Holiday Gifts: L’Equip Blender

Sexy, revs up from 1 to 70 in seconds, with a quiet roar, this baby is the newest machine on the block.  For men, there’s a tachometer in plain sight, sharp ignition with a twist of the knob, and a NASDAC maleness that equates to virile!  Check out this – no, not a Lamborghini Murcielago – BLENDER!

 This smooth little baby is a fabulous smoothie and sauce/dressing blender par excellence! The L’Equip blender is small, ergonomic, and powerful!  I compared it with my Cuisinart Smartpower Premium blender, Model CB-600 only for the purpose of this review.

The L’Equip model 306500 is affordable, has the distinction of being named favorite blender by Men’s Journal Magazine, and has a 900 watt motor that generates up to 20,000 rpm.  Men will LOVE the built in RPM tachometer on the front of the black, sturdy base.  The toggle switch allows the user to go up and down in speed, with one soft touch.  This baby roars, let me tell you!  The polycarbonate pitcher is fully dishwasher approved, and is light and comfortable.

As you can see from the pictures, I began with an equal amount of fresh fruit in order to see how my blender compared to the L’Equip.  I use my blender only for smoothies and dessert sauces and to make homemade mayonnaise and sauces and dressings for salad.  So I have to say that my Cuisinart also performs chopping, pulse and other features that regular blenders perform.  So the comparison is not apples to apples, but I wanted to see how the L’Equip fared on smoothies against my chug a lug blender, the Cuisinart.

I took ½ cup of cantaloupe, ½ cup of blueberries, ½ of a banana, and a small amount of liquid Fuse Slenderizer drink for moisture in each blender.  After about 4-5 seconds of ON, the L’Equip, with its fantastic inserted blender stick, served up a perfect smoothie.  My Cuisinart had not even chopped anything, and the fruit and juice sat in the blender – untouched after a 5 second push on HIGH and then PULSE, then ICE CRUSH.  It took one hit of the ON button for the L’Equip to present a smoothie perfectly blended, perfect texture, no chunks of fruit.  After adding another ½ cup of FUSE fruit liquid to my Cuisinart, and pushing HIGH several times (about 7 more seconds) the blend was very watery and there were large chunks of cantaloupe sifting about in the liquid.

The L’Equip comes with a lightweight plastic pitcher and cleaned up in seconds.  My Cuisinart pitcher is heavy glass, and fruit always gets under the casing, so I have to remove the stand and the blades and casing to clean after every use, a five minute task I would rather not have to perform!

The L’Equip also comes with a lightweight plastic top, a hole in the top where one can place the plastic blender stick, along with a funnel to use instead of the blender stick in order to pour in ingredients while high speed blending.  If you make sauces, mayonnaise, or other cuisine, this is absolutely perfect, and allows for the insertion of ingredients smoothly, blending perfectly.

The L’Equip is so fast on the draw – one hit of the ON button, seconds later perfect smoothie – that I had to say a sad goodbye to my trust ole Cuisinart.  Just as an aside, the L’Equip does not have the ability to pulse, nor crush, and if you are chopping, this is not the blender that you need.  However, since I hand slice tomatoes for salsa, etc., I didn’t care!

I was also impressed with the company that makes L’Equip.  In the past, I had read reviews online about the blades being aluminum and flaking off.  The company replaced the aluminum with stainless steel blades, and no more problems.  There was another problem, and it was also fixed by the company immediately.  Customer service got kudo reviews, although obviously I had no reason to call except to shout, “I LOVE you L’Equip.

If you want a stock car, get a Black and Decker.  If you want a Lexus made like a racehorse, grab the L’Equip!  Price differences?  Well, my Cuisinart cost around $50 at Costco, so I should have figured you get what you pay for.  The L’Equip, a professional, restaurant quality blender retails for about $179, but I found it online from $139 to $156.00.  Best buy?  I’d go with the Engine that Roars – the L’Equip!

Wanna come over for a smoothie?  You got it!

L’Equip products can be purchased directly from their website.