Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

EDIT 6/19/2018: I spoke too soon. It died last night, on only the second pot of soup. Talking to their warranty dept now, but don't really want a new one. EDIT, 7/2/2018 The warranty department didn't get back to me, so I returned it through Amazon. Amazon is amazing, and the return was super simple. A customer service rep from Ovente eventually called me to apologize after reading this review. I really appreciated that, and makes me at least willing to give their brand another shot in the future. Original Review: I have been using a $10 immersion blender from Walmart that has bee getting the job done... but then the casing around the blade finally bit the dust. To replace it, I first ordered on Amazon the Koios 500 Watt one... which sounded awesome but was a huge bummer. I use an immersion blender for soups, and while the motor for the Koios was had 250% more wattage than the walmart one, it didn't create any kind of suction toward the blade AT ALL. That meant that in order to blend the pot of soup, I had to literally fish around the whole thing trying to individually poke each carrot and onion to make a smooth, homogenous puree. Nope. I actually gave up and used the broken Walmart one to blend that pot of soup. And then I returned that sucker. (or, I guess, not-sucker) This immersion blender is wonderful. I used it earlier this week for an indian butternut squash soup. I was very pleased! It's a hair more powerful than the one from Wallace Martin, but it has a metal housing that I expect to last for a very long time. It also creates a very nice vortex that causes movement in the whole pot, and carries the chunks of soup directly into the blades of the beast. I really dig this blender, and I'm real happy with the price point too. One more thing I like; it doesn't come with a bunch of nonsense and attachments I won't use. It's the Ron Swanson of immersion blenders. It's a $15, straight-forward, well functioning stick blender that doesn't need a bunch of flashy accessories to compensate for being crappy. So why 4 stars? Well, when I first got it out of the box, it a gnarly high-pitched whine. Now so does my two-year-old, and I still like her. So it's not a deal-breaker. I put some olive oil on the shaft and it went away right away. It was just a bad first impression that might be indicative of less than stellar attention to detail in the craftsmanship. Though again, I'll remind you... 15 bucks. If you're a world class chef that will use this 10 or 15 times a week... come on dude. Have some realistic expectations for this blender. But if you're just a guy that likes to make some soup a few times a month, I really like and recommend this one!