I would like to make smoothies exactly like those that Jamba Juice is famous for. I tried a blender and it pulled the standard blender stunt on me: Wall of blender had slush-like gunk sticking to side, and a puddle of liquid at bottom. I thought: a smoothie maker would be able to do it properly. I assumed that a smoothie maker would have different blades, work at different speeds, or do something different, because the texture of the Jamba Juice ones is one million times better than the ones that I make.
I was at a department store yesterday and I saw a smoothie maker for sale. The blades in it looked exactly like a standard blender. I do not need another blender to make slush. I need something that can produce what I want.
My question, thin, is: Is a smoothie maker any different from a blender, or is it the emperor’s new smoothie maker, at only $40 more?
Thanks,
hh
But a smoothie maker has a spigot! Isn’t that worth $40?
$40 coming up! 
I haven’t been to Jamba Juice, but the local smoothie maker here uses a Vita-Mix . As a Vita-Mix devotee, I highly recommend it, if you have $500 burning a hole in your pocket.
In my experience, the more expensive the blender, the better it is. However, I have found that my $150 Cuisinart food processor/blender is about as good as my mom’s Vita-Mix, though I don’t make the stuff that my mom does with her vita mix. I just use crushed ice, milk, yogurt, fruit, protein powder, and peanut butter.
Yeah, there’s nothing special about the smoothie maker other than the spigot and, in the models I’ve seen, a little plastic stick that you can use to mix stuff around as it blends. If you’re having problems with your blender, you probably just need a more powerful motor or a better-designed container.
Another vote for Vita-Mix. That’s what a lot of the places in St. Louis use and I have one at home.
Good customer service too. Mine’s about 5 years old and developed a crack in the plastic at the base. Not that it was leaking, but the crack could have spread. Four days later I had a new container via UPS.
Another thing. If I make a smoothie and it can flow through a spigot on the side of the container, it ain’t made right! 
Ive had wildly varying success with different brands of blenders. My guess is that the blades are just at the wrong heights or angles on some blenders, or the pitcher is too wide at the height of the blades. My KitchenAid does great; Oster’s Osterizer was fine until a ricochet cracked the glass pitcher; a Hamilton Beach brand blender was so dissatisfying that we gave it away on Craigslist and superglued the crack in the Oster!
Lots of power in the blender motor helps, but mixing your smoothie properly also seems to do a lot of good. Ice cubes and large frozen fruits (anything bigger than a 1" cube) will remain large and frozen as long as the blades just bat them around - the liquid needs to be thick enough that the fruits’ drag and buoyancy doesn’t keep them perpetually out of blade-range. Try less juice and more soft, room-temperature fruit; less milk and more yogurt. My wife also swears by adding a few whole raw nuts to the mix (almonds and walnuts) which make the fluid abrasive, which grinds the frozen fruits down more quickly. I forgo the nuts because they make my “smoothie” into a “grittie” but YMMV.
One last note: the most common smoothie maker I’ve seen (Hamilton Beach again, I think) is almost worse than a regular blender. Two friends who have used it claim the spigot gets clogged and the blender leaves big frozen fruit chunks in a morass of slush and juice.
Huh. I’ve been able to perfectly re-create Jamba Juice’ sown “Citrus Squeeze” in my cheap-ass bought-from-Walgreens blender.
We likewise have a cheap blender, but it makes smoothies just fine.
I think the key for us is to make sure that the ingredients going in are of the correct mix - if there is thin liquid and frozen fruit and ice, then nothing will blend. Likewise, if there’s too much frozen stuff then the mixture will cause the blades to cavitate and again nothing happens. We like to use some non-frozen fruit (banana, fresh strawberries, canned pineapple, etc.), frozen fruit and/or ice cream, milk or sprite or OJ, maybe some honey, maybe an egg, maybe some yogurt, etc. As long as the motor is powerful enough to not stall on the mix, then it should work - you may need to shake the blender and/or scrape the sides with a spoon or chopstick (motor off) as conditions dictate. Good luck.
Got a brand name, model number, etc…?
thanks,
hh
I’ll try to remember when I get home, though I’m not entirely sure I’ve seen that blender since we moved.
I just got an Oster 4125 beehive blender from Amazon. $99, with free shipping, it’s a 6 piece kit with two pitchers, a chopper, 1 cup mini blender and a milkshake blade. 500 watt motor really blends the daylights out of things to make for a nice smoothie. I haven’t really pushed the envelope though, banana, milk, ice and chocolate sauce is my typical drink, but it is smooth as silk.