Vitamix Ascent A3500 and A3300 Blender Review

The A3300 and A3500 blenders are the top Vita­mix Ascent prod­uct line mod­els released on 25 Decem­ber 2016. The Com­pa­ny has made blenders for near­ly 100 years, and these two mod­els super­sede all exist­ing Vita­mix mod­els. They are not only over­loaded with a vari­ety of excit­ing “bells and whis­tles” but come with a few tru­ly hi-tech features.

Do you want to find out which Vita­mix blender suits you best? Then, go to our Vita­mix Blender Guide arti­cle and reviews.

• Which is the Best Vita­mix Blender to Buy? – All Mod­els Comparison

Here is our hon­est review for your con­sid­er­a­tion, which will help you decide if the blender is worth invest­ing in.

Dis­clo­sure: As an Ama­zon Asso­ciate, we may earn an affil­i­ate com­mis­sion for pur­chas­es you make when using the links on this page.

Functionality

Smooth­ie: Blends equal­ly well the soft banana and fibrous kale, car­rot, and pineap­ple into the silki­est smooth­ie you have ever test­ed; Makes smoothest green drinks; Oblit­er­ate any flax seeds and straw­ber­ry, blue­ber­ry, rasp­ber­ry, and oth­er into homo­ge­neous drinks with­out residues left; Destroys avo­ca­do core;

Juices:  Per­fect for mak­ing “whole” juice;

Ice Crush­ing and Frozen Treats Crush­es ice, frozen fruit, veg­etable, and drinks; eas­i­ly make any frozen desserts like sor­bets, snow cones, ice cream, and oth­ers; Ide­al for daiquiris and oth­er frozen alco­holic beverages;

Nut milk:  Nut, seed, or soy milk is a breeze for the Vita­mix blender; you often do not need even a nut bag to strain the fiber from the liquid;

Puree­ing: Ide­al for puree­ing raw and cooked fruit and veg­gies for side dish­es and baby food; makes per­fect hum­mus, pesto, and vari­ety spreads and dips;

Soup/ hot ingre­di­ents: Designed to blend hot ingre­di­ents and heat liq­uids via fric­tions, makes boil­ing Soup from cold food in under 7 min­utes (depends on contain­er type); makes bul­let­proof cof­fee (the small­er con­tain­er is preferred);

Chopping/food prep: Blends may­on­naise, mari­nades, sal­ad dress­ing, and sauces; eas­i­ly chops soft and hard veggies;

Nut but­ter: Makes a per­fect­ly smooth home­made nut but­ter from raw and roast­ed nuts in less than 1 minute;

Grinding/milling: Mills into bak­ing qual­i­ty flour any grains and beans, even the most chal­leng­ing and tini­est; grinds spices and coffee

beans with ease (but 8 oz bowls are pre­ferred for the task);

Dough/batter: Makes ide­al bread and piz­za dough and mix­es cook­ies batter;

Speed Settings and Programs

The Vita­mix Ascent 3300 and 3500 con­trol pan­el design com­bines a capac­i­tive sens­ing touch­screen and a phys­i­cal dial-up knob.

Touch­screen. The touch­screen resem­bles the smart­phone screen tech­nol­o­gy; it is a scratch-resis­tant mate­r­i­al with func­tion­al touch but­tons so tac­tile that you will hear tiny clicks while touch­ing them.

The touch­screen comprises:

• The dis­play that shows all rel­e­vant blend­ing infor­ma­tion such as cur­rent speed, up/down count­ing time, the present pre-set pro­grams icon, and an icon indi­cat­ing the vari­able speed running;
• Pro­gram­ma­ble timer +/ – time selec­tion capac­i­tive touch but­tons. The pro­gram­ma­ble timer is a handy fea­ture which sets a count­down timer like a microwave timer; it allows you to avoid under-pro­cess­ing and over-pro­cess­ing of your recipes, exper­i­ment with new ones and repeat your favorite recipes later;
• 5 pre-set pro­gram icons for Smooth­ies, Frozen Desserts, Soups, Dips/Spreads, and Self-Clean­ing; the icons are capac­i­tive touch but­tons (for the A3500 mod­el only);
• The Pulse and Start/Stop capac­i­tive touch buttons.

