Vitamix 6500 review 4

If you love blending fresh fruits and frozen treats into delicious, healthy snacks and meals for you or your family, then this is a review that you need to read. The Vitamix 6500 blender comes with a 1.9L container and a powerful, long-lasting 1,500-watt motor that’s going to blow you away.

What’s in the box of the Vitamix 6500 blender?

In the box of the Vitamix 6500 blender, you’ll first find the blender base, which is heavy and sits securely on the countertop. (No need to hold your blender down from the top when it comes to Vitamix.) The 6500’s base comes packed next to the its 1.9L BPA-free Tritan plastic container (that’s the brand’s 64 oz “Classic” size), which has a silicone lid and a Tritan lid plug.

You’ll also find a “Getting Started Guide,” a giant cookbook, and a plastic tamper in this box. This blender’s power cord is stored neatly in its base using flexible, non-removable cord organization clips.

Vitamix 6500 what's in the box

Vitamix 6500 blender features

The Vitamix 6500 is an awesome choice if you just want something simple. This is my kind of blender: No bells, whistles, or fragile parts. The 6500 is a purely analog machine, with a physical speed dial and two switches. Its Tritan plastic components are beautiful and durable—it’s honestly one of my first-choice materials when it comes to kitchenware. Well-made Tritan plastic, like the kind Vitamix uses, is super strong and haa a bright, brilliant finish that I find stays looking brand new for years.

The speed dial on this blender offers intensity settings of 1-10 if you turn it clockwise. However, if you turn it anticlockwise, it offers three preset functions:

  • Smoothies
  • Frozen desserts
  • Hot soups

To the left and right of the dial, you’ll find a pulse switch and a start/stop switch. Vitamix recommends that you use a combination of the variable speed control and pulse features to refine any texture, giving you the ability to blend just a little for the perfect, chunky salsa or a lot for a hot, fresh, puréed soup.

The Vitamix 6500 comes with a 1.9L BPA-free container made from Tritan plastic. It’s the brand’s soft-grip product, with a handle and lid that you’ll notice are different from the rest of the line.

Vitamix 6500 review 7

What you can make in the Vitamix 6500

I know well by this point in my life what I want to be making in the kitchen. I want to make a lot of cold, healthy smoothies and frozen yogurt treats with fruits and vegetables. This blender can do that easily on a preset function and I don’t even have to worry about timing it or turning it off. I also want to make a lot of hot soups that don’t go on the stove. This blender can do that, too. Finally, on Saturday mornings, I want to blend a perfect, lump-free crêpe batter. The Vitamix 6500 stand blender can do that for me, too.

Here are a few samples recipes from Vitamix that I think sound particularly delicious:

  • Breakfast zinger juice
  • Apricot-ancho barbecue glaze
  • Pomegranate rye cocktails
  • Apricot, carrot, ginger, and fennel juice
  • Pear mango avocado baby food (honestly, kind of want to try this one as a smoothie)
  • Pumpkin walnut spread
  • Acorn squash and turmeric soup
  • Chicken potato spinach soup

Vitamix 6500 quick start guide

What I made in the Vitamix 6500 blender

I’ve mostly made frozen smoothies with this blender so far. For this review, however, I wanted to make a point of using recipes from Vitamix’s own cookbook. The cookbook that comes with this blender is full of photos and recipes. You can make every single one using your 6500.

I pulled an asparagus and cashew soup recipe from the Vitamix cookbook and it was ridiculously good (and so easy, too!). I didn’t have to pre-cook any ingredients and I already had everything I needed on hand. From start to finish, my soup took less than seven minutes including time to wash my asparagus spears. It made enough to serve five with leftovers for all of us.

Just think about that for a second: seven minutes. I made and cooked an entire fresh soup (that honestly tasted pretty fancy) in less time than it would have taken me to make boxed macaroni and cheese.

I also made a little bit of fresh strawberry milk in this blender, just to live out my summer drink dreams. The way it turned out really changed how I viewed my experience with this blender—in a great way.

