KitchenAid Diamond 5‑Speed Blender Review

The KitchenAid brand has an excep­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion and is syn­ony­mous with qual­i­ty and design for years. The KitchenAid KSB1575 Dia­mond 5‑Speed Blender is no excep­tion; how­ev­er, it is also avail­able in two oth­er less pop­u­lar mod­els KSB1570 and KSB655. All three mod­els have an iden­ti­cal base unit design, motor, and oth­er parts but dif­fer in the design and selec­tion of jars and con­trol pan­el design. It is avail­able in 21 dif­fer­ent col­ors with a price rang­ing under two hun­dred dol­lars depend­ing on the pack­age, col­or, and retailer.

Think­ing about the alter­na­tive option? KitchenAid KSB4027 K400 Coun­ter­top Blender Review, Check here our arti­cle Best Coun­ter­top Blenders under $100 and KitchenAid 5‑Speed Dia­mond Blender vs. Oster Pro 1200 Blender.

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Functionality and Versatility

Smooth­ie: The KitchenAid Dia­mond 5‑Speed Blender makes excel­lent smooth­ies from soft fruit and veg­eta­bles but out­puts a bit grainy drinks from hard ingre­di­ents like car­rots or leaves some small green flecks when pro­cess­ing leafy food like kale, spinach, and oth­ers. It takes anoth­er 2–3 min­utes to blend them into a decent­ly smooth con­sis­ten­cy. So, it takes some effort to process qual­i­ty green smooth­ies using the KitchenAid machine.

This machine will well homog­e­nize nice­ly nuts or gin­ger root added to the smooth­ies. How­ev­er, it will not han­dle well straw­ber­ry or blue­ber­ry, part­ly pro­cess­ing it and part­ly leav­ing them intact.

In addi­tion, it is not pow­er­ful enough to eas­i­ly deal with thick mix­ers; when it becomes thick, the machine tends to form air pock­ets, slow down the speed, and make whirring sounds. So, the user always has to add a suf­fi­cient amount of liq­uid to keep the mix­ture watery.

Juic­ing: No blender is designed to make text­book juice by sep­a­rat­ing fiber and liq­uid. How­ev­er, if a blender makes a smooth­ie, it is some­times called whole Juice. The KitchenAid is able to make “whole juice” with some effort and needs to blend for 2–3 min­utes in total.

Frozen ingredients/desserts: This machine can turn ice cubes into snow. The Ice auto­mat­ic set­ting will do it per­fect­ly well by puls­ing con­tent for 30 sec­onds, or the man­u­al­ly used pulse func­tion also might be used for this pur­pose. It is per­fect for snow cones or moon­shine slushies. How­ev­er, blend­ing frozen fruits in smooth­ies could be a bit chal­leng­ing for this blender; it needs a suf­fi­cient amount of liq­uids for this pur­pose; oth­er­wise, it will stall due to air pock­ets form­ing and have to be stopped to stir up con­tent man­u­al­ly because it comes with­out any tam­pers or sim­i­lar tools.

So, this machine will hard­ly pre­pare ice cream or frozen yogurts eas­i­ly; how­ev­er, the user can try to per­form this task with extra effort.

Soup/ hot ingre­di­ents: The KitchenAid Dia­mond 5‑Speed machine will pre­pare hot soup from scratch because it does not heat any liq­uids via fric­tion, and it either does not have any heat­ing ele­ments. If you want to process already heat­ed food, then the user man­u­al advice to cool the liq­uids before use if pos­si­ble or when blend­ing boiled hot ingre­di­ents it requires remov­ing the cup from the insert in the mid­dle of the lid and cov­er­ing it with the tow­el to reg­u­late the pres­sure the hot food may cre­ate inside of the con­tain­er. Although it is not straight­for­ward it seems clear that this machine is not real­ly designed for blend­ing hot liq­uids. In addi­tion, some con­sumers who used the machine for tasks like bul­let­proof cof­fee com­plain that the pitch­er seal­ing gas­ket wea­ried out soon after using it for hot liq­uids. How­ev­er, this machine is per­fect­ly capa­ble of puree­ing cooled-down ingre­di­ents for soup.

