Whether you need a post-workout protein shake or a frozen margarita for an evening with friends, the best blender can do it all.
I've been a product tester for my entire career and I've assembled this guide to the best blenders after years of hands-on testing. I'll pit each blender against another to find the very best of the top brands, with rundowns on Ninja, NutriBullet, Vitamix, and KitchenAid.
Our testing process covered more than an easy summer berry smoothie; we blended tough, fibrous kale, hard root vegetables, and the ever-tricky protein powder. That's before you get into our much more challenging tests. We've used these blenders to make frozen sorbets, crush ice, make piping hot soup, mix fresh dips, rustic nut butters, and even tried them to make homemade butter.
When we're selecting the best, we look for a number of qualities. Of course, these blenders need to perform like professional models, but they need to offer much more. The best blenders are straightforward to use, easy to clean, and nice to look at (or at least small enough to store away, especially if it's being considered as one of the best portable blenders). If it has extra functions we'll judge whether these are worth the splurge as well as useful enough to warrant investing in.
There's a lot to weigh up, but I've selected the powerful, versatile Vitamix A3500 as my top pick this year. I've organized the rest into a simple list of the best blenders, all tested and respected by our expert team.
The Quick List
If you haven't got time for all the detail, these are the best blenders on the market. We go into more specifics further down.
With five presets and the ability to make soup as well as smoothies, this was a fast favorite. It has over ten speeds and is universally beloved. It comes with a hefty price tag though.
Ready for on-the-go drinks as well as smoothies for two, we found the NutriBullet easy to use. The shape means it's more of a smoothie specialist, rather than a substitute food processor.
This blender is great in its own right, but it also has a huge 68oz capacity and easy pre-sets, so that all the family can get good use out of it. It's big though – too big for countertop cupboards.
This sleek smoothie expert can handle any fruit or vegetables you choose to add to your shake. It's a good-looking appliance, but better suited if you have plenty of countertop space.
The stainless steel Smeg blender is the sleekest, best-looking product on the market – but it's not just a pretty face. The professional controls can whip up smoothies, dips, and crush ice effortlessly. Plus, the vacuum pump keeps blends fresher for longer. Very luxurious.
If you want your blender to do it all, this is the one. It comes with a 72 oz pitcher, 64 oz food processor bowl, and smaller, single-serve cups too. It takes up a lot of space though.
If you want a little blender for mixing protein shakes while on the go, this is the best option. It's no countertop blender and might outsize some handbags, but our experts loved it.
If you're a fan of early-morning smoothies, you might prefer a quiet blender to avoid waking up the entire household. The BlendJet2 also happens to be portable and cordless, so it's a great option for the office, too.
The best blenders 2024
You can trust Homes & Gardens. Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing the latest products, helping you choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.
Best blender overall
The Vitamix's reputation precedes it. The A3500 Ascent Series is the brand's star appliance, which can make everything from silky smoothies and protein shakes to incredible ice cones, soups, and more. Did we test every function? Yes. Did we love every function? Yes. Is it worth the price? Possibly.
The Vitamix comes with five useful presets as well as a manual dial, which offers ten different (noisy) speeds. Our experts thought this was just about as high-tech as you'd want your blender to be. Vitamix has covered simple features, such as a lift-away pitcher which is suited to right- and left-handed users as well as the more technical settings that a seasoned smoothie drinker might demand.
Our experts couldn't find a trace of fruit skins, seeds, or stems in our smoothie tests. Plus, when we used it to cook – I repeat cook – tomato soups and sauces, we found they were piping hot and super smooth within ten minutes. You should be aware that it can't cook firmer ingredients like potato or carrot, but it's still a suitable substitute for the best immersion blenders.
We put the Vitamix through our tests on dips and ice cones and it whizzed everything up effortlessly. We were left speechless. The Vitamix really can do it all. To prove it, they give you an excellent recipe book and a quick start guide, so that you can get to work instantly.
We took our time deliberating over whether this was worth the $700 price tag. That's a lot of money for a blender that can't even go in the dishwasher (you have to use the self-clean mode). Our conclusion was this: if blending quality is your only concern, you can't do better than the A3500 Series. This made the best soups, smoothies, and dips of our tests and it remains unbeaten two years later.
