The Breville Boss Review

The Breville Boss is a 1500 Watt blender (2 peak horsepower). It has six stainless steel blades, six presets (Pulse/Ice Crush, Green Smoothie, Smoothie, Frozen Desserts, Soup and Auto Clean), a 12-speed variable knob, timer and a pause button. It comes with a standard seven-year warranty and a large 76 page full-color cookbook with lots of useful info about blending and the food science behind it.

Performance Comparison

Ease of Use

This blender received one of our highest ratings for this metric. The preset functions and timer take a lot of the guess work out of blending, and also let you walk away and get something else done when you're pressed for time. It has a digital timer which in addition to counting down the preset functions can also be set for a certain amount of time when using the variable speed settings. It even has a pause button, in case the phone rings while it is in use (because this machine is loud enough that you'll need to turn it off even to hear yourself think, but more on that later). It comes with a tamper and a scraper, which we used on all the machines when making nut butter, and the lid and cord have Breville's signature “Assist” loop, making them easier to remove and unplug. This was one of the tallest blenders in this review, and just barely fits under a counter, so if you have low cabinets you might be better off with the shorter Blendtec Designer 675.

Smoothies

This machine has two smoothie presets: Green Smoothie and Smoothie. Both of them are fun to watch. First they blend on a lower setting to get the mixture moving, along with a few random pulses in case anything gets stuck in the blades, then it runs on high for a bit, and finishes with a few more pulses in case any last chunks are floating around. Here's how those programs worked with our different recipes.

This blender made a good green smoothie, but not a great one. The majority of the smoothie was well-blended, smooth, and bright green, but at the bottom of the strainer we found a few larger chunks that somehow missed the blades. There was also quite a bit of foam in the smoothie, which is not the most pleasant thing to drink. If green smoothies are your thing, then the Vitamix Pro 750 is pretty hard to beat.

This blender also had some struggles processing all of the seeds in our berry smoothie. Compared to how small the Vitamix Professional 750 was able to get the seeds, the Boss was not as effective. It did do a better job than the Oster Versa or Nutri Ninja DUO though.

Frozen Drinks

We really liked the frozen drinks that we made in The Breville Boss, and this was the only category that it beat the Vitamix Professional 750 in. The Vitamix motor is so powerful that it quickly takes ice to liquid if you're not careful. With the Boss, we were better able to control the blend and make some fun frozen treats.

Puree

This blender had no trouble pureeing the fibrous carrots in our soup test, and made a delicious and creamy soup. It was only a hair thicker than the Vitamix, taking a minute or two to run through a strainer, as opposed to pouring right through like the Vitamix. Breville takes a whole page in their cookbook discussing microns and how smaller particles lead to better and more blended flavors. They also seem to take a stab at Vitamix when talking about their Soup preset, suggesting that theirs is superior because it won't result in the top popping off and potentially burning you. We didn't experience any issues with this in any of our testing, but it is something to keep an eye on, as pressure can build up in a blender when blending really hot ingredients.

Grind

When it came to grinding almonds into a spread, this blender got the job done but with a lot of stopping and scraping. Once the blend got moving, it ended up slightly chunkier than the Vitamix, but smoother than the Blendtec Designer 675.

Noise

This blender runs on the loud side, with an average level of 110 decibels and a peak of 123.8 during the grind testing. This is really unfortunate, as we liked many other aspects of this blender, but if you feel like you need to leave the room when you are using it, it might dissuade you from using it in the first place. The Vitamix Professional 750 runs at an average level of 103.1 decibels by comparison.

Best Applications

The Breville Boss is a great choice for people looking for a do-it-all blender. It can make smoothies, soups, frozen drinks and desserts, grind nuts, make flours and doughs, and on and on.

Value

This blender can do everything that the Vitamix Professional 750 can, and almost as well, but for $200 less. It'll still cost you $400 though! If you want a high-end blender but can't quite commit to the high-end prices, then this model can soften the blow a bit.

Conclusion

We really like the overall functionality and ease of use of this blender. It makes a pretty good smoothie, great frozen drinks, and you can get really creative with all of the recipes and additional functions. We've had good success with Breville products in the past, and we wouldn't hesitate to recommend this blender. But, when searching for the absolute best model, this one just wasn't as good as the Vitamix Professional 750.

Other Versions and Accessories