Puree­ing: This KitchenAid Dia­mond 5‑Speed Blender can suc­cess­ful­ly puree cooked, and raw veg­eta­bles with some liq­uids added. It is able to make deli­cious hum­mus with a decent amount of liq­uid; how­ev­er, it requires scrap­ing down the sides in between purée puls­ing, but it came out well blended.

Chopping/food prep: May­on­naise, sal­ad dress­ings, may­on­naise, gua­camole, sauces, and sal­sa is what this blender does the best. It is capa­ble of emul­si­fy­ing var­i­ous dips; how­ev­er, the thick ones like hum­mus with some effort and enough liq­uids added. It is also per­fect for veg­gies or nuts chop­ping. How­ev­er, it is not pow­er­ful enough for chop­ping meat or fish.

Nut milk: The KitchenAid Dia­mond 5‑Speed Blender will make decent nut milk; it eas­i­ly pul­ver­izes nuts in liq­uids into homo­ge­neous consistency.

Nut but­ter: This machine will be able to make nut but­ter from soaked for a few hours or roast­ed nuts (although not per­fect­ly smooth) by stop­ping the machine a few times and mix­ing it with the spat­u­la. Be pre­pared to also add some oils and liq­uids when pro­cess­ing your nut butter.

Grinding/milling: The KitchenAid Dia­mond 5‑Speed Blender will grind the cof­fee, nuts, flax seeds, and grat­ed cheese. The machine will also mill the oats and oth­er soft grains but not suit­able for mak­ing bak­ing qual­i­ty flour from hard grains like wheat or rice.

Dough/batter: This machine is not designed to knead dough; how­ev­er, it is per­fect­ly capa­ble of mak­ing deli­cious crepes or cook­ie batter.

Although KitchenAid Dia­mond 5‑Speed is a sim­ple and not expen­sive blender, there is a learn­ing curve to learn­ing how to use it most effi­cient­ly. For exam­ple, to blend the decent green smooth­ies, you have to pulse it, then apply chop speed and puree at the end, it involves a few steps, so in a few min­utes and a few steps, you will be able to achieve a good result.

Speed Settings and Programs

The KitchenAid Dia­mond 5‑Speed Blender is equipped with 8 but­tons the pow­er — Pulse, Ice Crush pre-set pro­gram, and 5‑speed but­tons — 1) stir, (2) mix, (3) chop, (4) puree, and (5) liquefy.

The user has to press the pow­er but­ton and then choose the speed, Ice Crush pre-set, or Pulse func­tions to start the blender oper­at­ing. If the user wants to use the pulse, then after choos­ing the pulsed, it also requires select­ing the exact pulse speed from 5 avail­able ((1) stir, (2) mix, (3) chop, (4) puree, and (5) liquefy).

The Crush Ice but­ton is pre-pro­grammed to pulse at dif­fer­ent speeds for 30 sec­onds. The con­trol pan­el design for KitchenAid KSB1575 Dimond, KSB1570E, and KSB655 mod­el dif­fers slight­ly only by the shape of but­tons and absolute­ly iden­ti­cal in functionality.

So, the blender’s choice of speed is quite good and allows the user to make a good array of nice recipes. All the but­tons are slight­ly raised, pro­vid­ing a lit­tle tac­tile feed­back, so the user will nev­er won­der if the but­ton actu­al­ly was pushed or not. Over­all, the con­trol pan­el looks very sleek and solid.

Ease of Using and Cleaning

Oper­at­ing: The KitchenAid Dia­mond 5‑Speed machine is very easy to assem­ble and use. Since it has the blade built into the pitch­er, it requires only putting the pitch­er on the base and turn­ing the pitch­er clock­wise until you hear the sound. Then, add ingre­di­ents, and close the lid. And it is ready for running.

To dis­as­sem­ble the blender, the user has to rotate the pitch­er coun­ter­clock­wise to unlock and remove it. Some peo­ple com­plain that it is hard to dis­as­sem­ble, but it hap­pens not very often, just with some units. It has a great, secure lock­ing mech­a­nism and a very easy pour with no drips.

