The BlendJet followed me around the internet for about two years before I gave in. Instagram, TikTok, that one YouTube pre-roll I could never skip. Everybody has one. It is the default. I bought mine in 2022 and used it most mornings for a year and a half without thinking about it once.

Then in December 2023 the CPSC announced a recall of about 4.8 million BlendJet 2 units for fire and laceration hazards. I did not find out from the news. I found out from a friend, roughly a year late, in a group chat, which is apparently how most people found out.

I flipped mine over and read the serial number off the bottom of the base. Four digits. I was in the range.

Then Came The Rubber Seal

The remedy is a free replacement base, which sounds fine until you read how you claim it. You have to cut the rubber seal out of the bottom of your blender into three or more pieces, photograph the mutilated base next to its serial number, and email that in. Then you wait.

I did it. My base is still in the garage in a box. I am not telling you that to be dramatic. I am telling you because I think it explains something. There are millions of these out there that nobody ever bothered to fix, sitting in the back of a cabinet, because the process is annoying enough that most people just quietly stopped using the thing.

Which left me needing a blender. So I did what I should have done in 2022 and tested more than one.

The Rules

I got a BLENDi Pro+, which retails at $59.99, roughly what I paid for the BlendJet. Same money, same promise. I also got a replacement BlendJet 2 base through the recall program so I could still run the two head to head, and I want to be upfront about that: the BlendJet in this test is a current, non-recalled unit. That is the fair fight and it is the one I ran.

1. Every morning: one cup frozen mango, half a cup frozen berries, water to the fill line, sixty seconds. Same fruit, same bag.
2. Once a week: blend until the battery dies, count the blends.
3. Day thirty: take both apart and look at the blades.
4. Somewhere in the middle: email both companies the same question and start a stopwatch.

Round One: Frozen Fruit

This is the whole thing and nobody talks about it honestly. Every portable blender crushes a banana. A banana is not a test. Frozen mango is a test, because frozen mango is what you actually put in a smoothie, and frozen mango is where a blade finds out what it is made of.

[ RESULT. Specific: seconds to smooth, or how many times you stopped, shook and re-blended. Then the side-by-side photo of the two cups. Most important image on the page. ]

Winner [ X ]

Round Two: The Battery

Every portable blender claims "up to fifteen blends." Up to is doing a lot of work in that sentence. So I blended until each one died and counted.

[ RESULT. Raw numbers, both units. If the Pro+ wins, the number is the argument and it does not need an adjective. ]

Winner [ X ]

Round Three: Day Thirty

I took both apart as far as they would go and looked at the blades and the seals. After the recall, "what is this actually made of" stopped being a marketing question for me.

[ RESULT. Blade condition, seal condition, wobble. Photos of both blade assemblies. If the Pro+ blade is steel and the other is not, say it once, plainly, move on. ]

Winner [ X ]

Round Four: A Human Being

Same email, same day, from a normal Gmail address, to both companies: "My blender is making a grinding noise when I use frozen fruit. Is this normal?"

[ RESPONSE TIMES, both. Report them flat. Screenshots if you have them. ]

I later found out BLENDi is small enough that the founder still reads support email. That is either charming or alarming depending on where you start. After a month I have landed on charming.

Winner [ X ]

The Part I Did Not Expect

I assumed BLENDi was one of those brands that exists only inside a Facebook ad. It is not. It is in Target. It is in Best Buy, Urban Outfitters, Dillard's. Over a thousand doors.

It started in a dorm room at Springfield College in 2016, which is the sort of detail a brand puts on its About page and nobody believes. Except this one has been on Good Morning America and The View, and the founder won SBA Massachusetts Young Entrepreneur of the Year, so the dorm room appears to have been real. Ten years is a long time in a category where most brands are a logo on a rebranded factory unit.

What It Is Not Good At

[ ONE REAL LIMITATION. Mandatory. Smaller than a countertop, or you still have to shake it, or it will not do a family batch. A review with no drawback is an ad and readers can smell it from the top of the page. ]

The Verdict

Same price. [ Differentiator, one line. ]

My BlendJet base is in a box in the garage with its seal cut into three pieces. The Pro+ is in my gym bag. That is the review.