Mega 1200 Blender

A personal blender is mostly judged on its motor, which is why almost every cup you can buy has smooth walls. The wall is doing more work than the marketing suggests.

The Beast Health Mega 1200 moulds twelve ribs inside its vessel, three large and nine small, where most personal blenders offer smooth walls or three small ribs at best. The point is to interrupt the vortex. A smooth cup lets the whole mix spin as a single body above the blade, barely touching it; ridges break that rotation into turbulence and friction, pushing ingredients back down through the blade, which is what actually takes the bits out of a smoothie. Beast pairs the ribs with motor coils wound in copper wire rather than aluminium, and with stainless steel gearing between base and blade where cheaper machines use plastic gears that wear and corrode. The 1200-watt motor is rated at the equivalent of 1.6 horsepower.

Blending is one button. Hold it for a second and the machine runs a 60-second hands-free cycle, programmed as three intervals with short pauses between them so the contents fall back around the blade before the next burst. The same button pulses. The vessel holds 1000 millilitres in total with 750 millilitres of working room, is moulded in BPA-free Tritan about two and a half times thicker than most blending cups, and sits on a soft TPE base that doubles as its own coaster.

Everything but the aluminium base goes on the dishwasher's top rack. It stands 15.75 inches high with the vessel fitted and takes under five inches of counter in each direction, which is the kind of footprint that decides whether a blender lives out or lives in a cupboard.