Best blenders in 2024: Reviewed by appliance experts

Whether you're furnishing your first kitchen or looking for an upgrade to your existing model, choosing the best blender for your home will be the gift that keeps on giving. Once large, noisy and surprisingly sensitive, modern blenders are immensely powerful and capable of blitzing ice, turning frozen fruit to tasty sorbet, or even milling a bowl of nuts down to delicious homemade nut butter.

Regardless of price, blenders are now more powerful as manufacturers know their products need to be able to do a lot more to compete with the market-leading brands such as Ninja and Vitamix. If you can afford to upgrade to a premium appliance, I'd recommend you invest in the Breville The Super Q Blender, which is super-smart and packs a lot of power in an attractive design. Alternatively, the Nutribullet Pro 900W is a simple but incredibly effective blender for small homes or those on a budget.

We tested a range of full-size blenders to find those that stand out from the crowd. We assessed the overall performance by blending a selection of recipes which varied in consistency and difficulty. Tests included oat milk, hummus, ice, and a fruit and veg-based smoothie. Some of the options we tested came with extra features such as food processors attachments, so we also tested these add-ons when evaluating. We recorded the noise in the process and took the design and ease of use into consideration too. Finally, countless smoothies later, we collated our results to find the winners. These are the best blenders.

The quick list

Here’s the best blenders you can buy right now based on our testing and reviews. Scroll on for our full in-depth reviews.

The best blenders you can buy

The Breville Super Q Blender is aimed at home chefs looking for a commercial grade performance, and it certainly delivers as a multi-purpose machine ready for a wide variety of recipes. Equipped with twelve speed settings paired with a 1,800-watt motor, the Super Q whipped chickpeas into hummus similar to what you might buy at the market. It continued to impress in other tests too, crushing ice cubes into fluffy snow in a minute and turning rolled oats and water into sweet creamy non-dairy milk with ease. The vortex effect it creates also resulted in very tasty fruit, vegetable and protein powder smoothies.

The size and weight of this blender warrants a permanent space in the kitchen, but its hefty dimensions also means you’ll never worry about it tipping over or shuffling about like cheaper, lighter models. Cleaning is easy with a programmed 1-minute clean cycle. The wide-mouthed large 68-ounce BPA-free jug and blade arrangement also reduces the chances of cutting yourself if you need to reach in to clean any remaining lodged ingredients.

The built-in blade assembly eliminates the task of taking apart and then reassembling all of the components. As you would expect the Breville comes at a premium price, but your investment is protected with an exceptionally long ten-year warranty. That’s why it’s the best blender overall.

Read our full Breville Super Q Blender review.

Best personal

Nutribullet revolutionized the blender market with its personal blenders, but while the Pro 900 is one of the less recent launches from Nutribullet, it still continues to be one of the all-time greats. Although it's technically described as a single-serve blender, this option has a 32-oz cup that is ideal for making a drink for two. It's also got a range of lids which will allow you to pre-make and store smoothies and shakes, or take them to go.

The Nutribullet Pro 900W has one control only, which simply requires you to press down and twist your blending cup into place to commence blitzing. This can make pulsing tricky, and it also means the blender won't stop blending automatically after a certain amount of time, like many of the premium picks in this guide. However, it does a great job of pulverizing fruits and ice to make speedy drinks, and it's ideal for those who need a blender for health or fitness purposes, as it's perfect for making protein shakes and green drinks.

In testing we found that this blender is extra noisy at 92dB, and while the brand doesn't recommend you blend dry ingredients, we had some good results with our dry food tests to make the biscuit base for a cheesecake.

Read our full Nutribullet Pro 900W review

Best budget

Pressing the Ninja’s pre-programmed smoothie button unleashes a sharp and sudden calamity, initially in a span of intermittent stop-go action, before it unleashes all 1,400-watts of power into one last 10-second burst. Fortunately all of that dramatic fury produces smoothies reminiscent of a lip smackingly good thick and frothy milkshake. During our tests, we found it was equally adept at milling grains down to fine powder, and also transforming rolled oats and water into a full-bodied and thick oat milk.

A thoughtfully designed pour spout keeps pours precise, with a small flap to keep contents fresh-tasting between servings. The thick, rubberized pitcher grip running from top to bottom improves ergonomics and the turn-to-lock mechanism attaching the jar to the base offers confidence the blender is secure and ready for its next batch. There’s no dedicated clean cycle, but running the Ninja at its highest setting with a dollop of liquid soap and warm water is sufficient to remove all hints of ingredients.

