Russell Hobbs Yawye Smoothie Maker > Reviews > Soft and smoothie just llike me.

Author's product rating:   

Performance	Excellent
Ease of use	Very easy
Durability	Everlasting
User's Manual	Excellent
Value for money	Excellent

Advantages:	Easy tp use, ice crushing facility,
Disadvantages:	None I have found

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I have been wanting a smoothie making machine for ages, everyone that I know has got one and swears by them and every day at work some of the girls that I lunch with come in with their home made smoothies to get them through the morning to lunch time. So I decided it was about time I caught up with the times and purchased one for myself.

I purchased the Russell Hobbs Yawye Smoothie Maker because it primarily looked uncomplicated. It seems smoothie making machines come in all different shapes and sizes and their ease of use is also quite widely spread between never understanding it and very easy and I opted for very easy.

In looks this smoothie maker looks like a blender and essentially that is what a smoothie maker is, a glorified blending machine except it is a smoothie maker. The base contains those little non-slip pads on the feet so that once it is on your kitchen work top it will not move about when it is working, a definite safety must have, it is white in colour with a silver trim around the base and in the middle is the user button whilst on the side of the base is a little white dispensing tap to pour your smoothie into your glass.

The practical side of this Russell Hobbs smoothie maker is that it is 600 Watts and has a capacity to hold 1.7 litres of fluids, which is actually quite a lot, whilst making a decision as to which smoothie maker to buy it would seem that the fluid capacity ranged from 1.2 litres to 2 litres, the latter being part of a huge machine. Inside the glass jug, which is nestled on top of the base are the stainless steel blades, again like the ones you would expect to see within a blender and just as sharp. The reason they need to be extremely sharp on this machine is because one of the functions is an ice crushing one, which I have to say is one of the main reasons I bought this machine as it isn't a popular feature upon smoothie makers and for me it really does make a smoothie taste much better to have crushed ice mixed in to give it a bit of a kick. Further features of this smoothie maker are a pulse function to give a further pulsing of the fruit or whatever ingredient you choose to include within your smoothie and what the pulse action does is break that said ingredient down much further and more powerfully than either of the two speeds which this machine is capable of.

When I purchased my smoothie maker it cost me £40 from Robert Dyas shop and with it came a full colour recipe book which is brimming with ideas of what kind of smoothies to make ranging from food and vegetable to ice-cream and nuts and I initially used this booklet the whole time until I became more confident in deciding which ingredients I thought would work well together.

Now using this machine is really easy to do and I mean easy. I am the type of person who always has a lot of things on the go; multi-tasking should have been my middle name and John is just as busy and I feel this allows me to introduce more fruit into the daily routine than I would usually have had the time or inclination to eat and it also means that I am not buying fruit for the sake of it and leaving it to rot in the fruit bowl, John no longer complains when I am telling him to eat more fruit because the first thing I do in a morning is not only put the coffee maker on but I also prepare the fruit to go into the smoothie maker, grab the ice and the two cups that I kept from Starbucks when buying on of their ice drinks and prepare the smoothies.

Once you have decided what fruit you are going to use, if like me you are a little indecisive then grab the recipe book to help you decide, my favourite of the moment happens to be strawberry, banana and Kiwi. So firstly you would set the machine to blend your fruit together and then I add my ice cubes which have just come out of the freezer and I add the ice, I always add a few at a time and then usually I would add 8-10 ice cubes eventually throughout the smoothie making and allow it to pulse through before I use the dispensing tap to pour it into the cups ready to go to work. The other advantage of having the crushed ice is that it keeps it cool for a little while longer and gives your smoothie some thickness to your smoothie. You can add ice-cream which works just as well as ice to make your smoothie thicker. The whole process takes around ten minutes in a morning to do and they definitely keep you going until lunchtime and have definitely stopped my snacking.

Finally, if you are looking for a smoothie maker which is easy to use, has an ice crushing facility and has the capability to hold quite a large amount of liquid then this is the machine for you.