Dial knob. The phys­i­cal dial knob reg­u­lates the speed from slow­est #1 (1400 rpm) to high­est #10 (23000 rpm) by phys­i­cal­ly turn­ing it in half-step incre­ments (19 speeds in total). The knob has a very soft grip, flows very smooth­ly when you turn it, and gen­tly clicks between speed set­tings. The slow­est speed is plod­ding, and the high­est is high enough to heat the liq­uids via fric­tion up to the boil­ing tem­per­a­ture. The dial knob does not have an absolute posi­tion; when­ev­er you turn the machine on or after a blender is stopped, the speed set­ting auto­mat­i­cal­ly resets to speed #1. It ensures that the device will not ramp up when it starts run­ning if you for­get to reset it to a slow speed.

Base Unit, Motor Power, and New Technology

Com­pared to old­er Vita­mix mod­els, the Ascent 3300 and 3500 blenders have a com­plete­ly new base unit exte­ri­or design. As a result, it looks pret­ty from all angles. The stan­dard base option is made of durable plas­tics with shiny met­al trim­ming. The A3500 mod­els are also avail­able in a few col­ors of sol­id met­al fin­ish shells.

The A3300 and A3500 base hous­es the sol­id and pow­er­ful 2.2HP ball-bear­ing motor (the same as most Lega­cy line machines). The blender also has a very durable all-met­al dri­ve to blade couplings.

Like all com­mer­cial-type blenders, Vita­mix Ascent is equipped with a ther­mal over­ride safe­ty sys­tem, which turns the motor off before the motor burns if over­loaded. The Ascent blenders will show error code E31 or E3x on the con­trol pan­el dis­play if the blender over­heats and ther­mal over­ride trig­gers (at ~185°F).

Wire­less Con­nec­tiv­i­ty. The Vita­mix Ascent 3300 and 3500 bases are equipped with wire­less con­nec­tiv­i­ty. This com­plete­ly new fea­ture via the NFC (near-field com­mu­ni­ca­tion) tech­nol­o­gy rec­og­nizes the type of con­tain­er con­nect­ed to the base. It adjusts blend set­tings to accom­mo­date par­tic­u­lar con­tain­ers (64 oz., 48 oz., 20 oz., and 8 oz.). Each con­tain­er is pro­grammed to max­i­mum run­ning time, and the blender will stop auto­mat­i­cal­ly after 6.30 min for 64 oz. con­tain­er, 7.30 min for 48 oz/, and 1.15 min for 20 oz. and 8 oz. containers.

You will also not be able to start the blender run­ning if there is no con­tain­er con­nect­ed to the base; the con­trol pan­el sim­ply will not react to your commands.

Anoth­er exam­ple is if you pop on a 64 oz. con­tain­er and select Soup pre-set pro­gram (A3500 mod­el only); the timer will show a 5.45 min blend­ing time if you pop the 48 oz. the con­tain­er, the timer will show 7.30 min (3 inch­es blade will do it slow­er) if you pop on 20 oz. or 8 oz. con­tain­ers, it will show that the blender will not make Soup because the con­tain­er is unvented.

Per­fect Blend App. The Ascent mod­els are also equipped with Blue­tooth, con­nect­ing the per­fect blend app to your smart­phone. The app has a few hun­dred recipes—each recipe is pro­grammed at a spe­cif­ic blend­ing algo­rithm and blends at vari­able speeds at the pre-set time.  The app then allows upload­ing pre-set blend­ing pro­grams to the blender. This per­fect blend app is a real hid­den Vita­mix Ascent gem.

Container

Con­tain­er: Vita­mix Ascent A3500 and A3300 blenders come with a low-pro­file wide bot­tom 64-oz./2L capac­i­ty con­tain­er. The con­tain­er is made of high-qual­i­ty, BPA-free, impact-resis­tant, heat-resis­tant East­man Tri­tan copoly­ester mate­r­i­al. It has marked ounce, cup, and ml mea­sure­ments on the side of the jug.

