Breville BBL620 Fresh and Furious Blender Review

Bre­ville BBL620 Fresh & Furi­ous Blender is the updat­ed ver­sion of the dis­con­tin­ued Bre­ville BBL605XL Hemi­sphere gad­get. Amer­i­ca’s Test Kitchen, Culi­nary Insti­tute of Amer­i­ca, and a num­ber of oth­er pub­li­ca­tions pro­mote Bre­ville’s old BBL605XL Hemi­sphere and new BBL620 Fresh & Furi­ous Blender as the half-priced best alter­na­tive to com­mer­cial stan­dard machines like Vita­mix or Blendtec. No doubt, it attracts con­sumers. How­ev­er, even at a glance, the com­par­i­son is not fair. The Bre­ville BBL620 comes with 1100 watts of motor pow­er which is 25–30% less than Vitamix’s pow­er. In addi­tion, it has only a 3‑year Lim­it­ed War­ran­ty as opposed to the 5–10 years Full War­ran­ty for Vita­mix and 8 years for Blendtec mod­els. Some oth­er argu­ments for Bre­ville’s excep­tion­al fea­tures are also not com­plete­ly true.

For this rea­son, we decid­ed to look close­ly at this machine and set­tle if the Bre­ville BBL620 is a valid alter­na­tive to the indus­tri­al stan­dard blenders.

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Check our arti­cle The Best Blender under $200 – Is There Real­ly Cheap­er Alter­na­tive to Vitamix?

 Functionality and Versatility

Smooth­ie: Bre­ville BBL620 Fresh & Furi­ous Blender can blend smooth con­sis­ten­cy drinks only from soft ingre­di­ents. Though it will not total­ly process apple or pear peel­ing but leave some residues in the drinks. The blender also will not make smooth smooth­ies from tough or leafy ingre­di­ents like car­rot, kale, and oth­ers but deliv­er chunky or grainy out­put. Final­ly, this machine will not deliv­er smooth liq­uid from leafy gree­nies, even blend­ing using the Green Smooth­ie pre-set program.

This gad­get will also not pul­ver­ize nuts or dates added to the smooth­ies but leave the chunks in the drink. Liq­ue­fy­ing straw­ber­ry or blue­ber­ry seeds is also an unat­tain­able task for this blender; it will leave them intact as residues in the drink.

Juic­ing: The Bre­ville BBL620 will not suit mak­ing the “whole juice”, since it is not able to pro­duce a real­ly smooth smoothie.

Frozen ingredients/desserts: The Bre­ville will shave stan­dard-size ice cubes into the snow con­sis­ten­cy. It can han­dle a max­i­mum the one stan­dard tray or 250g of ice at any one time. There­fore this gad­get is capa­ble to make snow cones or frozen drinks like margaritas.

It will pul­ver­ize well only small pieces of frozen ingre­di­ents; the user will need to add some liq­uid to process the large pieces. In addi­tion, it is a chal­leng­ing task to pul­ver­ize frozen fruits with­in one cycle of the pre-set AUTO PULSE/ICE CRUSH pro­gram; most like­ly, you have to run it twice.

Soup/ hot ingre­di­ents: The BBL620 Fresh & Furi­ous machine is not designed for pro­cess­ing hot ingre­di­ents and requires cool­ing them down before liq­ue­fy­ing soup. There­fore, this machine can­not make hot soups, heat­ing it via fric­tion. That is the sig­na­ture func­tion for a prop­er heavy-duty blender, so Bre­ville must be exclud­ed from this cat­e­go­ry and thus not suit­ed for com­par­ing with Vitamix.

Puree­ing: With some effort, the machine is able to mash boiled pota­to, steamed parsnip, or broc­coli but will hard­ly puree any raw veg­eta­bles. Pro­cess­ing any thick tex­ture makes this motor over­heat by trig­ger­ing shut off of the sys­tem. The user man­u­al also requires blend­ing all the heavy mix­tures for less than 10 sec­onds, then stop­ping the blender for stir­ring the ingre­di­ents and continuing.

Chopping/food prep:  The Bre­ville is quite good at per­form­ing a light-duty job and will eas­i­ly make var­i­ous sal­sa, sal­ad dress­ing, and mari­nade recipes. How­ev­er, mak­ing a prop­er dip will require adding enough liq­uid. So the hum­mus could be done only with enough oil and oth­er liq­uid added.

