Vita-Mix 5200 versus Blendtec Review

Durability

Both blenders are heavy duty and do a great job at blending just about anything. While the Vita-Mix 5200 is bigger, appearing more heavy-duty and industrial, the Blendtec Total Blender is more powerful. Both blenders now come with BPA- Free Copolyester containers with Blendtec's latest upgrade to the TB-600-20 series (available via our links) so that is no longer a deciding factor. Blendtec offers a 3 year warranty with lifetime on the blade.

Blending performance

Both blenders easily crush ice, make nut butters, hot soup, grind seeds, and a whole lot more. While the Vita-Mix draws less power, 11.5 amps/1380 watts the Blendtec with 13 amps/1560 watts, performs a great deal better. We have collected a lot of feedback from people on a raw food diet who have been completely satisfied with the Blendtec Total Blender.

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Vita-Mix offers manual control over your blending pleasure with its variable speed dial in addition to a Hi/Lo switch. It also comes with a tamper to assist in blending solid and whole (uncut) foods because of its inability to process large items on its own.

Blendtec presents Smart-Touch Tec-nology™ allowing you to push a button and walk away to have it run through a hands free automatic program cycle that stops when completed. Blendtec also offers complete control with its 'up' and 'down' buttons to manually cycle through its 10 speeds along with a 'pulse' button. The Blendtec will automatically shut off after a max of 50 seconds of continuous blending while the Vita-Mix will continue to run until manually shut off.

Smoothie Making

Both machines do an excellent job at turning out delicious fruit smoothies. We've used our Blendtec over several hundred times (it includes a digital usage counter) and have found that the program cycles while very helpful can be challenging to master - but fear not as the Blendtec offers manual control buttons for complete control over your blending desires.

Dry Grinding

The Blendtec boasts a one blade does it all - both wet and dry, while Vita-Mix recommends a separate container with a "dry blade" for dry grinding (an additional $100 cost). Both blenders have no issue with grinding large amounts of seeds, such as flax or sesame although we generally prefer our dedicated coffee grinder for that job.

We've been doing a fair amount of wheat berry grinding lately, as well as fielding questions about differences in how the blenders grind, so we've been using all 3 containers to see how they perform. We found that the Blendtec does a superior job of grinding the berries compared to the Vita-Mix "wet" container and is comparable to how the Vita-Mix "dry" container grinds.

If your plans include a little to moderate grain grinding we recommend the Blendtec but if you plan on doing a lot of grain grinding then as Blendtec recommends: "To get a very fine grind and to keep the nutrients, always use the Kitchen Mill".

Clean Up

Unlike less industrial blenders, neither blender has an easy option to remove the bottom blade housing to access the jar for easy cleaning. The 2 prong blade and smooth square design of the Blendtec container does result in significant easier access to remove your blended goodness and to clean it than the taller, more narrow, Vita-Mix design.

The Bottom Line: