Cleanblend Commercial Blender Review

The Cleanblend finished roughly in the middle of the entire group, just barely outperforming the KitchenAid Diamond 5-Speed by a single point and finishing a bit behind the Blendtec Designer 650. The Blendtec and the Cleanblend both did about the same when tasked with making smoothies, but the Blendtec did a bit better in all of our other metrics. However, the Blendtec does cost over $300 more than the Cleanblend. The KitchenAid is a bit better than the Cleanblend at grinding harder types of food and crushing ice, but it isn't as good at making smoothies or being easy to use. The KitchenAid usually retails for about $70 less, making it a much better value option.

The Cleanblend Commercial Blender.

Credit: Jenna Ammerman

Performance Comparison

In our quest to find the ultimate blender, we compared and researched dozens and dozens of different models and brands, then picked out the ones that showed the most promise to purchase and test out head-to-head. We scored each product in five weighted testing metrics, with the Cleanblend's results described in the following sections.

The Cleanblend made above average smoothies.

Credit: Jenna Ammerman

Smoothies

The main use for many people and our most important set of tests overall, our smoothie metric is responsible for 30% of the final score for each blender. We made four different drinks in each blender — a green smoothie, fruit and oat smoothie, berry smoothie, and an Oreo malt — and scored the taste and consistency of each one to determine each blender's overall smoothie score. The Cleanblend delivered a fairly impressive set of blended beverages, meriting a 7 out of 10.

This appliance got off to a great start with the fruit and oat smoothie, which is one of the more difficult drinks of the group due to the lack of liquid. We did have to stir the ingredients once at the start, but the Cleanblend easily mixed them without issue after that. We liked that it didn't heat up the drink at all, but the overall texture was a bit grainier than the top models.

Prepped up for the fruit and nut smoothie challenge.

Credit: Jenna Ammerman

It also did exceptionally well with the Oreo malt, though it did need a small amount of encouragement at the start to get the ingredients blending and the texture was just a tiny bit grainy.

The fruit and nut smoothie was a breeze for this blender.

Credit: Jenna Ammerman

The Cleanblend struggled a bit more with the green smoothie, but still did slightly above average overall. It was a very pulpy smoothie, with a few unblended chunks of pineapple and much more were caught in the sieve than with other products. However, the taste was great.

This model wasn't the best at breaking down all the cell walls of the greens.

Credit: Jenna Ammerman

It did about the same with the berry smoothie. The Cleanblend struggled the most with the berries and we definitely had to use the tamper until everything was partially liquefied.

The Cleanblend didn't do well at blending up the strawberry seeds.

Credit: Jenna Ammerman

The final drink had quite a few fruit skins and tons of whole strawberry seeds were caught in the sieve, compared to most of them being totally obliterated by the top products.

The Cleanblend didn't quite crush the competition but it did very well.

Credit: Jenna Ammerman

Ice

Following smoothies, we moved on to our ice metric. This metric is responsible for 20% of the final score for each blender and is based on how well each appliance did at making a margarita and at crushing ice. The Cleanblend delivered another solid set of results, meriting an 8 out of 10.

This blender made an excellent margarita, easily crushing up the ice without any issues and producing a much more liquid margarita than almost any other product. Unfortunately, we didn't think the final drink was as homogeneous as some of the other beverages made by the top blenders. The Cleanblend's blades just don't make the same kind of vortex that other models do.

It also did very well crushing ice without any liquid. It wasn't terribly effective if we just ran the blender continuously, but it did a fantastic job if we pulsed it — the blade never even slowed down when cutting through the ice cubes.

The Cleanblend has a simple interface.

Credit: Jenna Ammerman

Convenience

Our next metric focused on how it is to actually use each blender, rather than its actual blending performance. We compared the ease of cleaning each product, the different preset functions and settings available, and if the lid is easy to take on and of for this metric, which also accounts for 20% of the final score for each kitchen appliance. The Cleanblend is fairly easy to use, earning it a 6 out of 10 for this metric.

The pitcher, lid, and blade of the Cleanblend are all dishwasher safe, making it one of the easiest to clean. If you don't have a dishwasher, then this is also quite easy to clean by hand. The lid is one of the easiest to clean, with no tiny nooks or crannies that trap food. Food doesn't really get stuck to the sides of the pitcher that often and the pitcher and blade are both fairly easy to clean, although you don't have a ton of room to maneuver around the blades.

The Cleanblend is also dishwasher safe.

Credit: Jenna Ammerman

There is plenty of ventilation for this product to adequately dry when placed on the base and the text is clear and easy to read on the controls. However, we did miss the presence of a digital timer or any preset functions.

There are no presets on this blender.

Credit: Jenna Ammerman

Finally, the lid is very easy to take on and off, almost never sticking.

Ready to test!

Credit: Jenna Ammerman

Pureeing

Back to rating the blending performance, we moved on to score how well the Cleanblend can puree different types of food, which is responsible for 15% of its overall score. Specifically, we looked at how well it did at making nut butter and tomato soup, as well as if it can effectively be used to heat up soup to serving temperature. It did alright, earning another 6 out of 10 for its all-around above average performance.

Starting off, the Cleanblend did quite well at creating nut butter — one of the hardest challenges we put before each blender. It took about 8 minutes for the Cleanblend to make some acceptable nut butter, though it did take a bit of convincing to get it started. It came out a little dry and chalky, but this could probably be remedied with some extra oil — something the best models didn't require.

The Cleanblend had a really grainy nut butter.

Credit: Jenna Ammerman

It struggled a little with tomato soup, leaving behind plenty of leftover pulp and an overall thicker soup that didn't pour through the sieve very well.

The soup didn't pour straight through the sieve using this blender.

Credit: Jenna Ammerman

For the last test of this metric, the Cleanblend delivered a mediocre performance.

The Cleanblend doesn't quite heat up the competition.

Credit: Jenna Ammerman

It did heat up the tomato soup, but never really got it to serving temperature, leaving it rather lukewarm.

This model included a tamper for those tough to blend smoothies and nut butters.

Credit: Jenna Ammerman

Grinding

For the final round of tests, we looked at how the Cleanblend handled harder types of foods - namely by milling corn, making powdered sugar, and grating hard parmesan cheese. This trio of tests is responsible for the remaining 15% of this blender's score, with the Cleanblend meriting a 6 out of 10 for its grinding results.

This blender got off to a great start, making some excellent powdered sugar, with almost no leftover granules.

This model really ground up the granules.

Credit: Jenna Ammerman

It struggled a bit with the parmesan cheese, leaving a ton of larger pieces and failing to achieve any semblance of a uniform size.

The Cleanblend wasn't super effective at grinding up parmesan.

Credit: Jenna Ammerman

It did a little better than average when we tried to make cornmeal. It did mill most of the kernels, but the resulting meal wasn't very consistent and there were a decent number of larger pieces that didn't make it through the sieve.

The cornmeal wasn't evenly ground.

Credit: Jenna Ammerman

Value

This blender is a poor value option, as it costs about the same as some other models that did vastly better.

Berry smoothies are a personal favorite.

Credit: Jenna Ammerman

Conclusion