Our full Vitamix A3500 Ascent Series Smart Blender review has more details
Best bullet blender
Available in a range of colors and with various attachments for drinking on the go or around the house, the NutriBullet Pro 900 Series Blender is perfect for smaller, individual servings. When we tested this on smoothies and shakes, we were impressed. There wasn't a seed or fiber left unblended, even tough kale and protein power was totally pulverized.
Whilst all bullet blenders are generally straightforward, our experts loved how especially easy this is to operate. All we had to do was twist on the lid and lock it into place on the blending base to start it. Once finished, the blender comes with a screw-on handle and lids for sipping, which saves you any excess washing up. When we were cleaning up, we found that the blades weren't dishwasher safe. They're easy enough to rinse under the tap, but it's nevertheless worth noting.
For the price, this is a perfect option for smoothies. However, this blender is limited to single-servings. The more you fill it, the more the bullet shape becomes limiting. What's more, it only has a single speed, so if you want to get creative with a recipe you might be a little stuck. We also found that when we tried it on sauces and dips like hummus it left a little to be desired. We won't mention the ice tests either (this struggled, a lot).
Our full NutriBullet Pro 900 Series Blender review has more details
Best large blender
The Breville Super Q has a pretty huge capacity; 68oz means you can make vast quantities of drinks. It's great for making smoothies for the whole family for breakfast or preparing vegetables for a whole course of soup.
That's because the big capacity is married with a 1800W motor, making this one of the most powerful blenders we've ever tested. On test, we found that it can power through tough ingredients like kale and frozen fruit with ease. It particularly stood out for its performance when crushing ice, misting several ice cubes into a fine white powder which is great for slushies and frozen margaritas.
Even better, this blender has easy, simple settings. There are 12 manual settings if you want control, but our experts loved making use of the dedicated settings for green smoothies, smoothies, soup, ice, and frozen desserts. We pressed a button and felt comfortable leaving the blender to its own devices.
This sounds like the luxury blender experience because it is. However, with premium features comes a premium price tag. Like the Vitamix, it's a serious investment. However, we thought a busy family who wants a versatile blender could just about justify this.
Another drawback is the size. The family-sized capacity comes with quite a footprint. It's 18 inches tall, which means it won't fit under or sit flush with kitchen cabinets. It's fine if you have a kitchen island, but storage might be tough. I also found that the lid is pretty stiff, so if you have motor issues like arthritis you might find it hard to open.
All the details are in my Breville Super Q review.
Best blender for smoothies
This powerful blender is our favorite for smoothies. There's almost no fruit or vegetable you can't throw at this appliance. It is easily powered through kale and spinach, which can be tough for some blenders. Even with minimal liquid added, it turned frozen fruits into delicious smoothies without any trace of skin or seeds. This translated into some excellent dips. When making hummus, we could blend through chickpea skins and garlic, even without much liquid. We didn't find any lumps, seeds, or tough skins. Trust us, we were looking for them.
Our experts were pleased to find that this was also great for making soup. The pitcher is heatproof, so we whizzed up leeks and potatoes into a delicious soup. In fact, while it's not a function advertised on the Zwilling website, some users found that running it for around five minutes creates enough heat to warm up and even cook vegetables for soup. However, that means you should be careful you don't overuse it when making colder drinks. We didn't have any problems in our tests, because we used the pusher insert when ingredients needed a helping hand to get close to the blades.
The pulse function is best reserved for ice-crushing. It arguably did the best job of all the blenders on this list, impressing our experts with the results. However, if you want to use the pulse function to give your mixes a final blast, you have to approximate it, because it's the same as the ice-crushing function.
It's also pretty bulky to store, and while it's not a problem we experienced, other users found that dishwashing can make this blender a little dirty because water can get into the handle and can't get out.
Our full Zwilling Enfinigy Countertop Power Blender review has more details
Best blender and food processor
The Ninja Professional Plus Kitchen System with Auto-IQ truly does it all. As well as the enormous 72 oz. pitcher, you get a 64 oz. food processor bowl (this has chopping and dough attachments) and two 24 oz. blending cups for single-serve drinks to take away.
