Best blender 2021: ranking Nutribullet, Ninja and other blenders we tested | Tec...
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Best blender 2021: ranking Nutribullet, Ninja and other blenders we've tested
By Emily Peck, Sophie Bird, Carrie-Ann Skinner - Homes Editor 42 minutes ago
We’ve tested the best blenders for smoothies, soups, and tasty dips
(Image credit: Shutterstock)
The best blenders ensure you can pulverize everything from fruit and vegetables, to nuts, ice, and coffee beans. So whether you want to enjoy a refreshing smoothie, create hearty soups, or even prepare silky sauces and drips, a blender is the go-to appliance.
As well as blitzing ingredients together, the best blenders can also chop and grind, too - making them great for crushing ice to use in frozen cocktails, taking the hard work out of chopping nuts when cooking, and even grinding coffee beans, meaning you can save on space with these multi-use appliances.
Unsure how versatile a blender really can be? Get some recipe inspiration with these five best dishes to make in a blender, while, if you’re new to this kitchen appliance, get some top tips for how to use a blender.
Blenders feature a powerful blade that purées anything it comes to contact with, whereas the best juicers extract liquid from fruit and vegetables, discarding the flesh and skin. Similarly, while both blenders and food processors have a blade that can pulverize ingredients, food processors come with other attachments that can slice and grate foods. Discover just how the two appliances differ by reading blenders vs food processors.
There’s a wide array of blenders on the market, with popular kitchen appliance brands such as KitchenAid, Breville, and Smeg offering models, alongside newer, but no less capable brands such as Nutribullet and Ninja. So choosing the right one for you can be confusing.
We’ve spent hours putting the most well-known blender to the test, pulverizing pineapple and kale into smoothies, grinding coffee, and crushing ice, while also preparing batches of mayonnaise, to discover which are the best blenders you can buy right now.
Best blenders 2021: ranked
1. Vitamix A3500
The best blender you can buy
Reasons to buy
Reasons to avoid
The Vitamix A3500 blender means serious business and made light work of combining ingredients in our tests, without leaving any chunks behind. Ice cubes were blitzed up with ease, and an auto-cleaning cycle means using this blender is a breeze.
This Vitamix blender has an impressive 10 variable speed settings, a pulse function, and even a programmable timer so that you can set it to work and it’ll automatically switch off once the timer is up. To make life easier, there’s also a selection of preset programs for making everything from smoothies to spreads.
There’s only one blending jug included with this model so if you want extra accessories, you’ll have to purchase those separately which makes the Vitamix A3500 quite an expensive option.
You’ll be able to connect this blender to your WiFi and then by using the compatible app, you can access blending tips and lots of recipes. The A3500 is quite bulky though, so take this into account if you’re short on space.
Read our full review: Vitamix A3500
2. KitchenAid Artisan K400
The best blender for style and substance
Reasons to buy
Reasons to avoid
The KitchenAid Artisan K400 blender has the brand’s signature style but isn’t lacking in substance either. There are seven color options to choose from and each model has three preset blending programs, a pulse function, and a choice of five-speed settings. All of the programs can be selected by using the simple dial on the front of the K400, but the symbols for these are pretty small.
There aren’t any additional blending cups or accessories included with this KitchenAid blender, but the blending cup provided does a fantastic job of mixing up small quantities - something that not many other blenders we tested offered.
The K400 made light work of fruits and vegetables and create a smooth and silky texture, but nuts turned to powder. To make it easier to use, this blender has rubber feet to prevent it from shimmying around on your counter as it gets to work. The base of the Kitchen blender is made from die-cast metal and is nice and durable.
If you buy this blender in the US or Australia, it’ll arrive with a plastic jug whereas, in the UK, it’s sold with a glass jug.
Read our full review: KitchenAid Artisan K400 blender
3. Breville the Super Q
The best large capacity blender
Reasons to buy
Reasons to avoid
If you want professional-style smoothies, then Breville the Super Q is the option for you. This powerhouse blender wouldn’t look out of place in a professional kitchen, and it’s pretty bulky too. Included with this blender, you also get a personal blending cup with a travel lid so that you can make smoothies for when you’re on the go.
In our tests, we were impressed with the 12-speed settings and the preset programs for creating crushed ices, smoothies, and more. The smoothie settings did a good job of creating a silky mixture, but the green smoothie setting was particularly powerful for mixing up veggies.
The Breville the Super Q machine is really designed for making larger quantities and it struggled to mix small mayonnaise recipes we tried out, however, when it’s filled to capacity, the blender copes well and there were no leaks whatsoever.
This blender is great if you have a large household or just want to make large quantities of mixtures in one go, but the machine itself is also pretty tall measuring 18.1 inches/ 46cm high. It’s not the cheapest model on the market by far, but for what you pay, you get a powerful and easy-to-control blender.
Read our full review: Breville the Super Q
4. Nutribullet Blender
The best blender for soup
Reasons to buy
Reasons to avoid
Nutribullet, which is more commonly known for its range of powerful smoothie makers, also offers this multi-use blender that can be used for hot and cold ingredients and has a larger 0.42-gallon / 1.6-liter capacity than its other devices in the range.
