Why to/NOT buy Optimum Nutriforce Extractor - Blender Review

It was a long wait for my pre-ordered Optimum Nutriforce Extractor, but hallelujah I finally received it last week. I gave the blender a go with some ice cubes, flax seeds, and an Iced Mocha which was listed in the recipe book. You may have read my other article where I wrote about Froothie’s sale; the Nutriforce Extractor is being offered at 50% off.

First Impressions of the Nutriforce Extractor

Boring brown box with ‘Optimum’ on the side. Well packaged, I must admit, but nothing spectacular. Not like Moogoo or Herbcottage where the package itself is a present in its own right. Moogoo packages the products in hay and Herbcottage has great little custom boxes for their herbs, which I love. Inside the boring brown box is a more exciting box with pretty pictures of the Nutriforce Extractor and all the great things you can blend with it.

What’s good about the Nutriforce Extractor

It made minced meat out of ice cubes
The little cup with grinder blade grinds seeds well
It’s quite spunky looking with a small footprint in your kitchen. Different colours are available too. I really wanted a white one to match my big blender, the bread machine etc., but there’s no such thing.
It has plenty of grunt, pulverised ice cubes and seeds like they were nothing.
There’s suction cups on the motor base which make it very stable.

What’s not so good about the Nutriforce Extractor

It’s extremely noisy
It’s really hard to attach the cup to the base, I mean, you just about have to have the grip of a Ninja Warrior to push it down enough to fit into the locks.
Its quite hard to screw the base (with the blades) on and off the cup. The cups are so smooth on the outside, it’s hard to get a good grip
Smoothies are not smooth
The auto shut off overheating protection – all good when your smoothie is actually smooth, but when it needs more blending after 50 seconds you have to wait for it to cool down before blending again
I’m not sure what the idea is behind the giant handle that comes with it. Its ginormous! Also, when you screw the handle onto the cup, the lid does not fit. So, you can either have a handle, or you can have a lid. It would have been nice to use the flip-top lid with the handle, it would be like a travel cup then, but you have to use either.
There were some rather rough finishes on the accessories, mainly inside the flip top lid and on the blade bases.
And why on earth are there no measurements on the cups?! I always use the measurements on the cup for the liquids, so not having them was a design fault.

Care to ellaborate?

The Iced Mocha recipe in the supplied Nutriforce Extractor recipe book is a disaster; I couldn’t imagine anyone liking it. It was like water, no taste at all. It was smooth enough I suppose, but so it should be when the only ingredients were icecubes, coffee, sugar and milk. And there’s so much of it too, it filled the whole big jug. Anyway, I tried to fix the recipe by using only half of it and adding bananas, raisins and kale.

What was the outcome?

Meh, it still tasted like water, but that’s not the Nutriforce Extractor’s fault. What was its fault is that it shut itself off after 50 seconds. This is an overheating protection that Froothie doesn’t tell you about on the website, but it’s listed in the instruction manual. It’s marketed as a safety thing, but really its just plain annoying, especially since the smoothie still had great big lumps of food in it. See the picture to the side of some ‘sieved’ smoothie.

The Nutriforce Extractor Accessories

There’s nothing too special about the accessories. You get 2 cups and 2 lids, 1 flip top lid and the ginormous handle. As I mentioned, the handle doesn’t play well with others and must therefore play on its own. Banish it to the naughty step, I couldn’t see you using it. The flip-top lid would come in handy if you like to take your smoothie with you.

What about Froothie’s 30 day risk free guarantee?

So far, the warranty has been excellent, but I haven’t received my refund yet (I only sent it back yesterday), so check back later for an update. Froothie advertises you have 30 days to send your blender back if there’s anything wrong with it or you are not satisfied. Things to be aware of however:

Keep the outer brown box for the full 30 days so you can use it to send it back in. I
Make sure the blender is clean before sending it back. I’ve read complaints from people who have sent blenders back to Froothie and they’ve charged them a $30 cleaning fee. Their opinion is that Froothie is making money of their 30 day guarantee that way, but I’m not convinced on that. We’ll see how they handle my return – the blender was clean as a whistle so if they charge me a fee I’ll let you know. Froothie’s comment: “Please ensure the product is cleaned in full with no food residue remaining. A fee of $30 will be applied for any appliances requiring to be cleaned by the Service Team.”

EDIT 1/7/2017 My Nutriforce Extractor blender was refunded within a week without problem. No questions raised about the cleanliness or packaging. The money was refunded into my PayPal account. I’m convinced that, as long as you keep as much of the original packaging as you can, Froothie will stand by their 30 day guarantee, and you really can buy the Nutriforce Extractor without risk.

If you’re looking to just blend some pesto’s, dips, seeds, nuts, muesli etc on their own, the Nutriforce Extractor will be suitable. It’ll cope just fine with soft foods too, like soups. It’s handy because it’s small, doesn’t take up much space on the bench, and is capable of doing many things. However!

If you actually want to make smooth smoothies (think of the children!), get the bigger, high-powdered Optimum Vortex 9400 blender, which is on special for $479. Especially once the Nutriforce blender goes back to its retail price of $378 (it’s now $189 discounted), the 9400 is a much better investment.

If you can afford it, go for the all-time favourite, the Vitamix. I like the 5200, which is $795 on special at KitchenWarehouse, but how pretty is the professional series copper one (pic on left)! If only day dreaming. It’s on special too, from $1395, now $1195. *Edit 11/8/18 – I got myself a Vitamix Pro 500!!! Honestly guys, it blows Froothie out of the water. Check out Rawblend for great Vitamix packages with the small wet & dry jugs and cook books!

Some more photo’s and video’s of the Nutriforce Extractor

Here’s the other photo’s I took of the Nutriforce Extractor blender, plus some video’s. I have to apologise for the video quality, I was trying to blend and film at the same time. It should still give you an idea of the noise and the workings of it though.