Look at the number one ingredient first when choosing a protein powder. Number one here is maltodextrin. It's understandable, as this is a "gainer" but you're paying to take a shortcut diet wise. It's a high glycemic index carb filler and where most of the calories come from. The body absorbs it quickly, spiking your insulin level enough to be anticatabolic, but you could easily find a good whole food carb source to replace this. Maltodextrin is just like sugar and the body will store it as fat if there aren't muscles that need glycogen. Also check out the serving size, one heaping scoop might seem reasonable, but grab a kitchen scale and you'll find that it requires closer to 2 mostly full scoops to equal one serving of 165 grams of this stuff. It felt like the bag was lasting longer than the claimed 28 servings, so I measured it out on the scale and found I've been getting maybe 75% of the serving I thought I was intaking. You're honestly better off eating a fruit for carbs and using ON's normal whey and casein protein, both excellent products. If you do decide to buy this as a shortcut, don't take a whole serving at once...30 min prior to working out, take 83 grams of this (3/4 scoop), and immediately after working out, take the remaining 83 grams to equal the whole serving. It works better than just smashing all of it afterwords

The scoop provided isn't anywhere close to the stated 165 grams that makes one serving. I tried scooping up as much as I could but no matter how many times I tried, I could only get to 120 grams. It would make more sense if they provided a scooper that provided 82.5 grams and just change the label to read Serving Size: 2 scoops. I was going to rate the product 5 stars but I had to subtract a star because of the scooper size. Despite all these facts, it does taste great and mixes well

This product may have been almost a life saver for me. I have been using it for 10 years. I became seriously ill about a decade ago and was losing weight for unknown reasons. I am 5'10" and used to weigh in the mid 160s prior to my illness. Finally after dropping to the upper 120s my doctor recommended that I try drinking gainer shakes though he didn't mention this product in particular. I happened to mention my weight loss dilemma to my brother-in-law who pointed me to this product. So glad that he did. I started out drinking two servings per day and usually add a scoop of ice cream to it in the blender. It tastes fine to me with plain water but the ice cream makes the drink pleasingly colder. Anyhow, this put a stop to my nose diving weight and gradually pushed me into the low 130s which helped me feel some relief about my condition. About a year later I joined a gym and started working out with weights 3 times a week at least an hour each time, plus did some weight lifting at home in between. Slowly, slowly my weight raised into a more respectable mid 140s after about a year of weight lifting exercices plus this product 2X a day. Roughly 3 years later with my weight seemingly stuck in the 140s I decided to reduce it to one serving a day. I always monitor my weight and it remained basically the same. About a year ago I reduced use of this to a half serving, 6 days a week. I continue to work out at the gym and at home like usual. My upper body strength has increased especially my arms/biceps/triceps and pec muscles even at the reduced half serving of gainer plus my usual scoop of ice cream in the blender. I am happy to say my weight over the last 6 months has been lifted to almost the same level as I had prior to my illness. I am currently bumping up on the 160 lbs mark. So I have been using this for 10 years straight now plus going at my weight lifting for nearly that long a time. When I look in the mirror I grin at the results I have had over this LONG period of time. But I give a lot of credit to this gainer product and my doctors who initially encouraged me to use something like this many years back. I tend to drink mine now in the mid afternoon after my gym or home workouts and in between lunch and dinner. It does sometimes take away my appetite a bit if I drink it too close to dinner, especially back in the beginning when I was drinking two servings a day. Now at half a serving the appetite loss is much less of a problem. Will I ever stop using this altogether? Maybe, but not just yet. I do think there is a correlation between using this after a workout and building your muscle tissue so I may eternally use this at half strength based just on that. By the way, adding a scoop of ice cream to it in the blender not only makes it tastier and creamier but also adds some extra calories and calcium (I believe). The double chocolate is my favorite and adding some mint ice cream is wonderfully tasty. I think overall this product tastes great, even those times that I simply use plain water without anything more