The Nutribullet blender comes with the same unique stainless-steel extractor blade that’s designed to pulverize ingredients without losing any of their nutrition, found in Nutribullet’s personal blenders. The blender proved very versatile in our review, offering up silky smooth, well-combined results for smoothies, soups, and dips, and even crushed ice and broke down nuts too.
The control panel features two speed settings and a pulse function, although you can’t use the pulse setting if you’re liquidizing hot ingredients, so this blender is best suited for smooth soups, as opposed to chunky on. The jug lid has a vented cap, which can easily be removed mid-blend to add cold (but not hot) ingredients, and it also comes with a tamper that allows you to scrape any rogue ingredients towards the blade during a blend but we were disappointed a brush to clean the blades wasn't included.
Read our full review: Nutribullet Blender
5. Ninja Personal Blender and Smoothie Maker QB3001
The best smoothie maker
Reasons to buy
Reasons to avoid
If you want a blender solely to make refreshing smoothies, then the Ninja Personal Blender and Smoothie Maker QB3001 is worth considering. On test, we found the blender blitzed tough, fibrous fruit and vegetables including Pineapple and Spinach into a smooth, silky drink without any grittiness.
Simple to use, the Ninja Personal Blender and Smoothie Maker QB3001 comes with two 16 fl oz / 470ml single-serve cups and to-go lids, so you can pulverize ingredients into a smoothie and take it with you, without having to decant it first.
We also found the blender effectively crushed ice and ground hazelnuts. However, unlike many of the blenders in this list, there’s no way to add ingredients while the blades are spinning, which means it can’t be used to make condiments such as mayonnaise that requires ingredients to emulsify.
Read our full review: Ninja Personal Blender and Smoothie Maker QB3001
6. KitchenAid K150
Best blender for crushing ice
Reasons to buy
Reasons to avoid
If you’re a cocktail fan, then a durable blender to can crush ice with ease is a must-have, and the KitchenAid K150 is a worthy contender for a place on your kitchen countertop. While this may be KitchenAid’s entry-level blender, it certainly doesn’t compromise on power. On test, we found that it pulverized fruit and vegetables with ease, while also offering a uniform consistency when crushing ice and chopping nuts too.
The blender comes with a 0.37 gallon / 1.4 liter plastic pitcher, and has three speed settings. While you won’t find any presets for making different dishes such as smoothies and sauces, we think this will appeal to those that want a simplistic blender that looks stylish too.
It doesn’t come with a host of accessories, such as personal blending cups, but we think that’s acceptable considering this is the most-affordable blender KitchenAid offer.
Read our full review: KitchenAid K150 Blender
7. Breville the fresh and furious
Reasons to buy
Reasons to avoid
Breville offers a range of stylish, durable and powerful blenders, but with eye-wateringly expensive price tags, they may be out of reach of many consumers, with the exception of the Breville the fresh and furious. This entry-level blender from the brands combines the sleek styling, with power to create a compact blender that’s more affordable than other models the brand offers.
Simple to use, we were impressed with the Breville the fresh and furious. - it was able to liquidize pineapple and leafy spinach into a completely smooth and lightly aerated drink, with no bits, as well as crush ice, chop nuts and emulsify eggs and oil into mayonnaise.
The blender comes with a 0.4-gallon /1.5-liter jug, and has five speed settings, as well as three preset programs including a cleaning function. There was a slight amount of leakage when the blender was filled to maximum capacity, but this was only in the well of the lid, and not enough to be a serious concern.
Read our full review: Breville the Fresh and Furious
8. Smeg BLF01 blender
The best retro style blender
Reasons to buy
Reasons to avoid
With its die-cast aluminium frame that comes in a range of eight glossy colours including cream (pictured), red, pastel blue and pink, the Smeg BLF01 blender has a head-turning design. Although its 1.5-liter capacity jug is the smallest we’ve featured in our round up, which is a plus point if you have a small kitchen, and a minus if you’re looking to blend large batches. Either way, the design is compact and the Tritan jug, like the Tefal and Philips models, is relatively lightweight to hold and robust.
The control dial has two pre-set programs for ice crushing and smoothies and speed settings that can be manually controlled from 0-4. This comes with a soft start so the speed is built up gradually for an even blend of the ingredients.
Noise-level wise, when we used the Smeg BLF01PBUK blender to make a smoothie, it reached 103 decibels - a little above average. The blend was smooth, albeit a little frothier than say the finish of the Philips vacuum blender design.
It’s worth noting that the Smeg BLF01PBUK blender doesn’t have a pre-set cleaning button – you can add warm soapy water to the jug and turn it on to dislodge any stubborn ingredients, and then finish by washing it by hand. You can take out the blade using the measuring cap in the top of the jar that doubles up as a key for the blade, which makes for an ergonomic design feature.
Read our full review: Smeg BLF01
9. Nutribullet Magic Bullet Kitchen Express
Best blender and food processor in one
Reasons to buy
Reasons to avoid
If you’re tight on space on your kitchen countertop, this smoothie maker and food processor in one, is a great buy. Compact, and simple to use, the Nutribullet Magic Bullet Kitchen Express comes with two 16fl oz / 470ml single-serve cups, for blending smoothies in, and a 0.2 gallon / 830ml food processor bowl, so you grate, chip and slice food too.
