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"   5. Hamilton Beach Tango Commercial Bar Blender  Fruit After we spent 21 seconds trying to blend a banana mixed with some soy milk and ice, almost all of the banana remained. We mixed the contents around a bit by hand and turned the Tango on for an additional 36 seconds, but its blades came to a standstill against the ice and fruit long before that time was up. We smelled smoke and cut the motor. Results were similar with the more difficult-to-blend fruits\u2014because the Tango&amp;#039;s blades couldn&amp;#039;t crush the small amount of ice in the blender, they never got close to blending up the fruit chunks.   Ice Convinced that the Tango would never do any &amp;quot;extreme&amp;quot; blending, we tried a mixed drink test with ice and water. The tango performed a bit better here, blending up some of the ice completely, but many large pieces (longer than one inch) remained.  Final Results This blender failed every test on our list, showing that horsepower alone won&amp;#039;t lead to effective blending if the blades and blender pitcher don&amp;#039;t do their part of the job.   4. Blendtec Total Blender  Fruit After forty seconds macerating a whole banana at top speed, the Blendtec had crushed the ice to Frappuccino consistency, but had only eaten through half the fruit. After we mixed the pitcher around a bit and blended for another minute, the results looked a bit better, but left a large chunk of fruit with the peel on. We were having similarly disappointing results with the whole orange, so we poured the contents of the pitcher into a larger Blendtec pitcher ($90) with a 4-inch blade. With this pitcher, the Blendtec ate through the orange easily and left us with something that looked a lot like orange juice. But even with the larger pitcher, the blender could not blend an entire Red Delicious apple. We gave it plenty of time and used several settings\u2014the whole-juice setting, the regular setting, even the ice-crushing setting. It didn&amp;#039;t seem to matter. Half of the apple remained in the pitcher, leading us to question whether a blender that can&amp;#039;t get through an actual apple can possibly blend Apple computer products.   Ice We measured the Blendtec&amp;#039;s ice-crushing abilities by testing a peach ice cream recipe that came in the Blendtec cookbook. Its ingredients included frozen peaches, half and half, sugar, vanilla and ice cubes. The book says that this recipe can take as little as 15 seconds\u2014less time than the normal ice cream setting affords. After three minutes in ice cream mode (three cycles), we had a delicious frozen treat\u2014a chewy ice-cream-like slush. A more normal ice-crushing test produced ice of a very fine consistency\u2014one of the finest in this test. But the blender required a fair amount of water to do its job; it can&amp;#039;t shave a pitcher of ice without more than a cup of liquid. Final Results While some of what we blended in the normal Blendtech pitcher came out remarkably smooth, other tests produced chunky results that we wouldn&amp;#039;t expect in a machine priced at nearly $500.  3. Breville Die-Cast Hemisphere Blender  Fruit It took the Hemisphere one go and just 40 seconds to liquefy the banana, and it didn&amp;#039;t need any pushing or prodding to get the job done. The orange was a similar story. The Hemisphere was one of two blenders that could turn a whole apple into applesauce without whining, smoking or leaving a large chunk of core. Though we rank the Breville number three overall, it made an impressive showing in the fruit-crushing category, and would be our number-two choice for whole fruit smoothies. Here&amp;#039;s what kept it from the absolute top of the pack: Though it chomped through all the fruit and ice we fed it, the final consistency of the blended liquid was not completely smooth. It reminded us of the results from a food processor, while the results from our top two blenders were as smooth as toothpaste.  Ice Though the Breville did a serviceable job of blending ice into liquid, a few frustrating half-inch chunks remained. The ice cream was similar to that of the Blendtec\u2014tasty, but not smooth. Final Results The Breville isn&amp;#039;t a cheap blender, but it does cost less than three of the blenders in this test. It struck us as a solid workhorse machine that will satisfy most people&amp;#039;s blending needs.  2. Vita-Mix 5200  Fruit Without the tamper, the Vita-Mix can&amp;#039;t compete with most of the blenders on this list. We first tried our banana test without it, and the blender made a poor showing, blending only half the fruit. With a couple of quick pushes from the tamper, however, the banana was gone\u2014giving us pudding-smooth results in just 10 seconds. The results were similar with the orange. But with the apple, about a third of the fruit remained whole after blending\u2014it didn&amp;#039;t matter how much we pushed on it with the tamper. This disappointing result kept this blender from being an all-out winner.   Ice We made the same ice cream recipe with the Vita-Mix as we did with the Blendtec, and the difference was huge. While the Blendtec ice cream was icy and chewy, the Vita-Mix ice cream had a smooth, ice cream-like consistency, impressing all of our tasters. It&amp;#039;s a recipe we&amp;#039;d make again. The Vita-Mix was also able to crush our ice and water mixture effectively and without incident. Final Results With the exception of the apple flub, the Vita-Mix performed well, delivering the smoothest results in this test. The fact that it is tamper-dependent, however, led some in the office to write it off. The tamper is another part to clean\u2014and to misplace in a messy kitchen drawer.  1. Kitchen Aid 5 Speed Blender  Fruit The Kitchen Aid destroyed all the fruit we threw at it, and it did it quickly, without us having to turn the blender off and push the contents around. In this category, it was the clear winner, showing that sheer power can&amp;#039;t trump good blade design.   Ice The Kitchen Aid ice cream, while tasty and reminiscent of real ice cream, was not as smooth as the Vita-Mix version. When it came to ice, the Kitchen Aid was the best at crushing more ice with less water, although the final consistency of the ice was a bit rougher than that of the Vita-Mix and Blendtec. Final Results The Kitchen Aid is clearly the best value on the list, in terms of performance per dollar. We were concerned about black marks on the blender jar in areas where the jar had contact with the blender base. It seemed like the machine was working so hard that it was hurting itself in the process, leading us to wonder whether it could withstand months of wear and tear. However, it would take a lot of replacement parts for this machine to add up to the $450 sticker price of the Vita-Mix. And when we filled the Kitchen Aid with 40 jawbreakers, it turned them into sugar in no time.           "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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