Smeg BLF01 Blender Review

The Smeg BLF01 is compact for a full-size blender. Its motor base is only slightly larger than the NutriBullet Rx's, so it doesn't take up too much room on your kitchen counter or in a cupboard. You can also remove the jar for easier storage.

The Smeg BLF01 has poor build quality. At first glance, the aluminum motor base looks premium and sturdy, the power cable is thick, and the controls feel clicky and well-made. However, the grey plastic on the motor base and the bottom of the jar feels thin and cheaper than the rest of the build. A safety feature ensures the blender can't start unless the jar is mounted on the motor base, but it doesn't stop you from blending with the lid off. You can remove the blade assembly from the jar by using the removable center piece of the lid as a key, but unlike the tool that comes with the NutriBullet Rx, it doesn't give you much extra leverage and is tricky to do when your hands are wet. It also likely causes damage to the plastic center piece over time.

Our unit often leaks when used to blend liquids. This may be because the rubber gasket on the blade assembly fits loosely. As you can see here, water drips through the blade assembly onto the top of the motor base into the small hole for the safety feature. It goes down through the motor itself and can end up on the counter.This can also happen during cleaning cleaning. Also, the metal nut under the blade assembly can heat up so much that it fuses slightly to the plastic base of the blade assembly and begins to burn it.

It has a 48oz capacity, which is suitable for blending multiple batches at once. If you generally blend for one, the Smeg Personal Blender PBF01 has a similar design, but it's smaller and comes with 20oz jars.

The jar is made of plastic and is dishwasher-safe, as long as you remove the blade assembly first.

The blade assembly has four sharp blades with two angled down to help keep ingredients moving below the blades. You can remove it by turning the jar upside down and using the plastic centerpiece of the lid as a key to unscrew it. Unlike the jar and lid, it needs to be cleaned by hand.

There's a two-part lid for the jar. You can remove the plastic center piece to add ingredients mid-blend, and it doubles as a small measuring cup. The center piece also doubles as a key that unlocks the blade assembly from the jar when you want to remove it for cleaning. Both parts of the lid are dishwasher-safe.

The power cord is thick and long enough to reach an outlet near your counter. When it's not in use, you can wrap it around four plastic fins on the underside of the motor base to keep it out of the way.

• Smeg BLF01 motor base
• 48-oz main jar with removable blade assembly
• Two-part lid
• Manual and warranty information

It makes a very smooth blend with small batches of fibrous ingredients. Aside from a few tiny unprocessed grains, something like a single-serve kale smoothie will turn out very smooth. However, it's a longer process than many full-size blenders, like the Vitamix Explorian E310. The ingredients splash up the sides of the jar for the whole process, forcing you to stop and scrape the sides of the jar to avoid more unprocessed bits.

It's outstanding for processing fibrous ingredients at full capacity. Unlike with smaller batches, splashing isn't an issue when the jar is filled to full capacity, and the ingredients are pulled into a vortex more efficiently. This blender still processes ingredients more slowly than some, like the Vitamix 5200, but it produces an extremely smooth puree with no leftover bits.

The Smeg BLF01 is excellent for crushing ice. If you use 'Pulse' mode, it takes about two minutes to process 12 ice cubes into fluffy, snow-like crushed ice. A few small unprocessed chunks are left over, but the ice is mostly uniform. Unfortunately, when using the dedicated 'Ice Crush' mode, it does a much worse job and leaves behind big chunks of ice.

It's bad at making nut butter. It quickly crushes the ingredients into dry powder but struggles to do much beyond that. The mixture gets pushed to the sides of the jar, which is quite wide at the base, and the blender can't reincorporate them into a vortex. Several times during the process, you need to stop the machine and use a spatula or shake the jar to dislodge ingredients stuck away from the blades. Even with that effort and a very long blending time, it makes a crumbly, crunchy paste that doesn't qualify as nut butter.

It's on the loud side for a full-size blender. We've tested many quieter full-size models, like the KitchenAid K150 and the Wolf Gourmet Pro-Performance.

It has a small range of speeds. The top blending speed is fast, which helps blend fibrous ingredients smoothly, but the slowest blending speed isn't very slow. This limits how much you can adapt its speed for different recipes. For example, slow speeds are useful for recipes like nut butter, so the small range of speeds hurts the blender's versatility.

There are four speed presets and two blending programs on the dial, 'Smoothie' and 'Ice Crush'. The programs run the blender for a set time before switching it off automatically. A button for pulse (above the dial) runs the blender for as long as you hold it down. The red light above the dial always flashes when the blender is plugged in, which some may find annoying. When it's running, the white ring around the dial lights up.

It's easy to clean. Running the blender with soap and water in the jar helps a lot, even if you're working with sticky ingredients. You need to take the time to manually clean the lid and the blades with a brush or sponge, but it's not a very long or difficult process. You can also remove the blades from the jar to make it easier to clean, but it's unnecessary if you're cleaning it by hand.