The stacked blade assembly requires a little extra care while cleaning, as it has a tendency to slide out. And despite its name, the Ninja can be eardrum-piercing loud rather than stealthy, especially when breaking down ice. However, you’re paying a great price for a great performance, which is why it’s one of the best blenders.

Rear our full Ninja Professional Plus Blender review

Best for smoothies

If smoothies are your thing, then the Blendtec Total Blender Classic is the best blender for you. The Blendtec’s upturned helicopter blade configuration is exceptionally proficient at chopping down frozen berries, bananas, protein powder and ice downward into a vortex, completely incorporating ingredients into deliciously smooth-textured concoctions that had us scraping the jar for more. The 1,560-watt motor is powerful, capable of mixing chickpeas with olive oil into satisfyingly creamy hummus in under a minute.

The design is a bit utilitarian, but very stable and yet lightweight enough to pick up and move around without a struggle. The inclusion of 10-speed controls with pulse mode as well as six programmed settings for mixing batters, whipping up hot soup, blending whole juice, making ice cream, and crushing ice means you’ll never be left wanting for options. The illuminated LCD timer display is also bright and easy to read from a distance.

The Total Blender Classic only falters when crushing ice, prone to leave a few chunks and shards in the bottom corners of its ample plastic pitcher. These irregularities can sometimes be found hidden amongst the otherwise powdery soft snow.

Read our full Blendtec Total Blender Classic review

Best smart

Vitamix is the brand synonymous with serious blenders for serious cooks, and the A3500 excels at almost any recipe you toss into its large 65 oz/6-cup container. With its four-blade design – two flat, two angled – it can produce creamy smoothies with satisfying mouthfeel in less than a minute, or crushed ice so consistent in shape you might mistake it for soda machine made. It struggled when blending oat milk however; producing a milk-like texture that was affected by a noticeable amount of fine chalkiness per sip.

The five pre-programmed controls are touchscreen-style, complemented with a tactile variable speed dial, allowing for precise control. Vitamix throws in a large plastic tamper to help keep things moving along when ingredients need a nudge in the right direction. This Vitamix model also connects wirelessly to the Perfect Blend app via Bluetooth for iOS, iPadOS and Android, unlocking seventeen preset programs, 500+ step-by-step recipe instructions, and nutritional information.

Cleaning the A3500 pitcher jar after preparing smoothies usually requires only a quick 10-second rinse. An auto clean mode uses a pulse-to-full speed cadence to effectively dislodge stubborn ingredients from nooks and crannies, pushing soapy water from top to bottom, leaving the container completely clean after. Vitamix’s premium reputation and price are matched by an impressive ten-year warranty.

Read our full Vitamix Ascent Series A3500 review

Best hybrid

If smoothies, juices, slushies and cocktails play prominently in your daily diet, the Breville 3x Bluicer is a great space-saving blender juicer in one. Five aggressively angled blades sit above a contoured curved bowl perpetually scooping up ingredients to prevent them from getting stuck at the bottom. It shreds even the most fibrous greens into pleasingly digestible juice and disintegrates frozen fruits into a soft pour after just 45-seconds. With the add-on juicing chute accessory installed, the gaping 3.5 inch opening up top allows for fresh produce as large as small apples to be dropped in whole.

Of the four onetouch program buttons, two are dedicated to smoothies; one for dairy-based drinks and the other for green smoothies, with five additional speed buttons underneath, with “1” set for incorporating delicate ingredients in a folding motion, all the way to “5”, the fastest speed and best for whipping up sauces and emulsifying salad dressings. The latter demands a bit of extra oomph to break down fibrous greens into a palatable concoction. A small control dial gives users an additional way to fine tune control across the blender’s 12-speed range. Sharing the same sleek stainless steel design as the Breville Super Q, the 3X Bluicer looks great on any countertop and is easy to clean. Add a splash of liquid soap and warm water and the 1-minute intermittent pulsing auto clean mode does all the rest. That’s why it makes the list as one of the best blenders.

Best under $100

For under $100, this powerful family-sized blender is a steal. The Nutribullet Smart Touch has a whopping 1500W power, meaning it can make easy work of blending frozen ingredients for smoothies. And with the 62 fluid ounce pitcher capacity, you’ll be able to make smoothies for the whole family.

There are four presets: puree, soup, smoothie, and frozen drink. Each has a set time and power level, but if you want to go rogue, you can manually select your desired power and keep blending until you’re happy with the consistency. You can make nut milk in ten seconds with this powerful thing. The Smart Touch also made light work of smoothies and managed to make almond butter with only a little protest.

