Oster 6684 12-Speed Blender, Black

I’ve had this for a couple of years now and it still works great, easy to clean and not too heavy. Super easy to use and I love that the blender is made of glass

This is an decent blender for the price. Parts are available on amazon if it leaks after a few years, so do not be like me and throw your last one away thinking it could not be fixed with a new rubber gasket or blades. It can! It makes and blends delicious shakes and has not problems with ice. If it is not crushing the ice, either slow down the speed or shut off and shake the container and it will work. Please remember that this is real glass and metal parts for most of the drive mechanism. For the price it is a great deal. Any blender can have problems, but this blender gets mostly good reviews. Happy blending my friend.8/1/2013- Revaluation 2 weeks later. This blender is still a good deal for the money, but here is the real juice of the matter. If you do not put enough liquid in the blender, the blade will spin but not mix up the ice and fruit for smoothies. Here is how to do it correctly. Remember friends, this is a very low priced blender which if used properly will give you many years of service, hopefully. Put your milk or fluid in first, then add half the fruit. Put the top on and start a SLOW blend. When you see the ingredients start to whirlpool, take off the top and drop in the ice cubes one at a time. As you add each ice cube, place the lid back on for a second while it gets crushed. This is easy once you do it a few times. Please do not put yours hands inside the blender while blending. Add the rest of the fruit and turn the speed up. Blend for 30-60 seconds and voila, great smoothies. I am making great smoothies every morning and night. Hint- Add 3 tablespoons of organic ground golden flax seeds with the fruit. It has more great healthy omega 3's than stinky fish oil and much safer than eating fish from our filthy ocean that Japan has been nice enough to irradiate for us.

Ordered with my fingers crossed. Over the years I have owned too many wimpy blenders that get that burn-y smell when I try to make something heavy duty, like hummus! This is the ultimate test of a blender's muscles. Well, this one passed the test! It did its job and I was relieved. It is easy to clean, easy to use a rubber spatula to get everything out too. We were a bit disappointed that this item took nearly a week to arrive here--probably the result of two major snow storms that his New Jersey just when we ordered. I think that this item is well worth the price. Try it, you will like it!Additional information posted on December 11, 2011: We threw this blender out! It started leaking. And it was spinning around when the blender was on, unless I held it in place. Finally we realized that the base was broken. The black part that screws on was cracked. Don't know why. It wasn't dropped or abused. It just gave up the ghost!

I am very happy with this blender. My previous blender was also an Oster, and I had it for many years. I could have kept it longer, even, had I ordered a new "O" ring for it, but I'll get to that in a few moments, as I first want to talk about all the good things about this blender (the "O" ring in Osters is my one bit of not-so-good feedback, so I'm saving that until after I tell you the good stuff). By far my favorite thing about this particular Oster is the glass, 5-cup container! I LOVE that it is glass! My previous one was plastic. It is somehow harder to clean plastic, and mainly what I love about the glass is that the food I put into the blender is not going to leach any weird chemicals out of the plastic container, even if I decided to put any leftover amount straight into the fridge, in the container, for a while. I think the glass is also aesthetically beautiful and high-quality--it's nice and thick. Just a really great, quality container, especially at such an affordable price point! I also personally like the black base, and black lid, as my kitchen countertops are a black granite ("Baltic Brown" granite, to be specific--it's called Baltic Brown but really it is a black countertop with flecks of brown, etc., in it). This blender looks very sleek and inkeeping with the color theme of my kitchen. Lastly (for the good feedback), it's an Oster, and I do feel, from my past experience, that Oster is a reliable brand: affordable and good quality that lasts. Okay, now I come to the one thing I don't like--oh, but first, let me add one other thing that falls between "good" and "bad", and is just an FYI: the actual blending power of this blender is okay and does the job, but only if you ensure that you have enough LIQUID in the container. Otherwise, you are going to be there a while trying to get everything blended! However, if you do put enough liquid in there, you are in business. For example, I made a smoothie the other day from 100% pineapple juice, a banana, plain lowfat yogurt, and frozen mango chunks. The frozen mango chunks are large, and were completely frozen. Yet this blender did a great job of completely pureeing the smoothie. That is because I had enough of the pineapple juice in there, though, so just be sure to put enough liquid in the container. Okay, now I get to my one gripe about Oster blenders: the "O" ring and the design of where it is. In my strong opinion, you have to be SURE to completely take the base off the container after each use and rinse the O ring separately, then allow everything to dry before putting it all back together. I say this because I did not always do that with my previous Oster and, eventually, the O ring got moldy (unbeknownst to me) and eventually starting disintegrating INTO whatever I was blending. I didn't realize this until *after* a few blends, and me consuming bits of the disintegrating O ring (!!!). I don't see why Osters have to have a rubber O ring that sits in a place wherein the rubber is in any way in contact with the food/liquid in the blender, period. To me, this is a design flaw, as the O ring should not contact the food, let alone (granted, after years of use, in the case of my prior Oster) disintegrate into it. This new Oster blender, which like I said, I LOVE, also has this same design. So again, what I now know to do, and what I recommend to anyone reading this, is to TAKE APART THE BLENDER AFTER EACH USE, so that the glass container is unscrewed from the base, and rinse off the O ring. Every time. That way, you can ensure that it will never get moldy, and also that you will be scrutinizing it often to see that the integrity of the O ring is still good and it isn't starting to disintegrate. You can easily buy replacement O rings for Osters for a few dollars, which is probably what I should have done when my old one went, but I'm glad I didn't, as I really LOVE this new Oster so much more, since it has the glass container that I think is so great, and it has the black base and lid. So, the short version of all of the above is that, in my opinion and experience, this is a very good blender for this price point, especially the very high-quality glass container, which holds five cups. Just keep your O ring clean and inspect it after each use, and you will have a blender than you can enjoy for many years.