Powerful but poor design (broken after ~4.5 months)
Pros:
Powerful, reasonably straightforward to use.
Cons:
Possible poor design resulting in premature wear for food processor adapter.
The Bottom Line:
Avoid due to possible bad design that may cause premature wear.
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Overall Rating:
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Author's Review
I was given this as a wedding gift. It's loud and powerful and fairly easy to use. However, its design makes it a bit messier to clean-up than my other food processor (perhaps this is part of the compromise in combined blender + food processor). My main complaint is the food processor adapter which can occasionally wriggle out of its "locked" position during use. Even worse, the gearbox portion of the adapter broke after about ~4.5 months. I believe this is due to the poor design of the safety "interlock" mechanism for the adapter -- despite its (as advertised) all-metal design, the gears do not always properly lock, which probably caused premature wear and death. Because it was a wedding gift and Oster (in Canada, at least) does not honour warranties for someone other than the original purchaser (or without a receipt for that matter), they would neither replace nor fix the adapter.
In short, although quite powerful and with a handy included drink recipe list, I do not recommend the Oster Fusion blender / food processor due to what I suspect are fundamental design flaws. One of Oster's competitors sells their own version of a combined blender+food processor and I considering purchasing the competitors product to replace my broken Oster.
Some additional information requested by someone:
When operated at maximum "high" speed, it is quite loud -- I wear my construction-grade ear protection (ANSI S3.19) to protect my hearing, and it's fine. When operated at "medium" I don't bother with the hearing protection, and at "low" the noise is entirely reasonable. The noise doesn't bother me, but if you more than two people in your household, it might be a greater consideration. I suspect that all 600W blenders/food processors are fairly loud at max speed.
The pitcher for the blender is single-body glass or similar material; it is a single body, so there are no cracks or crevices that would make cleaning difficult.
The pitcher for the food processor is plastic. I have no problems with it (other than the design problems I previously described which prevent it from locking effectively into the motor base).
From a cleaning perspective, the gearbox adapter for the food processor cannot be immersed in liquid. Partly due to this, it was more work to clean than the other food processor that I now have. The blender portion is pretty straightforward to clean and all blender components can be immersed in water (except the motor base, obviously!).
One additional clarification I'll add is that problems I experienced and described in my review are almost exclusively with the food processor setup. I've had no trouble with the blender portion. (Of course, the purpose of a blender+food-processor combo is to be able to use both of them!).
