The Best Blenders for Smoothies, Soups, and Slushy Cocktails

If you mostly want to make big batches of cold smoothies, hot soups, and maybe even frozen margaritas, a full-size blender is the way to go. If you’re primarily going to use your blender for single-serve smoothies and the occasional small batch of hummus or pesto (and you think you can get away with a food processor for anything larger), a personal blender may be all you need. And if you want the option to do it all with one gadget, a combo blender is a good option. It’s worth nothing that while we tested a few combo blenders this year, none made the top picks.

The best blenders

• Best blender overall: Vitamix 5200, $500 at Amazon → Read more
• Best budget blender: Oster Original 3-Speed, $125 at Amazon → Read more
• Best personal blender: Zwilling Enfinigy, $100 at Amazon → Read more

Below, read our full review of the blender we've been recommending for years—the Vitamix 5200—along with a recommendation for a more budget-friendly option as well as a personal blender. Keep scrolling to learn more about how we tested blenders, what we looked for, and the other blenders we’ve tested.

We’ve been recommending the Vitamix 5200 blender for years because it’s a high-power blender that’s easy to use, and at least compared to other Vitamix models, it’s moderately priced. In our testing, the 5200 has reliably made velvety soups and best-tasting smoothies, and it pulverizes solid ingredients like it’s no big deal.

Though the BPA-free plastic blending jar is large (64 ounces) this blender can make a single-serve smoothie without issue, and because you can so easily control the speed, it will even emulsify mayonnaise. A simple dial has 10 variable speed settings, or you can flip a switch to blend on high. Another switch turns the motor on and off, and other than that, there are no bells, whistles, buttons, or lights to clog up the control panel.

While you can’t remove the blade for cleaning, like with all blenders, you can rig up your own“self-cleaning” function by just adding some warm water and dish soap to the pitcher and running it on low or medium speed to dislodge anything stuck in or under the blade.

As food director Chris Morocco says, “If you get anything other than a Vitamix 5200, price better be the only reason.” But there’s also size to consider. This is a bulky blender, and the pitcher alone is too tall for some cabinet shelves. So if you’re short on counter or storage space you might want to take some measurements before adding it to your cart.

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If the Oster Original 3-Speed Chrome Blender looks like something your grandma used back in the day, that’s because it kind of is. Oster was one of the first brands to make blenders for home cooks, and this three-speed blender is a contemporary take on the brand’s original single-speed beehive blender—but has some very useful updates that set it apart from similarly-priced blenders in my testing this year.

A sturdy chrome base houses a 700-watt motor that, combined with the stainless-steel blades, can crush ice as well as higher-priced blenders, though not quite as well as a Vitamix. At its highest speed, this blender quickly and easily incorporated almonds and kale into a smooth smoothie, though it wasn’t as velvety as what I got from the Vitamix 5200.

The 1.5-liter glass pitcher (about 50 ounces) is square shaped, a departure from the original round one, with gently sloped corners, and those four straight sides make it so ingredients get thrown back into the blade’s vortex. In a round pitcher, the same ingredients might stick to the pitcher and spin around the blade, like your body does on a Gravitron amusement ride (any state fair fans out there?). The blade base can also be removed from the pitcher for easy cleaning. And because the pitcher body is all glass, it can go in the dishwasher.

Overall, the materials feel—and look—so much nicer than those on comparably-priced plastic blenders and it’s a very simple gadget. There are three speeds on a dial and you can power it off by turning the dial to the left from speed 1 or to the right from speed 3. I also really appreciate that there are no extra cups or parts to keep track of.

With a 50-ounce capacity, the pitcher holds about 10 to 15 ounces less than most standard modern blenders. You also have to be careful to not overblend in this thing. The first time I made a smoothie in it, I ran it at its highest speed, 3, longer than I ran the Vitamix. I think the extra blending was unnecessary since I duplicated the results with less time later. But the smoothie was noticeably warm. So as you’re getting used to making your own recipes in it, you’ll need to be careful not to overblend. The motor is also loud, especially when operating at the highest speed, and compared to the hum of the Vitamix motor, this one is a bit more piercing, though not unbearable.

