Vitamix makes the best blenders. Period. End of story. We know that from years of testing dozens of blenders from different companies, during which time the brand’s tried-and-true 5200 model has maintained a multi-year reign as our favorite blender. But the 5200 is far from the only blender in Vitamix’s arsenal. The Vita-verse has several different series: the legacy series (powerful but straightforward blenders like the 5200), the Explorian series (less powerful, less expensive), the Propel series (basically Legacy blenders with presets), and the Ascent series (techy, Wi-Fi enabled blenders). Now there’s a new addition, the Ascent X series.
Like most of Vitamix’s other high-performance blenders, the Ascent X Series touts a 2.2-peak horsepower. It also has a whopping 10 presets, designed to allow a user to put all their ingredients into the container, press a button, and let the machine work its magic.
The X line includes four different models—the X2, X3, X4, and X5—with more presets and features as you go up in model number (and in price). The X5 includes the largest number of blending programs, a notification for tamping, and a button that adds an extra 15 seconds to any blend that seems inspired by Breville’s well-known “A Bit More” button. So are those upgrades worth the extra cash? We tried out the Ascent X5 to find out.
The Ascent X5 at a glance
The X series is feature-laden, but it’s not bigger than other high end Vitamix models. The X line favors the smaller 48-ounce container as opposed to the original Ascent’s wide 64-ounce blender pitcher. The actual interface also looks a little different. Where the Ascent had physical preset buttons and a knob to control the various power settings, the X mostly uses the knob to scroll through the various presets. There are additional buttons for the self-clean function and to add 15 more seconds to any run times. Other features include an alert telling you when it’s time to tamp and a tamper holder so you always have it on hand.
How the Ascent X5 performed
To figure out whether the slew of new programs and features were worth investing in, I put the Ascent X5 up against Vitamix’s A3500, essentially the brand’s previous high-end tech-forward blender from the Ascent series. The main differences between the two are in the number presets, 5 for the A3500, 10 for the X5. The main focus of my testing was determining whether the presets on the X5 outperformed similar ones on the A3500 and if the new presets on the X5 could perform tasks the A3500 couldn’t. I made a frozen fruit margarita, leafy kale smoothie, frappé, hazelnut butter, almond milk, and ground spices in both blenders, using either the presets each machine had or trying my best to mimic them on the A3500 in the case that it lacked a specific setting for the task.
I started to become endeared to the X5 right off the bat when I used to make smoothies. This test introduced me to what would soon become my favorite feature from the Ascent X series—the tamp notification. The tamping notification on the Ascent X works as a silent alert that appears on the screen with specific settings, telling you when to start tamping down on your ingredients to consistently blend everything. If you don’t have much experience with high-powered blenders, proper tamping is actually one of most important things you can do to ensure you’re getting the most out of your machine. The Ascent A3500’s smoothie preset did produce very good results, but the added tamping notification as well as the “add 15 seconds” functions offered a nice bit of hand holding.
All the other X5 presets I tested didn’t exist on the A3500 and none of my attempts to replicate them worked as well. The X5’s smoothie bowl was a bit, well, smoother. Almond milk in the X5 was less gritty, frozen margaritas dissolved on my tongue in a way they just didn’t with the A3500 marg. When I moved on to grinding spices, three ounces of allspice or coriander in the X5 became a perfect powder ready to dissolve in a sauce or marinade. The whole spices bounced around the container in the A3500 and came out so coarse I might as well have just used a mortar and pestle.
Finally, the X5 really showed out making nut butter. The X5 took about 60 seconds to produce a butter with a consistency I’d expect to find in a jar at the grocery store. The tamp function combined with the more compact container kept everything together. That wasn’t the case with the A3500. The larger container meant a lot less control and tamping was more difficult. Hazelnuts splattered everywhere, and the resulting butter wasn’t a butter so much as a chunky paste.
Is the Ascent X5 worth it?
If your blender only comes out for morning smoothies a couple times a week and the occasional soup or spread, this new Vitamix will be more machine than you need. But if you want to make nut butters or alt milks regularly, if you love creamy frozen margaritas and Starbucks-worthy frozen coffees, or you’re a fan of grinding whole spices on the regular, this will be a great blender for you.