BrevilleBBL620SIL Fresh and Furious Blender, Silver

If so, call me weird!Okay, the backstory. I actually purchased the Breville Blender in 2022, yes 2 years ago. It sat on my countertop unused because I thought this is going to be some major headache to operate, clean, etc. based on past blenders, despite having read numerous positive reviews regarding the Breville. However, recently I decided that I would make healthy smoothies instead of going to these juice places where you pay $$ for something you can make cheaper-and likely healthier-at home. This is part of my wellness and health reset for me and my husband. Another story.Anyway, as I am wont to do, I plunged in and started with a strawberry, banana, spinach, and yogurt smoothie with add-ins such as chia seeds, protein powder unflavored, super greens, and collagen (I told you this was a wellness reset, or my version of it). Added some ice and voila, it was delicious!So there I went making several varieties of smoothies every week and generally washing it by hand along with occasionally placing it in the dishwasher for a deep clean (make sure to put the top of blender in the upper rack of DW). I'm going on about my merry way until today when I noticed some stuck spinach on the bottom of the blades (why hadn't I noticed that before?? eew) which I couldn't get it out despite soaking the base and using a scrubber.Real conversation, me to husband:Me-I need to buy a special type of scrubber to get under the bladesH- that's why I don't like these blenders because you can't unscrew the bottom to get the blades out (as he watches me try to unscrew bottom)Me-I still love it, though. Maybe the instructions will say how to unscrew the bottom to clean the blades (looking at instructions for the first time). What- it says there's an auto clean to use??H- (looking at the blender). It's on the frontMe-Ok, I'll try it. Following booklet instructions I fill the blender with 2 cups of warm soapy water and turn on the auto cleanPeople, let me tell you, the interior of the blender was SPARKLING CLEAN after a few minutes of whirling, including said spinach stuck on bladesI should be embarrassed by this admission, since the auto clean was staring me in the face for 2 years LOLBut since I rarely read instructions (I bequeath that to my husband), there you go. Note to self, maybe it's better to read the instructions myself and take a good look at appliance.This is long so I'll wind up by noting why I am in love with this blender.The pros:sleek and sturdy design which feels nice to the touchworks like a charm, churning, blending, mixing, etc with easehas a specific countdown for making smoothies, i.e., blends for a certain number of timeeasy to use, and evidently can clean itself!has measuring indicators- I threw that in because I don't really pay attention to that feature, but hey it can be usefulHere's my unoriginal tip- read instructions. The booklet also has helpful info and smoothie recipes. Who knew.Since there are pros there has to be a con, right?Here it is...it is noisy especially when blending ice. I mean LOUD. However, as the ice break downs it becomes a bit quieter. Even with this ANNOYANCE, I refuse to downgrade my 5 star rating to 4. I love it that much.The end.

I use a blender several times a week to make smoothies and blended overnight oats. Our previous blender was a 20+ year old Waring model that just wasn't cutting it. Love the Breville blender! It's big enough to make four days worth of overnight oats (couldn't do that in my old one, too much stuff) and probably more. The motor, in my opinion, is really not that loud. After all, it's a blender, not a white noise machine. I used the smoothie option, which is 60 seconds timed, perfect for what i am making. It kind of stops and pulses on its own, which helps make sure everything is getting blended properly. When I was done, I used the self-clean option, which is as simple as putting in a touch of dish soap and warm water, and pressing a button. After rinsing, it was perfectly clean. This is important, because my overnight oats include oatmeal, chia seeds, and flax meal, in addition to the other ingredients, all of which are really really hard to clean (esp. the flax)! This blender was worth the price. We also have a Breville toaster oven/air fryer, which we LOVE, so I felt confident we were getting a quality product.

There's a reason these things are considered the best actual normal everyday blender on the market. All those gimmick blenders as seen on TV are more marketing than an improvement on the art of blending things electrically. In the real world, where people don't buy appliances because they look good on Instagram, look pretty on their counter, or because a celebrity told them what to buy, the Breville is *it* for a reason. In a working kitchen, for the purpose of taking things and making them into squishy things, you buy this.Cleaning your blender is always a pain, right? I mean, nobody loves the task of cleaning a blender. There are all these fiddly bits and gaskets and even if you just take it apart and huck it in the dishwasher it's still not the fun part of blending things. The Breville makes that as minimally painful as possible, to the point of actually having a cleaning cycle where you just throw some water in there and push the clean button. It helps unstick the goo and makes it much easier to quickly rinse and wash properly. The shape of the jar itself makes the inside easy to clean, and the rest is really straightforward to wash off.Noise, though? Man, oh, man, there's no such thing as a quiet blender that does a good job. There might be products that are quiet-ish, but they're terrible blenders. There might be fancy commercial blenders, but they're ridiculously loud. The random blender you buy at Target or something is both loud and terrible at the same time. The Breville, it's not quiet at all, not by a long shot, but since it does its job properly you aren't running it forever and ever just to try to get the thing to do something. Turn it on, it does its thing, turn it off. The loud part is over quickly. Compared to a cheap blender, that's saying something.Honestly, now that I've had a chance to use one of these things, I'd never consider anything else. All the fancy-pants brands fail to live up to their expensive reputations one way or another. The Breville, however, is everything they say it is. Believe the hype.