Dash Chef Series Digital Blender Review

Dash Chef Series Dig­i­tal is a rel­a­tive­ly new (released at the end of 2012) blender on the mar­ket with an ambi­tion to com­pete with high-end machines like Vita­mix and Blendtec. It is equipped with a high-pow­er motor and is designed to per­form the blend­ing tasks that are typ­i­cal of com­mer­cial-type blenders.

Could the Dash Chef Series become a true bud­get com­peti­tor of well-known but expen­sive high-pow­er machines? Please read our review below to answer this question.

Alter­na­tive­ly, check here our articles:

• Best Blender for Smooth­ies and More – Buy­ing Guide 2021
• Best Blender under $200 – Is There Real­ly Cheap­er Alter­na­tive to Vitamix?

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

Smooth­ie:  Dash Chef Series Dig­i­tal makes rel­a­tive­ly smooth drinks from soft and tough ingre­di­ents like car­rots, spinach, kale, etc. The added drink­ing nut, chia, or flax seeds will also be effort­less­ly homog­e­nized. So the Blender is suit­able for mak­ing decent green smooth­ies or pro­tein shakes. It blends straw­ber­ry, rasp­ber­ry, and black­ber­ry seeds quite well but with a small num­ber of unprocessed seeds left in residues. This pow­er­ful machine is also able to pul­ver­ize avo­ca­do seed if it is cut in half before blending.

Juices: This machine is not designed to squeeze the text­book juice that requires sep­a­rat­ing a liq­uid from a fiber. But it is per­fect­ly capa­ble of blend­ing very smooth smooth­ies, aka “whole juice.”

Ice Crush­ing and Frozen Desserts: The machine has enough pow­er to blend ice with and with­out liq­uid added. It per­fect­ly process­es frozen ingre­di­ents and ice cubes in smooth­ies and is also designed to crush ice to pro­duce flaw­less snow cones, sor­bets, ice cream, or alco­holic frozen drinks like mar­gar­i­tas and others.

Nut milk: The Blender has enough pow­er to pul­ver­ize nuts in liq­uids to pro­duce decent qual­i­ty nut milk.

Puree­ing: The gad­get is equipped with a good speed range, and pulse func­tion and thus is per­fect for mak­ing mesh­es, var­i­ous spreads, sauces, and deeps. The machine is also excel­lent for pro­duc­ing var­i­ous baby food recipes.

Soup/ hot ingre­di­ents: This gad­get is designed to heat liq­uids via fric­tion and is thus capa­ble of mak­ing hot soup from cold ingre­di­ents. It heats liq­uids to 170, Fus­ing the soup pre-set pro­gram that runs for 8 min­utes. The pitch­er is also equipped with a vent­ed lid that will release access to the pres­sure dur­ing the blend­ing. The machine is also suit­able for mak­ing bul­let­proof coffee.

Chopping/food prep: The Blender can make a vari­ety of sal­sa, mari­nades, and sal­ad dress­ing recipes using the pulse func­tion or low speeds set­tings. It also chops well veg­eta­bles for coleslaw and grat­ed cheese, and even grinds the meat.

Nut but­ter: This machine can process nut but­ter. How­ev­er, for the smoother tex­ture, it requires adding some oil to the recipe. It also comes with a tam­per, which is a great help for pro­cess­ing thick mixtures.

Grinding/milling: The Dash is per­fect­ly capa­ble of grind­ing herbs, and cof­fee beans, and also milling bak­ing qual­i­ty flour from hard and tiny grains.

Dough/batter: This machine is not designed to knead the dough but is able to mix a batter.

Dash Chef Series Dig­i­tal is a tru­ly ver­sa­tile machine with a horse­pow­er motor. It comes with a good selec­tion of speeds and pulse func­tions to per­form a large vari­ety of tasks with a 75–85% Vita­mix qual­i­ty. Besides, it comes with a tam­per that is a great help for per­form­ing the chal­leng­ing job of mak­ing nut but­ter or prepar­ing spreads.

Speed Settings and Programs

Dash Blender con­trol pan­el equipped with a dig­i­tal inter­face, 6‑presets, pulse func­tion, and 10 speeds. It contains:

• The dial knob that sets the pre-set pro­grams (Rinse, Puree, Soup, Smooth­ie, Crush, Frozen) by rotat­ing the knob to the appro­pri­ate pro­gram position;
• The speed (+) and speed (-) but­tons set the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and H (high) speeds;
• The time (+) and time (-) but­tons set the time from 1 to 10 minutes;
• The pulse but­ton runs the gad­get at the high (H) speed for short inter­vals, the pulse mode oper­ates until the user holds the button;
• The START/STOP but­ton acti­vates the Blender, starts blend­ing, and stops when the user needs it.

