TLDR; is this blender worth 600 bucks? If you intend to make a juice-free smoothie every day for years--absolutely.When it comes to small kitchen appliances, I tend to buy Breville products because I love their product design and their product reliability. When I decided to get more greens and fruits in my diet by becoming a smoothie fanatic, I purchased the Breville (BBL405) model and it served its purpose for a few years, but there would always be little spinach or kale bits in my smoothies. Also, whenever I added raw beets or cabbage to my blend, my smoothies may as well have been called "crunchies".This year I decided that I was never going to chew my smoothie again and instead of just upgrading to a current Breville model, I opted to try another brand. Consumer Reports recommended this product as the #1 model this year. I was not too keen on the idea of dropping $600 for a blender, but after talking to some of my neighbours and hearing them rave about their Vitamix I figured I would try it and if the results were no better than my Breville model, I'd return it. Now after several uses I can confidently assert that I will never buy another blender brand again.Pros: any fruit or vegetable tossed in my Vitamix is liquefied. It's like a juicer with all of the nutrients remaining. There are no spinach or kale shreds, no beet chunks--every drink is consistently smooth and delicious. It blends fasts and it's easy to clean. I thought I wouldn't care for the square container, but it's practical and allows for layering fruits and veggies. Also, the blender recipe book that this comes with is awesome. I've only recently purchased this Vitamix so I'm still just using it for smoothies, but you'd better believe I'm going to try some of the soup recipes and see if this can be a substitute for my ice cream maker. The warranty is for ten years, so I plan to use with confidence.Cons: I'm simply not a fan of the design. I've always avoided this product in the past because I just thought it was an ugly blender. That said, after watching and old black and white Vitamix commercial, I'm starting to warm up to the nostalgic aspect of the design. Another issue I have is the cleaning option makes the water warm. I tend to drink dregs of my smoothies to ensure that I get all of the fiber nutrients and with my Breville blender I could just throw in a cup of water turn on auto-clean and make an insta-infused water drink, but with Vitamix, when I do this--I get a warm a bit gross concoction. This apparently is a "feature", but it's annoying for me. Also, the lid tends to overflow if too many items are put in the container. I can use the same amount in my Breville blender and don't have this problem, so I believe this is a design issue, but it's not a deal breaker. Finally, I wish there were a better lid locking design--the current lid makes me nervous as I can never tell if it is properly secured and after a near-miss pop-off which would have painted my kitchen spinach green, I'm now wary every time I turn on blender.Please note that the 7500 model is apparently the non-commercial grade equivalent of this model and it doesn't have the preset options, but it has the same functionality for about $100 less. I wanted the preset options and I do feel like they are worth it.