Vitamix Ascent A2500	Blendtec Designer 650
10-Year Warranty	8-Year Warranty
64-oz. Low-profile Jar included; 20-oz. jar & 8-oz. mini jar available	90-oz. WildSide+ Jar included, 46oz Mini Jar & Twister Jar available
2.2 HP Motor	3 HP Motor
10-Speed Manual Control & 3 Presets	8-Speed Manual Control & 5 Presets
Metal-to-metal blender jar to the motor base	Metal-to-metal blender jar to the motor base
Thick, blunt tapered blades won’t dull over time	Thick, 2-prong wing-tip blunt blade
Digital LCD, Speed Dial, and Physical Switches	All capacitive-touch screen interface

 

 

Blendtec Designer 650 comes with the patented WildSide Jar. The WildSide Jar is so named for its unique fifth side which creates a high-powered vortex in the center of the jar that pulls the food down into the blades for a smoother consistency. Blendtec’s blades feature thick, blunt edges with wingtips which are designed to eliminate any tampering while blending. Blendtec's jars are incredibly durable and can even withstand a two-story drop without so much as a crack. 

The Vitamix Ascent Series blending jars have an updated design that makes them more efficient and user-friendly. The most notable feature is the new Self-Detect wireless technology integrated into each Ascent jar. This allows the blender base to communicate with the jar to recognize the size and adjust the power level and maximum blend time to avoid damaging the jar. The 64oz low-profile jar is extremely durable and will stand up to potential drops and falls over its lifetime.

Vitamix features blunt 4-pronged blades that are slightly tapered with pointed tips. Vitamix blenders use a tamper tool to push thicker blends back down into the blades while blending.

Vitamix and Blendtec both feature thick, blunt blades. Blendtec has designed their blades and jar to eliminate the use for a tamper.

 

The Ascent A2300 features Vitamix’s classic variable speed dial so you can control your blends to your preference. The A2300 also includes three presets for hot soup, frozen desserts, and smoothies. When a preset is selected, the new LCD timer counts down to display how long until your blend will be done. The toggle switches for the start/stop and pulse functions feel sturdy and satisfying to press.

The Designer 650 from Blendtec sports a sleek, futuristic, intuitive touchscreen interface. Easily press one of its six preprogrammed cycles and walk away while it blends. There is a dedicated pulse button and manual speed touch slider for blending at any speed you desire. The numeric LCD shows how long you’ve been blending and the time remaining on preprogrammed blends. 

 

Vitamix has their classic control dial, physical switches, and new LCD timer. Blendtec* sports a futuristic all-touchscreen interface with 5 timed presets.

(*Please note, image features the Blendtec Designer 675 Control Panel)

 

Both Vitamix and Blendtec also use metal for their drive socket and blade assembly. Metal parts are high quality and are designed to last for years. 

 

 

 

Hummus, everybody's favorite Mediterranean dip, is made from chickpeas & olive oil and can be flavored with just about anything. We had an abundance of onions in the test kitchen, so we decided to do some caramelized onion-infused hummus. A good hummus should be thick and spreadable with no chunks or bits of food in it. For this test, we looked at how well each blender incorporated the ingredients to test the effectiveness of the blades and the engineering of the jar.

Recipe: Caramelized Onion Hummus

Blend time: 1 Minute

Vitamix

We loaded the Vitamix with two cans of chickpeas, some water, lemon juice, and our caramelized onions. It took about one minute for the Vitamix to completely puree our hummus from start to finish. The olive oil was completely emulsified with the liquid with no signs of pooling oil on top. The hummus had a great airy, creamy texture with no signs of unblended ingredients. The final product was as spreadable as mayonnaise and tasted every bit as good as hummus you'd get at a restaurant.

Blendtec

We put Blendtec through the same test: all ingredients were blended on high speed for one minute. Like the Vitamix, the Blendtec completely emulsified the olive oil into the other ingredients and made a light and creamy hummus. Blendtec's hummus had a slightly less smooth consistency and was less airy compared to Vitamix's hummus, but both blenders made excellent hummus.

Both Vitamix and Blendtec made delicious hummus; smooth, fluffy, and creamy.

 

Winner: Vitamix - Emulsification Expert

Oil and water do not mix, but you can emulsify them. For oil and water to combine into one, oil particles have to be small enough to surround water particles to create a homogeneous mixture. Both the Vitamix and the Blendtec can achieve full emulsification, but Vitamix had better consistency and was slightly more airy and smooth compared to Blendtec's hummus.  

