The reason: I was having a seven year old 700 W mixie with a name ’Olympic’. It had come as my wedding present. Never had any complaints for first 3 - 4 years. Then every six months or so I needed to spend bout Rs.150. With time, the frequency of ’spend’ increased. I decided to change it after it stopped working about a month back.
The search: I checked out in the net and at neighbourhood stores in Bangalore - Girias, Adhiswars, Total and in Ulsoor. Girias and Adhiswars promoted Murphy Richards (Bajaj marketed). It came in three variants 500W, 600W and 750W. I liked the finish and quality. The base was metal, the juice strainer was plastic. It had a 5 year warranty. It was not the costiliest. I was impressed, but what went against it was - 1) New product to market, not sure of after sales, 2) Net was not promoting it (Nowadays depend on mouthshut and its likes a lot!)
The other products considered but later dropped were Philips, Kenstar. Considered Philips for it self claim of noiseless grinding and Kenstar because it seemed to be a popular choice, one of my family friends also had it.Then there was a choice to make - 500 / 600 /750 W. Went for 750 W as I perceived more the power the better it is.
Enter Preethi: What made me choose Preethi was its overwhelming brand image amongst South Indians. For South Indian cooking mixie is a must use - every day. So the advise given to me was - go for the best - which is Preethi, as per them. Herd mentality prevailed. Bought Preethi - blue leaf platinum at the Ulsoor shop offering at the lowest in Banglaore (April 09) @ 3500 in exchange for my junk of a mixe. MRP was 4650. Total is advertising for 3750.
Had chosen BL platinum over Chef Pro and BL gold as it was liked by my wife. She likde the look and wanted the additional jars.
Initial experience: The second day we tried to use the new love. It was working fine, but suddenly it will not operate in speed 1. It was working fine in speed 2 and 3. Imagine what horror we would have felt. Took it to the service center. The person opened the mixie and found a loose wire and fixed it. He told it was a fault which got developed during transportation. May be. But what impressed me was - There was not a single mixie waiting to be serviced at this only service center in Bangalore. WoW. Later learnt that Preethi is the largest selling mixie in karnataka. With such a large mixie population not a single mixie waiting for repair is fabulous. (Had earlier been to a Philips service center for repair of a different product. So can compare). Learnt from him that the difference betwen Chef pro and Blue leaf apart from the cosmetic marketing stuff is that blue leaf has a cooling fan and hence can be used for longer time.
Then started using it. Have used it to make various ’podis’ and ofcourse chutneys. Only after experiencing the quality of grinding was I able to appreciate it better. This was just too good compared to my old one. (Probably my old mixie was too bad).
In retrospect: Came to know that Preethi is also a TTK group product. Just like Ambanis TTK group has two brothers - one owns the prestige brand and the other preethi. Prestige has recently come to the market and is offering mixie at 2500. If I would have known this earlier, I would probably gone for that.
The noise made by the mixie is high. Later learnt that 750 W mixies makes much more noise compared to 500 and 600. Probably 600 would have been a better trade-off.
The juicer jar is made of plastic and is not of great quality. And I don’t know if I would use this often. Even the bigger jars given with the mixie will not be used much. I could have gone with Chef pro and would have saved Rs.750. Cleaning is a pain. In Murphy Richards if I remember correctly - you can remove the blades easily to clean.
Recommendation: Do not know. So far So good. Have to check this for atleast 5 years more!