Vitamix 6500 asparagus cashew soup

My experience with the Vitamix 6500

The Vitamix 6500 is the perfect blender for someone who wants a lot of control and doesn’t need a lot of preset functions. I’m not joking when I say that I feel like it’s my perfect blender. It’s ridiculously powerful, easy to care for, and easy to use. Its functions make perfect sense, each dial and lever turns or flicks with satisfying pressure, and the machine has a separate power switch that faces down and illuminates when in the “on” position. Even the lightweight plastic tamper feels great to use, with a back-end stopper that’ll prevent it from ever touching your Vitamix blades.

I was blown away by how creamy and smooth my Vitamix hot soup was, but my strawberry milk was awesome, too. You know how you usually make smoothies or juices with fresh or frozen berries and then you’re left with little bits of pulp and seeds? In a Vitamix, you can choose to just… not have that happen. There was no settling nut milk from my blended cashews; no crunchy seeds from my strawberries.

On slower or shorter settings, sure, there’ll be a bit of texture to your final product. That’s normal, and you can choose your Vitamix setting to produce or not produce that. But I even put my milk through a sieve when it was done and there was simply nothing to strain out. It was so smooth; so creamy; so sweet and fragrant from my fresh strawberries and just a tiny dollop of honey. And when I finished blending it, it was vividly pink and still nice and cold.

Vitamix 6500 strawberry milk

What makes Vitamix blenders special? 

Here’s a fun fact: Vitamix blenders were designed to be more than just a blender. They were first marketed as a health product—one with the ability to help you and your family enjoy whole, healthy produce in your meals. Over the years, the brand branched out to produce blenders that each prioritize freezing smoothies, mixing ice cream, warming soups, self-cleaning, and more.

The core of the brand, however, has really stayed the same. These machines are all about giving you and your family more ways to consume a balanced diet. Personally, I find that the Vitamix brand ethos translates into a noticeably high-quality blender. I notice higher quality blades and motors that help you get the most out of every piece of produce, and even the blenders’ switches and knobs feel different from everything else on the market. Vitamix blenders feel special because they just work so well. They’re essentially a commercial-grade product sitting in the comfort of your home kitchen—powerful and slick.

With a “hot soup” function like the Vitamix 6500 has, you can actually purée and cook certain soups right in the machine. There’s no heating element. Instead, Vitamix uses intense, sustained speed to cook your ingredients through friction. It’s a really handy, unique feature that Vitamix is well-known for. To find out what kind of soups you can fully cook in a Vitamix, refer to the brand’s included cookbook or online recipes—some recipes will have you cook or bake ingredients on the stovetop or in the oven; others will direct you to place them right into the blender.

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Final thoughts

If you’ve been considering adding a Vitamix to your kitchen, I think the 6500 is a great model to choose. It’s well-made, easy to use, and does a stellar job of pretty much anything you could ask it to do. With a 1.9L container, it’s large enough to make treats and meals for an entire group or family, and handy measuring lines on the side of the container help streamline your food prep process even more.

The Vitamix 6500 belnder is a pricy small appliance, but in terms of value for money, I think it delivers very well. Make sure to keep it in mind for morning juices and smoothies, after-school snacks, dinnertime soups and sauces, and frozen margaritas and daiquiris on the weekend.

Shop the Vitamix 6500 stand blender online at Best Buy today.

Rae Chen
Rae Chen covers everything from handbags to speakers here on the Best Buy Plug-in Blog. They can also be found at thenotice.net, where they've been writing about beauty & wellness since 2007.

481 COMMENTS

  1. My three would be:
    1. Iced fresh fruit smoothies
    2. Hummus
    3. Pureed butternut squash & pear soup.

  2. The top three things I would make are:
    1) Almond Milk
    2) Blueberry, banana pancake mix
    3) Kale soup

  3. Along with making healthy soups, smoothies and hummus, I would definitely make plant-based ice creams using bananas, dates, a little maple syrup and cocoa powder with a dash of vanilla and oat milk. Thanks so much for the opportunity!

