Month: January 2018

New to 2017, the Ninja Chef 1,500-watt High Speed Blender is the first high-performance model from this company that doesn’t have sets of blades throughout the jar. The Ninja Chef’s blades sit in the base of the jar, like normal blenders, and this model performs better than its predecessors. But it’s extremely loud, and our top picks—the Oster, Cleanblend, and Vitamix—still blend silkier smoothies.

The Hamilton Beach 1,800-watt Professional Blender with Presets performed well in our tests. When using the manual speeds, the blender’s digital readout shows a countdown timer, which is helpful because the instruction manual advises against continuously running the motor for more than two minutes. But the preprogrammed settings don’t effectively keep the mixture moving when air pockets occur. The on/off buttons are angled upwards at the top of the base, and susceptible to food and grime buildup over time.

Falling between $600 and $700, the KitchenAid Pro Line is one of the most expensive blenders we’ve tried, and it’s also the heaviest (22 pounds!). It blended silky smooth textures, but not quite as easily as the Vitamix 5200, and it also didn’t do well at emulsification. Its performance did intrigue us and after a year of long term testing, we found it delivers similar results to the less-expensive Vitamix. And the KitchenAid’s heft and large size make it difficult to move and a space hog.

The Cuisinart CBT-1500 Hurricane is a compact, powerful blender, but it struggled to process foods. Blending thick smoothies and peanut butter required more liquid, a lot of starting and stopping, and banging the jar on the counter. It did make mayonnaise on the first try, though, unlike the more powerful Cuisinart CBT-2000 Hurricane Pro. But without the Turbo button of the Hurricane Pro, it’s just another middle-of-the-road blender.

The Cuisinart CBT-2000 Hurricane Pro performed similarly to the Cuisinart CBT-1500 Hurricane, except it didn’t make mayonnaise as well (we only achieved emulsification on the third try). We did find the turbo button useful to get a fine puree. But again, without a tamper to bust air pockets, this blender needed a lot of tending to get uniform, smooth purees.

After discontinuing sales in North America for eight years, the Braun brand is back in the US with a line of kitchen small appliances manufactured by De’Longhi. The PureMix is a small, tamper-less blender that didn’t impress us in the least, with a flimsy jug and lightweight base. The PureMix had a hard time mixing our smoothie; we needed to add so much liquid to the mixture that the texture was way too thin—yuck! We disqualified the Braun after the first test.

Will the Blendtec Designer 675 blend? Yes, but not as well as our top picks. Despite Blendtec’s clever (if at times mildly sinister) marketing campaign of blending everything from rake handles to iPhone 6s, we’ve found its blenders wanting (we also tested the Total model in 2013). Although the Designer 675 really killed it on smoothies and blended drinks, its lack of a tamper limits its usefulness. In our tests, it didn’t make peanut butter (a tamper would have helped), and the preset speed for soup was frightening, with hot liquid flying wildly around the jar. This model does come with a manual speed slider as well as presets, but we didn’t find this obvious at first when using the machine. We do think this particular model is quite beautiful, with a sleek black, light-illuminated base. It’s a great blender if you want something that looks super slick on your counter that can make amazingly smooth mixed drinks and smoothies. But for $440, we think your blender should be able to do a lot more than that well.

The Breville Boss performed about as well as the Oster Versa and Cleanblend, but it’s almost twice the price. It has a variable speed dial plus five presets. That’s almost too many presets (something this Serious Eats article also mentions). Like most Breville products, the Boss is built really nicely. It probably has the nicest jar of any of the blenders we tried, and the silver base would look great on the counter in many kitchens. Overall, though, we don’t think it performed better than our winner.

The Waring Commercial Xtreme made very smooth smoothies, and it feels very substantial. But ultimately it didn’t perform better than the Oster Versa, Cleanblend, or the Vitamix. If we were willing to pay this price, we’d go instead for a reconditioned Vitamix 5200. We do like that there’s a metal jar you can purchase for this machine.

We still think our 2012 top pick, the Vitamix Pro 300, is a great blender. It has a shorter jar and is quieter than the Vitamix 5200. But in subsequent updates we found that the Vitamix 5200 is more highly recommended by a variety of pro cooks and editorial reviews. From a performance standpoint, the Pro 300 doesn’t outperform the less expensive 5200.

We tested the Blendtec Total Blender in our review from 2012, but found that it couldn’t compete with the Vitamix we tested. The lid felt flimsy and its panel controls seemed cheap. Blendtec has also phased this model out, although you can buy refurbished units through its site.

