[This review was collected as part of a promotion.] I love it!! I use it every day since I had received it as a Birthday gift from my husband several months ago. I make green, fruit, & kefir smoothies. Some days I make two or three different types of smoothies. Also made soups, sesame tahini {ingredient in Hummus}, and Almond butter. I'm looking forward to making many other things to enhance my familys health and food we eat. I feel good about the increased nutritional availability and digestibility of foods I make in it. 5200 is well thought out as far as how it works & materials used, such as the carafe being light weight food safe plastic. It's not heavy, cumbersome and more likely to break as glass. In the past I had a different brand blender which had a heavy glass carafe I found the glass to be more cumbersome and awkward to use. The plastic Vitamix carafe is easier to handle and clean. The pour spout is well shaped foods pour well and go right into whatever container I am pouring into, in my case it's mostly Ball Mason Jars. I also like the simplicity of this machine, and the fact that it's not digital. I did major studying before I chose 5200. I had read this was a favorite model of Americas test kitchen {TV show}. And I noticed one of my favorite TV chefs, Rick Bayless has this model I spotted the 5200 in his Chicago kitchen while watching his show. Additionally, I read countless reviews until my eyes burned. All my research seems to have paid off because I love my 5200.

I bought my Vitamix 5200 back in 2011. Never had a problem with it, ever. It worked flawlessly for soups and veggie drinks and shredding my cheese, crushing my ice. even rough chopping my chicken and sausage when cooking (we like it small in our recipes). I was buying non vitamix blenders that I would get a few years out of. Low and behold, I went to a big box store, saw it, bought it, used it, and my husband said how much? I said it was 350..and he was like What the??? And I said you got your power tools, now I have mine...So we are in the market for a new one, ours has slowed down a bit, but my husband said, get the vitamix again. So I got the refurbished Explorian and hoping for same great results...

I have lost count of how many of these I have bought because I gift them to my married kids, too. However, my original Vita-Mix is 25 years old and still used daily and doing great! My daughter has that one. I bought a reconditioned one quite a few years later and that one is my daily blender and it, too, is doing great. I cannot say enough about this awesome machine. I am so thankful you guys have not compromised quality like so many other companies.