We have a breville hemisphere at the lake house. It's normally 199 or so but with a 20% off coupon we purchased for 163 or so at Bed bath and beyond. It works great! I can make smoothies with kale froZen banana and berries- no problem. It even blends raw nuts into the drinks. Very happy with the purchase. We also make a lot of frozen drinks at the lake house--- a year later still going strong.

At our house we have vitamix. The breville isn't quite as good but it's also 1/3 or 1/4 the price! I personally like the breville better than my mom's blendtec.

We have a Ninja. Love it so much we bought a second one for our beach house!

Sube
Can you tell me which ninja you like, because amazon has about 4 of them.
Thanks

Lyban, they must have changed the design because none of them looks exactly like ours, but this must be the new-design equivalent to what we have because ours came with the two single-serve cups (which my kids love for smoothies). I only paid $99 for ours but that was a couple of years ago at Target.

DH makes smoothies almost every morning with whole frozen strawberries and this

Here is a link that might be useful: Hamilton Beach Blender

Thank you all for the blender recommendations; it gives me a starting point. I just watched a youtube video on that little Hamilton Beach blender and, goodness, for the price it was most impressive!

Hubby has gone through a number of blenders until our daughter bought him a Ninja. Not sure which one other than it has two tops. He bought a small one to keep in his luggage that he keeps at his hotel to use for making his daily smoothies while he's in Cali during the work week.

I don't have one, but I believe that Consumer Reports rated one of the Ninja models at or near the top.