During testing, while the blender did a good job at pulverizing the fibrous pineapple, it struggled with leafy spinach, leaving a gritty texture to the drink as it wasn’t completely broken down, making it best suited to fruit rather than vegetables.
It was also unable to achieve a uniform consistency when chopping nuts and crushing ice. However, we were impressed with its ability to grate carrot, slice cucumber, chop onions and make breadcrumbs.
As with similar smoothie-maker style blenders, it's not suited to making condiments like mayonnaise, as there’s no way to add ingredients while the blades are spinning to ensure they emulsify together. It was also one of the noisiest blenders we’ve tested too.
Read our full review: Nutribullet Magic Bullet Kitchen Express
10. Philips HR3752/01 High-speed vacuum blender
The best vacuum blender
Reasons to buy
Reasons to avoid
Like the Tefal and Smeg blenders in our round-up, the Philips HR3752/01 High-speed vacuum blender also comes with a robust Tritan jar, which feels lighter in hand compared to a glass jar. However, it trumps them with a vacuum feature that sucks out the oxygen from the jug before it blends, helping to make a fresh-tasting drink, with less bubbles and foam than you’d usually find using a standard blender.
The blender has four pre-set programs on the façade for vacuuming the ingredients, vacuuming the ingredients and processing, pulsing and ice crushing. On first look, we found the control panel a little tricky to decipher, but once we’d consulted the manual we were able to confirm which icon does what.
It also has ‘Advanced ProBlend 6 3D blending technology’ to ensure the ingredients you include are blended as finely as possible – a plus point if you primarily want this blender to tackle nuts and seeds. The design features a manual dial that lets you choose your speed setting easily and while there isn’t a pre-set cleaning mode, the detachable parts on the blender are dishwasher safe. When we used it to make a banana, avocado and spinach smoothie on the pre-set smoothie setting, the noise levels reached 100 decibels.
Read our full review: Philips HR3752/01 blender review
How we test blenders
In a bid to compare each blender, we’ve put in hours in the kitchen preparing bowlfuls of mayonnaise, while also blending pineapple, spinach, and Greek yoghurt into a smoothie. As well as assessing how smooth the sauce and smoothie are, we’re also looking for ingredients that are well-combined without any curdling and whether there is residue trapped under the blade, or if the ingredients have leaked from the base or lid during blending.
We also evaluate how finely and evenly the blenders chop ice and nuts and compare how easy they are to use. For each model we rate how loud they are, how durable and easy to clean the body and parts are, and the useful accessories they come with such as a tamper for moving ingredients closer to the blade, extra jugs or containers, and recipe booklets for inspiration.
What to consider when buying a blender
When it comes to selecting the best blender for you, start by identifying the type of blender you need.
Jug blenders feature a blade inside the plastic or glass receptacle, which spins when connected to the motor in the base units. They can blend large quantities but are usually bulky.
Meanwhile, smoothie blenders, also known as personal blenders, come with a small plastic cup rather than a jug. Fill the cup with your ingredients then attach the blade, flip the cup upside down and attach to the base. When the ingredients are blended to your liking, remove from the base, unscrew the blade and screw on a to-go lid, then take your drink with you.
Finally, there’s also immersion blenders to consider. Often referred to as hand blenders or stick blenders, they are designed to be inserted into a saucepan or container of ingredients you want to puree. These compact appliances should be swirled around in the liquid while the blade spins to ensure it’s blended uniformly. The blade can be detached from the main unit, containing the motor for easy cleaning too.
Also consider the number of speed and power settings the blender offers. If you’re looking to crush ice and grind coffee beans, it’s worth considering a blender that has more control over how quickly it spins, to ensure you can chop the food to the consistency you want.
Finally consider any accessories the blender comes with such as additional containers, a tamper to push food down during blending, and a brush to clean under the blades, as well as whether the parts are dishwasher-safe and simple to clean.
Blenders vs juicers
While juicers and blenders look similar, they perform slightly different tasks. Blenders use sharp blades to break down the contents of the blending jug. This means everything in the jug is turned into a smooth mixture. Juicers, however, extract liquid and leave behind the rest of the fruits or vegetables. As you might expect from the name, juicers are primarily used to make fresh juice so they can be quite limiting whereas blenders give you the means to make everything from smoothies to dips.
For all the pros and cons of both of these appliances, head to our full feature on Blenders vs juicers: what’s the difference?
How to clean a blender
Staying on top of cleaning your blender is key if you want it to last as long as possible and if you want to avoid any nasty odors building up. Many blending jugs can be placed inside the dishwasher but you can also clean them by adding warm water and dish soap to the blending jug, placing the lid on, and blending up the soapy solution.
If you’re struggling to get rid of any stubborn stains, create your own cleaning paste using 1 tablespoon of baking soda and mix it with 1 teaspoon of white vinegar. You can add this solution to the stains by using a clean scrubbing brush or a clean toothbrush.
For more handy hacks, read our how to clean a blender feature.
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