Blendtec Total Classic Original Blender Review

Blendtec Total Clas­sic Orig­i­nal Blender Review: The Blendtec Total Clas­sic Orig­i­nal Blender was intro­duced to the mar­ket in late 2004 as the first Blendtec com­mer­cial pow­er blender for home use. It was based on the Blendtec com­mer­cial blender’s mod­el. It used the exact mech­a­nisms as the com­mer­cial machines and a sim­pli­fied inter­face to make it more user-friend­ly for the home envi­ron­ment. Nowa­days, it is the most basic mod­el of the pri­ma­ry Clas­sic Blendtec prod­uct lines.

This mod­el was dis­con­tin­ued a few years ago, and the Blendtec web­site now offers only cer­ti­fied refur­bished Total Clas­sic Orig­i­nal Blender machines. How­ev­er, the mod­el was so pop­u­lar among con­sumers that Blendtec start­ed to show the lim­it­ed edi­tion of the new Total Clas­sic Orig­i­nal blenders through some retail­ers such as Ama­zon and Costco.

Do you want to find out which Blendtec Blender suits you best? Then, go to our Vita­mix Blender Guide arti­cle and reviews.

• Which Blendtec Blender To Buy? – All Mod­els Guide 2021

Read our review here if you would like to know if this clas­sic machine is a worth­while addi­tion to your kitchen counter.

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

Functionality and Versatility

It is a tru­ly ver­sa­tile machine that will blend any fea­si­ble ingre­di­ents you may wish to process.

Smooth­ie: The Total Clas­sic Orig­i­nal blender makes out­stand­ing fruit, veg­etable, and green smooth­ies from fresh and frozen food, reduc­ing all even the most fibrous ingre­di­ents, such as car­rot, kale, cel­ery, and pineap­ple, to a flaw­less­ly uni­form con­sis­ten­cy. It rup­tures straw­ber­ry, blue­ber­ry rasp­ber­ry seeds, fruit skin, and stems into per­fect­ly blend­ed liq­uid and unlock­ing valu­able nutri­ents of poten­tial­ly indi­gestible ingredients.

Frozen ingredients/desserts: This machine turns to ice and/or frozen fruit into ice cream, sor­bet, and frozen yogurt using pre-set cycles of indi­vid­ual speeds. Per­fect­ly shaves ice to pre­pare snow cones or frozen drinks like mar­gar­i­tas, daiquiris, and moji­tos. It will pul­ver­ize ice cubes with no chunks of ice left at all.

Juice: The blender Whole Juice pre-set is designed to yield max­i­mum nutri­ents from whole fruits and veg­gies. It will not sep­a­rate the fiber from the juice, but the con­sis­ten­cy it out­puts is so vel­vety smooth that it will resem­ble the juice or so-called whole juice.

Soup/hot ingre­di­ents: This machine can han­dle hot ingre­di­ents for hot soup or bul­let­proof cof­fee. It will heat liq­uids via blade fric­tions. You can add cold and uncooked food into the con­tain­er, and in 6 min­utes or less, serve straight from the blender jar steam­ing and ready-to-eat home­made soup.

Chopping/food prep: The pulse func­tion per­fect­ly chops raw and cooked veg­gies for sal­ads, sal­sa, and dress­ings.  It is also equipped with the Sauces/Dips/Dressings/Batters cycle that could be used for these tasks. How­ev­er, if you want to make hum­mus, you will need some effort, such as stop­ping it a few times dur­ing pro­cess­ing and using a spat­u­la to scrape the food from the jar wall.

Puree­ing and baby food: Depend­ing on the ingre­di­ents and with the help of high speed and puls­ing, it will eas­i­ly make puree from any fresh and cooked food for the side dish purees or home­made baby food.

Nut milk: Pow­er­ful enough to pul­ver­ize any nuts and liq­uid into uni­form con­sis­ten­cy to make nut milk after strain­ing it through the nut bag.