So I found out that my review is being hidden so 1 star. -I ordered the 10 lb bag. Opening it wasn't a problem as some have mentioned. Slide the e zipper open and make one small incision on the seal, and tear. The seal has these lines that help the tearing direction. -Taste. I ordered chocolate, I can say that it taste exactly like a chocolate milk shake. I can see how this could bother some who don't like sweets. I also use a ninja blender as opposed to a shaker bottle, creates a foamy-light texture. -Serving suggestions By far the biggest complaint I have is the serving size. "1 heaping scoop (165g)" see attached pictures. The largest scoop I could create was still considerably short by about 10%, and a modest scoop was short almost 33%. Infact, to get 165g of this powder you will have to fill a ninja bottle almost entirely(pictured above). And if you follow the directions, by mixing it with 16oz liquid, your mix will surely be too thicc

As an amateur/hobby bodybuilder, this single product has become a staple in my diet over the past 3 years. When I started getting serious about lifting again out of college, I had dropped to 145lbs from my previous high of 175lbs. My metabolism is fast, and I simply had trouble keeping up for a number of reasons: time, money, and the difficulty eating the calories I needed in solid foods. I then found this product, which has helped all three of those issues. VALUE - At approximately $2.25 a serving (when using subscribe and save), this is one of the cheapest quality 650 calorie meals you can provide your body with. I found this to be much more cost effective than trying to put together my own meal. Thanks to Amazon's subscribe and save, the prices compete with the other bigger online supplement retailers and I don't have to worry about re-ordering. PERFORMANCE - I can drink an entire serving in 2-5 minutes without feeling bloated/sick (taste ranges from acceptable to good - banana cream and vanilla are must tries). I have one serving every morning, and one at some point after my workout and before bed. This accounts for 1300 of my 3500 daily calorie intake. For me, without the aid of liquid weight gainers - it would be impossible to achieve my calorie goals and gain lean mass. I especially would struggle in the morning -- I often don't have time to prepare a good meal, and have trouble eating too many solid foods first thing in the morning. Also - understand that while 60 grams of protein a serving may seem like too much, this is not 60 grams of pure whey protein that is metabolized very quickly. It is packed with 7 sources of protein (faster and slower metabolized proteins) so it takes several hours for your body to metabolize the protein. RESULTS - When used with a high quality, high calorie diet and proper lifting routine - this product can help you achieve your daily calorie requirements and consequently gains in lean mass. I have used this product to raise my weight from 145lbs to 187lbs while keeping body fat under 8%. Highly recommend this product over cheaper gainers with more sugars/poorer quality calories. FYI - If you have the time, I recommend following the blending instructions provided. However, if you are short on time - a shaker bottle is best. The blender mixes the product so well, that it will take you 2-3x longer to drink since the volume of product is increased just due to being "frothy" from the blender. While the blender taste cannot be beat (and less water can be used to get good mixing results), a high quality shaker bottle does work well for this stuff as well with 20-40 seconds of shaking and the correct amount of water. You sacrifice taste for a shake that takes less time to drink

Optimum Nutrition Pro Gainer is one of my favorites. I recommenced getting the vanilla flavor since it taste good by itself and it is easily mix with other thing to change the flavor. I like to add cinnamon to my protein shakes and it taste so good. It is also packed full of vitamins and minerals that your body needs. It is really an all in one bundle with plenty of protein, carbs, fats, vitamins, and minerals

This is a great weight gainer product supplement. Don't over use. Don't use for complete meal replacement. Use this product To supplement your meals. I drink one with one meal per day as my drink. I use my second serving immediately following workout. Two Shakes per day. That is plenty. I see a lot of people drinking three and that is pushing it. You will burn yourself out. This is a supplement to get vitamins and proteins. You should be getting most of these from your diet. Work on a planned healthy diet and use this product to help with that diet for optimum results

