Customer Reviews

Waring HPB270N BlendFast Mega Pro Blender

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

 

 

After years of frustration trying to make a frozen drink with household blenders, I finally realized that I need a more powerful machine to do the job right. I bit the bullet and put up the big bucks for a 1HP machine and we love it. IT REALLY WORKS.

After finally killing my last blender with my regular smoothie habit, we decided it was time to play with the big boys. Yes, it's twice as expensive as other "premium quality" blenders, but it's more than twice as powerful, and if you need that kind of power this blender won't disappoint. It went through my frozen banana smoothies without a hitch (no more rrrrrr-rrrrr-rrrnnn of a motor not up to the task). And the top is well designed - no drips down the sides after pouring.

One caveat: this is a commercial blender and it looks it. The base is a greenish-grey and the label on the front won't win any asthetic kitchen appliance awards. On the other hand, this is a commercial blender and it works like one. It even comes with an extra drive coupling. This quite possibly will be the last blender I ever own!

My Favorite Smoothie Recipe: 1 c. plain non-fat yogurt, 1/2 c. OJ, 1/2 c. pineapple juice (or use all OJ), 1 scoop soy protein powder (optional), 1 or 2 T flax oil (optional, it just makes it healthier), 1/2 bag frozen berries (rasberries our fav, strawberries or blueberries also nice). 2 frozen bananas (great way to use up bananas past their prime...just peel and store in ziploc freezer bags). In this blender, throw it all in and give it a few seconds (in a regular blender combine all except bananas which need to be added slowly and in small pieces. You may also need to add more juice to get the blender to turn). It's like a healthy rasberry milkshake!

One reviewer suggested this blender would be quieter if the jar was glass rather than polycarbonate. This might help, but I think a more effective solution would be to add a muffler. The motor in this machine is one horsepower and it sounds it, which can be an issue if you're the first one up in the morning making smoothies. Unless your willing to drop $300 on a soundproof acrylic case, be prepared to make a lot of noise (like a lawnmower's worth) every time you turn it on.

Unfortunately, the noise isn't my only criticism of the Mega Pro. I don't believe the rest of the blender was adequately designed to match the motor. Large ice cubes and frozen fruit had a tendency to grind down to perfect spheres and pinball around until I intervened. Also, I often found ingredients had to be strategically added to avoid ice cave or superfroth. The blender's ultimate demise, however, was a frozen strawberry, which managed to wedge itself beneath the blade (according to events recreated) and test the integrity of the blade casing against the brute force of the motor. Needless to say, the casing lost, squirting strawberry puree out the bottom of the jar. All this after less than a week of light use. Fortunately, at least as of the writing of this review, Amazon appears to be pretty good about returns, but I'm still out shipping costs, and at a loss for finding a quality blender capable of making a good smoothie.

The one thing I can't take away from this blender is its appearance. I think it rides the fine line between ugly and cool just right, giving it presence without presumption. And you can't go wrong with battleship green.

Since I wrote an earlier, much more enthusiastic review of this blender, and gave it four stars, I thought that it would be important to give a followup review.

After seven months of use, I finally got that dreaded "leakage from the bottom" that others have experienced. It was only a small amount, but still troubling for such an expensive blender. The leakage appeared to go through the hub of the spinner. I took it to an authorized Waring dealer, and they replace the entire spinneret assembly for free. No leakage so far with this new spinneret while making smoothies. From what I can tell, the old spinneret assembly was just a bit too loose, and not closely coupled enough to prevent juice from working into the hub.

Other than the loud noise and this episode of leakage, I still generally like the blender. It does require some water to get the smoothie started. It does require periodic stirring. It does work best by adding the frozen fruit in two or three stages rather than all at once (mainly because the mass of frozen fruit tends to congeal and become impossible to stir - the blades will easily grind through the bottom of this mass of fruit, but an ice cave then forms at the bottom, which has to be stirred to break up and get the blending flow going again).

Then, when I realize that all of these problems were present in much less expensive blenders as well, it makes me wonder whether this blender was really worth it.