Our prior budget pick, the Breville Hemisphere, is still a good machine. It has a really nice control panel, with buttons that light up, an LCD timer, and five speed buttons. The vortex was very efficient, and it passed all of our blending tests. At this price point, though, we think the Oster Versa gives you more bang for your buck. Although the hardware on the Breville is nicer than on the KitchenAid 5-Speed, we thought the two machines blended about equally.

When it came to blending green and berry smoothies, we thought the Oster Beehive Blender did a pretty good job. It left a lot of pulp behind, and we kept having to open the lid to tamp down ingredients for our bean spread and ice tests. It is also super loud (and at a really annoying frequency).

For the price, the Ninja Master Prep Professional is a pretty good machine, but we don’t think it compares with the Oster Versa, the Cleanblend, or the Vitamix. The Master Prep did a surprisingly good job at smoothies, bean spread, and blending margaritas, but the design fails at making mayonnaise. The motor is top-mounted, so you can’t actually drizzle anything into the jar. The Master Prep comes with three blending jars in various sizes. We felt like there were too many parts, and they would just end up cluttering our cupboards. Overall, the machine feels really cheap.

The Ninja Professional Blender didn’t blend as well as the Ninja Master Prep or the Oster Beehive. For green smoothies, it left a weird confetti-like texture to the greens. Every time we ran it, there was a strong burning-motor smell. The jar is hard to get on the base, and the lid is finicky to clamp on. The mayo it made was super loose, which means more air was getting whipped into it. The base is big and clunky as well as cheap-feeling.

This guide builds on reporting by Seamus Bellamy.

Frontpoint

FrontPoint Security’s Interactive plan was our favorite home security system from 2013 to early 2016. Editor Nathan Edwards, who wrote the last version of the guide, is still using the system he bought in 2013. Its equipment, monitoring plans, and features are almost identical to LiveWatch’s: Both use the same Qolsys touchpanel or Interlogix Simon XT control panel; have similar or identical sensors and cameras; use Alarm.com apps; and support the same types of home-automation equipment. However, Frontpoint’s plans are slightly more expensive for the same level of service, its contracts are longer, its cancellation fees are onerous, and its pricing is less transparent than LiveWatch’s.

For this article, Nathan upgraded his system from the Simon XT keypad to the Qolsys control panel. Unlike LiveWatch’s nearly identical version of the panel, the Frontpoint system suffered from frequent lag, and froze several times while disarming the system.

When we recommended Frontpoint, we praised its ease of setup and use, great customer service, clear and competitive pricing, one-year contract option, and no-pressure sales tactics. The customer service and ease of use are still fantastic, and the equipment—with that one exception—is robust and reliable.

Frontpoint is consistently rated in the top three (usually number one) by most home security review web sites. Some of those websites seem to overlook similar or better features from competitors, or emphasize Frontpoint features that aren’t substantially different. Like cable companies, no security company has a great reputation for customer service, but Frontpoint’s is better than most.

Because their equipment and plans are nearly identical and both Frontpoint and LiveWatch both use Alarm.com for their smartphone apps and backend, the biggest differentiators between the two systems are the contracts and LiveWatch’s ASAPer system. We’re still happy with Frontpoint’s equipment, customer service, and reliability, but the greater expense and more restrictive contracts, along with a number of complaints we’ve noticed regarding recent changes in the company’s sales tactics, keep it out of the top spot this year.

Frontpoint’s default contract is three years, and if you leave early, you have to pay 80 percent of the remaining contract cost. When we first recommended them, Frontpoint offered a one-year contract option in addition to the three-year option. In June 2015, a Frontpoint spokesperson told us, “Frontpoint still has a one-year agreement. Because the three-year agreement comes with the best offer we won’t proactively offer anyone a one-year agreement.” However, many readers have told us that Frontpoint representatives denied the existence of a one-year contract when asked, instead pushing hard to get them to sign up for three years. Frontpoint told us that the one-year contract is available, but will cost $300 more for the initial equipment.

Where Frontpoint’s equipment and plan pricing used to be clearly listed on its website, the new website is sales-oriented and makes it impossible to compare monthly plan prices online—you have to give them your contact information and let them call you with a quote.That said, the monthly fees work out to be about $5 more than LiveWatch for each tier. You can still find equipment prices on their website if you look hard enough, but they’re not as easy to find as they were in prior years.

In addition, many commenters have told us that after they gave Frontpoint their contact info, reps called them constantly to try to get a sale—exactly the kind of behavior we praised Frontpoint for not doing in years past.

