These are the best blenders in 2023, tested and reviewed
Blender testing isn’t just about making smoothies and crushing ice. There are many other recipes that blenders work well for, and these tests will show you how capable each model is when it comes to dry, large, and chunky ingredients.
Ice
In a test of pure crushing power, we placed two cups of ice cubes in each blender. Counting the number of pulses it takes to get fine, crushed ice gives a good indication of the true chopping power. The three blenders we recommended above performed well.
smoothie
A classic blender recipe, fruit smoothies were high on my list of recipes to test. This shouldn’t be a major stress test for a decent blender, so it really comes down to speed and consistency. We used two cups of orange juice and one cup of frozen strawberries to make the test smoothies.
While many of these tests produced very similar results, some ran faster than others. Not all blenders have presets, but those that do almost always have a smoothie function. If possible, this is the mode we used. If there was no smoothie function, we followed the blender manual’s recommendation for making smoothies, which was usually about a minute on high.
Smoothie testing starts with whole, frozen strawberries and orange juice.
This is a relatively simple test, and most blenders handled frozen ingredients well. Some were frothier and some slushier, but only the Black & Decker model left large chunks of frozen strawberry unblended.
Nut flour and butter
Blenders aren’t just for drinks. They have plenty of other uses, including grinding dry ingredients. For our dry ingredient test, we placed a cup of almond pieces (unroasted) in each blender and pulsed until the pieces were reduced to a fine meal. A bit of a challenge for some blenders, but most were able to do it in about 10 to 20 pulses, with the Hamilton Beach model producing noticeably coarser results.
Nut butter is a different story. Most blenders aren’t really designed for long run times and the level of processing needed to make butter like almond or peanut butter. In fact, many recommend not running the blender for more than a few minutes at a time.
This nut flour is a bit coarse.
Only one Vitamix model showed real signs of progress toward almond butter in our tests with the nut flour, and it plateaued before reaching a good consistency. Most models simply stirred the dry ingredients up and into the hard-to-clean crevices of their lids. If you’re dead set on making nut butter, we recommend a model like the Oster with an included processing kit, or a separate food processor.
Cheese
Did you know that blenders can shred cheese? It’s true; some blenders can. We put an 8-ounce block of cheese in each blender and pulsed until the entire block was shredded. This revealed some interesting design choices on some models. The Ninja, for example, lost the cheese round because multiple blade settings made it impossible to fit the cheese block in the blender. I had to cut it up.
Blenders can grate cheese, and this NutriBullet did it in record time: just four pulses.
Both Vitamix models struggled a bit with this particular test, drilling holes into the block of cheese without actually blending it, while simultaneously melting what little cheese was grated as the machine heated up. Meanwhile, the NutriBullet, Ninja, Instant Pot, Breville Super Q, and Hurom Hexa were able to grate the block of cheese in under five pulses.
Pancake batter
If you’ve seen our list of the best waffle makers , it won’t come as a surprise that pancake batter made an appearance in our blender test. While I was happy to fire up the griddle and flip some cakes, mixing batter is an important test. It measures how easy or difficult it is for the blender to combine wet and dry ingredients.
