At Bruno's request, I'm starting a thread about my quest for a new blender.

For three years now, we've had a KitchenAid model, and it's never really done a very good job at...well...blending. Ice get broken down, but you'll still get a smoothie with chunks of ice in it. Not big ones, but pebble size - large enough that you feel like chewing it more than swallowing, you know? It does its job bad enough that now that it leaks, instead of simply buying a new carafe, I'd like to replace the whole thing.

My first inclination was to check out the Blendtec blender from the "Will it Blend?" videos, which means they've done a great marketing job, at least to geeks like us. But naturally I wanted to know how it would do with bananas and frozen blueberries more than an iPhone

I happened to see a demonstration at Costco that pretty much sold me (as they're designed and set up to do, I know). The guy blended up a handful of spinach, pineapple slices with the core, banana, and water. The result was delicious and completely devoid of any sort of chewy pulp. My blender would merely create a disgusting, undrinkable mess

The only problem, of course, is the price. The model I'd like is the version with the larger carafe in addition to the regular carafe, which runs $489. This is insane to me, but I can see the use of such a device, so I think I'm going to save up a while and go for it.

I also looked at the Vita-Mix blender, which most people seem to put out there as the main competitor to the Blendtec. My primary reason for turning this one down was the size, because it simply won't fit under my cabinets like the Blendtec would. I also don't like the design at all, aesthetically or practically. It looks like an outboard motor, and the carafe has a ton of edges that would make it hard to scrape stuff out.

So that's my story so far. Any other blender aficionados out there?