Russell Hobbs 14449

Any regular reader of my reviews will know that I am not overly creative in the kitchen, but my colleagues at work are always raving about their new kitchen creations so I thought I would start trying to extend my repertoire in the kitchen. I only own quite basic kitchen appliances/utensils due to the fact that I have never needed them before. One item I was told to get by my colleagues was a blender. I already owned a basic hand mixer but was told that a blender would come in very handy for trying to create some new ideas in the kitchen.

In case this ended up being a fad, I decided that I wasn’t going to spend a fortune on a fancy blender so went for a cheap Russell Hobbs one which I purchased from Sainsbury’s for £24.99. The model I purchased was the 14449 one. I purchased this one for no other reason than the fact that it was the cheapest on the shelves at the time.

I unpacked the box when I got home and I have to say I was a tad disappointed with what I saw. The blender was a decent size but it felt really flimsy and lightweight and I had expected it to be a little more robust for my money. Although I had picked the cheapest of the shelves, it had still cost me £25.00 which wasn’t to be sniffed at so I would have expected a decent quality product, but decided to hold back judgement until I had at least tried it out.

This blender is a 400w blender with two different speed settings, but even the supposed quickest setting isn’t particularly powerful in my opinion and the slowest speed was quite disappointing. It has a 1.5L clear plastic jug and a safety interlock. I have been given a few basic things to try from work and have made some smoothies, soups and milkshakes with it so far. My step son and his partner had a baby a few months ago too and the baby is just starting to try solids so I have also blended a few bits up for baby when he has visited too.

My overall impression of the blender isn’t a particularly positive one I am afraid. I have found that the blades inside aren’t really big enough and therefore don’t tend to pick everything up from the sides and bottom of the jug so I have had to stop the blending process and drag all the bits that have been left on the side back into the main mixture which is a bit of a pain and although I have never owned a product like this before, I am presuming that not all blenders do this so I find this a little annoying.

Maybe I am being a little unfair on this blender as you do see the fancy, expensive ones being advertised on the tv so maybe I was expecting too much from this one and it is worth noting that this is cheap and cheerful and it is a fraction of the cost of some better branded ones which can cost over £100.00.

As for the results, they weren’t bad and it did do the job just not to the kind of quality I had expected. The blending process took longer than I expected it too. I expected to start it off and have it all smoothly blended within seconds, but it seemed to be quite a strained process and took far longer than I thought, especially having to stop the process half way through to scrape the sides.

I haven’t owned this blender for long so I can’t really say much on the reliability issues, but all I can say is that so far it seems to be ok and doing the job. If I find that I use the blender on a regular basis, I think I might upgrade this one to a more substantial one but if you are someone who only gets the blender out on certain occasions then this one is ok as it does do the intended job, it just isn’t anything special. Overall, this blender is ok and nothing more. Although it is at the cheaper end of the market, I still personally think it is a little overpriced for what you get so I will give this one 3 stars at best.