With a price like this, you’ll be sacrificing some things. The Smart Touch is incredibly loud — it topped out at 102 dB while blending ice — and incredibly bulky. But if you’ve got the ear protection and the space, you need only part with $99 for an amazingly powerful blender.

Read our full Nutribullet Smart Touch blender review

Best for frozen ingredients

The latest blender release from retro-style brand SMEG is surprisingly sleek and high-tech. Its 9 speed settings and 5 one touch programs are accessed by a smart dial, and it also comes with a vacuum pump. The pump serves to improve the performance of your blender and also keep drinks fresher for longer.

We were impressed how well this blender processed frozen produce, leaving smoothie bowls seed-free and silky in texture. However, a few of the smoothie recipes we tested needed re-blending to ensure nuts and frozen berries were processed entirely. The blender performed very well when it came to blitzing ice, leaving 5oz of ice in a powdery, even texture after just 20 seconds.

Noise levels topped at 98dB when blitzing ice, but this was by far the noisiest setting we tested. When trying Auto Mode, the noise came to 90dB at level 9, the most powerful setting. We also found that the blades on this blender got quite hot when we attempted to make nut butter, leaving our finished paste at 150F after blending for a few minutes. This did come in helpful when making soup though, as we were able to both blitz and cook our leek soup at the same time.

Read our full Smeg Professional Blender review

Best for small batches

Just because the Vitamix E310 is the brand’s entry level model doesn’t mean it’s lacking in features and performance. In fact, for most people we’d recommend it over higher priced Vitamix models because it blends everything nearly as well, and the smaller capacity is easier to handle and clean. Yes, you give up programmed buttons and will have to solely rely upon its 10-speed dial control, but it produces splendidly frothy, rich smoothies without any remaining bits or chalky texture with only a little experimentation.

The motor is both fast and durable enough to create friction at speeds for hot soups that literally steam upon opening the lid, something Vitamix blenders are famous for. But all that power also resulted in the loudest decibel recorded during testing, and it also disappointed while crushing ice, leaving large untouched pieces amongst powdery snow. The E310 also comes with its own small-sized tamper to help push ingredients into the maws of its 2.0 HP powered cutting blades.

If you work from a smaller kitchen, this is the best blender for you. You’ll appreciate the greater chance you can slide this blender under overhead kitchen cabinets. And years of blending are guaranteed with a 5-year warranty.

Best quality

The brushed stainless steel finish, chunky red dial and squared-off stance all give the Wolf High-Performance Blender the appearance of a professional-grade kitchen appliance. Weighing nearly 16-lbs, it’s best thought of as a “set it and forget it” appliance that’s also never going to shuffle or shake uncontrollably under normal circumstances.

And that heft is put to good use when the blender’s 2.4 peak HP motor blasts its blades to speeds normally associated with Ferraris (210mph, to be exact). Press the smoothie preset and it starts off the line slowly with a 15-second intermittent slow-then-go pulse before going all out for forty seconds at an impressive clip, obliterating rock hard frozen strawberries and liquifying frozen bananas into a drinkable consistency. Where the Wolf only does marginally well is while crushing ice. The one-minute ice crush function does a fine job of agitating ice and initially appears to break up ice into a fine even consistency. Upon inspection we found a good percentage of the ice was left untouched with other pieces merged into larger cubes.

Still worse, the flatter blade arrangement of the Wolf blender produced some of the most unpalatable hummus in our testing, an unpalatable paste reminiscent of wall spackling. So this isn’t the one to buy if you plan to make dips.

However, the Wolf especially shined when it was time to clean up, which is why it’s one of the best blenders. After running at its highest speed with a squirt of dishwashing detergent and warm water, only the most upper reaches of the jar lid retained the barest amount of residue that washed off in just a second under the tap. An especially clever feature is hidden in the cap design: the top pops off to reveal a spouted funnel to pour liquids slowly and safely while emulsifying ingredients.

How we tested

Blenders are often marketed as multi-purpose kitchen appliances, and many are equipped to make sauces, emulsify salad dressings, juice green vegetables and fruits, whip up hot soups and a myriad of other recipes, with dedicated program buttons reflecting the jack-of-all-trades function of modern models.

Even so, most people will probably dedicate blenders for combining fruits and vegetables with protein powder for a morning smoothie, or crush ice into refreshing drinks and cocktails, or maybe even for the occasional batch of homemade oat or nut milk. Thus we tested each blender in a battery of tests best suited for a blender versus a food processor or mixer.

