Cuisinart SmartPower 7-Speed SPB-7

I registered and received this blender as a wedding gift. I thought I was getting a steal since it also came with another food processing unit that you could swap out on top for the blender so I was very… excited. I am by no means a heavy blender user. I would say that perhaps I have used it on average two times a month for the past 3 years. About 2 months ago, I go to put on the food processor top and it makes this horrible high pitched squealing sound. I think I may have lost some hearing from how horrible it was. Two people within my household came running out of their respective rooms to see what the "horrible noise" was. I picked up the base, and sure enough like many others on here - the drive had stripped the gripping teeth practically flat. The next day I tried the blender top, which worked fine until I went to pour it and it started leaking out from in between the white plastic ring to where it connects to the glass. This thing is a piece of junk!

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Seems to be a solid blender. I was worried about the negative reviews but after using it myself I am convinced that those were user errors. There is a possibility that the glass jar is not correctly placed… on the base which could lead to accelerated wear of the plastic connectors. This should not happen with a bit of care. Only bit of criticism that I have is that the blender could be slightly faster and blend more foamy.

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I recently purchased this mixture at a retail store. Before opening the box, I went to Amazon to see how it was being reviewed, and was somewhat concerned at all the bad reviews. I nonetheless decided to… open it, and have used it several times so far to make smoothies to good results. Granted, I've only had it for a couple of weeks, so I could be disappointed in the future, but I did want to address my own experience about a few things that recurred in the reviews. -One person said the jug has no pour spout. Perhaps Cuisinart have changed the design somewhat, because mine certainly has one, although a bit small. But overall, no problems pouring into glasses. -Several people have mentioned that the blades just spin at the bottom and that in order to get them to actually blend things, you have to keep pushing things down with a spoon. This has completely not matched my experience. I followed the instructions to use the "liquefy" speed for smoothies. When using fresh fruit they were completely and smoothly liquefied within approximately 20 seconds. When I used frozen fruit it took a little longer (a couple of minutes). In both cases I didn't need to use a spoon to push them down. -I did learn after a couple of uses that it's very important to make sure that the jug is pushed in all the way before you use it, because otherwise the plastic blade-spinning device may just spin in the air or may work but with tiny bits of plastic coming off it. When the jar was pushed all the way in, I had no problems with this. However, I am keeping a close eye on that plastic bit because it seems to be the cause of most problems here. So overall to date I'm happy with my purchase. I gave it four stars because I'm not sure how it would react to really heavy-duty use and because I am concerned about the plastic blade-spinner per the reviews here. So far, however, it has worked perfectly to my satisfaction.

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