The Vita­mix A3500 and A3300 jars are made of high-qual­i­ty copoly­ester and not glass because the glass con­tain­er will not with­stand the load that com­mer­cial-type blenders like Vita­mix are exposed to. The only alter­na­tive to avoid plas­tic is using a met­al con­tain­er, but most pro­duc­ers choose the impact-proof copoly­ester because it is lighter and more aes­thet­ic than the met­al one. Nev­er­the­less, Vita­mix released a new stain­less steel con­tainer in 2020 that is com­pat­i­ble with Ascent machines; it was an answer to the numer­ous Vita­mix cus­tomer request to pro­duce an alter­na­tive jar that will avoid the con­tact of food blend­ed with plastic.

The Ascent A3300 and A3500 mod­els also have a few new fea­tures not present in the old­er Vita­mix machines. (1) It has a bit notch just under the spout to pro­vide a smoother pour flow. (2) It comes with a new design trans­par­ent see-through lid, so you can see what you are blend­ing. The new lid is designed with snap fas­ten­ers that make a firm click when it is locked on and is bet­ter leak­ing-proof than old­er rub­ber lids. The lid is made of plas­tic and has a rub­ber seal around it, so you must remem­ber that you may need to clean build-ups under it occa­sion­al­ly. The lid is equipped with a remov­able, vent­ed lid plug that allows you to make process ingre­di­ents, add food while blend­ing, and use a tam­per while pro­cess­ing. (3) The cap also has mea­sur­ing marks (15 ml and 30 ml) that are use­ful for small ingre­di­ents such as spices and flavorings.

Tam­per: A tam­per is a help­ful tool when you blend thick mix­tures; it helps to remove the air pock­et and cre­ates a bet­ter vor­tex.

If your blend­ing mix­ture becomes sticky and needs to stir, you have to use the tam­per through the lid plug and mix until it ‘burps.’ oth­er­wise, you can always press the On/Off but­ton to stop the machine.  Next, remove the con­tain­er from the blender base and use a rub­ber spat­u­la to push the air bub­ble away from the blades. Add liq­uid if necessary.

Lock­ing: Vita­mix has no lock­ing sys­tem. It freely sits on the four posts and lit­tle vibrate dur­ing the pro­cess­ing. It is made on pur­pose because of its high torque; if it locks, it can dam­age the con­tain­er. In real­i­ty, it is safe and has no prob­lems with secure pitch­er sitting.

The Ascent mod­els are also equipped with addi­tion­al intel­li­gent safe­ty fea­tures. For exam­ple, the con­tain­er blade assem­bly is equipped with an NFC chip, which only acti­vates when the con­tain­er is safe­ly sit­ting on a base; oth­er­wise, the blender will auto­mat­i­cal­ly stop.

Small vs. large batch­es: The 64 oz. the wide bot­tom con­tain­er is per­fect for blend­ing medi­um to large batch­es of food. The min­i­mum liq­uid amount it will han­dle is 2 cups. To blend per­fect Vita­mix smooth­ies, you need to cov­er the blade’s lev­el, and the less ingre­di­ent you add, the more like­ly it will splash the food around a bit. You can process a sin­gle por­tion of smooth­ie in the 64 oz. wide bot­tom jar, but it does not do quite as fine a job as with larg­er batch­es. Thus, you should pur­chase small­er pitch­ers or sin­gle-serve cups for pro­cess­ing a small por­tion of food (sin­gle-serve smoothest, sal­ad dress­ing, baby food, etc.).

Blades

The Ascent A3500 and A3300 have the stan­dard Vita­mix blender irre­mov­able blades built into the con­tain­er. In addi­tion, all Ascent mod­els with wide bot­tom con­tain­ers are equipped with 4 inch­es and 4‑prong “wet” blades. How­ev­er, “wet” means pro­cess­ing wet ingre­di­ents such as fruits, veg­eta­bles, nuts, seeds, and liq­uids into smooth­ies, milk­shakes, nut kinds of milk, nut but­ter, and frozen desserts. But they are also able to per­form grinding/milling and knead­ing tasks.

The patent­ed blades are pre­ci­sion-cut from hard­ened stain­less steel and are dull by design; thus, they will not need sharp­en­ing and are very safe to handle.

