Cuisinart CBT-1500 Hurricane 2.25 Peak HP Blender Review

Cuisi­nart is an inter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized man­u­fac­tur­er that pro­duces an array of kitchen gad­gets. It has recent­ly released to the mar­ket a few pow­er­ful blenders. One of them is the Cuisi­nart CBT-1500 Hur­ri­cane 2.25 Peak machine. Here we will thor­ough­ly inves­ti­gate all the strong and weak sides of this machine to decide if this gad­get is worth adding to the mod­ern countertop.

Read More:   Best Blender under $200 – Cheap­er Alter­na­tive to Vita­mix 2022 Guide.

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Functionality and Versatility

Smooth­ie: The Cuisi­nart CBT-1500 Hur­ri­cane 2.25 Peak machine blends almost per­fect smooth­ies from soft, hard, and fibrous ingre­di­ents (cel­ery, gin­ger, and oth­ers), so it is suit­able for mak­ing green smooth­ies with­out bits or chunks. How­ev­er, this blender is not able to oblit­er­ate straw­ber­ry, blue­ber­ry, and rasp­ber­ry seeds. The nuts and chia seeds in the drinks may also leave vis­i­ble flecks.

Juic­ing: Cuisi­nart CBT-1500 Hur­ri­cane machine is a clas­sic blender and thus will not make text­book juice that sep­a­rates liq­uid from fiber, but it is quite a capa­ble blend­ing smooths smooth­ie aka “whole juice”.

Crush­ing Ice and Frozen Treats: This machine is designed to process ice eas­i­ly with and with­out liq­uid added. It crush­es up to 14 pure ice cubes into the snow-like con­sis­ten­cy in sec­onds. So it is more than capa­ble of pro­duc­ing not only smooth­ies from frozen ingre­di­ents but also mak­ing per­fect frozen desserts like frozen yogurts, sor­bets, and slushy drinks (daiquiri, mar­gari­ta, and others).

Soup/ hot ingre­di­ents: Despite the pow­er­ful 1500 watts motor, the Cuisi­nart CBT-1500 Hur­ri­cane 2.25 Peak machine is not able to heat liq­uids via fric­tions. How­ev­er, it is more than capa­ble of pro­cess­ing already cooked ingre­di­ents for soup. The user man­u­al clear­ly states that before plac­ing boil­ing ingre­di­ents into the blender, they should be cooled for 5 min­utes. Thus, the machine is also not com­plete­ly safe for prepar­ing bul­let­proof cof­fees. 

Puree­ing: The Cuisi­nart CBT-1500 Hur­ri­cane 2.25 Peak machine will process qual­i­ty fruit and veg­gies puree or baby food from raw and cooked ingre­di­ents only with some liq­uid added. Thus, it is not suit­able for mak­ing mash pota­toes but quite good at pro­cess­ing hum­mus and var­i­ous dips.

Chopping/food prep: The blender is equipped with Low Pulse and High Pulse func­tions so that it can pre­pare a vari­ety of food prep recipes like sal­ad dress­ings, may­on­naise, and whip­ping cream. The pulse func­tion is also per­fect for chop­ping nuts and grat­ing soft and hard cheese or breadcrumbs.

Nut milk: This gad­get is pow­er­ful enough to make nut milk; the cook­book includ­ed in the user man­u­al con­tains a few nuts, rice, and oats milk recipes also.

Nut but­ter: This gad­get, with some effort, can make a bit crunchy but fair­ly accept­able nut but­ter. Since this machine does not come with a tam­per, you would need to stop the machine dur­ing pro­cess­ing and man­u­al­ly mix the con­tent with a spat­u­la to dis­lodge ingre­di­ents from the blade area and walls.

Grinding/milling: The Cuisi­nart CBT-1500 Hur­ri­cane 2.25 Peak blender is quite good at grind­ing cof­fee, and herbs, chop­ping nuts, and milling soft grains. How­ev­er, it is not able to pro­duce bak­ing qual­i­ty flour.

Dough/batter:  It will not knead bread dough but is per­fect­ly able to mix pan­cake batter.

Despite the very pow­er­ful motor, the same as Vita­mix, this machine is not able to per­form high-end blender jobs such as hot soups, bul­let­proof cof­fees, and bak­ing qual­i­ty flour from hard grains. How­ev­er, it is very good at mak­ing qual­i­ty smooth­ies and crush­ing ice for pro­duc­ing slushy drinks and frozen desserts.

Speed Settings and Programs

Cuisi­nart CBT-1500 Hur­ri­cane blender is equipped with an elec­tron­ic touch­pad con­trols pan­el with six (6) func­tion­al but­tons, an LCD dis­play with a 3‑minute count Up/Down timer, and two (2) time selec­tion but­tons. The six func­tion­al but­tons include On/Off, Low and High speed, Pulse func­tions (Low and High speeds), and two Smooth­ies and Crush Ice pre-set programs.