Even though that 72 oz. pitcher is actually larger than the blender we recommend for families, it wasn't as good. Our experts made some delicious smoothies and soups, even when we added kale and protein powder. However, we could detect some residue from the leaves and seeds, which we didn't find in the other models on this list. Although, it's worth noting that this is an ice expert, crushing ice into a powder completely effortlessly.
Where the Ninja really excels in the food processor functions. It did a great job chopping zucchini, celery, and carrots, and an incredibly fast, if imperfect, job at shredding cheese. We used both the blending and food processing functions to make dips and actually preferred the food processor. The blender was good on guacamole, but the different heights of blades on the food processor attachment gave a much smoother blend of hummus in particular. Beyond the Auto-IQ programs, there are Low, Medium, High, and Pulse settings which our experts liked using when they wanted more control too.
Our biggest gripe was that this is really hard to store because the attachments are big. While it's great that there are a lot of them, it can be hard to find space. More importantly, the lids on the attachments don't close unless they're on the blender motor, so they're also an awkward shape to stow away. It can be tricky to wash the blender pitcher by hand, too, because you can't remove the blades, and it is pretty noisy.
Our Ninja Professional Plus Kitchen System with Auto-IQ review has more details
Best stylish blender
If you're looking for a beautiful blender that looks great in your kitchen, but doesn't compromise on functionality, the Smeg Professional Blender is a dream come true.
The sleek, stainless steel model is on the expensive side, but it's a joy to use and boasts some of the most impressive performances on the market. You can whip up smooth, velvety hummus in just 20 seconds (the space-age LCD screen will time it for you), and whizz onion into nothing for the creamiest guacamole.
There’s a special smoothie function you can select and click using the effortless, minimalist controls. It’s a little noisy (making on average 82 dBA of noise) but the results of my smoothie bowl were flawless. There were no seeds from the berries, no traces of spinach, and no ice crystals.
I kept the rest of my smoothie in the refrigerator, using the innovative vacuum pump to keep it fresher for longer. Although it did start to discolor after a few days, I was happy to drink a bright purple smoothie at breakfast for most of the week. A real time-saver.
Our Smeg Professional Blender Review has more details
Best portable blender
This portable blender has unseated the Cuisinart Evolution X and BlendJet 2 as my favorite portable blender. It has a bigger capacity and more power than both, but still packs it into a small package.
Our expert tester Alex used it in our test center and in his home for a month and really liked its performance. It's great at mixing in powders like protein and creatine and makes very smooth protein shakes. It's surprisingly great at processing leafy greens like spinach, and incredibly good at crushing ice for such a small blender.
It's very straightforward to use, with a handy system of colored lights around the power button to let you know when the blender is ready to go, or if there's been a clog or it's running on low power. We also found it easy to clean – you just add a little dish soap into the blender with water and start the blender, and it does a remarkably good job cleaning the body. It comes with a blade cap for safety when you're not using the main body, and a screw-on bottom so you can take shakes on the go, which passed our commute test.
However, it's definitely not perfect, and after using it for a month Alex noticed that lumps of bigger fruits like frozen strawberries were sometimes unblended. It also can't blend seeds like some of the blenders on this list, so blackcurrant seeds always show up in a mixed berry smoothie. When we tested it on dips, it made a serviceable hummus, but other blenders are much better. While it's surprisingly compact for an 18oz pitcher and blender motor, it's definitely more of a backpack blender than a handbag blender.
There's more information in our Ninja Blast review.
Best quiet blender
Although the Ninja is our favorite portable blender, its rival the BlendJet 2 is the quietest blender we've ever tested. BlendJet markets it as ‘whisper quiet’, and whilst it’s not silent, it’s certainly much quieter than many other blenders on the market. Reviewers compared the noise levels to a normal conversation (64 decibels), and we found the same on test.
Our tester Millie was pleased with the results of her smoothie-making. She found that it was surprisingly powerful across a range of tough and frozen ingredients, especially considering this is a cordless option. It did struggle a little with tough frozen fruits and blueberry skins, but nothing too drastic.
As far as portable blenders go, this is great for its size. Portable blenders are a great option for low-noise levels, but they aren't the most powerful. As it is a cordless model, it isn’t as powerful as countertop appliances and you will have to recharge it.
Read more in our Blend Jet2 review.