Customer Reviews

Krups 243-70 Power X Plus Combi Blender

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

 

 

The blender works just fine for smoothies, shakes and sauces. It doesn't crush ice as well as some of the more powerful professional blenders I've come across, but it's adequate. The food processor is a poor replacement for a real food processor, i.e. Kitchenaid or Cuisinart. The capacity is small and it does not chop very evenly--half your food turns to mush while the other half remains in big chunks. It is, however, good for making breadcrumbs. Get the blender, but invest in a separate food processor if you really need one that works.

I've had this blender and food processor for 1.5 years now, and it's a wonderful widget at this price point for a young person learning/expanding cooking knowledge, with limited kitchen space and a limited budget to stock kitchen tools and gadgets.

Kitchen appliances are like any other tool: buy cheap, buy twice. I'm glad I spent another $10-20 over the next step down, because a glass pitcher beats the heck out of plastic jobs that crack and split easily. My pitcher still looks quite pristine despite reasonable use! The speed and evenness of the blending is great compared to my various former roommates' machines, with a wide range of speed, and the option of separate power burst as well as ice-crusher functions.

Yes, the food processor attachment is a simple thing -- only one twin-blade attachment that fits on easily, somewhat small in volume -- and therefore won't do everything perfectly. But, the alternative is spending a lot more $$$ for a Cuisinart or whathaveyou. At my level of cooking and budget, I'm not going to shell out for the real, upscale Cuisinarts, so this beauty-in-simplicity food processor is a great addition, doing almost everything I need it to do (onions, peanuts, whatever). It takes up very little extra precious space in my kitchen. The processor also has a nice safety design-it won't fit onto the base until the lid is on correctly and everything turned into slots just right, such that you can't accidentally hit a button and process your fingers or send your vegetables flying. :-)

The thing I love most about both this blender *and* the food processor, compared to anything else I'd seen previously, is that all parts are well-designed for exceedingly quick and easy dismantling and cleaning, with few if any nooks and crannies that you can't reach. The hole-stoppers in both lids that also function as 2-oz measuring cups are an extra-but-minor plus--a shot measurer if you need it.

Bottom line: for me, this blender+processor has been a high quality device for a reasonable amount of money. Skilled/experienced cooks who have a need for greater versatility will probably want to buy a separate, more complicated, more expensive, and harder-to-wash food processor.

Understanding that ALL products have occasional "lemons," where they should be returned with no questions asked, let me say that my Krups is by no means a sour machine. I have had this blender/processor combo for over 2 years now and am very pleased with its overall performance. The blender, which I use at least 4-5 times a week, makes extremely smooth drinks and crushes ice well on pulse and high power settings. It is great for converting chunky ice crems, esp. with chocoloate chunks :) , to milkshakes. It also makes very smooth purees for sauces. I would not suggest trying it, but I have also dropped the blender a couple of times and can truly say it is a sturdy container! The processor is adequate for its basic purposes, although I would not buy this combination if you are specifically seeking a multifunction processor; however, for saving space and money, it is a great deal. The processor is very good at dicing firm vegetables such as peppers, not so good as softer ones like tomatoes, which I don't trust any processor with. Another great use for the processor, as I discovered, is crushing whole spices such as allspice (peppercorns were a little tough b/c of their size--keep a pepper mill for them). The processor works best on pulse to get larger size pieces of vegetables and low speeds for small vege pieces. Grating hard cheese is easy on the high setting. The only disappointments I have are in the small capacity, although it is clear the base is not designed to handle much larger processors, and in the lack of slicing discs--there is only the basic chopping one, which will do most jobs but is not as versatile. The blender alone is worth the price, and the processor makes it a great value, even as a backup when you are chopping multiple food items and don't feel like cleaning between.

I've had this blender combo for only a few months. During that time I have had 2 unfortunate experiences of the same problem. The first time I thought may have been my fault. But obviously the second time, I realized that it was due to product failure. Upon blending a full blender both times the glass pitcher seemed to unwind from the base and fly off. The first time I caught it and just had a countertop to clean, but the second time I was not so lucky. It flew off the base, hit me first then hit the tile floor. You can imagine the sticky broken glass (margarita) mess it left. When I called the warranty department, they informed me that they would fix the blender, but were not responsible for the glass pitcher. Can you imagine the customer having to replace the pitcher. It is like getting in a car accident because of a mechanical problem with the car and the manufacturer saying "we'll fix the mechanical problem but sorry you have to fix the bodywork!!!" I'll never buy a Krups product again!!!

Summary: great value, blender works as well as anything I've tried (even models costing many times more), food processor simple but effective at what it does.

I've had this product for about two months now. I'm very pleased with it to date. The blender is reasonably quiet and powerful, but most reviews told me that. The real surprise for me was how well the little food processor attachment works. It doesn't do anything fancy, certainly (no kneading bread or making pasta), and its capacity is obviously limited. However, for simply chopping veggies like carrots, onions, peppers etc. it's worked nicely for me and it's a whole lot more convienient to use than a humongous food processor. I see a review here that says the attachment doesn't chop well and tends to leave some large pieces while turning the rest to mush. I'm not sure what to make of this, perhaps they were putting too much in at a time, but I can report I've had no problems like that. I did have a REALLY cheap food processor that did things like that but this product is IMO easy to modulate.

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For the price, this machine is fantastic -- and very quiet. Blender and food processor both perform well. Only downside is the size of the food processor container, but one can't really complain at this price.

I bought this combination blender and mini food processor thinking it was a great idea. I ended up not using the food processor much because it was so small. The blender, the main reason I bought this appliance, was a big disappointment. Whenever I tried to make smoothies or frozen drinks I would have to stop the blender, take off the top, and stir with a spoon, then start the blender again. Sometimes I had to repeat this process several times. What a pain! Even then my smoothies often ended up with stray chunks. Furthermore, everytime I wiped off the blender a little bit of the printing came off until finally there was no writing left anywhere beside the controls. Finally, the blender jar base melted around the drive shaft and after my husband sent away for a new one, we learned that the design had been changed and the new drive shaft didn't fit our blender. Lucky for us, because this time we researched more carefully and bought an Oster two-speed blender - it makes great smoothies and frozen drinks with no stray chunks!

I received this item yesterday, and immediately tried it out. Very easily I made fruit smoothies, and clean-up was a snap!!! The item was shipped carefully, and arrived on the date it was promised. A worry-free transaction !

It is only two months since i purchased this product. and it just went off while working, it was like as if it was slowing down.
this particular product is a waste of money. plus their service is bad. when i called them, they cannot do anything without a sales recipt which they consider a proof of purchase, now i am wondering did this blender dropped from sky in my house?

the design is really poor, it happens with food processors and blenders that sometimes you spill out some liquid or it comes out due to loose lid. the flaw in this design is that it goes straight into the motor and that's it. it becomes a showpiece.

please go for some other far better models available, otherwise u might also end up writing a review here.

I received this blender as a gift 3 or 4 years ago. I use it once every few months to make fruit smoothies. I always pre-crush the ice before inserting it into the blender just to try to extend the blender's life. Yesterday, when I tried to blend some very ripe papaya in the blender, the blades just wouldn't turn! I made sure that everything was assembled correctly, and made sure that the base was turning when the jar was not in place. I verified that I could manually turn the blades in the jar by twisting the attachment under the jar just as the base motor would have done. The problem, I eventually discovered, was that the base and the jar were not mating properly! The star-shaped rubber thing that turns on the base had shrunken so that it could spin freely without turning the blades in the jar! I checked my warranty only to find that it had expired only one year after purchase! Spend your money on a better brand.