The START/STOP but­ton will flash red imme­di­ate­ly after the machine is plugged in with the con­tain­er placed on the top of the base unit (one’s jar is removed, and it stops flash­ing). Hit the START/STOP but­ton, and it lights up the dis­play with all but­tons. Then select the pre-set pro­gram by rotat­ing a dial knob to the required posi­tion or man­u­al­ly set­ting the time and/or speed. Press START/STOP again for run­ning the machine. The time and speed could also be reg­u­lat­ed any­time dur­ing the blend­ing process. The pre-set pro­grams will stop auto­mat­i­cal­ly at the end of the cycle. At the same time, the man­u­al­ly set speed and time are stopped by press­ing the START/STOP but­ton again once the desired con­sis­ten­cy is achieved.

The Dash Blender con­trol pan­el is a bit clut­tered and requires some learn­ing to use. How­ev­er, the user man­u­al con­tains all the nec­es­sary instruc­tions for using this machine.

Ease of Using and Cleaning

Oper­at­ing: This Blender is very easy to use as all machines with the inbuilt blade assem­bly. It requires plac­ing the jar on the base unit; a beep will indi­cate the pitch­er was fit­ted the right way. Then the jar must be filled with ingre­di­ents and the rub­ber lid secure­ly fit­ted in place. And it is ready to run after press­ing the START/STOP but­ton. The machine could oper­ate using pre-set pro­grams or man­u­al settings.

Tam­per: The pack­age comes with a sim­i­lar tam­per design to Vita­mix for pro­cess­ing thick mix­tures and remov­ing air pockets.

Clean­ing: The Blender is not dish­wash­er safe. But this type of machine with irre­mov­able blades is straight­for­ward to clean using the self-clean­ing pro­ce­dure. First, the jar must be filled halfway with warm water and a few drops of soap and run on a rinse pre-set pro­gram or man­u­al­ly set for a 40–60 sec­onds cycle at high speed. Then pitch­er must be rinsed thor­ough­ly and dried with a cloth.

Base Unit and Motor Power

The machine has a very big and heavy base unit which con­tains a pow­er­ful 1400 watts motor. It rotates the blade with a speed of 240MPH or 35,000 RPM. The motor is well built with a durable all-met­al dri­ve socket.

The base unit con­tains the auto shut-off sys­tem that stops the machine when it is over­loaded for the safe­ty of the motor. It is also equipped with very con­ve­nient cord stor­age under­neath the base unit.

Containers

This machine comes with pre­mi­um qual­i­ty Tri­tan co-poly­ester 64 oz. 2‑liter (8.5‑cup) jar. The shape design of the Dash con­tain­er is a very close copy­cat of the Vita­mix jar. There is only a small dif­fer­ence in the lip/rim at the top of the jar that is present in the Vita­mix and absent in Dash. They even could fit and run on each oth­er motor base. The Dash blender con­tain­er also has a rub­ber grip for com­fort­able han­dling. Although the con­tain­er is a copy of Vita­mix and made from the same mate­r­i­al, it has some prob­lems. It is thin­ner than Vitamix’s one, and the faulty retain­er nut at the bot­tom that con­nects the blade assem­bly to the jar often may cause a crack in it.

The con­tain­er is also equipped with a rub­ber vent­ed 2‑parts lid with a close cap locat­ed in the cen­ter of the lid. This design allows the release of pres­sure from hot blend­ed liq­uids and the tam­per dur­ing pro­cess­ing with­out stop­ping the machine. The cap dou­bles as a mea­sur­ing cap also. The lid secure­ly sits on the con­tain­er even when the hot liq­uids are blend­ed. How­ev­er, it may have trou­ble removed after use.

Blades

This machine is equipped with 6‑prong stain­less steel blade con­struc­tion that is per­ma­nent­ly built into the con­tain­er. The gears shaft that mesh­es with the motor dri­ve sock­et at the bot­tom of the pitch­er and retain­er nuts are also all met­al. Although this design seems very sol­id, in fact, it has a major design fault. As a result, the retain­er nut tends to become loose and accu­mu­lates the black grease that comes from the con­tain­er con­tent. The pitch­er also quite often devel­ops the cracks at the place of con­nec­tions with the retain­er nut.

