You get what you pay for. This Vitamix immersion blender is extraordinary. It is extremely powerful, balanced, and well thought out. From a hard rubber tip guard to protect your container to the rubber hand grip to the easy to separate halves for easy cleaning and more. Also, their website provides dozens of recipes to create if you need any ideas as well as other tips and information. Anyway, this was simply an awesome purchase for us.

Very good blender very easy to use and I love it so much!!

Powerful and very “handy”. Much better than the cheaper counterparts and worth the price.

This could be one of the most powerful hand-held blenders. The motor is rated at 625 Watts, which is close to what some full-size blenders use. It's all wrapped in stainless except from the bottom so it doesn't scratch pots. The bell-shaped base helps it be more stable while blending, and reduces splash. There are two buttons on the handle: Pulse button for power and speed, which is controlled by clicking on it and white bars light up on the top of the handle to indicate the speed. It always starts on the slowest speed. The base is held firmly and has to be rotated to open. It's a bit slippery to open. Works better using a rubber jar grip. Because it's so powerful, it can be on the heavy side. There are four blades on the base instead of the usual two on most handheld blenders. The base diameter is about 3" so be warner that it does not fit through most mason jars that are 3" wide. So we used a pitcher instead to make smoothies. The base is over 9" long and the motor assembly is 9", making it somewhat long and can be used on bigger cooking pots. To make smoothies, we found out that using it on speeds 2 and 3 works best. It crushes ice with ease, although as with other hand blenders, the space between the top of the assembly and the blades is not much so crushed ice gets stuck on it, if crushing ice alone. Works fine when mixed with other liquids of course. The base is easy to rinse. Overall very satisfied. Although we used it for about a week, seems very well built, although it's built in China, not on Vitamix's blender factory in Ohio.

This one has surpassed my expectations. Well worth the money. Doesn’t scratch.