The Up/Down timer begins count­ing Up every time the Low or High speed is acti­vat­ed and Down when the Smooth­ie and Ice Crush pre-set pro­grams are used. To select your own cycle length with Low or High speeds, the user, after acti­vat­ing the machine with the On/Off but­ton, has to select with an up or down arrow the desired length of the cycle and press Low or High speed to start; the timer will start count­ing down, then the unit will turn off auto­mat­i­cal­ly at the end select­ed time cycle.

Although the Cuisi­nart CBT-1500 Hur­ri­cane 2.25 Peak machine has the abil­i­ty to set your time counter, it still has very lim­it­ed speed options (Low and High). The Low speed is not tru­ly low and starts fair­ly fast, caus­ing the liq­uid to splash out. But the Pulse func­tion, which oper­ates on both Low and High speeds, slight­ly expands the con­trol pan­el func­tion­al­i­ty. So the user will chop veg­gies at low speed and hard­er ingre­di­ents such as cheese and nuts at high pulse speed. Nev­er­the­less, the Smooth pre-set blends very good qual­i­ty smooth­ies while Crush Ice is very effi­cient and pro­cess­ing ice in snowy conditions.

The man­u­fac­tur­er also claims that the machine has an auto­mat­ic load sens­ing tech­nol­o­gy to adjust blender speeds for even blend­ing auto­mat­i­cal­ly; I have not noticed any evi­dence of this. It oper­ates at the same speed no mat­ter what ingre­di­ents you use.

Ease of Using and Cleaning

Oper­at­ing: The Cuisi­nart CBT-1500 Hur­ri­cane blender comes with a per­ma­nent­ly inbuilt blade assem­bly, so it is very easy to get ready for run­ning. First, posi­tion the blender con­tain­er on the jar pad; it firm­ly sits in place with­out any lock­ing mech­a­nism. Next, fill the jar with ingre­di­ents, fit the lid tight­ly on the top of the con­tain­er, and it is ready to run. Now you can press the On/Off but­ton and choose speed or pre-set pro­gram to start blending.

The blender’s lid comes with a cap open­ing that is very con­ve­nient as it allows you to add extra ingre­di­ents dur­ing blend­ing with­out stop­ping the machine and remov­ing the cov­er. How­ev­er, the machine does not include a tam­per. There­fore, it may still require stop­ping it dur­ing pro­cess­ing to dis­lodge with spat­u­la food through the open­ing around the cut­ting assem­bly or help cre­ate a prop­er vor­tex. The only prob­lem is that the lid some­times could be dif­fi­cult to remove, but if you lift an edge of the lid at the jar spout area upward, this task will become much easier.

Clean­ing: The per­ma­nent­ly inbuilt blade sys­tem makes all clean­ing quite easy. The Cuisi­nart CBT-1500 Hur­ri­cane 2.25 Peak blender jar and lid are safe to clean on the top rack of the dish­wash­er. Alter­na­tive­ly, you can clean them with your hands or use the self-clean­ing pro­ce­dure — fill the con­tain­er with hot water up to the clean max line (indi­cat­ed on the jar wall) and a lit­tle dish soap, and run for 30–60 sec­onds, depend­ing on the ingre­di­ents you used for blend­ing then rinse with run­ning water and dry with the cloth. You bet­ter clean the machine imme­di­ate­ly after use in order not to accu­mu­late build-ups.

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Base Unit and Motor Power

The Cuisi­nart CBT-1500 Hur­ri­cane blender comes with a pow­er­ful 2.25 HP peak input motor. The motor is well-built and strong with­out bog­ging down dur­ing oper­a­tion. It also has an all-met­al cor­ro­sion-resis­tant blade to dri­ve cou­pling con­struc­tion, which makes this machine long-lasting.

The base enclo­sure is made of heavy-duty plas­tic with a remov­able rub­ber pad around the dri­ve sock­et to secure­ly fit the con­tain­er with four guards’ help.

Besides, the Cuisi­nart CBT-1500 Hur­ri­cane 2.25 Peak machine is equipped with an auto­mat­ic shut­down sys­tem to pro­tect the motor against over­heat­ing. So if the motor shuts down, unplug the blender and allow to rest it for about 15 min­utes; then, the machine will be ready to be used again.

Containers

The Cuisi­nart CBT-1500 Hur­ri­cane 2.25 Peak machine comes with a pre­mi­um qual­i­ty of 60 oz. BPA-free Tri­tan copoly­ester con­tain­er. The jar has very clear Amer­i­can and Eng­lish mea­sur­ing marks on the wall, the max line for blend­ing ingre­di­ents, and the clean­ing procedure.

The jar has a com­fy soft-grip han­dle and a very con­ve­nient spout that will not splash any liq­uid dur­ing pour­ing. It is also equipped with a two-part lid with a cap open­ing to release heat when hot ingre­di­ents are blended.

Blades

The Cuisi­nart CBT-1500 Hur­ri­cane 2.25 Peak machine is equipped with non-remov­able 4‑prong blades. The blades and assem­bly are made from heavy-duty com­mer­cial qual­i­ty cor­ro­sion-resis­tant stain­less steel con­struc­tion. The retain­er nut is also all-met­al, thus very good qual­i­ty and long-last­ing. In addi­tion, per­ma­nent­ly inbuilt blades pre­vent any chance of liq­uid leaking.