Nut milk:  The BBL620 Fresh & Furi­ous machine is not good at pro­cess­ing nuts, so you can try it but have to use a nut bag to sep­a­rate fiber from the liq­uid for the prop­er milk quality.

Nut but­ter: This machine is not strong enough to make nut but­ter. The nut but­ter usu­al­ly requires more pow­er than this blender has (1100 watts), tam­per help dur­ing the pro­cess­ing that is not includ­ed in the Bre­ville set. How­ev­er, you can try to make it with some extra effort and soak the nuts, but you will need to stop the machine dur­ing the pro­cess­ing for mix­ing ingredients.

Grinding/milling: The Bre­ville BBL620 Fresh & Furi­ous machine will grind cof­fee and soft grains like oats, but it will not make bak­ing qual­i­ty flour from hard grains like wheat or rice.

Dough/batter: The blender is not able to knead the dough, the user man­u­al also clear­ly men­tions this.

Although many review­ers claim that the spher­i­cal bot­tom of the Bre­ville pitch­er is designed to cre­ate a prop­er vor­tex all the time, and this is the dis­tin­guish­ing fea­ture of this blender, it is not always true. The food is indeed well pul­ver­ized at the bot­tom of the pitch­er, where it is stacked. How­ev­er, there is not enough vor­tex for pulling the ingre­di­ents above the spher­i­cal bot­tom down and thus requires stop­ping gad­gets and man­u­al­ly mix­ing them with the spat­u­la. It is pos­si­ble to use the pulse func­tion for this pur­pose; how­ev­er, it dis­re­gards the unique idea of the spher­i­cal­ly designed bottom.

In fact, Bre­ville BBL620 Fresh & Furi­ous gad­get is a light to medi­um-duty blender. There­fore, it is suit­able only for fruit smooth­ies and food prep tasks such as may­on­naise, sal­ad dress­ing, and oth­er mixers.

Alter­na­tive­ly, check here our arti­cles the Best Blender under $200 – Cheap­er Alter­na­tive to Vita­mix 2019 Guide.

Speed Settings and Programs

Bre­ville BBL620 Fresh & Furi­ous con­trol pan­el fea­tures the On/Off but­ton, four pre-set pro­grams, and five speeds. It also has an LCD timer that counts up while run­ning the five-speed set­tings  (shows how many sec­onds passed) and counts down when four pre-pro­grammed set­tings are used (indi­cat­ing how long the set is operated).

The ON/OFF but­ton pow­ers the machine into the ready mode or is used to stop the gad­get dur­ing pro­cess­ing when needed.

5 speeds — (1) MIX (is the low­est speed and com­bines and is good for mix­ing wet and dry ingre­di­ents), (2) CHOP, (3) BLEND, (4) PUREE, (5) LIQUEFY (the fastest set­ting, and is best for break­ing down ingre­di­ents to make cock­tails and oth­er fine­ly blend­ed mix­tures). Each of the 5‑speed set­tings is designed to run for up to 120 sec­onds. After 120 sec­onds, the blender will auto­mat­i­cal­ly stop.

Four pre-set pro­grams — AUTO CLEAN, GREEN SMOOTHIE (runs 60 sec­onds and designed for leafy, soft, hard ingre­di­ents and berries), AUTO PULSE/ICE CRUSH (opti­mized to crush ice, and also good for pro­cess­ing foods that need pulse func­tion, the pro­gram has an intel­li­gent sen­sor to stop the motor when the ice is done) and SMOOTHIES (runs 60 sec­onds and designed for soft and frozen ingredients).

You can repeat the set­tings if the blender has not achieved the desired result in one go. If the result is achieved soon­er than 60 – 120 sec­onds, you can press the ON/OFF but­ton to fin­ish the blend­ing. You also can select the speed or pre-set pro­gram at any time dur­ing the blender pro­cess­ing. Just press the new speed or pro­gram, and the blender will change the speed or pro­gram imme­di­ate­ly; its but­ton will illu­mi­nate, and the pre­vi­ous but­ton illu­mi­na­tion will go out. When you change the speed and pro­grams dur­ing the pro­cess­ing, the Bre­ville BBL620 will auto­mat­i­cal­ly turn off at 120 sec­onds of total run­ning time. Or you can stop it ear­li­er by just press­ing the ON/OFF button.

The 2‑minute max­i­mum blend­ing time is anoth­er indi­ca­tion of the light-duty blender; com­mer­cial-type machines like Vita­mix can run up to 10 min in one go with­out harm to the system.

