Oster Blender Pro 1200 Review — The Best Glass Jar Blender

The Oster blender comes in two dif­fer­ent pack­ages — Oster Pro 1200 Blender 2‑in‑1 with Sin­gle Cup and Food Proces­sor Attach­ment and Oster Pro 1200 Blender with only Sin­gle Cup attach­ment. This ver­sa­tile machine is not new on the mar­ket and became avail­able in the mid­dle of 2015. With a price under $100, it falls in the afford­able low to mid-price blender range. In gen­er­al, Oster has a good rep­u­ta­tion among consumers.

Read the rest of this review to learn more details about the Oster 1200 Pro.

Con­sid­er alter­na­tive options. Check our articles 

Best Coun­ter­top Blender Under $100,

Best Pow­er­ful Blenders with Glass Jar, 

Nin­ja Pro­fes­sion­al Blender 1000 (BL610) vs. Oster Pro 1200 Blender, 

KitchenAid 5‑Speed Dia­mond Blender vs. Oster Pro 1200 Blender.

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

This pow­er­ful Oster 1200 Pro gad­get puts out an impres­sive array of blending.

Smooth­ie: It makes a tru­ly creamy smooth­ie from fruits and even green veg­eta­bles, while many of the blenders in this price range have prob­lems pro­cess­ing green and leafy ingre­di­ents. This gad­get is also able to pul­ver­ize even seed­ed ingre­di­ents like straw­ber­ries or black­ber­ries with­out any seed residues left. Dur­ing the blend­ing, it may require some stir­ring to get rid of air pock­ets, but in gen­er­al, it does the job very well.

Juice: This machine will not pro­duce clas­sic juice because it is just a blender. It will sep­a­rate the liq­uid from the fiber. But if you intend to make a very smooth smooth­ie, which is some­times called whole juice, then this blender is per­fect for this task.

Ice Crush­ing and Frozen Desserts: This gad­get also has enough pow­er to crush ice and blend frozen ingre­di­ents. It is also able to shave ice to snow cones con­sis­ten­cy and could be eas­i­ly used for the prepa­ra­tion of frozen desserts and drinks.

Puree­ing: It purees raw or cooked veg­eta­bles very well. Even the car­rot puree will come with a per­fect­ly smooth tex­ture. So it could be the per­fect solu­tion for those who are look­ing for a gad­get to make baby food. And this blender comes with a sin­gle-serve cup that process­es small batch­es of food.

Soup/ hot ingre­di­ents: The blender does not have a heat­ing ele­ment, and it is not able to heat food by fric­tion, but it per­fect­ly han­dles boil­ing tem­per­a­ture food and may process soup vegs that come straight from the oven. No ques­tion, this machine is per­fect for mak­ing bul­let­proof cof­fee too.

Chopping/food prep: On pulse mode, use the large or sin­gle-serve pitch­er, and it will make a per­fect sal­ad, hum­mus, sal­sa, or shred vegs for slaw. The blender’s low speed is tru­ly low, so the qual­i­ty of the chop­ping is very good. The unit with a food proces­sor attach­ment with the chop­ping blade and stain­less steel slic­ing disk will also do the chop­ping, slic­ing, and dic­ing tasks for a vari­ety of recipes.

Nut milk: It is also pos­si­ble to make good qual­i­ty nut milk with this blender.

Nut but­ter: To make nut but­ter is a bit of a chal­lenge for the blender. This usu­al­ly requires some stir­ring, and this blender does not come with a tam­per. How­ev­er, by stop­ping peri­od­i­cal­ly and push­ing the con­tent using a medi­um blend­ing speed, you will be able to make fine nut but­ter in about 10 min­utes. But, yes, it is a bit time-consuming.

Dough/batter: It can­not knead the dough but is able to mix the bat­ter. The pack­age with a food proces­sor attach­ment also comes only with chop­ping and slic­ing acces­sories and does not include any dough hooks.

Grinding/milling: The pulse or slow speed func­tions will grind herbs, chopped nuts, or mill oats, but it is not able to make bak­ing qual­i­ty flour.

When blend­ing tough or leafy ingre­di­ents in smooth­ies, place them first in the pitch­er, process with the pulse mode for a few sec­onds and then add the rest of the food and blend it on the smooth­ie pre-set pro­gram. Work­ing with the pro­grams and speeds this way, you will learn how to achieve per­fect results with any ingre­di­ents you use. The blade assem­bly for 48 oz. and sin­gle-serve 24 oz. con­tain­ers are the same, so there is no dif­fer­ence in the qual­i­ty of blend­ing when you use one or anoth­er. The only dif­fer­ence is the vol­ume processed.

Over­all, this is an excel­lent and ver­sa­tile machine for under $100, espe­cial­ly for some­one who needs a blender for small and large batch­es of food and does not need a heavy-duty food processor.

Speed Settings and Programs

The Oster 1200 Pro con­trol pan­el has 9 but­tons in total. There are three pro­grams — Green/Frozen Smooth­ies, Food Chop/Salsa, and Milk­shake; four-speed modes — Pulse, Low, Medi­um, and High; and Stop and On/Off buttons.

