Oster 6684 12-Speed Blender, Black

This is an decent blender for the price. Parts are available on amazon if it leaks after a few years, so do not be like me and throw your last one away thinking it could not be fixed with a new rubber gasket or blades. It can! It makes and blends delicious shakes and has not problems with ice. If it is not crushing the ice, either slow down the speed or shut off and shake the container and it will work. Please remember that this is real glass and metal parts for most of the drive mechanism. For the price it is a great deal. Any blender can have problems, but this blender gets mostly good reviews. Happy blending my friend.8/1/2013- Revaluation 2 weeks later. This blender is still a good deal for the money, but here is the real juice of the matter. If you do not put enough liquid in the blender, the blade will spin but not mix up the ice and fruit for smoothies. Here is how to do it correctly. Remember friends, this is a very low priced blender which if used properly will give you many years of service, hopefully. Put your milk or fluid in first, then add half the fruit. Put the top on and start a SLOW blend. When you see the ingredients start to whirlpool, take off the top and drop in the ice cubes one at a time. As you add each ice cube, place the lid back on for a second while it gets crushed. This is easy once you do it a few times. Please do not put yours hands inside the blender while blending. Add the rest of the fruit and turn the speed up. Blend for 30-60 seconds and voila, great smoothies. I am making great smoothies every morning and night. Hint- Add 3 tablespoons of organic ground golden flax seeds with the fruit. It has more great healthy omega 3's than stinky fish oil and much safer than eating fish from our filthy ocean that Japan has been nice enough to irradiate for us.

Ordered with my fingers crossed. Over the years I have owned too many wimpy blenders that get that burn-y smell when I try to make something heavy duty, like hummus! This is the ultimate test of a blender's muscles. Well, this one passed the test! It did its job and I was relieved. It is easy to clean, easy to use a rubber spatula to get everything out too. We were a bit disappointed that this item took nearly a week to arrive here--probably the result of two major snow storms that his New Jersey just when we ordered. I think that this item is well worth the price. Try it, you will like it!Additional information posted on December 11, 2011: We threw this blender out! It started leaking. And it was spinning around when the blender was on, unless I held it in place. Finally we realized that the base was broken. The black part that screws on was cracked. Don't know why. It wasn't dropped or abused. It just gave up the ghost!

This thing is powerful. It is also quite loud. It works very well so far though! Definitely recommend for the price. Used it about 5 times so far so I will update if I change my mind about the rating.Update at 9 months:Still use it every single day for a smoothie that fills the whole thing to the top. The power hasn't dropped much at all. I have put this thing through the wringer with the amount I pack into it. I'm very surprised that the power is still at least 90% of what it was initially. Definitely recommend especially for the price.Update at 4 years:Still going strong! Some weird smells from the motor area here and there signifying that we are pushing it too hard sometimes, but still has almost the same amount of power as it did when we bought it. My gf and I have used it each once per day for 4 years. We fill it to the brim with hard fruits and beets and leafy greens and ice for our smoothies each day so we load it up with difficult stuff twice per day for 4 years and this thing is still almost as good as it was when we bought it!!! Impressive machine for the price! The base has started to leak here and there depending on how well we put it back on. There are some small hairline cracks in the plastic base, but nothing major yet. It has been like that for maybe a year so it will likely give us another 2 years about. Overall, for the price it has done amazingly well for a long time for how hard we push it! I have heard of plenty of blenders that were pushed less than this one that were hundreds of dollars that pooped out in less than a couple of years. This thing is an amazing deal! Can't speak highly enough about it! Just buy it if you want reliable and powerful!