I bought this blender. It was on sale at Myer, I had a gift card and it has essentially the same specs as a Vitamix or Blendtec. It has a large jug standard and the smoothies I have made with it have an excellent consistency, it does 'choke' a bit when you're using larger chunks of frozen fruit like pineapple. When this happens you need to add more liquid and use the baton to push the fruit into the blades; there might be some other way around this - but I haven't worked it out yet.
I typically use one type of frozen fruit or ice in my smoothies and use the 'ice crush' or 'smoothie' pre-sets on the blender depending on ratio of frozen and unfrozen ingredients. All recipes make around 1 Litre.
A green one
1/2 cup of water
1/2 cups coconut water
50 g almonds
2 cups of spinach
1 1/2 cups pineapple
1 banana
Use frozen banana or pineapple, add extra water or coconut water to get the consistency you like.
An 'all year' fruit one
2 cups of pineapple
1 1/2 bananas
Juice of three oranges
Add 1 cup of ice if non of the fruit is frozen or 1/2 cup water if using some frozen fruit.
A summer fruit one
2 peaches
1 cup of blueberries
1 cups seedless green grapes
1 cup of ice
