GSI Outdoors Vortex Blender

Nice idea but it is to hard to crank at the high speed gear and I didn't try it out till past the return date. So I'm screwed with a product that doesn't work. I got this as a backup to my blender in case of power outage as I have to blend all my food because I'm on a feeding tube. I blend real food and not just processed junk.

 Watch the video review it will all so very sorry on YouTube

Reasonably well thought out design, it just doesn't do what I want it to do. I'd hoped to be able to use it to make Margaritas when camping. Alas, ice tends to jam up the works hard. I imagine it would work well for fruit smoothies and such, but I have no interest there.

We have a teardrop trailer that we go camping in quite often. We wanted something that would help us go off grid and still have frozen concoctions. Having really dense ice that our freeze ice maker creates or from an ice tray will result in your needing to turn the crank for longer - but it's still very possible and worth the effort. We try to use store-bought bags of ice as it is easier and quicker to get into a good consistency. Our latest addition, is buying a 1/4" square driver from the local HW store that we plug into our battery drill - then we can do the same work without, uh, working. :-) This works well, but I'm cautious not to overdrive the drill and burn out the blender. All in all, we're happy with it, and it's a staple of our bring alongs for tailgating and camping.

It does what it's told, or else it gets the hose (lol)!!! Great item, can actually chop ice, and is very easy to setup and take apart. Would highly recommend to anyone. I use it on my RV to make margaritas and smoothies, next up salsa!!!

Note: we tried to deliver this email to GSI Outdoors customer service but it failed. We also tried to leave it as a review in their web page... same result.We almost did not buy it because of the awful reviews 😬"Hello,I bought a hand-crank blender through Amazon from you.We have been living off the grid for 3 years now. I must admit we had terribly happy 3 weeks of use of your Vortex blender.After 3 weeks it stopped working and so it left emptiness in our short joy lived with it.We live down in Mexico, so after reading all the warranty info we decided to give it a try ourselves as it would cost us almost the same amount to send it back to you.This is no claim, it is just an advice. I got to open it and find out what the problem was. In my opinion, the "ability" of the blender to turn to both clockwise and counter-clockwise wears off the cog which has cuts to both sides.My suggestion: eliminate this "ability" and keep one direction design and blending so the cog does not wear off, thus loosing all abilities at once.Thank you for the 3 weeks of joy. It was a bit expensive for us, but the shakes was something we had missed for a while.We will save for a new blender and when time come to use it we will only move it to 1 direction.Nice product, keep up the good work and let us know if you perfect any of these aspects soon!Best regards,"

no power and need a blended drink like at camping or picnic? this will chop ice. not very great for making fruit or blended smoothies. but it crushes ice well enough.

Got this to use camping so my wife can mix her morning smoothies without the need of power. I works however u need a strong mounting surface and a fairly strong arm to operate it on the fast setting speed. It did take some time to mince up spinach. All in all unit did what it was supposed to.