sic Orig­i­nal and Vita­mix Explo­ri­an Blenders:

• Check the Best Blender for Smooth­ies and More arti­cle for more options.