Breville BBL620SIL Fresh and Furious Blender, Silver

Works great, cleans up easily, but it’s not quiet.
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.

Powerful; easy to clean
I’ve mostly used this blender to make Mexican foods (salsas from dried chilies & tomatillos, horchata with rice and almonds, etc.), and occasionally I make a smoothie or frozen drink.This thing is powerful. It goes through ice and nuts with no issue, and the various functions such as “smoothie”, “green smoothie”, auto clean, etc. are great. It can make ice almost into snowball ice consistency.At first I didn’t think I’d like the pitcher part, because it’s not glass, but it’s actually very nice (and lightweight to handle). It cleans up well, and since I wipe it out & off after washing it doesn’t get water spots – it’s still nice and clear and clean looking. And, it’s easy to read the measurements that are marked in red.The auto clean function works *really* well. On rare occasion I’ll still have to give the inside a quick wipe, but not often (only when I’ve used olive oil in it, and even then, the auto clean does the job 95% of the time). I’ve never put it in the dishwasher, so I can’t speak to that. If you clean or at least rinse it out right away, the auto clean really eliminates any need to put it in a dishwasher.It does sound like a jet engine taking off when it’s doing it’s auto clean, but that’s fine with me. With regular use it’s loud, but I’ve never used a quiet one, so it’s a non-issue for me.The lid can be difficult to remove because it really seats into the pitcher well. But, I’ve gotten used to it, and if I leverage my thumb upward against the lid handle while pulling up on it, it’s easier. It’s hard to to explain. Sometimes a bit of food residue will get under the big seal around the lid, as others have said, but I haven’t had any problems getting it out. I’ll run it under the faucet and just pull back a bit on the gasket. That usually gets any small particles right out.I like that the blades are part of the pitcher. They don’t come out, and aren’t a separate piece like my old blender. I thought at first that might be a problem with cleaning, but it hasn’t been. It’s actually easy to get the edge of a dishcloth under the blades if you need to, plus, nothing much escapes the auto clean function.If you plan to store this on your counter under a cabinet, or in a cabinet, take note of the height of it. I have standard height countertops & cabinets, and this fits on the counter under the cabinet just barely (with lid on).I haven’t bought a blender in years, and I’m glad I chose this one. I use it much more often than I thought I would. I’ve only had it about 6 months, so I can’t say how well it will hold up over time.**UPDATE 5/25: Blender still works just fine. However, the ‘stickers’ that are glued to the selection buttons (off/on, mix, pulse, blend, etc.) are peeling off. Yes, those are stickers. For the price you’d think that either they’d have these well glued, or even better, that you’d have actual ‘metal’ buttons, not stickers of all things. Pretty disappointing. But as I said, the blender is still doing the job and otherwise still looks good. Gotta get the glue out and glue these back on because I won’t remember which button is which function. Do better Breville.

Do it! Splurge! Buy it! You won’t regret it
Best blender ever! Worth every penny. I absolutely love the green smoothie feature. It makes it like a professional smoothie.

super happy with it just push the button you want and walk away does it all on its own.