Nut but­ter: Makes excel­lent nut but­ter out of wal­nuts, peanuts, cashews, almonds, pecans, and oth­ers. The Blendtec web­site has an exact algo­rithm of how to make it; how­ev­er, you shall expect some re-blend­ing and scrap­ing engagement.

Dough/batter: Eas­i­ly mix­es bat­ters for cook­ies, pan­cakes, waf­fles, muffins, and cakes. Also, it kneads thick piz­za and bread and dough.

Grinding/milling: Makes bak­ing qual­i­ty flour from wheat berries, bar­ley, rice, any bean, chick­peas, or even tiny teff grain. It also will per­fect­ly grind cof­fee or spices while you process no less than 1–2 cups of ingredients.

Control Panel, Speed Settings, and Programs

The Blendtec Total Clas­sic Orig­i­nal Blender con­trol pan­el is equipped with a con­trol touch­pad and LCD infor­ma­tion cen­ter dis­play. The blue illu­mi­nat­ed LCD just below the touch­pad indi­cates the rel­e­vant blend­ing infor­ma­tion such as the pre-set pro­gram or speed in use, count down/up timer, the total num­ber of cycles run, and blend­ing error infor­ma­tion (over­load and over-temp).

The touch-pad has nine press but­tons labeled with rel­e­vant pic­tures, which con­trol six pre-set pro­grams (Ice Cream/Frozen Yogurt, Ice Crush/ Milk­shakes, Soups/Syrups/Fondues, Sauces/Dips/Dressings/Batters, Whole Juice, and Smooth­ies), Pulse mode, and ten incre­men­tal man­u­al Speeds. The Blendtec Total blender was a redesign of the com­mer­cial machine for home use. Thus the main point is ready to run pre-set pro­grams that could be uti­lized by sim­ply press­ing one but­ton. How­ev­er, since the pre-set pro­grams are not a panacea, it is also equipped not only with 6 pre-sets but 10 incre­men­tal speeds and pulse must per­fect the tasks.

The low­est Blendtec speed, 1, is real­ly low, while the high­est speed, 10, runs 29,000 RPMs, that enough to heat liq­uids to boil­ing tem­per­a­ture with fric­tion. Each speed will stop auto­mat­i­cal­ly after 50 seconds.

Each pre-set pro­gram is designed to blend with mul­ti­ple speed that changes through­out a giv­en pro­gram cycle to out­put the best result. For exam­ple, the Ice Cream/Frozen Yogurt pro­gram runs 45 sec and changes speed 3 times, Ice Crush/ Milk­shakes — 35 sec and changes speed 3 times, Soups/Syrups/Fondues — 90 sec and changes speed 3 times, Sauces/Dips/Dressings/Batters — 23 sec and changes speed 5 times, Whole Juice ‑50 sec with 5 times speeds speed changes, and Smooth­ies — 40 sec and 4 times changes speeds.

Pulse mode runs while the user holds the but­ton and helps with per­form­ing chop­ping, minc­ing, whip­ping, remov­ing air pock­ets formed by stub­born ingre­di­ents, and oth­er momen­tary tasks.

The con­trol pan­el does not have Start/Stop but­tons, but you can stop run­ning any pre-set or speed cycle by press­ing any touch­pad button.

Using and Cleaning

Assembling/disassembling/operation: The Total Blender is straight­for­ward to use. You have to load the jar with food, set it on the top base, and run one of the pro­grams or speeds. How­ev­er, the Blendtec does not use the tam­per, and it is cru­cial to load your jar with ingre­di­ents in the cor­rect order to achieve the best result — liq­uids first, fol­lowed by soft items like apple or kale, and then hard dense food like iced and frozen ingredients.

Dis­play. When you turn ON the blender, the infor­ma­tion dis­play will show a “cycle count,” which means how many times you have used your blender (the fea­ture does not mean much to you, it is just a rudi­men­ta­ry attribute remain­ing from the com­mer­cial blender which was rel­e­vant for com­mer­cial war­ran­ty issues).

