Vitamix’s Ascent Series Combines Tech and Power

I’ve never really been a blender person. Why would I be, when I have a food processor and an immersion blender that can ably handle my basic puree and emulsification needs? But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that maybe I’ve never been a blender person because I never had a good blender.
As a longtime recipe developer and tester who works from my home kitchen, I have to say there is nothing like professional-strength tools. They really are harder, better, faster, and stronger. The downside to using pro kitchen tools, though, is that they’re usually a lot bigger too. They’re generally intended to manage higher volumes than most home cooks will ever see, and settling for a more compact appliance usually means a sacrifice in power. Definitely not the case here—this puppy packs a whopping 2.2 horsepower.
In testing the new Vitamix Ascent X2, I mainly wanted to find out if the much-lauded Vitamix is worth the hype (and hefty price tag). If I’m going to invest $550 in a new appliance, I also want to make sure it’s worth the real estate on my counter. My Breville Air Fryer Pro (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is large, but I use it every day, so it’s worth the loss of counter space. The Vitamix doesn’t take up a huge footprint, but it is substantial—it weighs more than 13 pounds, and its 17 inches in height makes for a pretty commanding presence in the kitchen. Fortunately, it’s an attractive machine, especially in midnight blue.
As mentioned, she’s a good-looking appliance, with a matte finish on the body and a shiny front panel with a programmable timer. There’s a little platform for the tamper stand, but it’s kind of flimsy. (The cup that holds the tamper is easy to remove for cleaning, but that makes it a bit wobbly.) A retractable cord would be a nice touch, but there is a little space under the unit where you can wrap the cord when it’s not in use.
Turning it on (there’s an on/off switch on the underside in addition to power and pulse switches on the front), I first noticed how smoothly the knob turned while still being haptic enough to feel like it’s “real.” (I don’t need everything to be analog, but it bugs me when displays and controls are entirely digital, and folks with impaired vision may agree.) The knob and switches are tactile and straightforward; the single knob has timed settings for cleaning, smoothies, soups, and frozen desserts on the left, and a smooth variable speed control on the right. The digital time display is in the center. Sleek and simple.
The blender isn’t nearly as loud as my cheap 20-year-old Oster, and the motor doesn’t smell like burnt plastic after a couple minutes of use. (During the first use there was a slightly plasticky smell from the pitcher and attachments, but this dissipated quickly.)
But how does the Vitamix Ascent series compare to other Vitamixes? The first notable difference is that the Ascent series has wireless connectivity with near-field communication (NFC) tags embedded in the base of the containers—part of its Self-Detect program that automatically adjusts settings and blends speed according to what container is attached. This sets Ascent apart from other series (for better or worse), but the app hasn’t been updated since early 2022.
Like the Venturist series blender, the new Ascent series (which includes X2, X3, X4, and X5—the higher the number, the more presets it has) is compatible with Vitamix’s food processor attachment (sold separately, of course), and the 48-ounce pitcher is narrow, making it better suited to smaller quantities than the previous versions’ 64-ounce pitcher. Plus, the pitcher is now dishwasher-safe.
In general, as long as you stick to the order of operations when adding your ingredients (liquids first, chunky stuff in the middle, powders on top), this blender is like the popcorn button on your microwave or the bagel setting on your toaster—the three blending presets all have your back. For variable timing, just start slow and then increase the speed.
I saw instructions for making shave ice on the Vitamix website, where you basically make a fruit puree, freeze it in an ice cube tray, and then ostensibly blitz it into a frosty heap. I wanted to see if I could do this to turn plain ice cubes into floofy snow so I could douse it with my own syrup and fill the Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine-shaped hole in my heart. Alas, while there was initially an impressive amount of snow, the heat from the blade quickly melted the frosty fluff, which refroze and turned to a solid ice mass. Without an added liquid to keep the ice moving, many ice cubes remained in the top portion.
However poorly it performed as a snow machine, the Vitamix more than redeemed itself at blitzing frozen fruit into a smooth puree. This is a blender’s raison d’être, after all, and if you need to turn frozen blueberries, cherries, bananas, and chia seeds into a perfectly uniform smoothie without any errant, straw-clogging chunks, you’d be hard-pressed to find a machine more up to the task. The Vitamix is a smoothie-making Ferrari.
