When it comes to the advancement in technology it feels like the living room and office get all the love. TVs, PCs, tablets, consoles, and even lighting and sound have all been on a steady trajectory to become more powerful, more featureful and even better priced as the cutting edge elements become more mainstream.

The kitchen has, unfortunately, seemingly been left behind in this technological arms race as the appliances you can buy today look very similar to the ones your parents and maybe even grandparents used to own.

Well tech giant Xiaomi is here to mix things up – quite literally today – with its range of smart kitchen appliances starting with the Xiaomi Smart Blender.

By giving the classic blender some brains Xiaomi has reinvented the way you can use your kitchen appliances. Smart control through the app gives you wireless functionality, endless recipes, speed monitoring and even scheduling.

The scheduling feature has us the most excited as you can schedule a blend up to 12 hours in advance. While we wait to win the lottery to hire a butler to have breakfast prepared when we wake up, we can instead use the Xiaomi Smart Blender.

Simply load up your ingredients before bed, schedule the blend for just before the alarm rings, and wake up to a fresh breakfast. After breakfast load in more ingredients to enjoy the same robot butler experience when you return from work. Outside of meals and snacks this is great for more focused blends like the protein shake or pre-workout drinks to make exercise just that much easier.

Worried about leaving your ingredients out while you’re at work or sleeping?

Don’t be thanks to the Xiaomi Smart Blender’s impressive insulation and the fact that this blender is made to support both hot and cold blends. The thick outer walls of the high borosilicate glass jar keep your cold drinks cold and avoid the use of a plastic container unlike some other brands. For hot blends the internal bottom heating plate provides between 800W and 950W of heating power. This is absolutely perfect in South Africa with a very bitter winter hitting us sun-loving locals.

Consider blending your own hot and hearty soup too as you’re definitely not limited to just drinks. The powerful motor combined with the eight multi-angle, stainless steel blades can make short work of even the most stubborn and fibrous fruits and vegetables. Even frozen ingredients and ice can’t stand up to this combo and the nine speed settings.

Love the smart features but want to do things the classic way from time to time? That’s no worry at all as the Xiaomi Smart Blender supports manual inputs too. Manual mode even lets you fine tune elements like the aforementioned speed on the fly when you want to quickly and directly change how your blend is going.

This same mentality of creating fantastic appliances as well as smart functionality has worked itself into every part of the blender. Safety features for cleaning, physical controls and even tiny touches like a non-slip handle are all present. All of this is wrapped in a rather handsome and modern package in a lovely white colourway that will fit into any kitchen no matter the décor or colour choices. Even those with bolder aesthetic choices, see below, will find this blender looking suave in any setting.

The Smart Blender and the rest of the Xiaomi smart appliances range is available right now in South Africa. Shop from home from Takealot and Tafelberg today.