GSI Outdoors Vortex Blender - 1.5 Liters

Video Transcript for Review of GSI Outdoors Camping Kitchen Appliances - Vortex Blender - 37379365

Ellen: Hey, everyone. I'm Ellen here at etrailer.com and we're going to be taking a quick look at the GSI Outdoors Vortex Blender. So this is going to be a great option to have a blender with you wherever you want to camp out, and you have no access to electricity. This is a completely manually-operated blender so you can throw some frozen margs in there, you can maybe blend up some fresh fruit for your smoothie in the morning, however you want to use it, totally fine. If you're going to be using it for a smoothie, you're probably going to be wanting to use some ice so this is not really for somebody who's going to be backpacking in anywhere. It's more of like you're in the camper, you don't want to waste any electricity, you don't have to, but you already have that ice maker around.So let's take a closer look at it and I'm going to actually show you how it operates so we can take a look.

It does kind of compact itself. Right now the blender base is inside the carafe so if you open this up, we can set it up so that does save us a little bit of space so it's not going to be as big. We're just going to set our carafe on the top, and then line it up and there's a couple of little tabs that this will turn into. So you just got to get the bottom little teeth of the blades to grab into this wheel. So it's just what I'm trying to do here.

Okay. There we go. It feels like it's going down. Slide it over. That's pretty much it.Now we'll have a C-clamp, so you can attach this to a board or a table, and that does help whenever you're going to crank it.

You can hold it down with your hand, but I've found that it's just easier to clamp it down if you have access to that. If you don't, like I said, you can just hold onto it, but it does kind of want to get away from you a little bit, especially if you've got stuff in there.So, other important part is going to be our handle. This just threads on, there's a bolt in there. So you're just going to thread this down until it's pretty tight. Now this will freely spin so there's nothing in there to hold that bolt down, so this can come undone pretty easily but if you just keep an eye on it and check to make sure that you don't see any visible threads, it's not going to fly off at any point.

That's pretty much all you have to do as far as assembly. Lift the top. It's going to attach the same way as our base, just hops on there and then turns. And you'll also have a little tiny measuring cup in that lid as well so you can use this as a shot glass or as just a small measuring device.There are printed on, or actually embossed, measures on the carafe itself so it helps you if you want to measure things out to keep your ratios correct. I'm going to set this over here, because I've got a little shelf and I'm going to attach this and show you how it works more in closeup.I'm just going to take my base. I'm going to take the clamp and that attaches to this little window down here. It's got a lip that it's going to grip onto. I'm going to put that on first and then set that in place and tighten it down. The clamp is made out of metal so you shouldn't have any worries about it being too wimpy to hold on effectively. Get that tightened all the way up. Once that's tight. I'm trying to actually get it pretty tight on there so it's not going to move around. There we go. So now that base is locked into place, so we don't have to worry about it.You'll have two different gears. The one at the top is the lower gear so more for mixing stuff in, blending it together. It's a square peg that goes into the square hole, so you just want to make sure you push that all the way down on there, as much as you can, and then crank away there. So you have a little lower torque there.Now if we switch it to the lower gear or the one that's below that, that's actually going to be the high gear or more of the blending gear. Now this is going to make it go real fast. So definitely something that's going to puree or frappe your drinks and beverages and stuff, and really get things moving inside there, so pretty easy to operate, the handle's nice and big so you get a good grip on that even if you've got bigger hands than mine, I don't have the largest man hands in the world or anything, but it still gives you a nice, good grip. It's kind of a rubbery design so it doesn't feel too bad so if you're going to be there cranking for a while, it shouldn't be too hard on you.That's pretty much all there is to it as far as the operation. This does hold up to 1,500 milliliters, or about 48 ounces, which would be the same as about six cups, had to do some math in my head there. So definitely holds enough for a party. Again, do all kinds of stuff. I think this is going to make a really fun thing to have in your camper, something that can just make the party life a little bit more enjoyable, or again, have that healthy alternative by allowing you to still have smoothies for breakfast in the morning and not just be limited to some other things for a not so healthy breakfast. But whatever you want to use it for, I think it makes it a great option. It's pretty cool that it all compacts pretty easily.The one thing that I don't particularly like is that they didn't figure out a way to attach the clamp or the handle to that whenever it's in the compacted zone, like a little clip or something would have been cool, but that's just a small gripe of mine.Well, I hope this video has been helpful in deciding if this Vortex Blender is the right one for you. We do have a lot of other camping and other outdoor accessories here at etrailer.com so check them out. Thanks for watching.