I had a few raw quinces lying around and wanted to see how the machine would handle one of nature’s most stony fruits. I quartered the fruit (this is the easiest way to core it) and then chucked it straight in with just a splash of water. It went from rock-hard pome to a uniform puree in under a minute. After scraping the pulverized quince out of the pitcher, I added sugar and a little more water and simmered the mixture for a few hours until a thick and sticky dulce de membrillo (aka quince cheese) came together. Had I been forced to simmer chopped quince instead, I’d have added another hour or two of cooking time, and then I’d end up having to mash or puree the stewed fruit anyway.
Given WIRED’s 2021 test drive of the ever-popular Vitamix 5200, which included making mole, I knew I wanted to try the same with the Ascent X2. I make a really nice fig mole and had recently bought a bunch of dried chiles, but rather than pureeing soaked peppers, I thought I’d make a chile powder blend, allowing the heat from the machine to gently toast the chiles as they were reduced to dust. (I cannot overstate this: Do not lean your face over the pitcher when you remove the lid, or aerosolized chile powder will go straight into your nose and eyes.) Powdering chiles was so much fun that I took it a step further and turned a jar of dried hominy into a pile of silky masa harina for making tortillas. Not gonna lie, the thought of milling my own masa is kind of thrilling.
Another popular Vitamix use is making homemade nut butter. However, instead of an ordinary nut butter, I made pkhali—a thick walnut spread from Georgia, redolent with blue fenugreek, coriander seed, paprika, and fresh herbs. Because it includes cooked greens, I figured it’d be a good way to tell how the Vitamix performs at making a roughly uniform texture without pulverizing it to smithereens. Unfortunately, even with careful pulsing, some of the blanched kale, blood sorrel, and fresh cilantro stayed in kind of fibrous chunks while the walnuts became very smooth and stuck to the blade. Next time I’d pulse the greens with the oil first to make a loose slurry, then add the remaining ingredients. I think that would also help prevent so much of the walnuts from getting glued to the blade.
I saw reviews that mention you can cook in the machine with the heat generated by the blade’s friction. I had to see if it was true. I chucked in a large raw carrot, a Fuyu persimmon, and a half cup of water, let it rip for six minutes, and indeed ended up with a steaming bowl of bright orange carrot soup that presumably retains every molecule of the ingredients’ nutritional content. This is exhilarating. Just be careful when you remove the pitcher from the base, as the metal assembly gear will be ripping hot.
Though this machine is definitely growing on me, I do have a few minor complaints. First, as foodborne illnesses are on the rise in the United States, I think it’s pretty important to be able to completely disassemble the pitcher and blade for cleaning without needing any special tools. Yes, there is a cleaning cycle, but I’d prefer to run the components through the dishwasher without having chunks of nut butter still stuck on the underside of the blades. (In professional kitchens, where the Vitamix reigns supreme, sanitizing between uses is a requirement, not a suggestion.) Having the blades and pitcher fused also means some of the final product is left behind—I hate digging every bit of my pesto out of the blades with a chopstick, but I hate wasting food even more. In the smoothie test, a few chia seeds gelatinized and adhered to the blade and pitcher, staying put even after the clean cycle and an additional rinse.
Finally, and this is a super niche gripe, Vitamixes don’t work with the canning jar hack. Basic blenders can be screwed directly onto a regular-mouth Mason jar, which is kind of a game changer for stickier stuff like ice cream or thick smoothies that end up getting glued to the bottom of the pitcher. (“But the blending cups!!” I hear the stans shouting. Sorry, but Vitamix retired the smaller screw-on blending cups for the Ascent series, and the “smart” X models won’t recognize them.)
So, is it worth it? I have definitely been converted, but I have one bit of advice: Don’t squander its power on smoothies and baby food. If you’re an adventurous cook (I’m serious about milling my own masa!), it’s a sturdy, professional-strength tool that has the potential for making it much faster and easier to do things the hard way.