Using and Cleaning

All Vita­mix gad­gets are straight­for­ward to use, but the Ascent mod­els are loaded with so many fea­tures that you may need to ded­i­cate a lit­tle time to learn them.

Acti­vat­ing: You acti­vate your blender with the ON/OFF switch on the side of the base unit. If there is no con­tain­er on the top of the base, the con­trol pan­el dis­play will show the float­ing “Vita­mix” logo. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, you still can­not start run­ning the machine until you set the con­tain­er on top of the base unit; the con­trol pan­el sim­ply will not react to your touch (a nice safe­ty feature).

As was men­tioned already, the Ascent blenders are equipped with self-detect con­tain­ers and wire­less con­nec­tiv­i­ty (or NFC — near-field com­mu­ni­ca­tion) fea­ture which rec­og­nizes the type of con­tain­er (64 oz., 48 oz., 20 oz., and 8 oz.) you fit and adjusts blend­ing time to suit the cor­rect container.

For exam­ple, if you pop on a 64 oz. con­tain­er and select soup pro­gram, the count­down timer will dis­play a 5.45 min blend­ing time if you pop 48 oz. the con­tain­er will show 7.30 min (since 48 oz. is equipped with 3 inch­es blade and they require more time to blend Soup) if you set 20 oz. or 8 oz. cups, the dis­play will show that the blender will not make Soup because those cups do not have a vent. Sim­i­lar works for the per­fect blend app.

So, when you place the con­tain­er on the base, the dis­play will show the container/cup icon and speed 1, indi­cat­ing that it is ready for use.

Run with vari­able speed: With the con­tain­er on the base unit, just touch the Start/Stop but­ton; the blender will run and show the run arrow sym­bol, count uptime, and cur­rent speed. You can reg­u­late the speed by rotat­ing the speed dial at any time dur­ing the blend­ing cycle. Then, touch the Start/Stop but­ton again to stop the blender when you need it. Each con­tain­er is pro­grammed with a spe­cif­ic max­i­mum run time, and the machine will shut down auto­mat­i­cal­ly when the max­i­mum run time has passed.

Pre-set pro­gram (applies to Vita­mix A3500 mod­el only): Select with a touch one of the 5 pre-set pro­gram icons (Smooth­ies, Frozen Desserts, Soups, Dips/Spreads, and Self-Clean­ing) and press the Start/Stop but­ton. The default pro­gram time speed and select­ed pro­gram icon will dis­play on the con­trol pan­el, and the blender will start run­ning with the timer show­ing the count down­time. The blender will auto­mat­i­cal­ly stop at the end of the pre-set cycle. You can stop the pro­gram at any time by press­ing Start/Stop, but you can­not adjust the speed and times dur­ing the blend­ing for the spe­cif­ic pre-set program.

Timer: For­tu­nate­ly, you can read­just blend­ing time and speed dur­ing the blend­ing when using the timer. Touch the +/- but­tons on the con­trol pan­el to set your time and press it to ini­ti­ate blend­ing. The con­trols dis­play will show the speed, count down­time, and arrow run­ning sym­bol. You can adjust the speed dur­ing the blend­ing process and stop the blender at any time by press­ing the Start/Stop but­ton again.

Pulse: Press the pulse but­ton and hold it as long as you need it; you can select any speed to puls­ing mode before or dur­ing the processing.

Clean­ing: All Vita­mix con­tain­ers are designed to be cleaned with­out remov­ing the blade assem­bly. The pri­ma­ry method is the self-clean­ing pro­ce­dure. You just have to fill the con­tain­er half full with warm water, add a few drops of dish-wash­ing liq­uid, and run for 30–60 sec­onds or select the Clean­ing pre-set pro­gram (A3500 only). Then rinse the con­tain­er thor­ough­ly. To avoid cloudy con­tain­er build-ups, you have to dry clean with the cloth imme­di­ate­ly after rins­ing. If you used the machine for recipes like nut but­ter, you might need to remove sticky food with a kitchen brush before the self-clean­ing procedure.

Besides, all Ascent con­tain­ers, lids, caps, and can­ter­ing pads are now dish­wash­er safe; you can clean those parts on the top shelf of your dish-wash­ing machine.