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Ease of Using and Cleaning

Oper­at­ing: BBL620 Fresh & Furi­ous machine has the blades per­ma­nent­ly inbuilt in the pitch­er, so it is very easy to oper­ate. Just place the jar on the base unit, fill it with ingre­di­ents, close the lid, and run. The lid con­sists of two pads, the lid, and the remov­able cup which allows the addi­tion of extra ingre­di­ents dur­ing the blend­ing process. How­ev­er, the blender does not include a tam­per and requires stop­ping it from mix­ing the food or get­ting rid of air pock­ets. The air pock­et also could be removed using the pulse function.

Clean­ing: Like any oth­er blender with inbuilt blade assem­bly, the BBL620 Fresh & Furi­ous Con­trol is easy to clean. The con­tain­er is dish­wash­er-safe. It also could be washed using the self-clean­ing mode. Just fill the con­tain­er with the water, add a few drops of dish-wash­ing liq­uid, and run it for 1 minute or less. It is advis­able to hold the lid dur­ing the self-clean­ing pro­ce­dure because the bub­bles may burst the top off.

Base Unit and Motor Power

Although the exte­ri­or design of BBL620 Fresh & Furi­ous has a heavy-duty die-cast met­al base and looks very sol­id, it is equipped with only an 1100 watts motor and the plas­tic base unit sock­et for con­nect­ing the blade assem­bly to the dri­ve sys­tem. So what is the weak side of the con­struc­tion and ques­tions the claim about this machine’s good build and per­for­mance? As a result, the blender can han­dle only light-medi­um duty tasks and could not per­form any usu­al job for com­mer­cial-type blenders.

How­ev­er, the machine is equipped with an over­load pro­tec­tor sys­tem to pre­vent over­heat­ing the motor and extend motor life expectan­cy. It also has great cord stor­age that is neat­ly coiled around the base of the blender.

Containers

The BBL620 Fresh & Furi­ous Blender comes with 50 oz. (6 cups/1.5L) East­man Tri­tan copoly­ester con­tain­er is made from pre­mi­um qual­i­ty BPA-free and light­weight poly­mer mate­r­i­al. The mea­sur­ing guides print­ed on the side are eas­i­ly iden­ti­fied. The con­tain­er is shat­ter­proof, dish­wash­er safe that can sur­vive repeat­ed dish­wash­er clean­ing. How­ev­er, the con­tain­er is not designed for blend­ing hot liq­uids, which is the obvi­ous draw­back for the pre­mi­um qual­i­ty jar.

In addi­tion, the Bre­ville con­tain­er has an inac­cu­rate design of the spout, so it tends to splash the poured liq­uids. The con­tain­er lid also does not fit very secure­ly the pitch­er and often pulls off dur­ing blending.

Blades

The Bre­ville BBL620 Fresh & Furi­ous was designed with the blade assem­bly semi-per­ma­nent­ly attached to the con­tain­er, but it could be removed with a spe­cial wrench if need­ed. The blades are strong and made from sur­gi­cal-grade stain­less steel to ensure they stay sharp for longer. The blades are con­struct­ed as 6‑prong with two of them wide and straight, and anoth­er four with ser­rat­ed edges with medi­um and small teeth. The blades, bear­ing assem­bly, and dri­ve nut are also all met­al with a cou­ple of rub­ber seal­ing. The blades and all assem­bly are well made and of good quality.

Special Features

Col­ors: BBL620 Fresh & Furi­ous machine is avail­able in stain­less steel col­or only.

Cer­ti­fied Refur­bished: There is no cer­ti­fied refur­bished blender avail­able for these mod­els at present.

Use in coun­tries out­side of the USA/Canada: The Bre­ville BBL620 Fresh & Furi­ous is sold in the USA and equipped with a 110–120 volt­age sys­tem. There­fore, it is pos­si­ble to use it in 220–240 volt­age sys­tem coun­tries over the volt­age trans­former. How­ev­er, you can find this blender in many coun­tries through local retail­ers. Hence, it is bet­ter to buy it local­ly and use the machine with a pow­er trans­former if you need to take it abroad for a short peri­od of time.

Noise

Although the BBL620 Fresh & Furi­ous has not a very pow­er­ful motor (1100 w), it is a loud blender. It releas­es around 80 at low speed to 95 at high-speed deci­bels which is com­pa­ra­ble to the sound from a pass­ing diesel truck.