Pro­grams. Once you have filled the jar with food in the cor­rect order and pro­por­tions, press the but­ton for one of the six appro­pri­ate pro­grams (Ice Cream/Frozen Yogurt, Ice Crush/ Milk­shakes, Soups/Syrups/Fondues, Sauces/Dips/Dressings/Batters, Whole Juice, and Smooth­ies). The blender will start run­ning, and the LCD will show the pro­gram name you run and count down­time. The time infor­ma­tion may help you in the future to cre­ate your recipes or adjust exist­ing ones.

At the end of the pro­gram, the blender will stop auto­mat­i­cal­ly. If you want to stop before the end of the pro­gram, press any button.

Sup­pose you run the “Soup/Syrups/Fondues” pro­gram and wish to blend your soup to the boiled tem­per­a­ture con­di­tion. In that case, you may need to run the cycle 2–4 times, depend­ing on the ini­tial tem­per­a­ture of the ingre­di­ents, because the “Soup/Syrups/Fondues” cycle is designed for only 90 sec, and it takes up to 5–6 minute to heat from cold ingre­di­ents via frictions.

Speeds. If you need father adjust­ment for your recipe or just run your own, you can use ten incre­men­tal speed func­tions. Select desired speeds by sim­ply press­ing the “+/- “but­tons. The dis­play will indi­cate increasing/decreasing speed while you hold it pressed after you have grabbed the need­ed speed, release the but­ton, and the blender will start run­ning at the select­ed speed. The timer will begin count­ing upward. The machine will shut off after 50 sec­onds because each incre­men­tal speed cycle has been lim­it­ed by 50 sec­onds. To con­tin­ue your blend­ing, select the need­ed speed again for anoth­er 50-sec run­ning cycle. To stop the process before the 50 sec­onds, press any button.

Pulse. The Pulse func­tion is acti­vat­ed sim­ply by press­ing it, and the blender will run the pulse mode at a medi­um-high speed only while the but­ton is held down. Once you release it, the machine stops.

Clean­ing: The Blendtec is designed with blades per­ma­nent­ly inbuilt into con­tain­ers. So self-clean­ing is the most appro­pri­ate way to clean your blender after use. Just add a few drops of dish­wash­ing soap to the con­tain­er and press the pulse but­ton for 5–10 sec­onds. Then, rinse with clean water and dry with a cloth to pre­vent jar cloud build-ups. Some­times you may need to use a brush to remove some stub­born blend­ing left­over after nut but­ter and others.

Base Unit and Motor Power

The Blendtec Total Clas­sic Orig­i­nal Blender base is equipped with a pow­er­ful direct-dri­ve 13 amp, 120 Volts, and 1560 watt motor, which cou­ples direct­ly with the blade assem­bly via a durable dri­ve sock­et. The direct dri­ve sub­stan­tial­ly increas­es the effi­cien­cy of the oper­a­tion due to the absence of belts or clutch­es, reduces noise because it has few­er vibra­tions, pro­longs life­time because of few­er parts, and pro­vides high torque at low rpm.

The base unit hous­ing is con­struct­ed from a rigid poly­car­bon­ate mate­r­i­al and is proven to get any liq­uids inside the motor. The back of the base unit is equipped with the On/Off switch. The vent­ing sys­tem is locat­ed under the motor base. The base unit is also equipped with over­heat­ing and over­load­ing sys­tems that will shut off the sys­tem until the motor cools or removes or adjust ingre­di­ents that caused an over­load and pre­vents the motor from burn­ing and wear­ing early.

Containers

The Total Blender mod­el is avail­able with a squire shape 75-ounce (9.3 cups) Four­Side and 90-ounce Wild­Side+ con­tain­ers made from tough, light­weight, shat­ter­proof, impact, and tem­per­a­ture resis­tant (up to 212 F) East­man Tri­tan copoly­ester material.

