Buy Now...

click image to enlarge

First as the hand blender it is 36cm tall, holding it at the thickest part of the rubberised grip it is 15cm round just about comfortable for an adult hand. The top 19cm is the rubberised piece and this is where the powerful 700watt motor lives. There are two push buttons on/off and turbo but above these near the top is a control wheel with speeds from 1 to 5 for various tasks. The bottom 19cm is the stainless steel blender bit made to be inserted into either hot or cold with a sealed blade to make short work of whatever it is put into. Before anyone works out that 19+19=38 when the two bits clip together the bottom of the motor unit goes 2cm into the blender bit so when together the overall measurement is 36cm.

Once you remove the stainless steel part the blender bit can be connected to either of two lidded containers that each has a blade. The notional sizes of these containers are one litre and 500ml but the amount of anything that should be put in them is at the most 50% of the figures given. So now the hand blender works with two other blenders.

See also: Kitchen

more

We are far from finished yet as there are serrated blades for special tasks as well as an adapter so that a whisk attachment can be added, ideal for beating cream etc. Finally - I think - a one litre measuring jug and a lid for this.

Now I have all this laid out around me a total of thirteen items, certainly not in my mind a hand blender but much more. My initial concern is how all these bits ever fitted in the 33x 14x36cm box they came from.

The only documentation is eight sides in English in a small booklet, this does include a guide showing what fits into what and an explanation using letters A to Q to explain what is what. The manual covers three models the HR1370, HR1371 and the model I have the HR1372 and some of the bits and containers are not provided with the first two models.

Reading this it seems the HR1370 only has the hand blender; the larger capacity container is in HR1371 while the whisk and both containers are in the HR1372. The beauty of having both containers is that as the motor portion never goes near whatever is being prepared then the containers whisk and blender arm can all be dirty while you still have available bits to work with.

To remove whatever from the motor unit is just a matter of pressing two buttons near the base of the wand and whatever is connected just drops away.

The 1.4metre long power lead emerges from the top of the unit and while of course the top part should never be washed it can be wiped clean easily the main item to remove will be messy fingerprints but of course only do this once the blender is removed from the mains.

Four pages of the instructions list what should be done in what container and with which blade, as an example the serrated blade is for crush ice. It also gives an idea of quantities and amount of time it should take.

As the job of this unit is to prepare items such as fruit and vegetables, baby food, sauces, batters and shakes I suppose it is acceptable not to provide a receipt book but it might have been nice especially with this top of the range unit.

While I did prepare the odd soup most things were of the cool or cold variety as my review period was during the hot weather (we did have a few days) and the number of fruit smoothies and shakes helped me enjoy the weather the serrated ice blade was well used.    

Doing my Internet searches found the Phillips HR1372 at a best price of £51.58 including delivery from the first link below.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000R2D5V2?ie=UTF8&tag=gadge0a-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634

http://www.shop.philips.co.uk/topangebote/ctl3590/cp36765/si3144524/cl2/Hand_blender