Blendtec Designer 725 Blender Review

The Blendtec Designer 725 is a bit shorter than the Blendtec Classic 575, but it's still fairly bulky and best stored on your counter or in a spacious cupboard.

This blender has an outstanding build quality. The base is made of rubber and stainless steel, with plastic feet to help it grip onto surfaces. Its gear and transmission are made of metal as well. The power cord is thick and feels heavy-duty, and there are vents on the bottom of the base to help with air circulation.

The Blendtec Designer 725's main jar is the 90-ounce WildSide+ Jar. It has a fifth side that's designed to push food towards the blades and allow it to blend frozen ingredients more efficiently. Even though the jar has a 90-ounce capacity, the manufacturer says that the volume of your ingredients after blending shouldn't be more than 36 ounces. The jar can be washed on the top rack of your dishwasher.

The Blendtec Designer 725 also comes with a personal jar, the 24-ounce GO Travel Bottle, which has its own removable blade assembly and plastic to-go lid. You can wash the jar and lid in the top rack of your dishwasher.

The Blendtec Designer 725 uses two thick, blunt blades with tips that point upwards. The blade assembly can't be removed from the jar, but you can put the jar and blades in the dishwasher.

The Blendtec Designer 725 has a two-part lid with a clear plastic cap in the middle that you can remove to add ingredients while blending. However, the cap feels loose and not very tightly secured to the main lid. The lid itself is held in place by friction, and since it's made of flexible plastic and feels flimsy, it doesn't seem very secure.

The Blendtec Designer 725 has a thick power cord that should be long enough to reach most nearby outlets. On the downside, there's no compartment to stow it away when you're not using it.

• WildSide+ lid
• 90oz WildSide+ jar
• 34oz Blendtec GO bottle
• Blendtec GO blade assembly
• Blendtec GO lid
• Blendtec GO How-To pamphlet
• Owner's manual
• Motor base

The Blendtec Designer 725 has buttons for eight pre-programmed modes as well as a touch-sensitive bar that you can slide your finger on to adjust the speed of the blender. Unfortunately, it's possible to accidentally turn the blender on with the touch-sensitive bar while the lid is off.

The Blendtec Designer 725 makes okay almond butter. It's spreadable but dry, with some small, uniformly-sized unprocessed pieces. You may need to stop it every once in a while to scrape the sides of the jar to ensure that all of the nuts are caught by the blades, which can be a bit of a hassle.

The Blendtec Designer 725 makes a decent smoothie using its smaller personal jar. It processes ingredients like kale and frozen banana into a cold, uniform, but still grainy drink. Unfortunately, it takes a while, and you may need to remove the jar from the base and shake it a few times to ensure everything is caught by the blades.

The Blendtec Designer 725 makes a poor smoothie in its main jar. The ingredients may not be blended at first using the smoothie preset, so you may need to use pulse mode at the beginning. The thick blades struggle to fully process leafy greens like kale even after several minutes, resulting in a foamy, sludgy smoothie.

The Blendtec Designer 725 is incredible at making crushed ice. Using pulse mode, it can crush ice into a very even, snow-like consistency in less than a minute.

The Blendtec Designer 725 has several preset modes that are controlled with buttons: 'Smoothie', 'Dips', 'Whole Juice', 'Mixed Drinks', 'Hot Soup', 'Batters', 'Ice Cream', and 'Clean Blender'. It has a screen that displays which mode or setting you're using, as well as a stopwatch for manual blending and a countdown timer for the pre-programmed modes.

The manual says that you should run the blender for no more than five minutes straight. It also says you can't use it to blend ingredients that are already hot, but there's a "hot soup" preset that will warm up cold ingredients as they blend. The result won't be steaming hot, however.

The Blendtec Designer 725 blender is remarkably easy to clean. You can take care of most messes by adding a bit of soap and warm water to the jar and running the 'Clean Blender' preset. It even works if you're blending sticky ingredients, but in that case, you may need to clean the lid manually with a sponge because it has small crevices that food can get stuck in.

The Blendtec Designer 725 comes with virtually no extra features, but it does include one personal jar with its own blade assembly and matching lid. The manual says it can't be used to blend hot ingredients, but has a "hot soup" preset that can warm up cold ones.