 

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Powdered Sugar Test

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To test the effectiveness of the blades, we put sugar into each blender to see how well it turned granulated sugar into powdered sugar. We looked for a consistently fine, fluffy powder with no sugar crystals left unblended.

Recipe: Powdered Sugar

Blend time: 30 seconds

Vitamix

We added 1.5 cups of sugar in the Vitamix and cranked it up to the highest speed for 30 seconds. That's all it took to create perfect powdered sugar. We sifted through and did not find any full sugar crystals left over, resulting in a nice, white, sugary dust, as powdered sugar should be.

Blendtec

After 30 seconds at the highest speed in our Blendtec, we also ended up with a pile of snow-like powdered sugar. We sifted through and could not find any full sugar crystals. Blendtec makes a great mill for turning granular sugar into powdered sugar.

Snow-like powdered sugar falls through the sifter, dusting our test slate. Both blenders are excellent at milling.

 

Winner: Vitamix & Blendtec - Masters of Milling

Both blenders excelled at breaking down full-size sugar crystals into powdered sugar. Both Vitamix's and Blendtec's blade designs incorporate thick, blunt blades. These blades spin so fast that they actually crush ingredients because there is more surface area for those tiny sugar particles to hit. This, along with the food-grabbing vortex, ensures all of the food you put into your blender gets pulverized. This also makes Vitamix and Blendtec great for milling whole grains for flour.

 

Hot Soup

Vitamix is famous for making hot soup without ever needing to turn on your stove. As a testament to their claim, my vintage Vitamix from 1992 still churns out hot soup! How this occurs is brilliant in its simplicity: Those super fast blades create so much friction that food heats up while it's blending. Blendtec also advertises the ability to create hot soup sans stove. So who makes the better hot soup?

Recipe: Cheddar Broccoli Soup

Blend Time: 5 minutes 45 seconds

Vitamix

We filled our blender jar full of cheddar broccoli soup ingredients then pressed the Hot Soup preset and let the blender run its course. In a mere 5 minutes and 45 seconds, we had perfectly pureed cheddar broccoli soup clocking in at 162°F degrees. It was literally steaming. Vitamix delivers on its claim of making hot soup.

Blendtec

We used the same recipe and Blendtec’s Hot Soup preset button. We stepped away and 3 minutes later, we had soup at about 135°F. While the soup was steaming and technically hot, it was not as hot as we prefer the serving temperature to be. If you were to put this soup into a cold bowl, the soup would cool down quickly. Given that Blendtec's Hot Soup preset only blended for half the time as the Vitamix, we ran the preset once more and came back to a much hotter 170°F soup—similar to the Vitamix's results. 

 

Friction from the blades in a tight space creates enough heat to make a hot soup.

 

Winner: Vitamix - Hot Soup, No Stove Required

Although the Blendtec created a hotter soup in the same amount of time as the Vitamix, we're declaring Vitamix the winner because its Hot Soup preset gave better results the first time around for an easier user experience. Both Blendtec and Vitamix passed with flying colors on making hot soup, you just have to do a little more work with the Blendtec.

 

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Ice Cream Test

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At Everything Kitchens, we all love ice cream, so we were especially excited about this test! For this test, we looked at how well each blender crushed ice and how well the liquid ingredients froze around the ice particles, as these qualities are what create a well-blended ice cream. The smaller the ice crystals and the faster they've moved around, the more frozen and creamy the ice cream will be.

Recipe: Chocolate Ice Cream

Blending Time: 1 Minute

Vitamix

Vitamix has a dedicated Frozen Dessert preset function for ice cream. We added four cups of ice along with milk, cream, vanilla extract, and cocoa powder to the Vitamix and started blending. The ice was quickly crushed and began to freeze to the jar sides, so we used the tamper to push everything back down into the blades. After only one minute, we had thick soft-serve chocolate ice cream. The ice cream had very small ice crystals for a smooth consistency that held its shape nicely.

Blendtec

Blendtec's Frozen Dessert function works similarly to Vitamix's. Both begin blending at a slow speed which increases the power to crush the ice. At first, Blendtec was doing great, but after only 20 - 30 seconds, the ice cream began to freeze to the sides of the jar and would no longer blend. We had to stop and push the frozen ice cream back into the blades to continue blending. After blending, the ice cream came out almost perfectly. The ice crystals were small, but some chunks of ice were still there. All in all, Blendtec made a tasty chocolate ice cream and passed the test.

Both blenders made ice cream in their own way. It's interesting to see the texture difference caused by the blade design.

