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After looking at this blender question, I had a follow-up question.

I've seen both square and round containers/lids for blenders. Is either better?

I tend to see square blenders at smoothie shops - leading me to assume square ones are better. By better I mean, you don't have to do as much scraping and maybe they have more settings and automated features. I see mostly round blenders in your typical kitchen appliance aisle at your typical big box store.

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I can think of two reasons to prefer square containers :

  1. They store in less space for the same volume, when you're dealing with dozens of them (as the smoothie shops likely are)
  2. The key to a good blending is that the inside is not round -- you need baffles and such to keep the blender from forming a single, smooth vortex. The square containers would help to make baffles more effective by providing larger areas with slower moving liquid away from the center of the vortex.
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    Exactly. Gotta have those baffles to keep the flow from staying stuck to the outer edge of the container.
    – Rake36
    Commented Aug 14, 2010 at 20:07
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    The baffles in my blender had always irritated me, because they make it hard to clean -- I hadn't realised they were required. If a square blender allows a smooth interior, then that's a plus.
    – tdavies
    Commented Aug 14, 2010 at 22:22
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    @tdavies : there will still be baffles, they just might not need to be as significant in a square carafe.
    – Joe
    Commented Aug 14, 2010 at 23:18
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Look for one that has a tapered base so the food has better and more complete contact with the blades. Whether round or square as long as the container is tapered at the bottom it should do fine.

I wouldn't put a lot of weight or concern into having multiple settings. In my experience a machine that has a lot of settings has very little difference between each. I'd stick with something that has a high/med/low or even high/low. Most of the time you want the mixture to be smooth so you're likely to be using the higher setting most anyway.

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    I do disagree about the settings. I have found most settings to blend equally well, but the higher settings tend to aerate much more, which is sometimes good and sometimes bad depending on the dish.
    – Ocaasi
    Commented Aug 14, 2010 at 6:57
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    @Ocassi : I agree on the multiple speeds. I like my hand-my-down 30+ year old blender ... rather than buttons, there's a slide adjustment for speed, so it's easy to slowly ease up the speed, so you don't run into the sudden explosion when you kick it straight from a stop to high speed.
    – Joe
    Commented Aug 14, 2010 at 23:21

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