Right here.
Best Blender Under $200?
If we're talking the best of the best, it's
Vitamix. The peer to Vitamix is
Blendtec. You'd have to score a thrift deal because you won't find their flagship models for under $300. I've used Vitamixes, and they're spectacular.
As you can see from post #28, when I needed a new blender roughly five years ago, I went with the Chinese company attempting to be a rival to these industry leaders:
Omega. The reason was I caught an extraordinary deal-- cost me $150.
https://forums.sherdog.com/posts/125025691/
It was an excellent unit, and definitely a rival to the Vitamix in terms of its blending power. It was marginally inferior in terms of raw mincing power, due to the difference in the blades, I surmise, but this only mattered if I used it for rare jobs that weren't part of a routine like grinding a crapload of coffee beans all at once. It could do heavy jobs like large batches of fresh hummus, cream cheese dips, or bean dip bases from fresh beans. It wasn't quite as good at pulling down these really heavy loads as the vitamix, but a few churns with a wooden spoon, and that became academic.
The motor crapped out several months after it reached the 4-year mark. Until then, it worked great. Sadly, in a rare brainfart for me, I failed to register the warranty. I'm usually religious about warranties. The Omega I bought carried a 10-year warranty. I found the warranty papers idling blank in one of my desk drawers when I undertook to track it down. Drat.
The only elbow grease it required was using a screwdriver to periodically tighten a metal piece that fastened its spinning head to the base unit. This threw me the first time I did it because it required twisting the screwdriver in the opposite direction-- counterclockwise-- than every other screw that has ever been fashioned in the history of screws.
I will note a caveat. Even if the mechanical failure has been something lesser, or a broken part, there is where Omega may not be as reliable. Out of curiosity, I checked their website to see if I would have been able to collect warranty. Contrary to many Chinese companies, yeah, it wasn't a maze to find the claimant process. However, I did notice that my model was already no longer in existence. In fact, I couldn't find any parts to order for it. It's like it never existed. I looked on the third party market, and they were no less scarce. So I wouldn't pay more than $200 for a unit like the one I got from them than I did. If I was paying over $300 for a blender I'd want the ability to service it in the long term because I'd want it to last 5-10 years, or longer.
That's where Vitamix with its trusty $450 5200 cannot be equaled. It's timeless. It endures.
When purchasing a new model, I couldn't justify a $450 expense. I don't juice, anymore, and I rarely do stuff in the kitchen that justified the expense. So I gave
Ninja a shot. It's definitely a step down from the Omega-- a larger step down from the Omega than the Omega was from a Vitamix 5200. I'm talking about just getting the ice to the smoothest possibly consistency without requiring you to overblend, thereby melting the ice, and ruining the ratio of ice to drink, or even foaming the drink with the frappe effect (things that matter when trying to make a professional-class Margarita, for example, or an iced protein shake).
Still, it's very good for the job, and if under $200, a bulletproof option. If you get the base 1000W model, get it from Wal-Mart, not Amazon. Their all-time bestseller is the BL610, but IIRC, when I briefly researched it before buying, this was no different than the BL710, and that unit was $10 cheaper at Wal-Mart.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Ninja-Professional-1000-Watt-Blender-BL710WM/629359990
Here's how they step their stuff:
- BL610/BL710 (1000W)
- BL660 (1100W)
- BL770 (1500W)
Otherwise you're paying for sets, not necessarily superior blending power, like with the "Ninja Professional Kitchen".
Careful with these. Double check to make sure you have an outlet in your kitchen in a convenient place that actually supplies sufficient power to operate them. They're not designed for compatibility with the normal wiring that is built into typical American homes.
