The Breville Super Q is a performance blender that’s packed with lots of bells and whistles. In our tests, with its squat jar and powerful motor, the Super Q performed a lot like the Blendtec Designer 675, throwing smoothie up the sides and into the lid. At one point, the Breville shot bits of a smoothie in my face when I opened the cap to add more liquid. The Super Q pulverizes tough foods, but the Vitamix also does that for less money—and with less drama inside the jar. The Super Q also generated a lot of heat when we made peanut butter—so much that we had to stop the test early when we noticed steam coming out of the jar. Although the Super Q blended the silkiest piña coladas and came with lots of extra goodies (a 68-ounce jar, a personal blending jar, preset blending programs, and a vacuum attachment that’s supposed to slow the oxidation of raw foods), we don’t think it’s worth the $100-plus over the Vitamix’s price, especially since most of those goodies would just clutter your cabinets.
The KitchenAid K400 blender performed slightly better than the KitchenAid 5-Speed Diamond (our budget pick), but not enough to warrant its $150-plus price jump. And the K400 wasn’t nearly as good at blending fibrous kale as the less expensive Oster and Cleanblend blenders.
The Instant Pot Ace 60 Cooking Blender is unique among the blenders we tested in that it has a heating element in its base, so it can both cook and puree foods (some high-powered blenders also claim to heat soup, but they do so only with friction). Although it’s a nifty feature, as we watched squash soup gently burp and bubble inside the blender’s glass jar, the Ace reminded us of a lava lamp: novel but impractical. After performing extensive testing, we don’t think the Ace is better than any of our picks.
The Ace works well at some basic tasks: It whipped up smooth peanut butter and did a slightly better job of pulverizing tough kale leaves, ice cubes, and chewy dates than our former budget pick, the KitchenAid 5-Speed Classic Blender. But the Ace is huge and loud compared with the KitchenAid, and it doesn’t offer as much control. And though we like that the Ace comes with a tamper, its glass jar is heavier and less durable than the Tritan plastic jars of our picks. The jar’s wide base also makes creating mayonnaise impossible and makes it difficult for the Ace to form a powerful vortex (instead flinging ingredients all over the jar).
As for the Ace’s cooking abilities, we were able to make a satisfying broccoli cheese soup and a smooth butternut squash soup from raw ingredients, but we had to blend for longer than the programmed setting to get a creamy texture. And we were disappointed that we couldn’t adjust the temperature or sauté in the machine, since the heating element doesn’t start if it doesn’t detect liquid in the jar. As such, the Ace doesn’t produce the same nuanced flavors that you’d get if you were to start with a little caramelization. The heating element also introduces another possible point of failure into a type of appliance that is already prone to burning out.
Compared with our top pick, the Vitamix 5200, the Vitamix 5300 has the same 64-ounce capacity and speed-control dial, but it lacks the ultra-high-speed switch available on the 5200. It has a slightly higher peak horsepower, but any extra power is negated by the shape of the jar. In testing, we found that the 5300’s squatter jar didn’t maintain a vortex as well as the 5200’s narrow, tapered one. Also, for smaller volumes—2 cups or less—the 5300’s tamper didn’t reach down quite far enough to burst air pockets. We had to add more liquid to thicker mixtures, such as date puree and hummus, because the tamper wasn’t cutting it.
The Vitamix Explorian E320, available at Costco, is 99 percent identical to the 5300. A Vitamix customer service representative told us that the two blenders have the same motor base, jar, tamper, and functionality. The main difference between the blenders is that the 5300 has a small on/off switch located just below the control panel. On top of that, the E320 is available only as part of a package with two personal cups and an adapter.
Vitamix added the Explorian Series E310 variable-speed blender to its lineup in 2017. We chose not to test this model because we don’t think it’s a good value. Although it’s typically three-quarters the price of the Vitamix 5200, the cost difference is directly proportional to the E310’s smaller blending jar (48 ounces versus 64 ounces) and shorter warranty (five versus seven years). On the E310, Vitamix also replaced the switch that flips the machine from variable speed to high power with a pulse switch, thus eliminating the option for one-touch high-power blending. If you have limited storage space in your kitchen, you might like the E310 for its shorter height (about 17 inches tall, compared with the Vitamix 5200, which is about 20 inches tall). But if you’re going to shell out the cash for a Vitamix blender, we still think spending a little more on the 5200 is the best choice.
The Ninja Chef 1,500-watt blender is the first high-performance model from this company that doesn’t have sets of blades throughout the jar. Instead, the Ninja Chef’s blades sit in the base of the jar, as in normal blenders. This model also performed better than its predecessors. But it’s extremely loud, and our top picks—the Vitamix, the Oster, and the Cleanblend—still blended silkier smoothies in our tests.