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Personal blenders are sometimes called bullets (officially and unofficially) because the blending jars are often vaguely bullet-shaped, and they’re pretty much just single-serve smoothie makers, though they can be used for small batches of other things too. After you fill a personal blending jar with ingredients, you screw the blade attachment on like you would a lid, then flip it over and put it on the motor base. And to be completely honest, most of us who work at Bon Appétit don’t really like personal blenders because most of them just aren’t very good. They’re rarely powerful, they’re often flimsy, and they usually come with too many parts to keep track of. But everyone who’s tried Zwilling’s Enfinigy Personal Blender has been pleasantly surprised and it performed well in my testing this year too.

The sleek 500-watt motor base has three settings (normal, pulse, and smoothie) and the latter provides plenty of power for an actually-smooth smoothie—even one with kale and almonds. The 20-ounce blending jar is a great size for most sauces too, though you should never blend anything hot in a personal blender because it’s not vented. The BPA-free plastic jar is fluted, which gives it a nice look, and it comes with an air-tight lid for travel and storage.

The blending jar is dishwasher safe and the base is available in three colors (black, white, and silver) though the selection varies by retailer.

Aside from its limitations (nothing hot, can't crush ice, just under 20-ounce capacity), there’s not much we don’t like about this personal blender. The smoothie setting has an automatic shutoff so you don’t over-blend or overheat the motor, which can be a nice feature, but depending on what you’re blending you may need to run the cycle twice.

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Between Bon Appetit and Epicurious, my colleagues and I have reviewed nearly 30 blenders over the last few years, putting them to the test by crushing ice and making smoothies, pesto, and soup, among other things. For this round of testing, I repeated those tests, and also performed more detailed trials on my top contenders. I blended whole, raw almonds with oat milk to see how each one blended nuts. I also blended raw kale (stems and all) in water then strained the liquid through a fine mesh strainer. This allowed me to see not only how much pulp was left behind, but also how big or small the pieces were. Before hand-washing each blender, I filled the full-size blenders with warm water and dish soap and ran the blender on low speed for about 20 seconds to clean the blade.

I looked for a blender that could make a smooth and creamy smoothie without big chunks of anything—nuts, fibrous greens, ice, etc. I also looked for a blender that would fully incorporate a heaping spoonful of creamy, natural peanut butter into my cold smoothie.

I looked for blenders with intuitive control panels that were easy to use. If a blender had presets or special features, I considered whether it felt useful or unnecessary. I also noted how easy or complicated it was to attach and detach parts for use and cleaning.

Understanding that not everyone needs a big Vitamix blender, and that a personal or portable blender might be too small for others, I considered the footprint and height of each blender base and pitcher.

I paid special attention to the materials of the base and the pitchers (and any accessories, if included) and noted whether they felt durable and sturdy, or cheap and flimsy.

I hand-washed each blender to gauge how easy it was to clean both the pitcher and the blades, as well as any accessories. Blenders with dishwasher-safe parts got bonus points from me.

The Vitamix A3500 offers somewhat improved performance compared to the 5200 model, but with a higher price tag to match. Extra preset functions and a modern touchscreen interface are nice, but unnecessary features for something that’s supposed to blend frozen fruit and make purees. And while it is very powerful, the wide, 64-ounce jar (the 5200’s is tall instead) feels too big for small smoothies and ingredients. If you don’t need all the extra functions—and most people won’t—the A3500 might feel like overkill.

Released in 2024, the Vitamix X5 has some impressive tech upgrades including 10 preset programs for making perfect nut butters, frozen cocktails, and ground spices, and other pureed and pulverized ingredients. Helpful features include a tamper notification to let you know when you need to tamp your ingredients down and a one-touch option to extend any preset by 15 seconds. It’s a premium choice for those looking to do everything with a blender, but like the A3500 above, it might be too much tech if you just want to make basic smoothies. That said, if the features are appealing and you also want to consolidate your small kitchen appliances, you could consider getting this blender in a bundle that includes a 12-cup food processor attachment. Read our deeper dive on the X5 here.