The machine set­tings for smooth­ies and milk­shakes usu­al­ly do the job very well. The reverse crush motion blades pull all the food to the bot­tom, incor­po­rat­ing it con­tin­u­ous­ly into a vor­tex, so it is unnec­es­sary to stir ingre­di­ents dur­ing blend­ing. If any pro­gram set­tings are too short for par­tic­u­lar tasks, you can use the pulse mode or repeat the program.

Speeds and modes blend in both direc­tions and stages from low, medi­um to high, and back; to inter­rupt any speed mode, you have to press the Stop but­ton; the pulse but­ton works until you hold it. This gad­get does not have a set­ting for crush­ing ice cubes, but you can do it in pulse mode. This blender has rea­son­able con­trol over oper­at­ing with all the speed and pro­gram set­tings. The user can work with speeds and pro­grams to adjust to any needs. The user man­u­al also pro­vides good instruc­tions on how to oper­ate this machine for dif­fer­ent purposes.

Ease of Using and Cleaning

The Oster 1200 Pro has a remov­able blade, so it requires some effort to assem­ble and dis­as­sem­ble this machine for blend­ing and clean­ing. Accord­ing to the user’s man­u­al, it should be dis­man­tled and cleaned each time it is used. Since this is very incon­ve­nient, it is okay to clean it after each use by sim­ply rins­ing it with water or blend­ing it for a few sec­onds with some soapy water. Then, take it apart for a thor­ough clean­ing at least once a month. Remem­ber, the space between the con­tain­er and the bot­tom of the plas­tic jar cap will accu­mu­late some dirt.

To dis­as­sem­ble this gad­get, begin by unscrew­ing the black plas­tic cap at the bot­tom of the glass pitch­er. The seal­ing gas­ket should then be removed, and at that point, you will notice that the blade sys­tem is unlocked and ready to be tak­en away. When re-assem­bling this blender, make sure that the base is tight­ly screwed to the pitch­er and the resin gas­ket is placed the right way. Oth­er­wise, it may leak, some­thing that is quite com­mon for all blenders with remov­able blades.

Only one blade assem­bly serves the main pitch­er and the sin­gle-serve cup. There­fore, fol­low the same pro­ce­dure for assem­bling and dis­as­sem­bling the sin­gle-serve cup and the main pitcher.

Base Unit and Motor Power

The Oster 1200 pro comes with a very pow­er­ful 1200-watt motor at the peak and a blade speed of 19,000 RPMs. The pro­cess­ing pow­er decreas­es to around 900 watts, and that is very good for a blender in this price range. The motor sys­tem is con­struct­ed with an all-met­al dri­ve shaft and con­nec­tions that add dura­bil­i­ty to the motor.

The base hous­ing is made of brushed plas­tic, but it looks quite nice, and it is easy to keep clean. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, though the unit is well made, the base of this gad­get is not very sta­ble, and it tends to skit­ter across the countertop.

Oster Pro 1200 Containers

This blender comes with the main 48 oz. (6 cups) pitch­er, the sin­gle-serve 24 oz. cup, and 5 cups food proces­sor bowl (for the set with food proces­sor attach­ment only). The main con­tain­er is made of very heavy lab-qual­i­ty, stress, and tem­per­a­ture-resis­tant borosil­i­cate glass. The Oster is one of the few brands that still offers the glass con­tain­er that is so pop­u­lar among con­sumers. The glass con­tain­er is eas­i­er to clean, and it pre­vents unknown chem­i­cals from leach­ing into food.

The large con­tain­er for this mod­el has an inno­v­a­tive design. It comes with an extra-wide bot­tom for easy blend­ing. The black plas­tic cap that is screwed to the glass jar is equipped with a lever that ensures that the jar locks to the base and will not break loose dur­ing oper­a­tion. How­ev­er, the plas­tic lid of the pitch­er is not very tight. If you have this issue with your blender, con­tact cus­tomer ser­vice to replace the lid.

The sin­gle-serve or smooth­ie cup and food proces­sor bowl are made of BPA-free poly­car­bon­ate. The sin­gle-serve cup comes with a secure and spills a safe lid and an open/close latch.

Blades

This blender comes with a remov­able blade assem­bly; the blade is sharp and 3.5‑inches in diam­e­ter, which is quite large for this type of blender. This is the 6‑prong three dual-direc­tion blade assem­bly, which has the blades pro­trud­ing up and down, allow­ing food to move freely with min­i­mal air pock­ets. This all gives very good results and a per­fect con­sis­ten­cy for milk­shakes or smoothies.

The blender blades, food proces­sor chop­ping blade, slic­ing disk, and the post they are mount­ed to are all made of stain­less steel, and this adds longevi­ty to all of the blade sys­tems. In addi­tion, the blade assem­bly looks very stur­dy and durable.

