After spending 200$ for a supposedly premium Philips blender which broke in less than one year after having been sent to assistance, having parts replaced and broken again, been repaired by me and after I spent thousands of swear and curses, I am really this ’ ’ close to smashing it with an hammer and crucifying it to scare the other Philips products away from my kitchen.
Since those were 200$ wasted, and my parents and grandparents kitchen stuff worked sometimes for 30 years before breaking, where can I get my grandparents gear? Should I just resort to smashing vegetables and fruits by hand with stones?
I used to buy about 800 pounds of salvage electronics a week which I would then resell. I’ve seen and evaluated many brands of used older electronics.
For a blender, I’d recommend a Vita-Mix (5200 / 5500), then KitchenAid. Third tier would include Breville or Ninja.
We use a Vitamix 5500 here. A few benefits of the simple design are that the lid has no moving pieces or hinges or locking mechanisms… It’s just a flexible rubber dome that doesn’t crack if you drop it. The blender jug has the blender blade and a very large sealed bearing. You can swap the entire item out as a future service. The motor bases are extremely high quality. I can’t recall seeing any that were ever broken. They seem to rely on solid state electronics and big mechanical switches nstead of fancy displays and microcontrollers and LEDs – most common points of failure on the competitor’s products.
The biggest issue with most blenders is that they are overcomplicated. For example, a ninja blender has detection switches to ensure that the jug is correctly locked to the base and the lid is locked to the jug. If a tab or pin breaks it disables the blender. They could have just designed the shape so that you can’t have the jug halfway installed instead of adding electronics that fail when they get wet or damaged… Bad design choices.
My only warning for Vitamix is to avoid the white color motor base. That color will take on UV damage and turn obviously yellow over the years.
I would not hesitate to buy a well used working Vitamix in the used market. I have seen many units from the mid 1990s and up that run like new.
Dude, you are exactly the hero this sub needs
Do you know if Vitamix motor units are relatively easy to repair? We have one that the speed control doesn’t seem to work consistently anymore. Even at low speeds sometimes it’ll randomly rev all the way to max, or if the knob is turned up sometimes it won’t actually speed the motor up. I think the model is VM0102D if that changes things.
We’ve been dealing with it as-is because the overall functionality isn’t terribly impacted, it just needs a little extra monitoring when it’s in use, but if I can fix it it’d be a much better experience.