The main thing that this blender does better than a cheaper blender is that it has the power to grind up anything that is inside the jar. Cheaper blenders tend to get stuck on the big pieces of fruit inside and will eventually burn out.

Still, because of all the problems, I've dropped my rating of this blender by one star.

One thing that I wonder is whether anybody makes a high power, commercial blender that is NOT LOUD, and does NOT require stirring, and won't leak.

We tried using it mainly for smoothies and had high expectations but came away dissapointed. Yes this blender has unbelievable power (which also makes it extremely loud), but we had to stop the blender often and mix the ingrediants, which is fine for a much cheaper blender, but I expected less intervention on our part with all that power. As another reviewer pointed out, we had our share of leaking at the base of the blender which was very inconvienent to clean up. We decided to go with the KitchenAid blender and have been pleased with the results so far. At least for the money, the Waring just didn't command it's high price.

After burning up our last blender while making a strawberry smoothie, I decided I'd had enough with low powered el cheapo blenders and so got this one.

Most blenders just don't have the horsepower to grind up a jar full of frozen fruit - using our last blender required adding water and continuously shaking and stirring the fruit and slowly working up the blender in speed. Otherwise the clutch mechanism in the blender would disengage and the rotor wouldn't turn at all. It took a lot of work to make a thick smoothie.

Not so with this blender. It grinds through everything rapidly. You still have to add a small amount of water, and stir a little bit from the top of the jar in the beginning, otherwise the chopped up frozen fruit will congeal and form an ice cave around the rotor blades so that they end up just grinding air. But, with a bit of water and stirring, once the whole mix gets going, you can get continuous blending action inside the jar even with some very thick smoothies

The smoothies come out super smooth, even with the lower speed setting. The high speed setting will churn out a very smooth puree-like smoothie.

The only problem is the loud noise of this blender especially at the beginning of the blending process. I attribute this noise to chunks of frozen fruit banging against the polycarbonate jar. The motor and rotor mechanisms are fairly quiet. The polycarbonate jar is a good idea for durability but it is thinner and less dense than glass, and I think this contributes to the noise of the blending. If they made the polycarbonate thicker, this would decrease the noise.

Okay, so now this blender is out of warranty and it's started leaking from the base of the jar again. What to do? Not to panic. Waring Customer Service turns out to be very helpful (their phone number is taped on the power cord of this blender).

They faxed me a copy of the parts diagram for the various replacement parts for this blender. You can get almost every single part in the blender replaced individually.

It turns out that, at least in my experience, there are two main reasons for the leakage from the base of this blender. One is that the nut holding the entire blade assembly at the bottom of the jar has come loose. This is easy to fix, as long as you know how to use an adjustable wrench and realize that this particular nut turns in an opposite direction compared to normal nuts (counterclockwise to tighten, clockwise to loosen for this special nut).

The second reason for this leakage is that one or more of the washers in the blade assembly has worn out. To see if this is the case, push and pull on the wagon wheel assembly attached to the bottom of the shaft of the cutting blades. If the whole wagon wheel-shaft-blade assembly shifts up and down, then one of the washers has most likely worn out.

Here's the fix - you have to first remove the aluminum wagon wheel at the bottom of the blade assembly. Take a towel and stuff it into the jar against the blades (so that you won't cut yourself) to hold the blades in place, and then from the other end, unscrew the wagon wheel (it unscrews in the normal counterclockwise direction). You can usually do this by hand, but can use pliers on the wagon wheel carefully if it's stuck.

Next, take the blade and shaft out and inspect the various washers to see which one is worn out or missing. The parts diagram you can get from Waring Customer Service is very helpful in this regard.

In my most recent experience with leakage from this blender, I found out that the leaks were coming from both a loose nut and from a worn out washer.

I tightened the nut, and ordered about 30 of the washers from Waring (part #002903, fairprene washer). Putting this washer in got rid of the up-down shifting of the wagon-wheel-spindle-blade assembly.