The square con­tain­er design is a mat­ter of pro­duc­er pride. Blendtec has patent­ed it; it forces ingre­di­ents down into the blade, blends every­thing even­ly, and heats the com­bined ingre­di­ents slight­ly faster than a round­ed jar, which is excel­lent for soup and not suit­able for smooth­ies. In addi­tion, the square design jar is good for easy drink pour­ing from any of the three jar cor­ners because any of the point­ed cor­ners are sim­i­lar to the spout.

The con­tain­ers have mark­ings up to 32oz. And 36oz. Respec­tive­ly with handy mea­sure­ments (cups and ounces) along the side. The mark­ing line also indi­cates a top line because, accord­ing to a user man­u­al, the fin­ished prod­uct after blend­ing must stay at or below 32 oz. or 36 oz. They were mark­ing lines.

The Tri­tan copoly­ester jars are high-tem­per­a­ture resis­tant (up to 200F) and heat the liq­uid inside the jar via fric­tion up to 190F. How­ev­er, the boil­ing water should nev­er be poured into the con­tain­er, and the man­u­fac­tur­er advis­es fill­ing the jar with room-tem­per­a­ture liq­uids before blending.

The Four­Side and Wild­Side+ jars come with a flex­i­ble rub­ber lid with lit­tle lips, which allows snug­ly to fit the jar. The lid also has a clear plas­tic insert for vent­ing hot recipes or for adding extra ingre­di­ents dur­ing blending.

Tam­per: Blendtec blenders do not include any kind of tam­per in the set; the pro­duc­er insists that it is not nec­es­sary; how­ev­er, for the best result, you should load ingre­di­ents into the jar in the right order. It works per­fect­ly with the major­i­ty of recipes, but there is an occa­sion when it would be real­ly help­ful to have a tam­per when blend­ing thick recipes like nut but­ter and frozen desserts. Instead, you can use a spat­u­la when needed.

Small vs. large batch­es of food: The small­er size 75-ounce Four­Side Blendtec jar has a nar­row bot­tom con­tain­er, while the 90-ounce Wild­Side+ jar has a wide bot­tom. So The FourIs­de jar can han­dle small batch­es of food and tasks (1–2 cups min­i­mum and max­i­mum 32 oz.) and is ide­al for blend­ing bev­er­ages for 1–3 peo­ple. While the Wilde­Side+ jar will suit big­ger recipes, and the min­i­mum it can han­dle is 2 cups of ingre­di­ents, it bet­ter suits big­ger house­holds of 3 and more people.

Plas­tic vs. Glass con­tain­er: All jars that come with a pow­er­ful blender like Blendtec are usu­al­ly made of very strong plas­tic-like Tri­tan copoly­ester. Cus­tomers often won­der why such expen­sive blenders are not equipped with glass con­tain­ers. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it is not pos­si­ble sim­ply because the glass can­not with­stand torques gen­er­at­ed by com­mer­cial-type motors that typ­i­cal high-end blenders are equipped with.

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Blades

The Blendtec Total Clas­sic Orig­i­nal Blender comes with a blade assem­bly per­ma­nent­ly inbuilt into the jar and can­not be removed. But you will not need it because the ball bear­ings are designed to lubri­cate the shock-absorb­ing mount permanently.

The blunt 3‑inch and 2‑prong wing-tip blades are made from cold-forged, hard­ened, strong, and cor­ro­sion-resis­tant stain­less steel. The blades are safe to touch and han­dle. All-met­al blade shaft and dri­ve sock­et cou­pling make the blade assem­bly very strong and durable.

Certified Refurbished

The cer­ti­fied recon­di­tioned Blendtec Total Clas­sic Orig­i­nal Blender is avail­able from the man­u­fac­tur­er’s web­site and many oth­er retail­ers. It is sim­i­lar to the new mod­el and comes with a new jar, blades, and lid but has 3 years warranty.