The 1,800-watt Hamilton Beach Professional Blender performed well in our tests. When we used the manual speeds, the blender’s digital readout showed a countdown timer, which was helpful because the instruction manual advises against continuously running the motor for more than two minutes. But the preprogrammed settings didn’t effectively keep the mixture moving when air pockets occurred. In addition, the on/off buttons are angled upward at the top of the base and thus susceptible to food and grime buildup over time.
The KitchenAid Pro Line Series Blender is expensive, and it’s also the heaviest blender we’ve tested (22 pounds). It blended silky-smooth textures, though not quite as easily as the Vitamix 5200, and it also didn’t do well at emulsification. Its performance intrigued us, but after a year of long-term testing this model, we found that it delivered similar results to the Vitamix. And the heft and size of this KitchenAid model make it a difficult-to-move space hog.
The Cuisinart CBT-1500 Hurricane struggled to process foods in our tests. Blending thick smoothies and peanut butter required more liquid, a lot of starting and stopping, and banging the jar on the counter. It did make mayonnaise on the first try, though, unlike the more powerful Cuisinart CBT-2000 Hurricane Pro. But without the Turbo button of the Hurricane Pro (more on that below), this model is just another middle-of-the-road blender.
The Cuisinart CBT-2000 Hurricane Pro performed similarly to the Cuisinart CBT-1500 Hurricane, except it didn’t make mayonnaise as well (we achieved emulsification on the third try only). We did find the Turbo button useful for creating a fine puree. But again, without a tamper to burst air pockets, this blender needed a lot of tending to produce uniform, smooth purees.
The Braun PureMix is a small, tamper-less blender, and it didn’t impress us in the least, with a flimsy jug and a lightweight base. The PureMix had a hard time blending our smoothie, and we needed to add so much liquid to the mixture that the texture was way too thin—yuck! We disqualified the Braun after our first test.
Will the Blendtec Designer 675 blend? Yes, but not as well as our top picks. Despite Blendtec’s clever (if at times mildly sinister) marketing campaign of blending everything from rake handles to iPhones, we’ve found its blenders wanting (we also tested the Total model in 2012). Although in our tests the Designer 675 killed it on making smoothies and blended drinks, its lack of a tamper limits its usefulness. It didn’t make peanut butter (a tamper would have helped), and the preset speed for soup was frightening, with hot liquid flying wildly around the jar. We do think this particular model is quite beautiful, with a sleek black, illuminated base. It’s a great blender if you want something that looks slick on your counter and can make amazingly smooth mixed drinks and smoothies. But we think a blender that’s this expensive should perform well at more than just those two tasks. For more on how the Blendtec stacks up against the Vitamix 5200, read our piece on testing the two blenders head-to-head.
The Waring Commercial Xtreme made very smooth smoothies, and it felt substantial. But ultimately it didn’t perform better than our picks from Vitamix, Oster, or Cleanblend. If we were willing to pay this much for a blender, we’d instead go for a reconditioned Vitamix 5200. We do like that Waring has a metal jar that you can purchase for this machine.
We tested the Blendtec Total Blender for our 2012 review but found that it couldn’t compete with the Vitamix we tested at the time. The lid felt flimsy, and this model’s panel controls seemed cheap.
When it came to blending green and berry smoothies, we thought the Oster Beehive Blender did a pretty good job. It left a lot of pulp behind, and we kept having to open the lid to tamp down ingredients for our ice and bean-spread tests. It was also especially loud (at a really annoying frequency).
For the price, the Ninja Master Prep Professional is a decent machine, but we don’t think it compares to any of our other picks. It did a surprisingly good job of making smoothies, mixing bean spread, and blending margaritas, but the design is terrible for making mayonnaise (the motor is top-mounted, so you can’t drizzle anything into the jar). The stacked blades are also dangerously sharp, making them difficult to clean. The Ninja Master Prep Professional comes with three blending jars in various sizes; we thought it added up to too many parts and that they would just end up cluttering our cupboards. Overall, the machine feels really cheap.
The Ninja Professional Blender 1000 didn’t perform well. The green smoothies we made in this blender had a weird, confetti-like texture. And the mayo this model made was especially loose, which meant that too much air was getting whipped in. Every time we ran the Ninja Professional, we detected a strong, burning-motor smell. The jar was hard to get on the base, and the lid was tricky to clamp on. Also, the base was big and clunky and felt cheap.
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