(Note: more recently, I have also had to replace another washer, the phenolic washer, part #003526. The fairprene washer and phenolic washer are basically the two contact points for the blade and shaft assembly as it rotates against the bearing holder. The fairprene washer goes on the side of the bearing that is inside the blender jar while the phenolic washer goes on the side of the bearing that is outside of the jar. Instead of sealed bearings, this blender uses these two replaceable plastic washers to hold the blade and shaft assembly in place and keep it watertight).

And no more leaks!

Back to making frozen blueberry/strawberry smoothies!

Okay, the blender is still about as loud as a chainsaw and you still have to add water and stir the frozen fruit frequently (or the blades will just spin uselessly in an ice cave). But at least it's working and it does grind up frozen fruit faster than anything else I've ever used.

What an great machine! This is definately a commercial product. The polycarbonite jar is large, and does not have any means to secure to the base. But any blender that comes with laboratory and industrial cleaning instructions rates as cool in my book!

It is a bit loud, and does require liquid to prevent the 'ice cave' described by gp, but it will pulverize 2 pounds of ice in about ten seconds. Believe it or not there are more expensive blenders out there (for juicers: Ktec, Vitamix, etc) but for most of this is more than enough!

This is a solid peice of hardware and I would recommend it to anyone who is hooked on smoothies or frozen drinks.

My Grandmother had a Waring Blendor. My Mother had a Waring Blendor. Why did I have to BUY one instead of "borrowing" one of theirs? Because they gave them away to get "lighter", i.e., cheap, plastic blenders, back in the early eighties. Big mistake. My grandmother died before she had to replace hers, but my mother is on her third cheap blender now. I expect my Waring Blendor to last the rest of my life. Fortunately, I was able to get my grandmother's Waring Blendor Cookbook from the forties. The current model still has the powerful motor, heavy glass container, super-duper cord and top-quality switch that my grandmother's had, sixty-odd years ago.

I also picked up one at Goodwill to have an extra pitcher to make two kinds of frozen drinks when I have a party. It is about forty years old but still works great, and it was obviously used quite a bit. (I only wish I had found it before I bought a new one!) The container still fits the base on the current model.

Makes fruit juice like a juicer, makes the best milk shakes, daquiries, gazpacho; it can even whip cream for dessert or froth milk for fancy coffee drinks! You can make a thick, creamy milkshake with milk, a frozen banana, a couple of ice cubes, and a little chocolate powder. You can even pre-chill the container in the freezer to make sorbet.

The secret difference: this Blendor creates a tornado in the center of the container, ensuring that everything gets evenly mixed. According to my Waring Blendor Cookbook, this is because of the unique four-leaf clover shape of the container, the shape of the no-rust stainless blades, and the high-powered motor.

You can use a wooden spoon through the hole in the top to make sure ice cubes get properly mixed if you find that to be a problem. (If you add ice cubes one or two at a time to the container with liquid already in blending on high, you will have the smoothest frozen beverage you have ever had with NO leftover ice chunks.)

The easiest way to clean it is to fill it 1/4 to 1/3 full of water, add ONE drop of dishwashing detergent, PUT THE LID ON, blend, shake and rinse.

Sure, it is a little loud (brings back memories of my childhood!) and if you drop the glass container on your foot, you'll be sorry, for your foot, because the container probably will never break. Notice that none of the Waring Blendor's detractors suggest an alternative.

If it isn't in the MOMA collection of Twentieth Century Industrial Design, it should be.

Buy a Waring Blendor and you'll never have to buy another blender. And neither will your children.

The word which best describes this beast is Power. The noise is annoying but, happily it doesn't last long. My unit hasn't yet developed the leaks others complain about, but then mine is quite new.

Madeleine Miller in the Editorial Review states that the blender comes with a "replacement drive coupling and instructions.."
Mine arrived with neither. When I complained in an email, the vendor phoned me and informed me that I had bought a "refurbished" unit, something I never saw in the item description, and that no spare drive coupling was included.
He did, however, offer to send me the instructions.