Clean­ing: The user man­u­al indi­cates that the KitchenAid Dia­mond 5‑Speed Blender is dish­wash­er safe for easy clean­ing up. How­ev­er, many con­sumers pre­fer to fol­low the self-clean­ing pro­ce­dure that is quite com­mon for blenders with an irre­mov­able blade sys­tem. Fill the jar with the halfway water, add a few soap drops, and run it for 30–60 sec­onds. In order to keep the blender clean, it is advis­able to rinse it imme­di­ate­ly after use, so it will not build up accu­mu­la­tion. After the rinse it may, e cleaned in the dish­wash­er or with the self-clean­ing procedure.

Base Unit and Motor Power

The inte­ri­or build qual­i­ty of the KitchenAid Dia­mond 5‑Speed Blender seems great and heavy-duty because it comes with a heavy die-cast base that looks stur­dy and sol­id. How­ev­er, it is equipped with quite a low-pow­er motor of only 0.9HP (671 watts), typ­i­cal for cheap­er blenders under $50. Nev­er­the­less, the KitchenAid 5‑speed blender will def­i­nite­ly out­per­form the $50 machine’s func­tion­al­i­ty and com­pete with the machines that cost under $100 and are equipped with pow­er up to 1100 watts. Thus the motor has a good design, although the pow­er is rather low for this price range.

But the KitchenAid Dia­mond 5‑Speed Blender motor con­struc­tion still has one draw­back. The gear affixed to the bot­tom of the pitch­er is made of plas­tic. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the plas­tic gear is locat­ed at the place of high-speed spin­ning, thus exposed to high loads and may dis­in­te­grate quick­ly, which con­sid­er­ably reduces the machine’s dura­bil­i­ty. 

Containers

All KitchenAid mod­els come with the same qual­i­ty BPA–free plas­tic con­tain­ers that are designed to han­dle liq­uids heat­ed up to 180 F. The jars are heavy-duty and seem quite durable; there are no reports of crack­ing and break­ing of it even when it acci­den­tal­ly dropped.

How­ev­er, dif­fer­ent mod­els of this machine are equipped with dif­fer­ent capac­i­ty and shape containers:

• KSB1575 Dia­mond comes with 60 oz. soft grip and dia­mond-shaped container;
• KSB1570 has a sim­ple round­ed shape and 56 oz. capacity;
• KSB655 also has a sim­ple round­ed 56 oz. con­tain­er and an addi­tion­al 24-oz. culi­nary jar for grind­ing and milling the small­er amount of ingredients.

Blades

The KitchenAid Dia­mond 5‑Speed machine comes with the blade per­ma­nent­ly inbuilt into a machine that repli­cates the design of heavy-duty com­mer­cial-type blenders like Vita­mix or Blendtec. The blades are very sharp, made of stain­less steel, and seem to be of good qual­i­ty. How­ev­er, some con­sumers report that they may become dull with­in 1 year of use.

Special Features

Col­ors: KitchenAid KSB1575 Dia­mond is avail­able in 21 col­ors –black, white, cap­puc­ci­no, pur­ple, and a few shad­ows of metal­lic, red, pink, blue, yel­low, and green.

The KSB1570 with the 56 oz pitch­er is avail­able in 4 col­ors – black, red, white, and silver.

The KSB655 mod­el comes with 56 oz. Pitch­er and culi­nary jar avail­able only in two col­ors – red and black.

The dif­fer­ent col­or units are also sold at dif­fer­ent prices.

Cer­ti­fied Refur­bished: All three mod­els are avail­able in cer­ti­fied refur­bished con­di­tion. The price for refur­bished units is some­times twice cheap­er as for orig­i­nal units.

Use in coun­tries out­side of the USA/Canada: The units sold in the USA and Cana­da come with a 110–120 volt­age sys­tem only. How­ev­er, this machine is also avail­able in many coun­tries around the world, and it is bet­ter to buy it local­ly; oth­er­wise, the volt­age trans­former will be need­ed to oper­ate in coun­tries with a 220–240 volt­age system.