Vitamix Ascent A3300 and A3500 Blender Optional Accessories and Attachments

The Vita­mix pro­duces an exten­sive range of extra acces­sories for its blenders, such as addi­tion­al con­tain­ers, best blend scales, and others.

Vita­mix is known for the com­pat­i­bil­i­ty of the acces­sories between dif­fer­ent blender mod­els. How­ev­er, the self-detect con­tain­ers (Ascent line with clear lid) may be used on the Lega­cy bases. The A3300 and A3500 machines are com­pat­i­ble only with self-detect con­tain­ers designed espe­cial­ly for the Ascent blenders (those with a clear lid) since only self-detect con­tain­ers have wire­less con­nec­tiv­i­ty NFC tags.

• Food Proces­sor Attach­ment. It is an attach­ment that con­verts the Vita­mix Ascent blender into the best chef device.
• 48-ounce Wet Stain­less Steel Con­tain­er. It is the long-await­ed con­tain­er by many health-aware con­sumers that was released in July 2020.
• 48-ounce Wet SELF-DETECT Con­tain­er. The con­tain­er is designed to per­form the same job as 64 oz. wet blades con­tain­er, which comes in the pack­age with every A3300/3500 mod­el blender. How­ev­er, these small­er-capac­i­ty con­tain­ers will han­dle small­er por­tions of ingre­di­ents than the stan­dard 64 oz. For exam­ple, it can process a min­i­mum of 1 cup of food, while the 64 oz. jar min­i­mum will start from 2.5–3 cups. The small­er house­hold shell con­sid­ers this jar. The price for 48 wet-blade jugs ranges from $120-$145.
• 48-ounce Dry Grains SELF-DETECT Con­tain­er. The con­tain­er equipped these blades slight­ly dif­fer­ent from the stan­dard wet blad­ed. If the wet blades pull the vor­tex up, the dry blender will push it down for bet­ter-per­form­ing milling, grind­ing, and dough-knead­ing tasks. The dry blade con­tain­ers are avail­able at $130-$145.
• 20 oz. SELF-DETECT Blend­ing Cup Starter Kit. It includes two sin­gles serv­ing 20 oz. cups with a to-go lid and one self-detect blade assem­bly to use as a bul­let-type sin­gle-serve attach­ment, which allows you to blend indi­vid­ual por­tions direct­ly inside these trav­el cups. These cups are also help­ful for mak­ing baby food and small batch­es of recipes. This attach­ment will not process hot ingre­di­ents or heat them to boil­ing temperatures.
• 8 oz. SELF-DETECT Blend­ing Bowls Starter Kit includes two 8 oz. bowls and blade assem­bly (the same as for 20 oz. cups). It is designed to grind spices, chop gar­lic or onion and blend small batch­es of sauces, dress­ings, dips, and baby food. The kit includes lids so that you can store the blend­ed food straight in the bowl.
• 48 oz. Aer Disc Con­tainer is designed for per­form­ing pro­fes­sion­al-lev­el whip­ping, mud­dling, foam­ing, and emul­si­fy­ing tasks.
• Per­fect Blend Smart Scale and Recipe App, The smart scale, via Blue­tooth, inte­grates with the best blend app, unlocks over 500 new recipes on your smart­phone, and allows users to send them to your A3300 and 3500 blenders.

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Special Features

Col­ors: The A3300 mod­els are avail­able in two col­ors — Black and Gray. The A3500 comes in white and red col­ors (stan­dard plas­tic base unit) and four pre­mi­um met­al fin­ish­es (sol­id met­al shell base unit) — Brushed Stain­less, Cop­per, Graphite, and Black Stain­less (lim­it­ed edition).

Cer­ti­fied Refur­bished: Vita­mix web­site offers the Recon­di­tioned A3300 and A3500 for $100 off new prices. The recon­di­tioned units come with 5 years full war­ran­ty while new machines have a 10 years warranty.

Use in coun­tries out­side of USA/Canada: All Vita­mix blenders sold in the US are equipped with a 110–120 volt­age sys­tem and designed to be used in the US/Canada and oth­er regions with a 110–120 volt­age sys­tem (Japan, Tai­wan, Cen­tral, and South Amer­i­ca, Sau­di Ara­bia, etc.).