The refur­bished mod­els also come with the Wild­Side+ con­tain­er instead of Four­Side avail­able for the new machines. The Wild­Side+ jar has a wide bot­tom, 4″ blade, and a capac­i­ty of 90 oz. (11.25 cups) with mark­ings up to 36 oz. (4.5 cups). It also has a slight­ly dif­fer­ent design for the con­tain­er and lid. The con­tain­er has a fifth side (two ver­ti­cal ridges in the jar’s inte­ri­or), and the lid has a dif­fer­ent shape for the lid com­pared to the Four­Side jar. Since the Wild­Side+ has a wider bot­tom and 4” blades is designed to process larg­er batch­es of food (3–4 cups min­i­mum) com­pared to the Four­Side jar(1–2 cups minimum).

Warranty and Customer Service

Blendtec Total Clas­sic Orig­i­nal Blender with Four­Side Jar (the new mod­el) comes with an 8‑year Lim­it­ed War­ran­ty. At the same time, Blendtec Total Clas­sic Orig­i­nal Blender — Wild­Side+ Jar (Cer­ti­fied Refur­bished) has only 3 years of Lim­it­ed warranty.

Despite the lim­it­ed war­ran­ty, it cov­ers all parts of the blender for the appro­pri­ate peri­od (8 years for new and 3 years for recon­di­tioned). How­ev­er, the war­ran­ty is not trans­ferrable and applies only to the orig­i­nal own­er and to prod­ucts sold by Blendtec or its autho­rized deal­ers (Ama­zon, for exam­ple). To reg­is­ter the blender war­ran­ty, you have to retain the proof of orig­i­nal pur­chase to fill out a form with the machine ser­i­al num­ber (on the bot­tom of the blender) and oth­er details.

Blendtec also offers a 30-day mon­ey-back guar­an­tee for a full refund, no ques­tions asked.

The lim­it­ed war­ran­ty means you must pay for return ship­ping if you send it for repair or return it with­in a 30-day mon­ey-back guar­an­tee offer.

Set Includes

• Motor base;
• Four Side jar for the new mod­el (and Wild­Side+ jar for the refur­bished model);
• Vent­ed latch­ing or grip­per lid;
• Recipe book with over 200 recipes(for new mod­el only);
• User Man­u­al;

The pack­age is shipped in an orig­i­nal box, and the recon­di­tioned mod­el is in a brown box.

Optional Accessories and Attachments

Blendtec offers a few dif­fer­ent sizes and task jars; all of them are com­pat­i­ble and inter­change­able between dif­fer­ent models.

The Twister jar (37 oz. with mea­sure­ments up to 16 oz.) comes with a spat­u­la that must be turned around dur­ing blend­ing. It is designed to blend stub­born ingre­di­ents for recipes like nut but­ter, hum­mus, dips, etc.

The Blendtec GO is a sin­gle-serve attach­ment and comes with a trav­el cup (34 oz.), a sin­gle-serve blade assem­bly, and a trav­el lid.

The Wild­Side+ jar could be pur­chased for the Blendtec Total Clas­sic Orig­i­nal Blender new mod­el for pro­cess­ing larg­er batch­es of food. It comes with a wide bot­tom and 4 inch­es blades.

The Four­Side jar has 3 nar­row bot­toms and 3 inch­es blades and could be a use­ful addi­tion to the refur­bished Total Clas­sic blender, which was orig­i­nal­ly packed with a larg­er Wild­Side+ jar.

Special Features

Col­ors: Blendtec Total Clas­sic Orig­i­nal Blender’s new and refur­bished mod­els are avail­able in black, red, and white col­ors. The black one is the cheap­est and thus the most popular.

Use in coun­tries out­side of USA/Canada: The USA or Cana­da machines come with 110–120 volt­ages. North and South Amer­i­ca region, Tai­wan, Japan, Sau­di Ara­bia, and oth­er coun­tries where this blender will oper­ate with­out any problem.