Special Features

This blender is avail­able in brushed nick­el and black col­ors and has a few attach­ments to choose from. The main pack­age comes with a coun­ter­top and per­son­al blender attach­ment. An addi­tion­al pack­age is avail­able that comes with the main, sin­gle-serve con­tain­er and the food pro­cess­ing attach­ment. It should be noticed that the food proces­sor attach­ment is not suit­able for a heavy-duty job. How­ev­er, the pack­age price with the food proces­sor is only $20 high­er than for the main one.

Noise

Although the noise lev­el is a per­son­al pref­er­ence, it is clear that this unit is quite loud. It roars when crush­ing ice or frozen ingre­di­ents. It is clear­ly loud­er than my late Vita­mix 5200 blender, which had an out­put of 86 deci­bels. The only solu­tion I can offer is to place some rub­ber under this blender when in use, and that may notice­ably reduce the noise level.

Warranty and Customer Service

This gad­get offers a 3‑year Lim­it­ed War­ran­ty on all parts and a 10-year Lim­it­ed War­ran­ty on the all-met­al gears. How­ev­er, a lim­it­ed war­ran­ty means that the cus­tomer pays for any replace­ment and repair ship­ping. In addi­tion, if the cus­tomer does not like the item for some rea­son, it may be returned with­in 14 days from the date of pur­chase with return ship­ping paid by the cus­tomer unless the item was faulty.

The Oster Cus­tomer Ser­vice is great, and they tend to solve prob­lems and send replace­ment parts nor­mal­ly with­out problems.

Optional accessories

Even though most Oster acces­sories and pitch­ers are inter­change­able among the dif­fer­ent mod­els, this Oster 1200 Pro comes with a new design that includes the wider bot­tom pitch­er and the larg­er blades. There­fore this restricts the vari­ety of Oster acces­sories. In addi­tion, there are only three attach­ments that go with this mod­el; the main blender, the per­son­al cups, and the food proces­sor, which can be bought in pack­ages or separately.

Oster Pro 1200 Set Includes

• 1200-watt base unit;
• 6‑cups dish­wash­er-safe glass container;
• 24 oz. poly­car­bon­ate BPA-free sin­gle-serve cup;
• One dual-direc­tion blade assem­bly suit­able for con­tain­er and sin­gle-serve cups;
• 5‑cup BPA-free food proces­sor bowl (for the pack­age with food proces­sor attach­ment only);
• Chop­ping blade and stain­less steel slic­ing disk (for the pack­age with food proces­sor attach­ment only);
• Quick Start Guide and the User’s Manual.

Dimensions

This gad­get has quite a com­pact design with a foot­print of 8.5 inch­es x 10.2 inch­es, and it is only 14 inch­es tall with the 6‑cup pitch­er on the top of the base unit. It fits per­fect­ly in tra­di­tion­al kitchen cab­i­nets, sav­ing a lot of space in your kitchen. The ship­ping weight of the blender is ten pounds.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• It is a ver­sa­tile gad­get at a very rea­son­able price that comes with a coun­ter­top, per­son­al blenders, and/or food processing.
• This machine is very pow­er­ful for its price range and is capa­ble of mak­ing excel­lent qual­i­ty smooth­ies and shakes with­out any coarse tex­ture in the drink.
• This gad­get has a glass pitch­er, which is very rare for such a pow­er­ful blender.
• The sev­en (7) speeds and pro­grams offer good con­trol over the blending.
• This machine is well built and durable, with all-met­al motor dri­ves and cou­plings and also an all-met­al blade sys­tem. In addi­tion, Oster has quite good war­ran­ty pro­grams and help­ful cus­tomer service.

Cons:

• This machine is loud­er than aver­age for its power.
• It is also not very sta­ble on the counter and can trav­el dur­ing operation.
• It may have an issue with the tight­ness of the main pitch­er lid.

Oster Pro 1200 Blender Consumer Reviews

The Oster brand has a good rep­u­ta­tion among cus­tomers, and this rel­a­tive­ly new mod­el is quite pop­u­lar, with many reviews on Ama­zon. The aver­age Ama­zon rat­ing for this item is 4.4.

Price

The price for this gad­get fluc­tu­ates while usu­al­ly avail­able for under a hun­dred dol­lars with dif­fer­ent online retail­ers. The near­er the week­end, the it tends to become cheap­er. Click this link to check the low­est price list­ing to get the best deal.

BUY NOW

Summary

Over­all, this is an excel­lent and ver­sa­tile machine for under $100, espe­cial­ly for some­one who needs a blender for small and large batch­es of food (includ­ing a sin­gle-serve cup attach­ment) and does not need a heavy-duty food proces­sor. In addi­tion, this durable and pow­er­ful Oster Pro 1200 Blender can pro­duce high-qual­i­ty fruit and green smooth­ies and shakes. As a result, it is not only a well-per­form­ing and afford­able machine but also has a com­pact design, which saves you cab­i­net and shelv­ing space.

Alter­na­tive­ly, check our articles:

Best Coun­ter­top Blender Under $100,

Best Pow­er­ful Blenders with Glass Jar, 

Nin­ja Pro­fes­sion­al Blender 1000 (BL610) vs. Oster Pro 1200 Blender, 

KitchenAid 5‑Speed Dia­mond Blender vs. Oster Pro 1200 Blender.