Link Interactive

Link Interactive offers service very similar to LiveWatch and Frontpoint. Like them, it uses Alarm.com for its backend and smartphone control. The standard Link system uses a 4-inch 2Gig Go!Control panel with cellular connection to the monitoring station, plus Wi-Fi and Z-Wave for peripheral devices, with an option to upgrade to a 7-inch Qolsys screen for an additional $200. The 2Gig’s backup battery lasts for only eight hours, while the batteries in LiveWatch and Frontpoint systems last 24 hours, and while the touchscreen isn’t difficult to navigate, it’s certainly not as roomy as the popular Qolsys screen that used to come with LiveWatch. While Link Interactive offers 1-, 2-, and 3-year contracts with the option of month-to-month extensions, the cancellation terms are even worse than Frontpoint’s: If you cancel during your contract period, you have to pay for the entire rest of the contract.

Link Interactive’s packages start at $31 per month for standard monitoring with no mobile access or home automation, which cost an additional $5. If you want video, the monthly rate increases to $41. That’s $5 less than LiveWatch, but you’ll probably end up paying much more for Link Interactive’s equipment. Instead of offering any kind of standard equipment package, Link Interactive’s hardware is completely a la carte—which means it could cost about $1,000 to match the basic $100 package offered by LiveWatch. Granted, the equipment is yours to own, and Link also offers equipment discounts based on the length of your contract ($250 in “free” equipment for a three-year contract; $150 for two years; and $50 for one year), but it’s still not enough to offset the cost.

Aside from the shoddy installation instructions and my preference for the Qolsys panel, the Link system works pretty well, and is not significantly different from LiveWatch, Frontpoint, and Protect America. The main difference is that Link defaults to a three-year contract for all new customers that automatically renews for a year at a time unless you’ve notified the company that you want to go month-to-month. (The one- and two-year contracts aren’t advertised, and you’d have to speak with a customer service representative to get them because they’re not available on the website.) If you decide to leave the contract early, you have to pay for the remainder of the contract. If you’re comfortable with all of the above, it’s still a pretty good security system. But LiveWatch has better setup, a shorter contract, and a better equipment package, and Frontpoint has better setup and marginally better cancellation terms.

Protect America

The Protect America system is easy enough to set up and use, but it’s costly and restrictive. The monitoring fees are high and increase with the number of sensors you have, and the company locks you into a three-year contract that you can’t break without paying for the full term.

Unlike every other system we tested, Protect America’s monthly fee goes up depending on how many sensors you have on your system, presumably to cover the cost of the additional equipment. The cheapest cellular monitoring plan is more than $40 for the Copper plan, which only supports three door/window sensors and a motion sensor. There’s no upfront cost for that equipment (aside from a $50 activation fee) but the larger the package you select, the more your monthly fee is. For instance, if you need more door/window sensors, instead of paying for the sensors, Protect America moves you up to the Silver plan for $50 a month, which over three years costs about $400 more than the Copper. If you want to add video monitoring, your first camera is free, but your monthly fee goes up by $10. Additional cameras cost about $180 plus another $5 a month. The Silver plan, with cellular monitoring, nine sensors for doors/windows, and one video camera costs $60 a month. None of this is obvious; their website is a nightmare to navigate.

The system we used included a control panel with a 3.5-inch color touchscreen, several small door/window contact sensors, a motion sensor and the same indoor security camera used by LiveWatch and Link Interactive. Protect America also offers its own iOS or Android smartphone app, instead of the Alarm.com app that other companies use.

Protect America starts you off with a phone consultation to select your package and then pre-configures the sensors. The instructions are decent, and the company offers online video tutorials if you’d like to set up your system yourself, or you can wait for your scheduled phone call. During the phone call a rep will guide you through installation, setup, and testing.

The Protect America Simon XTi controller (a new one for the company and not currently shown on the website) is bulkier than the others we tested, and the tiny touchscreen isn’t as high resolution as LiveWatch’s or Link’s. Menu navigation isn’t as fast as the others, and we didn’t find the menu intuitive (it took some searching to find the volume control for the system beeps), but it works well enough. The controller lost connection to my home network a couple of times, though it’s hard to tell if that was the system’s fault or my network’s fault.

Once installed, the Protect America system worked fine, but it’s disqualified by the archaic three-year contract, 100 percent cancellation fee, and byzantine pricing structure. The company also has an online reputation for pushy sales tactics and poor customer service, but I didn’t experience either of those myself.