The Best Blenders

The best blenders are easy to use and moderately powerful and can make everything from smoothies to nut butter. Our longtime favorite is the Vitamix 5200. It’s pricey but durable; it consistently outperforms any blender on the market, and we love its simple, intuitive, no-frills controls. We also think the Vitamix A2500 is a great option. It performs nearly as well as our top choice and has a few handy preset functions that some users may appreciate.

At about half the cost of our top choice, the Breville Fresh & Furious is our favorite midpriced option. It blends foods just a tad less finely than our favorite, but otherwise, it does a great job with every task and is easy to use.

Finally, if you just want an inexpensive blender that can make a decent smoothie, the NutriBullet Full Size Blender might be the right choice for you. It’s quite loud, and it can’t handle small batches of food such as mayonnaise, but it performed decently on most other tasks.

We’ve also reviewed immersion blenders, which are great for letting you blend foods like soup in the vessels you’ve used to cook them; personal blenders, which are essentially small-scale blenders that excel at making smoothies, milkshakes, or dressing for one or two people; and portable blenders, which are rechargeable models that let you make smoothies on the go. 

What You Need to Know

A good blender makes it easy to whip up smoothies, milkshakes, frozen drinks, sauces, dips, dressings, and even nut butters with the push of a button. We’ve tested dozens of models over the last three decades, from the least to the most expensive and in every size, in order to find the best blenders on the market. Here’s what we’ve learned.

What Size Blender Should I Get?

Most blenders have a capacity of 8 cups, but we’ve found that blenders that hold slightly less, down to 6 cups, can still accommodate pretty much any recipe. Blenders that hold less than 6 cups aren’t necessarily bad; you might just need a few more batches to puree or liquefy a full recipe’s worth of soup or to make margaritas for a crowd. Because they’re smaller, they often cost less and can be useful if you’re on a budget, have limited storage space, or only make recipes intended for one or two people. 

Are Expensive Blenders Worth the Money?

Yes, for the most part. 

While blenders at every price point can have flaws, in our experience, blenders that cost less than $100 are more likely to have functional limitations. We have yet to find a lower-priced blender that can do every job we expect of a top-notch blender—one might be able to make a decent smoothie, for example, but fail to make mayonnaise or crush ice e... read more