Blenders have come a long way since I last bought one after college, setting up my first apartment. First of all this is run by a touch screen with a few presets. I also think it's a lot more powerful and a lot sharper than ye old school blenders. It takes up a lot of space, but is not as heavy as the old stuff because it's plastic not glass. The jar is surprisingly light weight, and although there's no sense that it won't hold up to normal use the instructions do tell you to hold onto the top when it's working on hard items like chopping ice just to keep it down. Note that the base is held to the countertop with suction cups for feet.Aside from the height and significant footprint of the blender base itself with the jar on top, be prepared to have plenty of room in your kitchen to store this. It comes with its own "tool box" to store all of the attachments. It's huge. And, you'll need it. I can't think of a better way to store all of the extremely sharp food processing discs and other blade attachments that would be safe. Speaking of the sharpness, I washed everything by hand after this arrived. It was nerve wracking. There's no way to hold the discs that I found not to be awkward, and touching them at any angle is gambling with a major cut incident. Now imagine fishing them out of a sink filled with sudsy hot water. You have to be VERY careful. While holding them on the least sharp part I could find, I scrubbed them with handled dish brushes I have.The instructions are clear and easy to follow, and the item came with a book of really amazing recipes. I know the Ninja is the rage now, and I haven't tried using one of those, though I've handled them and seen them used. This seems very comparable to one of those to me. Just a top notch product.