We measured decibel readings with a digital sound level meter, crushed 2-cups of ice, inspecting consistency, whipped up smoothies made with frozen strawberries, blueberries, banana, protein powder and oat milk, compared homemade hummus made from canned chickpeas, tahini, garlic, olive oil and seasoning, and also combined sprouted rolled oats with water for a simple dairy-free oat milk.

Each recipe was scored for taste and texture. Ease of clean-up, ergonomics and build quality were also factored in before tallying a final score for ranking.

Tested by

Tested by

Millie Fender

Millie has been testing the best blenders for five years. Previously specializing in kitchen appliances at Tom's Guide's sister site Homes&Gardens, she's blended thousands of blueberries and sampled dozens of dips to compare and contrast the very best blenders on the market.

Tested by

Tested by

Erin Bashford

Erin works on Tom's Guide's reviews team, testing all the latest kitchen gadgets for our buying guides. She tested both of the Nutribullet blenders featured in this guide, and has been using her own Nutribullet 900 long before joining the team.

Tested by

Tested by

Cassandra Brooklyn

Cassandra tested the majority of the blenders in this guide, meaning she was able to compare and contrast across a range of uniform recipes to detect the pros and cons of each machine. She even measured their sound levels using a sound meter for some expert insights.

How to choose

When shopping for a new blender, you'll want to take several factors into account, from the type of blender and specific features you need to the size of the blender and the counterspace you have available.

First though, you need to make sure you're buying the right appliance. If you're looking to chop, slice and dice solid ingredients, you're going to want a food processor instead. If you want more details on the difference, check out our guide on food processor vs blender.

• All-Purpose/Conventional blenders are the most wallet-friendly. While they’ll easily handle milkshakes and smoothies, depending on blade design and wattage, they can leave drinks a little chunky.
  
• Premium/High-Performance blenders have better-quality parts and give super smooth results. They can turn raw vegetables into soup, ice and cream into frozen desserts, and nuts into  butter. Expect to pay anywhere from $200 to $700.
  
• Personal/Smoothie blenders are perfect for fruit smoothies, milkshakes and powdered drinks. The mixing container doubles as a travel jar, so they're excellent for athletes and commuters alike. They're also smaller (and less expensive) than conventional and premium blenders.
  
• Immersion/Stick/Handheld blenders are meant to be submerged directly into the food/drink you're preparing: soups, purees, foams, marinades and more. When you’re making gravy or a soup like vichyssoise, you can puree the ingredients right in the pot; you don’t have to transfer the ingredients into the blender jar in batches.

The nest question is how much space you need for the blender. If you've got a small kitchen, the wrong blender could end up costing you valuable countertop real estate. Although immersion blenders can be easily tucked into a drawer, and personal blenders tend to be fairly compact, a high-performance blender is much more unwieldy. Don't buy a large, heavy machine if you don't have the space — it will end up collecting dust in a corner somewhere.

Pro tip: Measure the vertical space between your countertop and cabinets before purchasing a full-size blender; ideally, it should be able to slide under the cabinet when not in use. Eighteen inches of clearance is enough room for most models.

Finally, you'll want to note the specific features offered by the blenders you're considering. Some things to look for are the included accessories, the overall construction of the blender and the speed and power options each blender offers.

Accessories: Some models come with food-processor attachments, coffee grinders and drinkable to-go containers. Pick a blender with accessories that fit your lifestyle.

Plastic or glass containers: Plastic containers are more likely to absorb odors and stain but they're lighter in weight and less likely to break if dropped than than ones made of glass. Whichever style you choose, just make sure it's easy to clean, with clearly marked measurements on the side. If you like to chuck everything in the dishwasher, check to see if it’s dishwasher safe.

Speeds: The more speed settings available, the more user control a blender offers. Premium blenders may also offer preprogrammed options for tasks like smoothies, crushing ice, and pureeing that take the guesswork out of blending. Make sure you take advantage of these settings, otherwise you're making one of the 7 blender mistakes to avoid at all costs.

Power: You’ll see a range from 300 to 1,000 watts of power for most blenders, but 500 watts is enough juice (so to speak) for most blending tasks. Keep in mind that other factors influence the blenders performance, so more wattage doesn’t necessarily translate to better results. However, power can affect what you can and can't blend, speaking of which check out 11 things you should never put in a blender.

Warranty: One year is good, but five is way better. The more expensive the blender, the more important it is to pick one that's backed by a solid warranty.

Blender FAQs