Warranty and Customer Service

Bre­ville BBL620 Fresh & Furi­ous comes with only a 3‑year Lim­it­ed war­ran­ty which is rather short for the blender that tries to com­pete with high-end blenders and costs near­ly $200. The Bre­ville is quite good at replac­ing faulty units, but they will usu­al­ly charge a $40 fee if you decide to return the machine.

Cus­tomer Ser­vice is not very help­ful, and once the war­ran­ty peri­od is passed, they are unlike­ly to offer help­ful solu­tions to the customer.

Optional Accessories and Attachments

There is no extra attach­ment and acces­sories avail­able for this blender. There are only avail­able replace­ment pitch­ers to buy from the man­u­fac­tur­er or dif­fer­ent retailers.

Set Includes

• Base unit with 1100 watts motor;
• 50 oz Tri­tan copoly­ester round­ed con­tain­er and inbuilt blade assembly;
• Lid with mea­sur­ing cup;
• Bre­ville Instruc­tion Book and recipes card

Dimensions

The Bre­ville BBL620 Fresh & Furi­ous gad­get will not occu­py much of your counter space. It has quite a com­pact 6.9 inch­es x 8.5 inch­es base unit foot­print and a height of only 17.2 inch­es, which allows it to fit the machine under the stan­dard kitchen cabinet.

The assem­bled machine’s total weight is 8.4 pounds, which is quite light for the machine, espe­cial­ly with the met­al base unit coat­ing. No won­der this machine is not very sta­ble dur­ing oper­a­tion and may move across the counter, espe­cial­ly when blend­ing at high speed. No doubt, the Machine will move over the counter dur­ing oper­a­tion because of the very light­weight it.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Bre­ville BBL620 Fresh & Furi­ous Blender has a sleek and mod­ern design with a die-cast base unit enclosure.
• The machine is equipped with good qual­i­ty blade assembly;
• Bre­ville BBL620 Fresh & Furi­ous machine comes with an inbuilt con­tain­er blade assem­bly, mak­ing this machine very easy to use and clean.

Cons:

• The Bre­ville BBL620 Fresh & Furi­ous machine is rather over­priced for the medi­um-duty blender with only 1100 watts motor;
• The blender is fair­ly noisy;
• It comes with­out a tamper;
• The machine does not blend all the ingre­di­ents smooth­ly and eas­i­ly and requires to stop from time to time to mix the ingre­di­ents man­u­al­ly for eas­i­er blending;
• The BBL620 Fresh & Furi­ous machine comes with quite a short only a 3‑year lim­it­ed warranty;
• Although the blender was designed in Aus­tralia, it was man­u­fac­tured in Chi­na, so it has dura­bil­i­ty issues typ­i­cal for Chi­na’s out­sourced appliances.

Breville BBL620 Consumer Reviews

This blender has a very good rec­om­men­da­tion from Amer­i­ca’s Test Kitchen and oth­er rep­utable review­ers, so it may have favor­able reviews from the cus­tomers which is quite com­mon when the heavy adver­tise­ment is usu­al­ly accom­pa­nied by pos­i­tive reviews from cus­tomers no mat­ter how good the cus­tomers are a prod­uct in reality.

Price

The price for the Bre­ville BBL620 Fresh & Furi­ous Blender is sta­ble for the major­i­ty of retail­ers. How­ev­er, this mod­el is quite new and has no cer­ti­fied refur­bished mod­el yet avail­able, so no chance to buy it much cheap­er than the aver­age retail price.

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Summary

Even the Bre­ville BBL620 Fresh & Furi­ous Blender is a bet­ter ver­sion than the old BBL605XL Hemi­sphere with more than 1100 watts pow­er­ful, but it is not as excel­lent as the many reviews sug­gest. It han­dles ice crush­ing, makes good smoothest but not silky like Vita­mix, good at chop­ping and mix­ing job but is not able to han­dle tough and leafy ingre­di­ents in smooth­ies. Adver­tise­ment insists that it pulls the con­tents towards the blades for homo­ge­neous blend­ing, but this is not always true. It might be a very good machine with a price tag under $100, but it is unrea­son­ably over­priced and cer­tain­ly under-per­form for the device that costs a good qual­i­ty high-end blender clone.

Alter­na­tive­ly, check here our arti­cle, the Best Blender under $200 – Cheap­er Alter­na­tive to Vita­mix 2020 Guide.