  4. I’d make smoothies, orange juice, and maybe soups/sauces? But I’d stick to what I know and make smoothies.

  5. Three things I would be interested to make with a Vitamix blender would be smoothies (using many different fruits and veggies), homestyle version of Tim Horton’s ice capps, and lastly, homemade slurpees. As you can see, many of these are cold beverages.

  6. This blender would be great for me to make my own peanut butter, various flavours of homemade ice cream and the asparagus and cashew soup described above sounds delicious too!

  7. I would make smoothies for my granddaughters, butternut squash soup and ice cream So much fun

  8. I would use the blender for soups – hot and cold, juices, and smoothies. The hummus is intriguing too!

  9. Vegan cheese, it’s really hard to make a decent one using nuts or beans because you need a great powerful blender like the vitamix.

    Black Bean Brownies, I’ll be able to make super smooth, unlumpy brownies!

    Vegan potato cheese soup, I love that you can actually make soups inside the blender to smooth them out. I will def want to try that out.

  10. I’d make carrot soup, my famous vegan nacho “cheese” dip and a pineapple mango smoothie

  11. Vitamix A3500: If you’re looking for the latest and most advanced Vitamix blender, the A3500 is a top contender and my favorite. It boasts a powerful motor, a sleek design, and smart features like wireless connectivity and built-in programmable settings. The A3500 also includes a convenient self-cleaning function, making it easy to clean up after blending.

  12. My daughter has a Vitamix blender and loves it, and suggested I get one as well, because it is so powerful and works so well. I make a lot of soups, so I would use it to puree vegetable soups to get a nice, smooth, even consistency. I also love hummus, so would definitely use it to make big batches of hummus. And we make a lot of smoothies, so I would use the Vitamix for that; currently we just use a small single-serve unit, so it would be great to be able to make larger batches. Also, fruit often gets stuck in the bottom of our current small unit, which wouldn’t happen with the Vitamix. I’m going to post this on facebook – Cathy Erdle.

    The unit I liked best on the Best Buy site is the Vitamix Professional Series 750 1.9L 1500-Watt Countertop Blender in Pearl Grey. So heavy duty. This would last forever.

  13. Endless possibilities after reading your review! Right now, I’m obsessing about Virgin Margaritas, a healthy banana cacao smoothie, and a sweet ‘n salty maple hummus!

  14. There are three things I would like to make using a Vitamix blender, which would be smoothies, toum (garlic sauce), and less effort intensive dough.

    Things are getting so expensive that I can’t really afford restaurant versions of the first two. In the smoothie department, I think I would most often be making a blueberry or mango-pineapple smoothie. In the toum department, sometimes I just want to make some potatoes and have it with toum without having to buy a whole shawarma platter.

    As for the dough, it’s just so intense to have to manually knead dough. Sometimes, your hands get sticky in the process too. If a blender can do just as good of a job with less hassle, I’ll all in on that plan!

  15. I would love to try these 3 recipes:

    Pumpkin walnut spread
    Acorn squash and turmeric soup
    Chicken potato spinach soup

  16. Banana and Strawberry smoothies, Strawberry ice cream, and warm vegetable soups.
    Thank you

  17. Apricot, carrot, ginger, and fennel juice
    Pear mango avocado baby food
    Pumpkin walnut spread

  18. If I was lucky enough to own a vitamix it would open up so many possibilities in the kitchen! My top three things that i would like to try making with my vitamix are
    – Tomatoe Dill soup with honey
    – spicy Mexcal Margaritas
    – sweet and spicy chipotle dip with canned chipotle peppers, lime and cilantro with a dash of honey

  19. I would use this blender to make fruit smoothies, cleansing celery-based juices, almond butter, and zesty tomato-based cold soups!

  20. The top three things I would like to make are:
    1 – Pomegranate rye cocktails
    2 – Pumpkin walnut spread
    3 – Chicken potato spinach soup

  21. I’d make iced fresh fruit smoothies, Hummus, and pureed butternut squash & pear soup.

  22. I would make a blueberry lemon Dutch baby, a blended 0 alcohol sangria, and ice cream shake

Comments are closed.