 

Winner: Vitamix - Ice Cream Anytime

 

Vitamix is the big ice cream winner. With the use of the tamper, Vitamix made a better consistency without having to start and stop. Blendtec advertises that their blender is tamper-free which makes blending and storing the blender a lot easier, but in this particular application, a tamper would have been beneficial. For very thick blends, the tamper helps move food back down into the blender blades, and that's what helped Vitamix win this test.

 

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Bread Dough Test

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Both Vitamix & Blendtec advertise that their blenders can mix & knead bread dough right in the blender jar, so we put them to the test.

Recipe: White Yeast Bread

Vitamix

As expected, Vitamix did a great job at mixing dough. All of the flour was thoroughly incorporated, and there was a good amount of gluten development.

Blendtec

Blendtec also did a good job mixing bread dough. Like Vitamix, all the dough was well kneaded and created a nice, stretchy bread dough as shown below.

 

You can see the excellent stretchy gluten development in both doughs. This dough is on its way to becoming fresh-baked bread!

 

Winner: Vitamix & Blendtec - Kneads Your Dough

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Smoothie Test

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Smoothies are one of the most popular things people make with a blender. If you're a smoothie-lover, you'll want a blender that makes smoothies with a smooth consistency with no chunks or strings. For this test, we compared how smooth and velvety each unit blended the ingredients.

Recipe: Green Smoothie

(1 Apple, 1 carrot, 3 brussel sprouts, 1 oz of kale, 8 oz water, one frozen banana

Blending Time: 1 Minute

Vitamix

Our Vitamix Ascent A2500 had a dedicated smoothie button that ran for 60 seconds. No tamper was needed for the smoothie while blending and the vortex effect thoroughly blended all the ingredients to a smooth consistency. As you can see in the below photo, there are no distinguishable bits of carrot, apple, or kale. It's all one nice, consistent green color. This made for a smooth mouthfeel. The pulp was very fine and not grainy.

Blendtec

We used Blendtec's dedicated Smoothie button and in 60 seconds, we had a nutrient-dense green smoothie ready for drinking. The WildSide jar pulled down all of the hearty ingredients and pulverized everything. There were more tiny air bubbles in Blendtec's smoothie, but that's really the only difference we noticed.

Close-up of each green smoothie. Completely pulverized green ingredients from both blenders. Blendtec had some tiny air bubbles in its smoothie. Both make a silky smooth drinkable meal.

Winner: Vitamix & Blendtec - Professional Quality Smoothness

As far as smoothies go, both Blendtec and Vitamix deliver excellent results. I’m not the biggest green smoothie fan (I mostly drink them for the nutrition and not so much the taste), but I will say that both blenders made drinking a green smoothie an enjoyable experience. There was no grittiness, strings of kale, or chunks of carrot left over in either smoothie. Looking at the smear test, there's almost no discernible difference between the two. You won’t be disappointed with either blender when you’re making your morning smoothie.

 

 

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After using both the Vitamix and the Blendtec, I can absolutely recommend either of them as a great choice for your wildest blending desires. Both blenders passed every test and handled every single recipe we threw at them. We were very impressed with the results. We will say that Vitamix does better at some tasks, like making smoother hummus and hotter soup, but that's splitting hairs when talking about the overall quality.

When choosing between the two, take into consideration what kind of blending experience you prefer. Vitamix features physical control dials and switches that are easy to use and understand. Blendtec has a sleek, futuristic touchscreen and multiple timed presets that allow you to select, walk away, and come back to a perfect smoothie or creamy hummus.

Both Blendtec and Vitamix offer multiple sizes of blending jars to expand the versatility of their blenders. Create single-serve dishes and smoothies with smaller blender jars, or check out Blendtec’s Twister Jar for efficiently creating difficult-to-blend foods like nut butter.

Personally, I like the Blendtec a little more than Vitamix. The backlit touchscreen looks so sleek and provides a fun user experience while blending. I am also a fan of the WildSide Jar which, for just about every application, works great and doesn’t require a tamper. If you like a versatile, high-powered blender, you won't be disappointed with either Blendtec or Vitamix. Both blenders have lengthy warranties and an exceptional commercial-quality build for reliable blenders that'll last a long time. 

 

What Vitamix should I buy? Which Blendtec to buy?

Ready to learn more about what blender you should buy? Check out our Blendtec Blenders Shopping Guide or our Vitamix Ascent Blender Shopping Guide to see the differences between models of Blendtec and Vitamix blenders.

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