I am blown away by this Ninja personal portable blender. I own a large tabletop Ninja blender but it is just so incredibly loud, it hurts my ears to use. Plus, who wants to use a huge blender for a single serving smoothie and have to clean up the entire mess before work? That, in addition to feeling bad using a blender as loud as a jet engine at 8am with a roommate 10 feet from the kitchen, led me to this blender. Right off the bat I was worried that it would be too large to comfortable carry with the base, but that is not the case at all. It is only as tall as my 18 ounce Yeti, and only slightly wider. It’s compact, but not so small that you won’t be able to fit all of your ingredients for a personal smoothie (assuming you don’t drink massive smoothies). It feels really quality too. The base is solid and has some weight to it. The plastic “cup” is pretty thick and also has a bit of weight to it which is nice. The “ribbing” is only on the external for aesthetic purposes and does not influence performance. Opening the cap to the drink position feels really sketchy, but I haven’t had any issues. You open it and then essentially snap it down into a locked positions so that it doesn’t fall onto your face when sipping your smoothie, but snapping it into that position feels like you’re breaking the cap. Again, no issues yet for me but it just feels wrong applying that pressure to a plastic cap. In my video, I was worried I would be doing the product an injustice by not filling to the “Min Liquid” line, and additionally by over filling the container slightly past the “Max Fill” line. I loaded the blender with a small splash of water, maybe 2.5-3 ounces (even though it says 6 ounces is the minimum liquid), added a cup of Chiobani zero sugar yogurt, a medium banana, and a whole cup of frozen fruit that contained strawberries, blueberries, blackberries and raspberries. I expected that the blender would not blend well given that I did not have enough liquid and technically filled beyond the max fill line. To my COMPLETE shock, the smoothie was fully blended by the end of a SINGLE 30 second blend cycle, without any shaking to aid in the blending. Ninja recommends shaking the blender while it runs to help everything blend, but that wasn’t even necessary. Some people claim that 2 blends is necessary for fully blended smoothies which, sure, might be necessary if you have mostly frozen fruit. Even then, an 30 extra seconds with a blender this quiet is nothing. In such a tiny device, is incredible to me. It’s incredible to be able to put such a strong motor in such a small, portable device. Set realistic expectations for this blender and you will not be disappointed. If you expect to make enough smoothie for 2 or more people with this device, it’s not for you. If you expect to be able to blend all “dry” ingredients without adding a bit of of liquid, this likely is not for you. If you expect this to blend with the power of a $400 Vitamix that is 5-7 times larger, this is likely not for you. But, if you’re looking for an incredible personal blender to make single serving smoothies on the go, this is for you and you should buy it as soon as you can. I regret not buying it earlier! It’s also great for homemade sauces/dressings. I’ve made homemade chipotle adobo salad dressing with it and it came out fantastic. I’ve also made low calorie Alfredo sauce out of cottage cheese, milk, cream cheese, and Parmesan and it, again, worked wonderfully. Cleaning is fine but not a breeze. No matter what you’re going to end up getting the base wet and it feels sketchy getting water all over a battery powered motor base. I do my best to be extremely cautious when cleaning the base (I remove the cap, fill with water, blend to clean the blades, empty the cup, then remove it to focus on the blades/base) but water always ends up flowing down the base so I can see this causing problems if the charging port cover comes loose and water gets inside. Now for the cons: I’m rating this a 4/5 stars and the one star is lost to the battery life, lack of low battery warning, and inability to blend while charging. It claims that the blend light will turn yellow to signify that the battery is running low and then red for when it is in need of a charge/doesn’t have enough power to blend. That was not the case for me. I turned the blender on before making a smoothie to make sure it wasn’t reading low battery, put in my smoothie ingredients, hit the road to drive to work, and started to blend within 10 minutes. After running for about 5 seconds, the blender stopped and showed the red light signifying that the battery was dead and needed to be charged. Leading up to that blend, I’d maybe run about 6-8 blender cycles. There was also no yellow low battery warning light. It was really frustrating. I managed to find a charger once I got to work and to my surprise, the blender is unable to blend while charging. I don’t understand the reasoning for that, but it’s disappointing. I tried to run the blender again after about 7 minutes of charging and was able to get 1 full blend cycle in which was enough to fully blend the remainder of my now semi-thawed smoothie. Not the most delightful experience that day but I guess just charge it after every use and you should be able to avoid that situation. Overall I’m really satisfied with the product and highly recommend it for anyone looking for a personal smoothie blender or salad dressing/sauce blender!