I have got this shake mixer for my restaurant, I thought that will be good as it comes from the well-known company Hamilton beach, the body looks good but when I tried to make a cup of shake the plastic guard pin ( the on/off button that hold the top of the cup) come out easily you have to reinsert the guard pin again and again many time during making one cup of shake. it flimsy, I don't recommend it for anyone .

Why a drink mixer?

We love floats and shakes. We get them at Arby's, McDonalds, Dairy Queen, etc. What is the one common problem with these? Too sweet...can't be that healthy for regular consumption. For example, according to CalorieKing, a McDonald's medium strawberry shake has 690 calories, which is 31% daily value. What's worse is the saturated fat is 13%, which is 65% of the daily value. Think that's bad enough? Add another 75 mg (25% of daily value) for cholesterol.

In short, if you have your own drink mixer, in this case the Proctor Silex, you can buy low fat ice cream, use 2% or 1% milk, and make your own milk shake with a lot less calorie, fat, and cholesterol than what can be purchased in restaurants.

How does the Proctor Silex perform? We purposely filled up the cup very full with ice cream and milk to see if the "commercial" label can handle the job. It did take some time for the drink to mix completely (a larger mixing blade would have helped), but it did get the job done. The shake came out a bit runny, so we had to drink it fast before everything melted. The solution here is to put the milk in the freezer to get it very cold (don't turn it into ice though). Having the milk colder than refrigerator temperature will definitely avoid having the shake melt too quickly.

Despite this, we made shakes for all the kids at a dinner event, and everybody loved the shakes. Definitely recommend this machine for making your own shakes.

This Procter Silex 2 speed commercial drink mixer is big compared to many kitchen appliances, but its heavy duty, built for commercial use. Its worth the 10 pound weight, height - which doesnt fit under many kitchen cupboards, if youre going to be using it with regularity.

We tilted the mixer back in order to get it under our newer Merrilat cupboards. There's a bit of a space under the cupboards - maybe just under an inch, in which the mixer fits well. We've used this mixer on a daily basis to mix our protein shakes and it's been great! There's a no skid bottom, so we don't worry about someone trying to slide it out from under the cupboard and nicking up the wood.

It was just a matter of teaching people how to tilt the stainless cup in order to get it on the built in cup stand. Once it's tilted we start to pour in the ingredients. Its important to start with the liquid ingredients so things mix properly. We add the ingredients from liquid to solid and it works like a dream. We've noticed when someone gets impatient and tries to add everything at once it doesn't mix as well, but if you are using fruit, and want a bit of chunkiness, adding more ingredients at once is the way to go! We've tried this with peaches and strawberries - which has worked well both fresh and frozen and the fresh or frozen fruit is great for the added fiber. Frozen fruit, from what we've read has more antioxidants than fresh - probably because most frozen fruits are flash frozen, and as a fresh fruit sits it loses the antioxidants. Although there are only two speeds -- low and high, this mixer is built for commercial use, and its plenty powerful for just about any home drink mixing need.

Once you rest the cup on the cup stand (cup guide) so you can use the mixer hands free while adding ingredients, or allowing it to mix while you do other things. But it doesn't take long to mix things up at all. It's so fast and easy to make our smoothie like protein shakes -- we just rinse the stainless cup before starting a different flavor. No need to wash in between different flavor shakes. If you want to have a super thick shake don't add too much liquid and lift the cup, turning and moving it around as you turn. Be sure when you do this to keep the mixing shaft submerged in your shake, and if it doesn't thicken up as much as you want, you can add more fruit or protein powder.

