Breville Antony Worrall Thompson VBL030 Intelligent Blender

Not the cheapest of blenders, but certainly feels well built, with the base heavy enough to sit stably on the worktop, and the lid fitting securely enough that I dare to leave the thing running by itself without carefully holding the lid down.

I was skeptical of the "intelligent blender" moniker and assortment of buttons, but after trying it out, it does actually do as it says on the tin. It's rather nice to be able to shove some fruit etc in there, hit the "Smoothie" button, and walk away to do something else as it starts, stops, varies the speed etc appropriately, and finally stops of its own accord, leaving an excellent result.

Decent powerful motor, too, capable of blending thick substances without getting bogged down.

I even used it to make batter, simply dumping in flour, eggs, milk etc, switching it on, and ending up with a good result.

So, not cheap, but a good solid performer, and worth considering if you do (or plan to do) a lot of blending / smoothie making etc.

The attached movie gives a feel for how the blender looks in action and how the programs work, making a smoothie. See below for some more comments.

This blender is a very solid, good-looking piec of kit with a high capacity jug and a snug fitting rubber lid with a hole to add additional ingredients. It has a powerful and high torque motor in its base which makes lightwork for the chopping side of things but even when running at full pelt it sits firmly and steadily on a worktop.

It can be used as a "normal" blender with buttons controlling the speed of the blades (on/off and plus and minus to set power) but its main selling point is that it comes with eight programs for different tasks - this is not just a blender the packaging cries, this is an *intelligent* blender.

What this means is that it comes with a set of named programs which run the blender for specified periods of time, changing the power and adding pauses as neccesary holding out the promise that you can just drop you ingredients into the jug and with the press of a button produce professional chef results.

This *just* falls the right side of being a gimmick. As you can see from the smoothie video, some of the programs do have multiple stages and I was interested to see how long the blender ran for on this setting - I would not have left it so long - so this does have some value.

Other programs were effective too.

- the puree setting (although it seemed to just run for a bit at a constant speed) made a lovely creamy chicken and vegetable soup
- the shakes setting made "the best banana milkshake" my two young ten and six year old guinea pigs had ever tasted, very creamy and smooth
- the blend setting (again not very complex) made a batter for the lightest yorkshire pudding I've ever made

However, it is not all sunshine and roses in Mr Worrall Thompson's smiling world, there are three main issues I found with this product.

1 - the recipe booklet it comes with is only barely adequate. It has just nine recipes and these are of mixed quality. The smoothy worked well but the hollandaise sauce for example produced a very thin and very runny sauce (smooth and emulsified mind) which would not have stood up to eggs benedict or coated fish. In this age of the internet and bearing in mind this range is meant to be making chefs of us all more content (perhaps online) is almost essential. If you are already a good chef then this won't bother you of course but it is worth mentioning.

2 - the square jug is the very devil to clean. You will find yourself laughing hollowly at the instructions in the manual to "add lukewarm water, a drop of washing up liquid and pulse" as you try to clean anything even remotely sticky out of it. As I write this my jug sits forlornly soaking in the sink following my attempt to make hummus and after a "pulse wash" and a dishwash.

3 - the biggie...whilst the blender copes admirably with wet ingredients it is almost useless with anything that errs towards dryness or stickyness. I tried to make hummus in it using the dips setting as recommended in the rather terse table of recipe ideas. As suggested, I added the dry ingredients first (the chickpeas) followed by garlic, lemon juice and tahini. I then pressed "dips" and waited for some action. What happened was the blades whirred away and completely blended the 1/20th of the mixture they were in contact with but did not touch the layer above. I tried adding more water and re-running, then LOTS more and re-running but to no effect. In the end I got out my handheld and pulped the mixture up in seconds (it was a big hit with six month old George). A similar story with chopping - stickiness stops it dead.

All in all then a good, solid product for the £[] but with some serious limitations. Think about what you plan to use it for and how much help/inspiration you want. If you want a powerful, professional blender, like washing up and plan to blend wet ingredients to your own recipes then this is perfect...otherwise consider the three negatives before purchase.

In the past this might have been referred to as a liquidiser. Breville call it a Blender. I think it's best regarded as a Smoothie Maker. The product exceeds the standard blender in that it has a high powered motor (at 800w), a number of pre-programmed blending options, and a good build quality.

It could be better though. The blender will not fit under a standard work surface with cupboards above - a problem if you use it frequently and have limited storage space as it won't fit assembled in a standard kitchen cupboard either. That said, although the build quality is good it could be better and more attractive. I'd have preferred the base to be made of chrome rather than silver-coloured plastic. Perhaps surprisingly the recipe book with this Antony Worrall Thompson branded product is not very good. Only one smoothie recipe is given and it appears that generally there is one recipe for each of the pre-programmed modes. Worrall Thompson's recipes do little to sell the product however. Finally, as this is not described as a smoothie maker it lacks a tap from the blender to take blended drinks directly from the blender. You have to detach the blender jug for the base and pour the drink. However for cleaning - and most parts can be put into a dishwasher - the jug has to be detached anyway.

Luckily a friend lent be a smoothie recipe book as this is where the product excels. It quickly makes a wide range of both fruit juice based and yogurt based smoothies. However, to work well the blender needs a fair amount of liquid added. Otherwise fruit becomes trapped and can only be moved towards the blending blades by turning the machine off and using a spatula to hand mix the content and move unblended fruit closer to the blades. For what is theoretically a low-effort product this is an annoyance.

In summary a good product but best used for smoothies. For cake mixes, coffee bean grinding and more your probably better with a food processor which wouldn't cost too much more for a basic model.