Cleanblend Commercial Blender Review
Pros: Good at crushing ice, very smooth smoothies
Cons: Can’t heat up soups that well, poor performance grinding parmesan cheese
Manufacturer: Cleanblend
Our Verdict
Compare to Similar Products
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Cleanblend Commercial Blender | |||||
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Awards | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() | ||
Price | $180 List $178.97 at Amazon | $400 List $399.95 at Amazon | $520 List $498.37 at Amazon | $100 List $94.20 at Amazon | $200 List $138.95 at Amazon |
Overall Score ![]() |
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Star Rating | |||||
Pros | Good at crushing ice, very smooth smoothies | Fantastic smoothies, great at crushing ice, silky-smooth purees | Excellent at crushing ice, perfect at pureeing, superb at smoothies | Great blended drinks, excellent at pureeing, solid at making nut butter | Fantastic at crushing ice, very convenient, great value |
Cons | Can’t heat up soups that well, poor performance grinding parmesan cheese | Blade showed signs of wear and tear | Pricey | No presets, digital timer | Motor felt underpowered for pureeing nut butter |
Bottom Line | While the Cleanblend performed quite well in all of our metrics, there are other products that did far better overall for the same price | We think it's hard to go wrong with this kitchen appliance if you want the best of the best for your blending needs | This product is one of the best blenders available, handling everything we threw at it | If you are shopping on a budget, it’s hard to go wrong with the Nutribullet ZNBF30400Z | If you are looking for a budget blender that makes fantastic frozen drinks and superb smoothies, look no further than the Ninja |
Rating Categories | Cleanblend... | Cuisinart... | Vitamix A2500... | NutriBullet... | Ninja Chef... |
Smoothies (30%) | |||||
Ice (20%) | |||||
Convenience (20%) | |||||
Pureeing (15%) | |||||
Grinding (15%) | |||||
Specs | Cleanblend... | Cuisinart... | Vitamix A2500... | NutriBullet... | Ninja Chef... |
Model Number | Commercial Smoothie Blender | CBT-2000 | A2500 | ZNBF30400Z | CT805, CT810, CT815 |
Power | Peak 3.0 HP | Peak 3.5 HP | Peak 2.2 HP | 1.6 HP | Peak 2 HP |
DImensions | 18" x 15" x 13" | 10.05" x 8.50" x 17.55" | 11" x 8" x 17" | 16.5" x 9.8" x 7.5" | 17.99" x 9.72" x 8.46" |
Jar size | 64 oz | 64 oz | 64 oz | 64 oz | 72 oz (64 oz max liquid capacity) |
Dishwasher safe | Yes | Yes | Yes | Pitcher; top rack only | Yes |
Accessories | Tamper Produce bag |
None | Tamper | Tamper | Tamper |
Digital Timer | No | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
Presets | None | Yes,
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Yes, 3
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None | Yes, 10
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Our Analysis and Test Results
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Finally, the lid is very easy to take on and off, almost never sticking.
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.
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.
For the last test of this metric, the Cleanblend delivered a mediocre performance.
It did heat up the tomato soup, but never really got it to serving temperature, leaving it rather lukewarm.
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.
It struggled a bit with the parmesan cheese, leaving a ton of larger pieces and failing to achieve any semblance of a uniform size.
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.
Value
This blender is a poor value option, as it costs about the same as some other models that did vastly better.
Conclusion
The Cleanblend did well across the board, but not quite well enough to eclipse any of our current award winners and take home the prize.
— David Wise and Austin Palmer