This quiet, high-powered blender has simple, intuitive controls. As for its blending capability, it was top-notch. It was able to produce fine-textured foods without incorporating excess air, thanks to its narrow blender jar. The tamper accessory was helpful when blending thicker foods, and the blender’s 7-year warranty insured our investment. It’s tall, at 20.25 inches, so it can’t be stored on a counter beneath a standard 18-inch-tall cabinet, and its narrow jar made scraping out its contents a minor challenge.
A Blender Bonanza
In this guide, you’ll find all of our favorite blenders, along with a few tools that make blending tasks easier and more efficient.
Blenders are essential for lots of everyday kitchen tasks. They’re great for whipping up soups, quick sauces, and dressings. I use mine often for pureeing smoothies, especially on hot summer days. Our team has recommended the Vitamix 5200 for years. This commercial-turned-consumer luxury item is a top-notch blender, but is it the best model for every person? To find out, we recently assessed several other blenders and have updated our high-end blender review. We’ve also tested blenders for other budgets. We found an excellent midpriced blender and a favorite that comes in at less than $100.
—Carolyn Grillo, Senior Editor, ATK Reviews
This blender aced most of the tests, blending almond butter and hummus to smooth, even pastes and making creamy mayonnaise. It’s more expensive than our winner but offers additional user-friendly features, including a built-in timer that activates when you start blending, so you don’t need an additional timer when following a recipe. Because its jar is fairly wide, it makes slightly more aerated smoothies, though we still found these to be more than acceptable.
This new blender from Breville improves upon its predecessor in a few key ways. It’s more powerful, so it can get smoothies and almond butter even smoother, and it has a dedicated “green smoothie” button that completely blends fibrous ingredients into a silky smooth drink. It’s reasonably quiet and reasonably compact, and combined its ingredients efficiently with minimal pauses to scrape down the sides. Like the previous model, it still automatically stops every 60 seconds, which can be a little annoying during longer blends, but this wasn’t that big of an issue. Its timer makes tracking recipe stages very easy.
Tall and lightweight, with a generous 8-cup capacity, a comfortable handle, and very basic controls (Low, Medium, High, and Pulse), this powerful blender aced every challenge except for mayonnaise, where its low speed was simply too fast. It was a bit noisy, but it got the job done.
Solidly built, with a glass jar, this blender performed acceptably across the board, but it took time and effort because we had to stop and scrape to get results—it wasn’t hands-off. Its lowest speed was almost too fast to make mayonnaise, but it did manage. It was powerful enough to grind nut butter with a bit of effort on our part. The controls were slightly complicated but manageable.
Available for purchase at: www.blackanddeckerappliances.com
The Instant Pot Ace blender made great smoothies, crushed ice, mayonnaise, and almond milk. It wasn’t powerful enough to make almond butter, but we don’t consider that a deal breaker for a blender in this price range. The control panel is quite busy (sporting buttons for no less than three different kinds of milk, for example) but is easy enough to use. The glass jar is heavy and clumsy to wash because you can’t get the electronics on the bottom wet. The machine successfully cooked and blended raw ingredients into piping hot soup, something we’ve never seen from a blender before.
Thanks to its U-shaped pitchers and sharp, six-pronged blades that angle both up and down, this pricey model was among the quickest and most effective at every blending task—which compensated for the fact that users must continuously hold down the pitcher to engage the motor. Its travel lid was well designed, with a comfortable drinking spout and a hinged arm that seals tight with an audible snap. One defect: It’s as noisy as it is powerful.
Our favorite blender capably turned out smooth margaritas and smoothies and creamy salad dressing. Like those of the other models in our lineup, its narrow cup opening was difficult to fill, but we appreciated that it came with a small silicone funnel to help. We also liked that this blender was easy to turn on and off with one click of a button. It withstood being placed in a duffel bag and dropped five times onto concrete. It did begin to leak on the 45th smoothie, but that was a lot to ask of a machine likely intended for simpler tasks, such as making one smoothie a day or a few batches of frozen drinks at the beach.
We’ve recommended this model for more than a decade, and it’s easy to see why. Its lightweight construction and comfortable grip made it a breeze to maneuver around any vessel. Its ventless, bell-shaped blade guard kept food flowing freely and prevented splattering. Its two speeds, which were both powerful enough to pulverize frozen pineapple, are controlled by two simple buttons that we could operate with one hand. This machine was also durable: It blended 25 smoothies in a row without breaking a sweat. We also liked its clearly labeled, easy-to-operate eject buttons. This reliable model would be a great addition to your kitchen.
The unbeatable traditional version of the Pyrex Liquid Measuring Cup is back on the market.
This model is firm enough for scraping and scooping but also fit neatly into tight corners. Its straight sides and wide, flat blade ensured that no food was left unmixed. The all-silicone design eliminates any crannies that could trap food. It felt exceptionally comfortable. Its smaller blade fell short in our folding test.
This model can feel oversized, but the long handle offers good leverage in deep bowls and pots. The large, flat blade makes quick work of folding whipped egg whites, which would suffer from too much agitation. You may not use it every day, but it can’t be beat for certain tasks. It lost points for staining, but it eventually did come clean.
This straw set came with two 8-inch-long and two 10.5-inch-long straws. Both were very comfortable to drink from, thanks to their 3-inch-long silicone tips. Because the silicone tips were detachable, both the straws and the tips were easy to clean. The 8-inch straw fit comfortably in a glass, a to-go cup, and a travel mug and came with an effective cleaning brush that had plentiful bristles and a grippy handle. These sturdy straws did not dent when we placed a weight on them for an hour and ably punched through the lid of a plastic to-go cup. The 10.5-inch-long straw is ideal for to-go cups and tumblers larger than 16 ounces. The downside is that this set did not come with a carrying case (OXO said it plans to release a set with one later this year); however, we felt that its performance, easy cleanup, and durability outweighed this drawback.