Customer Reviews

Black & Decker ProwerPro II Food Processor FP1510

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

At less than 50 bucks i wouldn't call this food processor "slightly upscale" as the last reviewer did. It is a good budget food processor. It works fine for moderate use. A piece of plastic broke off into the handle and now it rattles around in there, but otherwise it works fine. It can slice veggies, grate, chop, everything a food processor should do. I think it's puree could be a little better - but for 50 bucks - what can you expect.

_Good_
I owned one for 2.5 years before it blew out, and just bought another. The price is as good as the absolute bottom models I used to get (e.g. Hamilton Beach), but with a little more power. (Often seen on sale at stores for $30.)

I used it mostly for mixing cookies, cakes, brownies. The stem in the middle is fairly high, so liquids don't leak out as easy as other brands (e.g. my Mom's Cusinart). When I made smoothies with frozen berries, it had plenty of power to chew the berries up. When the mixture becomes too thick, hard stuff added on top (e.g. nuts or chocolate chips) will just bounce around, but I think that's true of most food processors.

It shredded cheese well, only bogging down when I pushed the block down hard. A small amount of cheese gets wedged at the edge of the mouth; not as bad as other processors I've used though.

Originally I thought a suction cup would fall off or stop being sticky, but they were still working and gave the unit a solid feel on our tile counter.

The surface under the bowl is a textured platic that is flat and easy to clean. (Much better than stainless steel, which shows fingerprints!) Same for the buttons. Liquids don't get inside the unit. I know, because I opened it up when I tried to fix it. No food inside.

They've increased the cord length to 3 feet (old model was a little too short before, maybe 2.5'?). It still winds into the base like a blender.

_Bad_
Storage can be a problem, because the unit is _tall_. Even with the bowl removed, the base is tall like a blender jar.

A big point of failure is beginning to rotate the bowl before the blade has stopped spinning. (This is what I believe killed my prior unit after 2.5 years.) Even if you've shut off when the safety brake engages, there is enough momentum left in the motor to rip the plastic sleeve right off the motor shaft. After the incident, the motor runs, but the plastic sleeve doesn't turn. I can see why the designers would give preference to safety. A rachet mechanism would fix this, but that would of course increase the price and be another point of failure.

There's only one speed. I didn't have trouble with air getting whipped into my smoothies though.

There's no storage tray for the blades. You can store one in the unit. I use a small shallow cardboard box to set the other one in for safety.

As mentioned by many others, there is no dough blade, though it is pictured on the box and there is an indentation for it in the styrofoam packing. I've got a bread machine, so I'm not missing it.

Directions for this food processor are not clear. Unless you get the container in EXACTLY the right position, it will not operate. Truly annoying.

I used this processor 3 times and the handle promptly broke. Would not recommend it AT ALL!

I bought this piece of junk thinking it would actually perform well.It did twice.After the third use it broke!The palstic snapped when I tried to lock the lid in place.The light wouldn't come on and the damn thing wouldn't start.Buyer beware!Invest a little more money in something that will a least,last for two years not three months or,three uses.Believe me,I am a very unsatisfied customer.

Got one of these as a wedding gift. The plastic bowl melted slightly the first time we put it in the dishwasher. From then on we washed it by hand, but it remained very difficult to get the bowl to snap correctly to the base so that the motor would run. After a few more uses, the handle broke off and ruined the pin that disengages the auto shutoff. It's unusable now, after no more than 5-10 uses.

Impossible to put together, poorly-designed, impossible to clean, broke after 3 uses. Probably one of the most poorly-designed products I've ever had the misfortune to work with.

Mine also was missing the dough blade, even though there was a spot for it in the styrofoam packing.

Also, I was not happy with the capacity. It says 10 cups but I don't think that is right. One reason I got this was to make pie crust. The recipe I use is double size and calls for 4.5 cups flour and 3 sticks of butter/shortening. That should only total 6 cups of volume, but it was over the max fill line.

Additionally, at the max fill line the food processor was not able to incorporate the fat into the flour until I opened it and mixed it partially with a spatula. It had to pulse many many times resulting in over-mixing of the dough, and that was before I added the water. When I attempted that, it just got bogged down and I ended up having to finish the mixing by hand. The result was a crumbly pie crust that broke too easily.

Given the poor capabilities with just 6 cups of ingredients, I was extremely disappointed. This may be ok for small batches of things, but I'd rather pay more for a good all around machine.

UPDATE
I also attempted to make cashew butter and almond butter based on an episode of Good Eats which looked extremely easy in a Cuisinart. This B&D didn't grind the nuts fine enough so they never became a paste. Both attempts resulted in a hard gummy mess that tasted ok but just felt weird.

Lastly I used it with the disc to shred some of the cheese I bought at the 2008 ACS cheese sale (45 pounds of cheese for $50!) in Chicago. That did a decent job, except that the 6 cup capacity meant I constantly had to empty the container. Also, quite a bit of cheese ended up crammed next to the chute above the disc instead of the bowl.

The motor base on this thing is bigger than the container unlike the Cuisinart which has a base about half the size of the container. The Cuisinart base is much heavier and lower which gives it good stability too. To make the B&D stable, they put suction cups on the bottom which are really annoying. It is difficult to slide around on my counter which is invariably full when I'm preparing dinner for guests.

Lastly, the cord conveniently wraps up in the base, but the end of the plug doesn't fit in the compartment and sticks out so it doesn't rest flat. You can get around this by not wrapping the cord all the way, but then as soon as you put it down, it will unravel itself. Who designs these things?

If I still had the receipt I would return this but I can't so i'll only use it until I save up for a Cuisinart. I've always known that B&D power tools were poor quality and now I know their small appliances are too. Stay away and maybe you won't have to worry about fire safety recalls either...

I've had this for about a year now and it had been working perfectly fine until somehow I lost the attachemtn holder that sits in the center of the lid. But its not only that...somehow one of the "locks" or tabs on the lid broke, not a big deal as the lid still locks in place and runs. I just can't use the shredder without the missing piece to hold the attachment in place. Also, all three of the suction pegs have fallen out and for the life of me I cannot get them to go back in. So with just one suction peg, the processor is very difficult to lock the lid into place and unlock it because as others have mentioned to do so takes a lot of strength. The lid locks and unlocks hard. I don't recommend this product unless you like to waste money for sport!

Received this as a gift for Christmas. After looking at the cover of the manual, I assumed there was a dough blade in this - I was wanting to make egg noodles and washed the processor in full anticipation of using it, only to be disappointed in finding that the blade didn't come with this model. This will chop adequately, but I definitely feel like I lost about half of the potential the machine could have had without the blade.