Special Features

Col­ors: This styl­ish Blender is avail­able in four dif­fer­ent col­ors – black, green, red, and white.

Cer­ti­fied Refur­bished: There are no cer­ti­fied refur­bished units avail­able for this model.

Use in coun­tries out­side the USA/Canada: The Dash Chef Series machine comes with a 110–120 volt­age sys­tem for USA/Canada only. It could be oper­at­ed via the trans­former in coun­tries with 220–240 volt­age, but it will void the machine warranty.

Set Includes

• Base unit with 1400 watts motor
• 64 oz. Tri­tan copoly­ester container;
• 2 parts vent­ed rub­ber lid;
• Cus­tom tamper;
• User man­u­al with few recipes.

The pack­age does not include a sep­a­rate cookbook.

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Warranty and Customer Service

The Dash Chef Series Blender comes with a 1‑year lim­it­ed war­ran­ty on all parts and a 7‑year war­ran­ty on a motor. How­ev­er, if a user reg­is­ters the prod­uct with the man­u­fac­tur­er through their web­site, then the war­ran­ty on all parts is dou­bled to a 2‑year.

The man­u­fac­tur­er pro­vides very good and eas­i­ly reach­able cus­tomer ser­vice. They tend to solve all the issues with the machine and, with­out a prob­lem, replace the faulty parts and units.

Noise

The machine is not very noisy, con­sid­er­ing the high-pow­er motor it has. The Dash blender out­puts about 90dB at 10 ft. away when blend­ing fruit and veg­etable smooth­ies. Of course, ice pro­cess­ing will be slight­ly loud­er. The stan­dard advice to damp­en the noise out­put from the Blender is to place a rub­ber mat under the base unit.

Optional Accessories and Attachments

There are no addi­tion­al acces­sories and attach­ments avail­able for this machine, but the replace­ment jar is sold on the man­u­fac­tur­er’s web­site for $70.

Dimensions

It has a very mas­sive base unit about 10 inch­es high and a foot­print of 8.75-inches in diam­e­ter. This machine is also very tall, with a height of 21.5 inch­es with a 64 oz con­tain­er on the top of the 10 inch­es base unit. There­fore, it will not fit under the stan­dard kitchen cab­i­net. The unit weight is about 11 pounds. 

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Dash Chef Series is a very pow­er­ful and ver­sa­tile machine that can pro­duce good qual­i­ty smooth drinks, includ­ing the green smoothies;
• The Blender comes with a tam­per which makes it easy to process thick mix­ture and remove air pock­ets with­out stop­ping the machine;
• It has a very strong and sol­id motor that can pul­ver­ize even very tough food;
• The machine is very easy to assem­ble for run­ning and clean after use;
• This gad­get comes with a decent war­ran­ty and very help­ful cus­tomer service.

Cons:

• This machine has a retain­er nut design major fault, which results in ear­ly wear out of the pitch­er and blade assem­bly shaft;
• The gad­get has not very straight­for­ward to oper­ate the con­trol pan­el and requires good study of instruc­tions before using it;
• The con­tain­er lid fits very tight­ly with the jar and could be quite dif­fi­cult to remove after use. 

Dash Chef Series Digital Consumer Reviews

The machine has a good num­ber of very favor­able reviews with con­sumers that praise its pow­er and blend com­pa­ra­ble (but not equal) to high-end gadgets.

Price

The price fluc­tu­ates with dif­fer­ent retail­ers; how­ev­er, it is usu­al­ly avail­able t under $200. The Ama­zon offers are often on the low­est side. 

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Summary

Is the Dash Chef Series Dig­i­tal Blender the true com­peti­tor of Vita­mix? No, it is just a copy­cat, a fair­ly good copy­cat with qual­i­ty per­for­mance close to Vita­mix but still with some sig­nif­i­cant faults. For exam­ple, this machine has a good motor sim­i­lar to the Vita­mix con­tain­er and blade assem­bly, but the retain­er nut with bear­ings design is a great prob­lem. If the man­u­fac­tur­ers resolve this issue, then the Blender could become a decent cheap­er alter­na­tive to expen­sive high-end machines. But with cur­rent­ly present faults, it has a rel­a­tive­ly short life expectancy.

Alter­na­tive­ly, check here our articles:

• Best Blender for Smooth­ies and More – Buy­ing Guide 2021
• Best Blender under $200 – Is There Cheap­er Alter­na­tive to Vitamix?