How­ev­er, the pro­duc­er does not rec­om­mend oper­at­ing 110–120 volt­age units via a volt­age trans­former, and often they sim­ply do not work prop­er­ly. The best selec­tion and prices for 220–240 volt­age ver­sions of Vita­mix blenders are avail­able from UK online retailers.

Set Includes

• 2HP Motor Base
• 64 oz. wide base Tri­tan copoly­ester con­tain­er with a clear lid and mea­sur­ing cap;
• Cus­tom tam­per designed for 64 oz. wide base jar;
• Sim­ply Blend­ing Cookbook;
• User Man­u­al;
• War­ran­ty information.

It comes in envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly and secure card­board packaging.

Warranty and Customer Service

The A3300 and A3500 are equipped with a 10-year stan­dard full war­ran­ty and out­stand­ing Cus­tomer Ser­vice. The Vita­mix full war­ran­ty cov­ers all parts from top to bot­tom, and if any of them breaks, the com­pa­ny repair or exchanges them free of charge; it also cov­ers ship­ping both ways.

The war­ran­ty is valid no mat­ter from which retail­er you buy your blender. It is also cov­ered with a full guar­an­tee if you pur­chased the blender from a pri­vate per­son as a sec­ond­hand; the only dif­fer­ence is the war­ran­ty will start from the day the first own­er pur­chased it.

You are free to reg­is­ter your war­ran­ty any day with­in ten years of its valid­i­ty by sub­mit­ting to Cus­tomer Ser­vice the ser­i­al num­ber that is locat­ed on the bot­tom of your machine, so you do not need to keep safe for­ev­er the receipt or war­ran­ty cards.

Vita­mix also allows 30 days risk-free tri­al peri­od. After that, if you are not sat­is­fied with the blender’s per­for­mance or sim­ply change your mind, you can return the device to the autho­rized retail­er free of charge with a full refund, no ques­tions asked.

Noise

The Vita­mix machines are the qui­etest among the pow­er­ful high-end type blender (those with­out sound enclo­sures). The A3300 and A3500 are the qui­etest among all Vita­mix blenders. Although the man­u­fac­tur­er did not release any offi­cial data about the Ascent noise emit­ting, it con­firms that the gad­get was built using sound-damp­en­ing design and materials.

The noise the blender release also depends on the ingre­di­ents you blend; the soft­er food release less noise; the frozen ingre­di­ents are the nois­i­est. Accord­ing to unof­fi­cial mea­sur­ing, the A3300 and 3500 mod­els will emit 84 Db at a max­i­mum when blend­ing iced food. Such a sound lev­el will allow for main­tain­ing a con­ver­sa­tion while blend­ing with a slight­ly raised voice.

Dimensions

The A330 and 3500 have a foot­print of 8‑inch × 10¾ inch­es. And with a pro­file of 17 inch­es, it must fit under the stan­dard kitchen cab­i­net. The unit is heavy and weighs about 11.86 lbs. It stows out of sight the 4 ft. cord with all Vita­mix mod­els by wrap­ping it around the bottom.

Vitamix Ascent A3300/A3500 Blender Pros and Cons

Pros:

• A ver­sa­tile machine that per­forms all func­tions the typ­i­cal com­mer­cial-type blender will do, from frozen desserts to hot soups;
• Attrac­tive design with touch­screen controls;
• Self-detect con­tain­ers;
• 19 vari­able speeds;
• Pre-set pro­grams and
• Abil­i­ty to cre­ate your pro­grams with the pro­gram­ma­ble timer;
• Blue­tooth fea­ture, togeth­er with the best blend app, allows adding 500+ pre-set recipe programs;
• It has a wide selec­tion of extra acces­sories con­tain­ers and oth­er accessories;
• It comes with an extra­or­di­nary 10-year FULL war­ran­ty;
• Designed and assem­bled in the US.

Cons:

• Very expen­sive;
• Pro­cess­ing a sin­gle por­tion of food requires an extra 48 oz. container.

