I am a lady who loves my shiny kitchen gadgets, so when the hubby announced that he was going on a protein heavy diet (to bulk up his muscles) and would need protein shakes I decided now would be a fine time to purchase a blender.

My first blender of choice was the Breville IBL044 blender costing £24.99 from Argos. I got it home and hubby unpacked it and started fiddling with the big dial on the front, much to my distress the dial made a nasty crunching sound and proved itself to be broken without ever having dirtied its blades so back in the box it went and back to Argos.

I then perused the catalogue once more and came across Cookworks Signature KB40SA-1 Glass Blender costing just a few pennies more at £29.99. This caught my eye despite the fact that I have never had a Cookworks product before as it had a chunky glass jug and a stainless steel and black body and looked very sturdy for the relativley low price tag. The blender was well packed and the majority of the packaging was recyclable.

The glass jug lifts off and places back on the body of the machine easily it just slots in, no fiddly lining up or twisting required. The jug is very chunky and as long as its not dropped I can see it outliving the motor of the blender with ease.

The jug is clearly marked up one side to 1.5litres. The lid is black plastic and pushes on to the jug, sealing nice and tight, no leakage while blending, in the centre of the lid is a clear plastic, removable insert that can be removed to add ingredients during the blending process.

The controls of the blender are simple to use it has a large dial centrally placed on the body of the base, turn the dial to the left for a quick pulse action, the dial does spring back so you do have to repeatedly turn it to have continuose pulsing, when the dial is turned to the right it has two speeds fast and faster.

The body of the blender is easy to wipe clean and the base has nice sturdy rubber feet so it stays put while blending, unfortunatly there is no cord storage even though it claims to have it, but as the cord is not over long this doesn't pesent to much of an issue.

The jug is easy to rinse out and wipe clean, I cant find anywhere that says it is dish washer safe, I usually swirl it out and then hold it upside down in the sink and have a good old swish around with hot soapy water and that keeps it sparkling like new.

I have used the blender for crunching ice and it does a good job of it, obliterating a hand full of ice cubes to slush in a matter of seconds. On the down side the motor is very noisy and acts as a wake up call for the whole house in the morning, maybe even the whole neighbour hood, but to be honest that is my only downside, it's a good little blender and its chunky enough to last a good many years. The technical specs are as follows:-

* Glass with stainless steel jug.
* 500 watts.
* 2 speeds.
* Pulse function.
* Stainless steel blades.
* Capacity of jug 1.5 litres.
* Easy to clean.
* Cord storage.
* Size H42, W21, D23cm

I give it 4/5 stars, I removed one as it is so noisy.

Thankyou for reading, This is my first review in ages and I think the spell check on my comp is broke as it seems to think I've spelt everything ok.