The best Blendtec Total Clas­sic Orig­i­nal Blender prices with 220–240 volt­age are avail­able via UK retailers.

Noise

Blendtec Total Clas­sic Orig­i­nal Blender is quite noisy and emits around 90 deci­bels depend­ing on kitchen acoustics and the ingre­di­ents you blend. How­ev­er, since the aver­age blend­ing cycle will not exceed 90 sec, most peo­ple tol­er­ate the noise it releas­es. You can place a rub­ber mat under the blend dur­ing pro­cess­ing to reduce the noise.

Dimensions

It has a rather mod­est foot­print for such a pow­er­ful blender, just 7” wide by 8” deep, and will not occu­py much space on your counter. How­ev­er, with pro­file 15,” it sure­ly fits under almost any kitchen cab­i­net so that you can keep it on your countertop.

The machine weighs only 7.28 lbs and usu­al­ly trav­els over the counter dur­ing blend­ing. It has 35 inches/3 feet cord that extends from the back of the blender.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Ver­sa­tile blender which excels at any of the mul­ti­ple tasks it per­forms — from hot soup to frozen dessert;
• Equipped with 10 speeds,6 pre-pro­grammed set­tings, and a pulse mode that allows per­form­ing a wide vari­ety of recipes;
• Inbuilt into can­is­ter blades makes the blender very easy to use and clean;
• Engen­dered and assem­bled in the US, ensur­ing the high qual­i­ty of the machine;
• No won­der it comes with 8 years war­ran­ty that cov­ers from top to bot­tom blender parts;
• One of the cheap­est high-end blenders on the market.

Cons:

• The blender is dis­con­tin­ued, and the man­u­fac­tur­er’s web­site sales only recon­di­tioned ver­sion of this machine;
• As a result, it is avail­able only from a lim­it­ed num­ber of retailers.

Consumer Reviews

Although it is one of the best high-end blenders avail­able on the mar­ket, not all cus­tomers are sat­is­fied with the machine.  Some wish it had a glass con­tain­er, and they do not con­sid­er that the glass will not bear the high load such a pow­er­ful machine is exposed to. Oth­er peo­ple miss the tam­per, but this is the cor­ner­stone of Blendtech’s design, and it can oper­ate with­out extra help. How­ev­er, the major­i­ty of cus­tomers are very hap­py with their machines.

Price

The Blendtec Total Clas­sic Orig­i­nal Blender is avail­able from a lim­it­ed num­ber of retail­ers. Ama­zon and Cost­co offer the new and refur­bished ver­sion of these mod­els, with the price depend­ing on the pack­age where the type (Four­Side or Wild­Side+), num­ber, and selec­tion of con­tain­ers may dif­fer. The refur­bished Blendtec Total Clas­sic Orig­i­nal Blender is often avail­able at a bar­gain price.

 

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Summary

The Blendtec Total Clas­sic Blender is one of the obvi­ous choic­es for peo­ple who are look­ing for a pow­er­ful and ver­sa­tile machine that will last many years. It is tru­ly a mul­ti­func­tion­al machine and can eas­i­ly replace a few gad­gets in your kitchen. It will not only make per­fect smooth­ies but will process excel­lent frozen desserts and drinks, grind cof­fee and mill flour, mix the but­ter, knead the dough, and make your fresh home­made peanut but­ter. The machine was engi­neered and man­u­fac­tured in the USA; no won­der it offers 8 years war­ran­ty con­firm­ing its excel­lent qual­i­ty. Besides, it is one of the most afford­able high-end blenders cur­rent­ly avail­able on the market.

Do you want to find out which Blendtec Blender suits you best? Then, go to our Vita­mix Blender Guide arti­cle and reviews.

• Which Blendtec Blender To Buy? – All Mod­els Guide 2020