The compact Breville Fresh and Furious Blender is a good option for those with smaller kitchens. The 50-ounce pitcher feels generous for such a compact machine. It blends powerfully and efficiently and the intuitive control panel has nine one-touch presets. While the 1,100-watt motor can blend frozen fruit and ice, it’s still no Vitamix and in our testing, it didn’t produce the same silky smoothie texture the Vitamix 5200 and A3500 models did.

The Vitamix Explorian 310 is one of the least expensive Vitamix blenders and it performs and functions much like our favorite 5200. It’s smaller and squattier, with a 48-ounce pitcher compared to the 5200’s 64-ounce capacity. The Explorian 310 is also louder—and the 5200 isn’t exactly quiet. If you want to keep your spending under $350 and don’t plan to blend huge batches of anything, it may work for you.

The Hurom Hexa Power Blender is fine, but it can’t compete with any of our top picks. The speed dial is tricky to adjust (the knob needs to be set back to neutral before you can adjust the speed and if you skip this step and try to power it back on, it won’t start). It also doesn’t deliver super-smooth smoothies.

Wolf makes some great large and small kitchen appliances but the Wolf Gourmet High-Performance Blender isn’t one of our favorites. Though it has a 1,545-watt motor, it fell short in our ice test and overall it just didn’t perform quite as well as comparably-priced Vitamix models. It’s not a bad blender, and it has a sleek stainless steel base—but unless you’re dead set on that red knob, we recommend a Vitamix blender over this Wolf model.

This versatile Magic Bullet Combo Blender has a 48-ounce pitcher and a tall cup to use for single-serve smoothies. The stainless steel blade attaches to both and sits on the compact base, which houses a 600-watt motor. The lightweight base has two speeds and a pulse function, and suction cup feet are a nice touch to keep it firmly in place on a countertop, especially when blending large batches of smoothies. It did a pretty good job blending kale and almonds, which was kind of surprising given the fact that the blades aren’t even sharp. Overall, though, the materials feel cheap and flimsy and unless you really need both the pitcher and the personal blending cup (which comes with a solid lid for storage and travel) there are a lot of parts to keep track of.

The Nutribullet Full-Size Combo Blender has a 1,200-watt motor (that's even more powerful than the Nutribullet Pro, which has 900 watts) and three speeds plus a pulse and extract function. According to the manual, the latter is the smoothie preset (not a juicer function, sorry). This blender crushed ice much better than the Magic Bullet Combo blender and did a nice job breaking down rough kale stems in a smoothie. The motor base has a nice matte finish and suction cup to keep it planted on the counter, but the round plastic 64-ounce pitcher feels flimsy yet bulky and it's a little tricky to get on and off of the motor base. If you're looking for power and versatility, it's a good option at a good price point—and if we had to choose between this blender and the Magic Bullet above, we'd choose this—but it doesn't feel like something that's made to last. It's also important to note that there are a lot of parts to keep track of (and store); in addition to the personal blending cup there's a travel mug with a handle, travel lid, and tamper, plus an included recipe book.

The Blendtec Classic 575 Blender has a professional look and feel, but in our testing, the smoothies were a bit too thick and more fibrous than we’d like. It’s also pretty loud and while the presets are nice, the LED display feels flashy and unnecessary.

With an 1,800-watt motor, the Breville Super Q blender delivers in the power department (it excelled at crushing ice), but we had to run the smoothie preset twice to fully incorporate almonds in our smoothie test. The brand promotes this as a “super-quiet” blender (presumably “Q” is for “quiet”) but in our testing, we found it to be pretty loud, and overall not that pleasant to use. In 2020, we also tried it with Breville’s add-on Vac Q tool, which is supposed to remove air from the pitcher for a smoother blend, and while it’s an interesting concept, it just makes something that should be simple (blending) even more complicated (and expensive!) than it needs to be.

The commercial-grade Breville Super Q Pro blender is an advanced version of the Super Q above. It’s also the fussiest blender we’ve tested. The speed settings on the control panel were confusing to use, and it took longer than it should have to get a super-smooth smoothie.