Consumer Reviews

Such inno­v­a­tive and mod­ern blenders can­not leave the major­i­ty of con­sumers indif­fer­ent. No doubt, it is praised by most of the cus­tomers. How­ev­er, some peo­ple do not like low-pro­file con­tain­ers. They do not han­dle sin­gle-serve food batch­es; they also do not like the machine over­loaded with techy fea­tures and pre­fer the old clas­sic Vita­mix 5200. Nev­er­the­less, any avid gad­get lover will hard­ly miss the oppor­tu­ni­ty to upgrade to the Ascent blender.

Vitamix Ascent A3300/A3500 Blender Price

Vita­mix usu­al­ly fix­es the price for their lat­est mod­els, but a spe­cial Hol­i­day may offer them at a sale price. For­tu­nate­ly, online retail­ers often offer a bet­ter price where you can grab the state-of-the-art Vita­mix A3500 and A 3300 mod­els for a bargain.

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Summary

You nev­er will go wrong with any Vita­mix, which cer­tain­ly accom­plish­es the best blend­ing qual­i­ty for any task. Still, the A3300 and A3500 is the best Vita­mix cre­ation. It has an array of fan­tas­tic fea­tures, such as touch­screen con­trols, self-detect con­tain­ers, a pro­gram­ma­ble timer, a blender con­nec­tion to the per­fect blend app, and a great choice of extra attach­ments. So, if you can afford this machine, Vita­mix Ascent A3300 and A3500 are worth invest­ing in. They are expen­sive to buy, but they will last. Fur­ther­more, since Vita­mix plans to intro­duce more wire­less fea­tures for Ascent mod­els, they also promise to remain the most hi-tech blender on the market.

Vitamix Ascent A3300 vs. Ascent A3500

It is not a puz­zle to decide between Vita­mix Ascent A3300 and A3500 mod­els. They are iden­ti­cal machines; the only dif­fer­ence is that the A3500 has 5 pre-set pro­grams (Smooth­ies, Frozen Desserts, Soups, Spreads/ Dips, and Self-Clean­ing) A3300 does not have. And noth­ing else, but these five pro­grams make the A3300 about 15–20% cheap­er than the A3500.

Since A3300 pro­gram­ma­ble timer, Blue­tooth, and best app fea­ture allow us to mim­ic all the A3500 pre-sets and even more, the dif­fer­ence seems neg­li­gi­ble. How­ev­er, I nev­er used these pre-set pro­grams on my A3500 and nev­er used them when I owned Vita­mix 750. As a result, they are not per­fect and usu­al­ly over-process or under-process most of the recipes.

If you want the top-of-the-line blender or are keen to buy a met­al fin­ish Vita­mix (avail­able only for A3500), you should go for the A3500 machine. On the oth­er hand, if you love all the new and futur­is­tic fea­tures of the Ascent Vita­mix line but wish to save some mon­ey, then your obvi­ous choice is the A3300 model.

Vitamix Learning Curve

Using a Vita­mix blender, par­tic­u­lar­ly the pre­mi­um one, requires a learn­ing curve, which means you have to fol­low the recipe book instruc­tions close­ly at least a few times before you will learn a few Vita­mix tricks such as ingre­di­ents pro­por­tion to use, extra ingre­di­ents you can replace, or add some com­plete­ly new ones, ingre­di­ents you may drop with­out notice­able effect for the final result, or even invent your recipes. So it is like­ly if you use the blender with­out the recipe instruc­tion and expe­ri­ence, you will not get a per­fect result.

Using the Vita­mix the first time could be a frus­trat­ing expe­ri­ence, espe­cial­ly if you are not a pro­fes­sion­al cook or have exten­sive expe­ri­ence with any oth­er high-end blender. So you may have a temp­ta­tion to return it, exact­ly what I had when I had just bought my first Vita­mix 5200 about 15 years ago.

Do you want to find out which Vita­mix blender suits you best? Then, go to our Vita­mix Blender Guide arti­cle and reviews.

• Which is the Best Vita­mix Blender to Buy? – All Mod­els Comparison
• Vita­mix Cer­ti­fied Refur­bished Blenders – Are They Worth Consider?