Before the mixer came we made a trip with the kids to a local restaurant where they hand mix the shakes -- so they could see how it's done before they did their own shakes. Once it came and i had made nice thick shakes, but no one else was succeeding, (and didn't want to listen to me but wanted thick shakes) we made another trip to that restaurant, a smoothie place, and a local fast food place where they have a similar mixer. That might not have been the best idea because before we went home the kids wanted to add ice cream, Oreo cookies, and some kind of chocolate carmel candy they could chop and add to their mix. Since we're trying to keep this for healthy drinks we all decided we'd only add those type of ingredient on special occasions, and in the meantime, if they want to add flavor extracts, and some Stevia, they can do that. We don't add unhealthy fast releasing carbs to the mixes -- we didn't want it for old fashioned shakes -- we wanted a fast way to do shakes when it's just our fairly large family, and when we have friends over in addition to our family. Because the mixing cup cleans up with just a quick rinse, we get 6 - 10 shakes made in about 10 - 15 minutes.

The stainless cup can be replaced or you can buy extra cups for when the cup that comes with the mixer is being washed in the dishwasher. We got an extra just so we could get another shake going while the 1st is being poured and the cup rinsed.

One tip I came up with, knowing you only make whipped cream in a stainless bowl or container -- using stainless that's been kept in the freezer is the only way to thicken up whipped cream. So I put the stainless container in the freezer before use, and it seems to really help thicken up the protein shakes once we add the protein powder. We use Body Fortress Super Advanced Whey Isolate in Vanilla Cream -- which was one of one of the top Whey Proteins on Consumer Labs -- another was Body Fortress regular Whey protein - which we get in Vanilla. If I remember correctly they were rated # 1 and 2 on Consumer Labs because it contains exactly what it says it contains, is VERY LOW in sugar
I highly recommend this mixer for home users who will be using a mixer on a daily basis, and want something fast, easy to clean, and is has a good amount of power.
The mixer didn't come with any recipes -- but there are plenty of resources for healthy protein shakes, or dessert type shakes which can be made with commercial mixers.

This is the first drink mixer I have owned, and I love it. It is easy to use and makes the greatest milkshakes ever. I have made milkshakes in blenders and food processors before, but they are a mess to clean up. Washing this mixer after using it is easy.

This mixer is quite heavy so it stays in place while mixing. The only problem I have with the mixer is that it is about an inch too high to fit under my cupboards, but I think my old cupboards might be lower than most.

This Proctor Silex mixer is commercial quality. It is well made and I think it will last a long time. My grandkids are enjoying milkshakes at Gramma's. We plan on mixing pancakes in it soon.

This unit does not seem to work very well.

First of all, it is pretty much a unitasker and takes up a large amount of counter space. Two strikes against it. But if it worked well, I could overlook those.

I have used it three times. Each time, I add some fruit and liquid to either sorbet or ice cream to the stainless steel cup. I put the cup in place and the machine automatically turns on. But it has a lot of trouble mixing the items together. One time, there were huge chunks of strawberries left in the drink. Another, it didn't completely mix the ice cream in, so there were globes of it.

So the end result is not very consistent. When it mixes, it tastes great. I had a strawberry milkshake that tasted great and would have been perfect except for the globs of ice cream that didn't mix in.

But how do you get to the finished product?

Once you put everything in the stainless steel cup, you put it into place, inserting the steel agitator into the middle of the cup, and inserting the lip of the cup into a plastic holder, which also serves as the emergency switch. The item will not turn on unless the cup is connected here.

The agitator has two small items on the end, both of which are designed to mix and cut the items in the cup. When using a blender to make a shake, there is a moment when the mixture all of a sudden seems to 'catch' and start working. That moment never really comes with this drink mixer. It works fine in the middle, but I find that I have to turn the cup, to assist it, much like I have seen people do at ice cream shops.

But the plastic emergency switch, the one hooked over the lip of the cup, keeps coming off which stops the mixing. I then have to put it back on, after removing the cup, with large pieces of ice cream connected to the agitator. It pops into and out of place pretty easily, so this has to be done repeatedly.

Once you are done, the agitator needs to be cleaned, which is also a problem. Haven't quite figured out how to best do this.

This machine might be good for professional use (although I doubt it) but it is certainly not worth it for home use.