Waring Commercial Xtreme Hi-Power Blender, 2 Litre, 1500 Watts

The media could not be loaded.  Powerful,, no non sense blender. I use without the sound shield otherwise will take too much space and extra hassle of cleaning, etc.Very loud but so are other power blenders.It is very quick and zaps things in seconds. .It is the fully programmable of the extreme series,, otherwise performance between the extreme blenders is the same. Difference is some don't come with a sound shield or are manual.I have not tried to pre programme to my fancy yet, I just press the on-off button to start. There are also pre-programmes, eg smoothie, ice, etc.You can set speed from 1-100%,,and change speed manually as well.I found the preprogramme is not just about setting the time/ duration of the blend. It allows you to also set the speed, in whatever time increments you want within a programme. So, you could eg, set a programme no.1 for 5minutes, and the different speeds you want in that time. Eg start slow, pick up speed after whenever seconds or minutes, slow down maybe at end or ramp it up. I learnt this from online, as I don't think the instruction is too clear re. how to pre programme to your specs.I'm not sure how long this blender can run continuously for, but I have made nut butter that took 15minutes and it did not stop or smell because of overheating. I think it would have been quicker if there had been a tamper. Instead I improvised, careful not to touch the blades.Also, I fed it RAW mixed nuts up to the max fill line of the jug , with no water, oil or preloading. No problem. It just hot on with it and made nut butter out of this lot. It took about 15minutes to churn a free moving butter (video attached).. In the first few seconds it aggressively ground them; in the first few minutes, the nut could have passed for nut butter as well but was not free flow.I mention this as most blenders, even vitamix, usually specify how much nuts you can use to make butter at a time and a maximum 3minutes for processing in case of oil overheating, etc.Everything else is a breeze for this machine, just need to make sure you have water enough to blend, otherwise things don't move.Smoothies in seconds, overblend and it gets frothy, like one minute as I found.Easy self clean, made light work of the nut butter mess left in the jar.Cons:It needs a tamper! Otherwise if difficult to make nut butter, icecreams etc.With hindsight, I think I would have preferred the xprep model, as it is manual and has a dial for variable speed which I think is probably quicker than pressing the membrane pad to electronically change things. Although I guest if you preprogramme to your specs, this won't be an issue.13th October 2017 update:I made another batch of nut butter, as below, using hazel nuts and cashews only. I used the whole bag of hazelnuts 700g and about one third of the cashews.Blended for about 15minutes, seems to work best on slow setting then vary speed. Would have been quicker with a tamper. I had to stop to stir air pockets, etc. The blender base did not stop or overheat although the jar and butter became hand hot.The pictures show the results, and the last three pictures show the nut butter after a week. The contents have settled and a thick oil film on top just like in the shops where the oil had naturally separated.It was ultra smooth and still fresh, stored at room temperature with cling film over.The last butter before this lasted a few weeks at room temperature on our office at work so not sure how long it takes before it goes off but seems to last week's.Also, I did not store it in a jar , just a small ceramic serving dish with a lid and cling film.It appears this blender is very good for nut butter making , not just small amount.