The Calphalon ActiveSense is a full-size blender with a 64-ounce main pitcher and a 24-ounce personal jar. It can make snow-like crushed ice, process hot ingredients, and produce spreadable but crunchy almond butter. The blender has a few preset modes for different recipes and lets you select what thickness you want for the final product. The digital display screen alerts you when the blender thinks you need to add more liquid to the recipe. Unfortunately, it struggles to process fibrous ingredients like raw kale and makes grainy smoothies. It's also not very well-built. The motor base feels cheap and can jump around on your counter when it's running.
Our Verdict
The Calphalon ActiveSense is great for multi-purpose use. It has a versatile performance since you can use it to make snow-like crushed ice, decently well-blended smoothies, and process hot ingredients. It also makes spreadable almond butter, although it has a crunchy texture. There's a 24-ounce jar included for making single-serve drinks. Unfortunately, the blender struggles to completely liquify fibrous ingredients with either the main or personal jar, meaning it makes grainy smoothies if you add something like raw kale. Also, the motor base feels cheaply made.
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Easy to clean.
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Makes snow-like crushed ice.
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Motor base feels cheap.
The Calphalon ActiveSense is satisfactory for making smoothies and protein shakes. You can use the smaller jar to make decent smoothies. Ηowever, it doesn't fully process raw kale, so if you add fibrous ingredients, the resulting smoothie has a grainy texture. It also struggles to completely blend chunks of frozen banana in the main jar. That said, it's easy to clean and makes snow-like crushed ice, which is nice if you like to add them to smoothies or make frozen drinks.
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Easy to clean.
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Comes with a personal jar.
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Can move around when it's running.
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Makes grainy smoothies.
The Calphalon ActiveSense is excellent for crushing ice. It takes no time to make snow-like crushed ice using its 'Frozen Drinks' program. Unfortunately, some parts of the motor base feel flimsy, and the design of the gears makes them less durable.
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Makes snow-like crushed ice.
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Motor base feels cheap.
The Calphalon ActiveSense is great for soups. You can use the main pitcher to blend hot ingredients like roasted vegetables if you remove the two-part lid's center piece. Unfortunately, it struggles to fully liquefy raw kale, meaning purees can have a grainy texture. That said, it may perform better with softer cooked ingredients. The blender's parts are all dishwasher-safe, and it's very easy to clean by hand as well.
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Not too loud.
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Can hot blend.
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Makes grainy smoothies.
The Calphalon ActiveSense is good for professional use. It makes snow-like crushed ice, decent smoothies, and has enough power for tougher tasks like making almond butter. The main jar has a good 64-ounce capacity, and you can use it to process hot ingredients if you remove the center piece of the two-part lid. Unfortunately, the motor base feels cheaply made.
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Easy to clean.
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Not too loud.
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Motor base feels cheap.
- 8.5 Multi-Purpose
- 8.6 Smoothies (Single Serving)
- 9.1 Smoothies (Multiple Servings)
- 9.2 Ice Crushing
- 9.3 Soups
- 8.1 Professional Use
- Updated Sep 06, 2022: Converted to Test Bench 1.0.
- Updated Mar 30, 2022: Review published.
- Updated Mar 22, 2022: Early access published.
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Differences Between Sizes And Variants
The Calphalon ActiveSense comes in one color, 'Gray', and you can see the label for the unit we tested here. If you come across another variant, please let us know in the discussions, and we'll update our review.
Compared To Other Blenders
The Calphalon ActiveSense is a full-size blender with a 64-ounce main pitcher and a 24-ounce personal jar for making single-serve drinks. Like the Ninja Professional Plus Blender with Auto-iQ or the Ninja Blender Duo with Auto-iQ BL642, it's advertised to automatically adjust the blending speed and time to produce the best results. Ηowever, the speed adjustment isn't noticeable and the 'Add Liquid' alert feature, which lets you know if there's not enough liquid in your mix to blend well, appears inconsistently. The motor base's build quality also isn't the best.
If you're looking for other options, take a look at the best blenders for smoothies, the best blender for frozen drinks, and the best blenders.
The Calphalon ActiveSense is better than the Breville the Fresh & Furious for most purposes. The Calphalon comes with a 24-ounce personal jar in addition to its main pitcher. It makes better smoothies and crushed ice. You can also use it to process hot ingredients. On the other hand, the Breville has a much better build quality, and it's easy to clean by hand.
The NutriBullet Smart Touch Blender Combo is better for smoothies than the Calphalon ActiveSense. The NutriBullet is better-built and makes a silkier smoothie with fibrous ingredients like kale. It also comes with two personal jars for single-serve smoothies, while the Calphalon only includes one. On the other hand, the Calphalon is more versatile, since it can crush ice and make smooth nut butter.
You might prefer either the Calphalon ActiveSense or the Ninja Professional Plus Kitchen System with Auto-iQ. The Calphalon is much better at processing bigger batches of fibrous ingredients for recipes like smoothies. Its blade design makes it easier to clean by hand. On the other hand, the Ninja is better for tough blends like making nut butter. It's much quieter when it's running, and it comes with a food-processing bowl for chopping and slicing.
The Ninja Foodi Power Pitcher System is better than the Calphalon ActiveSense for most purposes. The Ninja makes better-blended smoothies and smoother almond butter. It has a better build quality and has a greater number of jars and more accessories, including a dough blade. It's also much easier to clean by hand. On the other hand, the Calphalon is safe for hot blending. It's quieter when it's running at maximum speed and comes equipped with some unusual features, like the ability to select your recipe's desired thickness or texture.
Test Results
The Calphalon ActiveSense is a somewhat tall full-size blender. It's not overly bulky but still takes up some room on a kitchen counter or in a cabinet. It's a bit shorter with the personal jar attached.
The Calphalon ActiveSense is decently well-built. The materials used for the jars and lids seem sturdy, and the motor base's display screen is of good quality. The lid seals securely with friction, and the bottom of the motor base is ventilated to let heat escape. There's a hole on the motor base under where the jar sits that lets any spilled liquid drain out. It also has small tabs that help it detect if you're using the main or personal jar.
Ηowever, the rest of the motor base feels cheap. The buttons wiggle when you're not using them and feel like they may get stuck after a while. The motor base can also jump around your counter when the blender is running, especially when you use the personal jar to process hard ingredients like frozen fruit. Its transmission uses a square-shaped gear while the jar has a star-shaped gear. It means you sometimes need to wiggle the jar to get it into place. It also wears out the gears more quickly since it causes more friction as they rub against each other. The gear assembly feels loose and is only held together by a rubber gasket. This design makes it easier to disassemble for cleaning, but it means you can't use the blender if you misplace the gasket.
The Calphalon 2099742 ActiveSense has one blade assembly that works with the main jar and personal jar. The blades screw onto the black plastic hub and are held in place by a rubber gasket, so it's easy to remove them for cleaning. You can see the blades attached to the hub here. They're also dishwasher-safe.
There's a two-part lid for the main jar that seals with friction. The middle part is removable, meaning you can add ingredients mid-blend. You can also use the center piece as a measuring cup, and it holds about two ounces.
The Calphalon ActiveSense's power cable is thin, and there's no place to stow or wrap it when it's not in use. It should be long enough to reach an outlet near your counter, though.
- Calphalon ActiveSense motor base
- 64 ounce main jar
- Two-part lid
- 24 ounce personal jar
- Spout lid
- Blade assembly (3 parts)
- Quick start guide
The Calphalon ActiveSense makes decent smoothies in its 24-ounce personal jar. If you run the smoothie program twice, it makes a cold, well-blended smoothie with ingredients like kale and frozen bananas. It's foamy and has grains because the kale isn't totally liquified, though. Also, you have to keep a hand on the blender when you're processing frozen fruit in the personal jar since the motor base tends to move around.
The Calphalon ActiveSense makes unremarkable smoothies in its main jar as the 'Smoothie' preset doesn't work as well as it does with the smaller jar. After running it twice, you need to scrape the sides with a tool like a spatula and then continue blending at high speed to get the best results. It doesn't fully process the kale, so the smoothie is very grainy. It also leaves behind some unprocessed chunks of frozen banana. Ηowever, the motor base doesn't move around as much.
The Calphalon ActiveSense is fantastic for crushing ice. If you use the 'Frozen Drinks' program, it can easily crush a batch of 12 ice cubes into snow-like crushed ice.
The Calphalon ActiveSense makes decent almond butter. It makes evenly blended and easy to spread almond butter, although it has a crunchy texture. Ηowever, you need to use a spatula or another tool to stir the ingredients, or they won't get incorporated by the blades. The almond butter is a bit warm because of friction from the blades, and the process would be easier if the blender came with a tamper.
The Calphalon 2099742 ActiveSense has buttons for three preset speeds, a pulse mode, and on/off. There's also a play/pause button that starts and stops the blender once it's powered on. There are buttons for choosing from five 'food modes' for different recipes and selecting the desired thickness for the final product.
This blender has five programs for different recipes, including 'Milkshake', 'Juice', 'Smoothie', 'Salsa', and 'Frozen Drink'. It also lets you select the texture you want for the final product. You can choose between 'thick' or 'thin' for beverages like smoothies and 'chunky' or 'smooth' for food like sauces or dips. The manufacturer advertises this blender to use sensors to automatically adjust the blending speed, blade direction, and blending time to help produce the consistency you want.
