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Tefal Optichef blender against a green background with a gold badge

Pros
Quick blending, easy to alter the speeds, minimal splashing 
Cons
Noisier than we’d like, complicated instruction sheets, blender doesn’t feel securely locked to mini chopper bowl

Tefal’s instructions can be a bit of a minefield as they tend to be in many languages or explained through illustrations, but we managed to find our way around this without too much bother, and everything clicked nicely into place. Well, almost everything – the weight of the main motor wand on top of the chopper bowl didn’t seem very secure to us and we’d have liked it to have slotted together a bit better.

A good-looking model, the Optichef has a chunky quality that made it comfortable in the hand and easy to move around, with well-placed, soft-touch controls and a grip panel that stopped our fingers slipping while trying to hold the wand and adjust the speed with one hand. Although heavier than some other models around, this gave it a feeling of quality rather than making it cumbersome to use.

Tefal Optichef hand blender results

There are 20 variations on speed, plus turbo, and we were pleased that even at the top end of the power scale, the smoothie mix stayed in the long mixing beaker and didn’t splash out. That may be down to the shape of the stainless-steel guard over the blending blade, which was taller than usual and bell-shaped. It did a good job of pulling ingredients in to blitz thoroughly on the smoothies, but we did have to pass this through the beaker quite a few times before getting our mayonnaise mix to the right consistency.

The balloon whisk is a nice size and made light work of some incredibly puffy meringues. A Sunday afternoon of batch-cooking saw the brilliant mini chopper coming into play, with sofrito soon ready to go for bolognese. A batch of some garlic, onion and ginger paste was whipped up in seconds and popped into cube trays for the freezer. We had to keep a firm hand on the top of the bowl to make sure there was no shifting, but the non-slip bottom made this a lot easier.

Tefal Optichef hand blender verdict

A stylish choice if you need a blender for everyday use or like to go heavyweight with smoothies, crushed ice and other jobs that need an extra bit of ‘oomph’.

Key features:

Wattage: 800 watts
Product weight: 1.61kg
Beaker capacity: 800ml
Blade material: Stainless steel
Speed settings: 20, plus turbo
Pulse function: No
Additional attachments: Whisk, beaker, mini chopper