New to 2017, the Ninja Chef 1,500-watt High Speed Blender is the first high-performance model from this company that doesn’t have sets of blades throughout the jar. The Ninja Chef’s blades sit in the base of the jar, like normal blenders, and this model performs better than its predecessors. But it’s extremely loud, and our top picks—the Oster, Cleanblend, and Vitamix—still blend silkier smoothies.
The Hamilton Beach 1,800-watt Professional Blender with Presets performed well in our tests. When using the manual speeds, the blender’s digital readout shows a countdown timer, which is helpful because the instruction manual advises against continuously running the motor for more than two minutes. But the preprogrammed settings don’t effectively keep the mixture moving when air pockets occur. The on/off buttons are angled upwards at the top of the base, and susceptible to food and grime buildup over time.
Falling between $600 and $700, the KitchenAid Pro Line is one of the most expensive blenders we’ve tried, and it’s also the heaviest (22 pounds!). It blended silky smooth textures, but not quite as easily as the Vitamix 5200, and it also didn’t do well at emulsification. Its performance did intrigue us and after a year of long term testing, we found it delivers similar results to the less-expensive Vitamix. And the KitchenAid’s heft and large size make it difficult to move and a space hog.
The Cuisinart CBT-1500 Hurricane is a compact, powerful blender, but it struggled to process foods. Blending thick smoothies and peanut butter required more liquid, a lot of starting and stopping, and banging the jar on the counter. It did make mayonnaise on the first try, though, unlike the more powerful Cuisinart CBT-2000 Hurricane Pro. But without the Turbo button of the Hurricane Pro, it’s just another middle-of-the-road blender.
The Cuisinart CBT-2000 Hurricane Pro performed similarly to the Cuisinart CBT-1500 Hurricane, except it didn’t make mayonnaise as well (we only achieved emulsification on the third try). We did find the turbo button useful to get a fine puree. But again, without a tamper to bust air pockets, this blender needed a lot of tending to get uniform, smooth purees.
After discontinuing sales in North America for eight years, the Braun brand is back in the US with a line of kitchen small appliances manufactured by De’Longhi. The PureMix is a small, tamper-less blender that didn’t impress us in the least, with a flimsy jug and lightweight base. The PureMix had a hard time mixing our smoothie; we needed to add so much liquid to the mixture that the texture was way too thin—yuck! We disqualified the Braun after the first test.
Will the Blendtec Designer 675 blend? Yes, but not as well as our top picks. Despite Blendtec’s clever (if at times mildly sinister) marketing campaign of blending everything from rake handles to iPhone 6s, we’ve found its blenders wanting (we also tested the Total model in 2013). Although the Designer 675 really killed it on smoothies and blended drinks, its lack of a tamper limits its usefulness. In our tests, it didn’t make peanut butter (a tamper would have helped), and the preset speed for soup was frightening, with hot liquid flying wildly around the jar. This model does come with a manual speed slider as well as presets, but we didn’t find this obvious at first when using the machine. We do think this particular model is quite beautiful, with a sleek black, light-illuminated base. It’s a great blender if you want something that looks super slick on your counter that can make amazingly smooth mixed drinks and smoothies. But for $440, we think your blender should be able to do a lot more than that well.
The Breville Boss performed about as well as the Oster Versa and Cleanblend, but it’s almost twice the price. It has a variable speed dial plus five presets. That’s almost too many presets (something this Serious Eats article also mentions). Like most Breville products, the Boss is built really nicely. It probably has the nicest jar of any of the blenders we tried, and the silver base would look great on the counter in many kitchens. Overall, though, we don’t think it performed better than our winner.
The Waring Commercial Xtreme made very smooth smoothies, and it feels very substantial. But ultimately it didn’t perform better than the Oster Versa, Cleanblend, or the Vitamix. If we were willing to pay this price, we’d go instead for a reconditioned Vitamix 5200. We do like that there’s a metal jar you can purchase for this machine.
We still think our 2012 top pick, the Vitamix Pro 300, is a great blender. It has a shorter jar and is quieter than the Vitamix 5200. But in subsequent updates we found that the Vitamix 5200 is more highly recommended by a variety of pro cooks and editorial reviews. From a performance standpoint, the Pro 300 doesn’t outperform the less expensive 5200.
We tested the Blendtec Total Blender in our review from 2012, but found that it couldn’t compete with the Vitamix we tested. The lid felt flimsy and its panel controls seemed cheap. Blendtec has also phased this model out, although you can buy refurbished units through its site.
Our prior budget pick, the Breville Hemisphere, is still a good machine. It has a really nice control panel, with buttons that light up, an LCD timer, and five speed buttons. The vortex was very efficient, and it passed all of our blending tests. At this price point, though, we think the Oster Versa gives you more bang for your buck. Although the hardware on the Breville is nicer than on the KitchenAid 5-Speed, we thought the two machines blended about equally.
When it came to blending green and berry smoothies, we thought the Oster Beehive Blender did a pretty good job. It left a lot of pulp behind, and we kept having to open the lid to tamp down ingredients for our bean spread and ice tests. It is also super loud (and at a really annoying frequency).
For the price, the Ninja Master Prep Professional is a pretty good machine, but we don’t think it compares with the Oster Versa, the Cleanblend, or the Vitamix. The Master Prep did a surprisingly good job at smoothies, bean spread, and blending margaritas, but the design fails at making mayonnaise. The motor is top-mounted, so you can’t actually drizzle anything into the jar. The Master Prep comes with three blending jars in various sizes. We felt like there were too many parts, and they would just end up cluttering our cupboards. Overall, the machine feels really cheap.
The Ninja Professional Blender didn’t blend as well as the Ninja Master Prep or the Oster Beehive. For green smoothies, it left a weird confetti-like texture to the greens. Every time we ran it, there was a strong burning-motor smell. The jar is hard to get on the base, and the lid is finicky to clamp on. The mayo it made was super loose, which means more air was getting whipped into it. The base is big and clunky as well as cheap-feeling.
This guide builds on reporting by Seamus Bellamy.