This stuff tastes great, mixes well, and is very easy on my stomach. I used it for months as a breakfast shake and would recommend it to anyone looking for a quick liquid meal with a good macronutrient profile. But it never really felt like 650 calories. It just wasn't as dense as I would expect, and my body didn't take as long to process it as I would expect for so many calories. The serving size on the back says "1 heaping scoop (165g)". I decided to test the volume vs weight measurement, so I bought a food scale. I filled one scoop all the way up until it was a little over the top and I added it to my blender which had been tared to zero on the scale. It was 100g, or 60% of 1 serving. Given that, serving size should be more like 2 scoops. If you only use 1 scoop you are getting about 400 calories, not 650, and about 36g of protein, not 60. This makes a lot more sense when I consider the serving size of other protein and carb powders I've used. I've found that Optimum tends to be optimistic in their serving sizes (it takes incredible physics to fit a serving into their scoops), whereas Now foods tends to be spot on (1 scoop really equals 1 serving). I haven't tried other brands, but recommend you go by weight using a food scale rather than scoop size if you want to really know what you are eating

Once again, Optimum Nutrition has a winner. To give you an idea of my lifestyle so you can make a comparison, my style of weight-lifting, eating, etc. is more of a "clean-bulking" program. Many will say the concept of the clean bulk is a myth, but I've done it. Is it perfect? Nah, but it works for me. I watch my diet all the time but am no calorie-counting zealot. I exercise every day of the week with five weight lifting sessions and three half-hour interval training cardio sessions (one day is combined of course). I am 5'6" and weigh 138 lbs with about 7% body fat. I am no expert on fitness but I've made it to where I am and I'm proud of it. So this review won't be the most scientific post on Amazon. First off, this is a GAINER protein. I will say that again because it merits repeating. GAINER. Despite it being visible in gigantic green letters on the package, and in the name, and in the description, I am sure some people managed to glaze over this. This is a higher calorie protein while being lower in fat, sugars, etc. so lean mass can be put on. You will put on some great muscle growth if used appropriately with exercise and proper diet. Despite the fact it's a lean gainer, some loss in definition is inevitable. Not all of those calories will go straight towards building muscle mass alone. I have been using this protein since November 2013 and I have seen some great improvements in my muscle gains and my strength shot through the roof. I am sure having the extra calories from the protein to increase muscle growth attributed to those results. Now I did experience some minor loss in definition with this protein since it is after all a GAINER; even with my constant clean diet not all of the calories went straight to my muscles some of it inevitably went to my fat reserves, particularly around the mid-section of course, but the loss in tone was minor. All in all I am thrilled with the results that this protein gave me and how much it bulked up my muscles with such little change to my "aesthetics" so to speak. The protein tastes fine. I am so sick of seeing "THIS PROTEIN DOESN'T TASTE LIKE CANDY. ONE STAR. THIS IS GROSS DO NOT BUY." If you want a candy like taste then go eat chocolate. This is a protein. If it has all the sugars and flavor additives then guess what? It defeats the purpose. Is it the best tasting one I've had? No, but I don't really care. It did it's job and that's what matters. I highly recommend this protein if you're looking to increase muscle mass without adding as much "other mass" AKA lean mass. The price is also a steal for 10 lbs. Pro Tip: If you open the box they ship it in with a knife, be careful. I learned the hard way

I chose this product after careful research of weight/mass gainers, since not all are alike as you may find in your own research. I'm a fairly skinny guy who has (had) trouble gaining weight. High metabolism, running often, on the go lifestyle; the works. I initially bought the 5.08lb Double Chocolate jar to try it out, and I loved it immediately. I took about 2-4 servings a day (in the morning, between meals, post-workout, and before bed). Within the first week, I saw noticeable weight gain. I finished by 5.08 lb jar in about 2 weeks, so I ordered this 10lb bag once I ran out. Shipping was very quick thanks to Amazon Prime, received it on a Saturday (even though I placed my order Friday evening). 3 1/2 weeks later, I've gained 8lbs of good, lean mass; something I always though not possible due to my high metabolism and hectic schedule. With 16 oz of milk, it tastes great and goes down smooth every time. I never feel like a brick is sitting in my tummy. If you're looking for an effective lean mass gainer, this is your answer. Workout 3-5 times a week. Eat Healthy. Take this supplement. You'll feel golden. Hope this review helps