There’s nothing powerful or elite about the Hamilton Beach Power Elite Blender. It performed about as well as we expected a sub-$50 blender to perform. The smoothie we made in it during testing was chunky, with unblended bits of almond and kale fibers—even with an extra minute of blending time. It was also so lightweight it felt flimsy.

The KitchenAid 3-Speed Ice Crushing Blender is a very simple and easy-to-use blender: Its dial has just three speeds and a pulse setting, with no preset programs like you find on some pricier blenders. During testing, the KitchenAid crushed ice cubes and blended basic smoothies better than some of the high-performance, higher-priced competitors. It did struggle with very hard ingredients though, like nuts, and fibrous ones, like raw kale.

The KitchenAid High-Performance Blender offers some improvements over the less-pricey model we also tested, but the performance didn’t justify the much higher price tag. In fact, in almost every test we did, the more affordable, basic 3-speed KitchenAid blender performed just as well or better.

We went into testing skeptical that the Cleanblend Commercial Blender could deliver. Sure, it has an 1,800-watt motor but it also costs less than half the price of a good Vitamix blender—and our testing has shown us that this is a category where you really get what you pay for. Overall, this is a decent blender. It’s powerful and easy to use, but, disappointingly (though not entirely surprisingly) the smoothie we made in testing was grainy.

Like all of Smeg’s 50s-inspired kitchen appliances, the Smeg Professional Blender looks great on the countertop (if a retro look is your thing, that is). But also like many of the brand’s offerings, it fell short in terms of performance when we tested it—especially when compared to comparably priced products. It does have presets for things like smoothies and ice crushing, but the results were underwhelming. The ice, specifically, was far from evenly crushed and we ended up with big chunks.

Cuisinart’s small appliances are really a mixed bag in terms of quality and performance, but we were intrigued by the Soho line, which offers stylish, compact options for small kitchens, including the Cuisinart Soho Blender. This is very much a basic blender. Beyond blend and pulse there are no other settings (it’s billed as a 2-speed blender but it’s really just those two settings). It made a decent smoothie, but it took a while to get there. If you’re looking for something in this price range, the Zwilling Effingy Personal Blender is a better option.

The Vitamix Venturist Pro is a Costco-exclusive Vitamix blender. Performance and functionality-wise it's very similar to the 5200, but it does have a few added features, including a built-in timer, which is a nice touch for when you figure out the perfect speed and time for your very specific morning smoothie. However, the base is bigger than that of the 5200—as is the base of the 64-ounce pitcher, making it harder to blend small quantities of anything. If you like to blend big batches of soups, smoothies, or frozen drinks (as one who shops regularly at Costco might) this could be a really good blender for you, but overall, it just felt like too much blender for most people.

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Discontinued blenders we’ve tested

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Aside from the obvious difference in shape, the biggest differences between blenders and food processors are the strength of their motors and the sharpness of their blades. For the most part, blender blades aren’t very sharp. Instead, blenders rely on high-powered motors to break down and purée ingredients. You’ll want to use a blender when preparing things with a lot of liquid—like smoothies, protein shakes, and other frozen drinks. A blender’s taller, narrower shape also makes it better for blending liquids (read more on why the shape of your blender really does matter).

Food processors, on the other hand, have razor-sharp blades and less powerful motors. They work best for pulverizing dry ingredients: Use them when you’re making breadcrumbs or cutting butter into flour for pastry. When you want to purée a sauce, but keep a little texture—say, when you’re making pesto—you’ll want a food processor. Processors are also great for chopping fresh ingredients like onions or garlic. Check out more on them in our review of the best food processors.

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Unlike countertop blenders, immersion blenders—a.k.a. hand blenders—are quite small gadgets that can fit inside a drawer. They’re handheld wands that typically break down into two pieces: the blades and the motor. They work without a blending cup or container and they’re wonderful tools for whipping, emulsifying, and puréeing food right in the pot or pan you’re cooking them in, so they’re perfect for blending creamy potato soup or marinara sauce. I actually prefers my immersion blender to a hulking full-size blender. Looking for the best immersion blenders? We like this 600-watt stainless-steel model from All-Clad, and this humble 300-watt model from Cuisinart.

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