Special Features

Col­ors: The Cuisi­nart CBT-1500 Hur­ri­cane 2.25 Peak machine is avail­able in gun­metal col­or with black trim only.

Cer­ti­fied Refur­bished: This mod­el is not avail­able in cer­ti­fied refur­bished con­di­tion yet.

Use in coun­tries out­side of USA/Canada: Cuisi­nart CBT-1500 Hur­ri­cane cur­rent­ly comes only with the 110–120 volt­age sys­tem and could be used in the USA, Cana­da, and oth­er regions with appro­pri­ate volt­age (South Amer­i­ca, Sau­di Ara­bia, Japan, and oth­ers). In addi­tion, the machine could be oper­at­ed via out­let adapter in coun­tries with 220–240 volt­age systems.

Noise

The Cuisi­nart CBT-1500 Hur­ri­cane 2.25 Peak blender is very loud even though the machine base unit has dou­ble hous­ing. It out­puts over 95 deci­bels when blend­ing stan­dard veg­gies and fruit ingredients.

The typ­i­cal advice for con­sumers to reduce noise vol­ume from the blender is to place the rub­ber mat under­neath the base unit to absorb vibrations.

Warranty and Customer Service

The Cuisi­nart CBT-1500 Hur­ri­cane machine comes with 3‑year Lim­it­ed War­ran­ty. That is quite mod­est for a well-made machine from rep­utable man­u­fac­tur­ers. More­over, the lim­it­ed means that the con­sumer may be charged an extra fee for the ship­ping cost or replace­ment parts on some occasions.

Besides, the Cuisi­nart Cus­tomer is a well-known man­u­fac­tur­er with a good rep­u­ta­tion; thus, it will undoubt­ed­ly serve the con­sumers appropriately.

Optional Accessories and Attachments

The Cuisi­nart CBT-1500 Hur­ri­cane 2.25 Peak blender does not come with extra attach­ments, nor is it com­pat­i­ble with any extra Cuisi­nart acces­sories. How­ev­er, the replace­ment parts are avail­able from the man­u­fac­tur­er’s web­site.

Set Includes

• 25HP at peak base unit;
• 60 oz. Tri­tan copoly­ester jar;
• Rub­ber lid with filler cap;
• User man­u­al with 29 recipes.

Dimensions

The Cuisi­nart CBT-1500 Hur­ri­cane 2.25 Peak machine has quite a large 7.75 inch­es x 11.50 inch­es foot­print. This blender’s height is 17.25 inch­es with the pitch­er on the top of the base unit and lid on the place and 16.25 inch­es with­out the lid. It must fit under the stan­dard 18 inch­es kitchen cab­i­net and thus could be stored on the countertop.

The unit is quite heavy, and with 12.5 lbs, it does not bounce over the counter dur­ing processing.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• The Cuisi­nart CBT-1500 Hur­ri­cane 2.25 Peak machine is a very pow­er­ful blender that is able to make good qual­i­ty smooth­ies, includ­ing the green ones;
• This machine crush­es ice well and pro­duces not only qual­i­ty frozen desserts but also makes qual­i­ty frozen drinks and slushes;
• The machine is well built, and with all-met­al cou­pling, good qual­i­ty blade, and con­tain­er, it must have a rea­son­able lifespan;

Cons:

• The Cuisi­nart CBT-1500 Hur­ri­cane 2.25 Peak machine has very lim­it­ed con­trol pan­el func­tions with only two speeds;
• It is quite a loud blender;
• The blender has quite a short war­ran­ty of 3–years for a rep­utable brand.

Cuisinart CBT-1500 Hurricane 2.25 Peak Blender Consumer Reviews

The Cuisi­nart CBT-1500 Hur­ri­cane machine is a quite new prod­uct on the mar­ket but has won a good rep­u­ta­tion with high con­sumer rat­ings from most online retailers.

Cuisinart CBT-1500 Hurricane 2.25 Peak Blender Price

The Cuisi­nart CBT-1500 Hur­ri­cane 2.25 Peak machine price varies with the dif­fer­ent retail­ers; how­ev­er, it is usu­al­ly avail­able for under $200.  Although the blender seems to be a lit­tle over­priced, its price still is quite rea­son­able for a rep­utable brand and well-built machine.

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Summary

The Cuisi­nart CBT-1500 Hur­ri­cane Blender is a well-made and fair­ly ver­sa­tile machine that eas­i­ly out­puts excel­lent smooth­ies and crush­es ice. In addi­tion, it has a met­al cou­pling gear and a strong motor and promis­es to last for many years. There­fore, Cuisi­nart CBT-1500 Hur­ri­cane Blender is a good option for those who would like to have a qual­i­ty blender from a rep­utable brand on their countertop.

Alter­na­tive­ly, check our arti­cle Best Blender under $200 – Cheap­er Alter­na­tive to Vita­mix 2022 Guide.