Breville the Super Q Review

The Breville Super Q comes equipped with a 68-ounce blender jug, a 24-ounce personal blender cup and blade system, a tamper, a spatula, and even a recipe book. The main jug is large enough for a big batch of margaritas or enough soup to feed the whole family, yet the 85-square-inch footprint fits easily on most countertops. The interface features five easy-to-use presets — Green Smoothie, Smoothie, Soup, Ice Crush, and Frozen Dessert — a digital timer, and 12 speed settings, making the Super Q an incredibly versatile blender.

Performance Comparison

Smoothies

Throughout our testing, the Super Q continually impressed our testers with its overall outstanding performance across the board. Of course, smoothie creation was no exception. All three smoothies — even the notoriously difficult green smoothie — and the milkshake were evenly and efficiently blended.

The Super Q offers five presets, including one for Green Smoothies, which works nearly perfectly, even when using the smaller, personal bottle base. This preset cruised through a blend of fresh kale and frozen berries in less than 60 seconds, producing a smoothie with a pleasantly creamy texture. While we did use the tamper to help stir ingredients during blending, it didn't require shaking or tipping to facilitate an efficient blend. That said, the contents don't necessarily need to be stirred to achieve a creamy consistency — with the preset, you could easily opt for a hands-off experience.

We used the basic Smoothie preset for our standard frozen berry, and fruit, nut, and oat smoothies. Though not nearly as quiet as the advertising suggests — the Super Q is on par with other, similarly powerful blenders in our tests — this blender broke down frozen fruit easily. Although there was a noticeable texture to the more substantial fruit, nut, and oat smoothie, both mixes were well blended. While the Super Q makes a decent berry breakfast on the Smoothie preset, it struggled to break down tiny berry seeds, resulting in a noticeable crunch.

We also noticed a little yogurt stuck to the sidewalls while blending breakfast smoothies, which is a bit disappointing considering the overall performance of the Super Q, but nothing that the included spatula couldn't easily clean up. On the other hand, an Oreo milkshake is perfectly blended on the Smoothie preset. This blender showed no signs of struggle, easily crushing ice cream and cookies to a smooth, creamy consistency.

Convenience

Among other professional-grade blenders we tested, the Super Q stands out for user-friendliness. The interface is intuitive, with clearly labeled buttons and digital readout, and the presets are dialed for uber-easy, “hands-off” blending. The Super Q is also conveniently easy to clean. Most parts are dishwasher safe, and it even features an effective auto-clean function.

Like all Breville products, the Super Q layout is super clean. The buttons for the blend preset, cleaning cycle, and timer all light up, and we appreciate that everything is labeled with words rather than images, so there's no room for misinterpretation. A dial makes it easy to scroll through options on the small digital screen — including speed settings like mill, puree, blend, chop, mix, and stir — and you can easily set the countdown timer. The clear labeling, intuitive design, and intentional presets remove the guesswork and allow for a hands-off experience while offering consistency in your blending experience.

The pitcher, personal cup, and lids are all dishwasher safe. While the lid and removable inner lid are easy to wash, we could not find anything in the user manual indicating whether or not they are dishwasher safe. If you don't want to use or don't own a dishwasher, the best way to clean the cup and non-removable blades is to blend some soap and water on the Clean preset. You can place the pitcher over the base to dry, ensuring it doesn't take up too much space on your countertop.

One of our main criticisms — of the very few we had of the Super Q — is that this blender is not nearly as quiet as the advertising suggests. Even though Breville claims that this premium blender features “noise suppression technology,” an average decibel reading of 82.4 dB on the standard Berry Smoothie setting puts it on par with most other blenders we tested.

Ice

Surprisingly, some blenders are not designed for crushing ice. But thanks to its high-powered 1800-watt motor and serrated blades, the Super Q has no problem breaking down ice. In fact, it has an Ice Crush preset specifically for this purpose — simply press the button and walk away. The powerful pulse setting will churn ice into a fluffy, snowlike consistency in less than a minute.

The other preset, Frozen Dessert, is perfect for producing what we consider ideal ice for a blended margarita: smooth and creamy, with consistent texture throughout. Certainly ideal for turning frozen berries into the same creamy consistency, this preset ensures you won't accidentally crunch down on a big chunk of ice mid-marg. Or, if you'd rather have chunky ice, simply pulse this blender on one of its 12 speed settings for your preferred texture.

Pureeing

While most blenders are a single-purpose kitchen appliance, it is worth considering investing in a high-end model capable of producing more than smoothies. Professional-grade blenders, like the Super Q, are utilitarian thanks to their capability of pureeing common homemade staples, like soup or nut butters. In this case, the Super Q was at the top of its class.

The Super Q produces some of the smoothest, creamiest nut butter of any blender we tested. Using the preprogrammed puree speed, and with a little help from the tamper, this blender produced perfect nut butter in roughly 1.5 minutes. Compared to other blenders with this capability, it required less oil to turn out a blended almond and nut butter that was easily spreadable.

An even more common use for powerful blenders is simultaneously blending and cooking a batch of soup — the soup preset on the Super Q purees for five minutes and 35 seconds, heating our batch of homemade tomato soup to a steamy 145 °F. Even using fresh tomatoes and garlic, the soup body was evenly blended with a creamy texture. Although the temperature change creates pressure, the Super Q features a super tight lid, and we didn't experience any soup explosions (though it is important to remain wary of this as a possibility!)

Grinding

Like pureeing, grinding is normally reserved for a food processor. But also like pureeing, the Super Q crushed our grinding tests, further cementing our trust in this powerful, versatile blender. Sugar is easily turned into powder, hard cheeses are ground with no signs of struggle, and we were even able to mill corn flour successfully.

The milling preset turns granulated sugar into a soft and fluffy powder in 30 seconds. The resulting powdered sugar was so powdery, in fact, that a big cloud poofed out when we removed the lid. This is a very useful preset for bakers, who might find themselves in a pinch without powdered sugar on hand to top off a freshly baked dessert.

The mill setting also creates next-to-perfect corn flour. While we still needed to sift to get consistent, fine-grained corn flour, almost all the milled flower traveled through the double-mesh sieve, leaving only a few course corn pebbles behind.

Using the chop setting, we could grind hard cheeses, like parmesan, with relative ease. Unlike some of the other blenders we tested, which required cheese to be precut into smaller pieces, the Super Q could take on larger blocks, making this process much more efficient. Although the result was a slightly coarser grind with a few unblended chunks, there was no clumping, and the resulting ground parmesan was still of restaurant quality.

Should You Buy the Breville Super Q?

The easy answer to this question is yes. The Super Q is a thoughtfully designed blender with an intuitive interface and several useful accessories, including a personal to-go cup. It perfectly blends smoothies, can easily whip up a batch of hot soup, and easily transition to non-traditional uses like milling or chopping. Thanks to its expert-level ice-crushing capabilities, it even makes a mean margarita. Although this premium blender carries a premium price tag, considering its high-level performance and versatility, it is well worth the investment.

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