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Noise

The KitchenAid Dia­mond 5‑Speed Blenderi­Blender is the qui­etest one, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing its low pow­er. The usu­al advice to reduce the noise out­put is to place rub­ber place­ment under­neath the base unit.

Warranty and Customer Service

All three mod­els usu­al­ly come with only a 1‑year lim­it­ed war­ran­ty, which usu­al­ly reflects the dura­bil­i­ty of the unit. The KitchenAid cus­tomer ser­vice is usu­al­ly quite help­ful and replaces faulty items with­out a problem.

The KitchenAid web­site may show the 5 years lim­it­ed war­ran­ty, but the price for the unit is much high­er than oth­er retail­ers’ offers, so the war­ran­ty is usu­al­ly also reflect­ed in the price. Nev­er­the­less, it is pos­si­ble to buy the extra extend­ed war­ran­ty for kitchen appli­ances with Ama­zon and oth­er retailers.

Optional Accessories and Attachments

The KitchenAid does not offer any extra acces­sories for any of the mod­els. It is only pos­si­ble to buy a replace­ment con­tain­er with inbuilt blades from the man­u­fac­tur­er or from online retailers.

Set Includes

• Unit base with 0.9HP pow­er motor;
• 60 oz. jar for the KSB1575 mod­el, 56 jars for the KSB1570 mod­el, and 56 oz. and 24 oz. con­tain­ers for the KSB655 model;
• Lid with mea­sur­ing cup;
• Use and Care Instructions.

Dimensions

This machine has a com­pact foot­print of only 7 x 9 inch­es; how­ev­er, it is quite tall with a total height, includ­ing the lid and cup; it mea­sures near­ly 18 inch­es and will not fit under the stan­dard kitchen cabinet.

The machine weighs around 9.4 pounds with a ship­ping weight of 12 pounds. It is also equipped with 44 inch­es pow­er cord. The cord does not have any stor­age under­neath the base unit.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• The KitchenAid Dia­mond 5‑Speed Blender has a sleek and fair­ly ver­sa­tile machine.
• This machine makes decent-qual­i­ty drinks, includ­ing green smoothies.
• Although the motor has only 0.9HP, it is quite pow­er­ful to per­form many func­tions that sim­i­lar wattage machines usu­al­ly can­not do, so it can save some mon­ey on ener­gy consumption.

Cons:

• The KitchenAid Dia­mond 5‑Speed machine comes with a part­ly plas­tic blade to a motor cou­pling which tends to wear out the system.
• Although this machine looks sol­id and stur­dy, it is not very durable and has a few issues which influ­ence its lifespan.
• It has only a 1‑year lim­it­ed war­ran­ty, which is rather small for a rep­utable brand.

KitchenAid 5‑Speed Blender Consumer Reviews

The KitchenAid brand has a very good rep­u­ta­tion among the cus­tomer, and this blender is no exclu­sion. It is very pop­u­lar and has a num­ber of very pos­i­tive reviews.

KitchenAid KSB1575 Diamond 5‑Speed Blender Price

The KitchenAid blender price varies great­ly between dif­fer­ent retail­ers. The man­u­fac­tur­er’s site sells it for around $160. Some online retail­ers offer very attrac­tive prices for this unit, and Ama­zon often offers the best bar­gain (depend­ing on unit color).

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Summary

In gen­er­al, the KitchenAid KSB1575 Dia­mond KSB1575/KSB1570/KSB655 5‑Speed Blender is quite a good machine if you can grab it for under $100. It has some issues with dri­ve cou­pling, the blade gas­ket, and dura­bil­i­ty, but it is quite a ver­sa­tile machine with very pow­er­ful for such a low ener­gy con­sump­tion motor.

Would you like to con­sid­er a more pow­er­ful KitchenAid blender?  Read our “KitchenAid KSB4027 K400 Coun­ter­top Blender Review” arti­cle.

Think­ing about the alter­na­tive option? Check here our arti­cle Best Coun­ter­top Blenders under $100 and KitchenAid 5‑Speed Dia­mond Blender vs. Oster Pro 1200 Blender.