There's nothing as refreshing as an ice-cold smoothie or freshly made slushie. Just throw some ice, fruit (ideally frozen) and juice or milk into a blender, and within minutes you can be sipping on a delicious frosty beverage. However, not all blenders are up to the challenge. Some struggle to crush ice, while others leave balk at the sight of a frozen strawberry, leaving you hot and bothered.
That's where I come in. I'm TechRadar's kitchen tech expert, and I've been hard at work blitzing heaps of frozen fruit to bring you this definitive list of the three best blenders for making smoothies and slushies at home.
All three of these are personal blenders, which means you can whip up a batch of your favorite beverage and then enjoy it straight from the blending vessel, with no pouring and no mess. Two of them are also cordless, so you can carry them with you to blend smoothies on the move, while the other has detachable drinking cups with an optional straw lid for easy slurping.
1. Ninja Blast Max
The Ninja Blast Max is, as the name suggests, supremely powerful, and is the only blender I've tested to date that's capable of obliterating big frozen strawberries in a single blend cycle. Frozen fruit is a super convenient and affordable way to make protein drinks more palatable while also cooling them down, and with the Blast Max, you can be sipping a delicious chilled smoothie in less than two minutes.
Like the Nutribullet Flip below, this is a cordless blender, which means you can take it to the gym to mix up a fresh shake as soon as you've finished your workout. It tucked nicely into the side pocket of my backpack and will fit in most cupholders as well.
The Blast Max is also superb when it comes to fibrous vegetables, so if you'd like to whip up a glassful of green juice, you can do so without worrying about unpalatable graininess. Every time I test a blender for TechRadar, I whip up a batch of Nutribullet's Banana Kale Blueberry Freeze, which is packed with an alarming amount of kale, and the Blast Max is one of very few that could make it palatable in one cycle.
It's not a quiet blender, and reached a maximum of 85dB when tackling particularly tough ingredients. It also had a slight tendency to wander across my kitchen counter when working hard, but the motor in the bottom is quite heavy, and I never felt like there was a risk of it tipping over.
Read my full Ninja Blast Max review
2. Nutribullet Flip
The Nutribullet Flip is a powerful personal blender with an ingenious design that eliminates any possible spillage when you're preparing your smoothie in a hurry. Most blenders have blades at the bottom, and when you've finished mixing your concoction, you have to turn them upside down, unscrew the blending unit, and replace it with a lid. It works OK, but there's a chance that you might end up with drips of sticky shake on your clean kitchen floor.
The Nutribullet Flip's blades are incorporated into the lid, so you simply load up your ingredients, tip it upside down and press the 'blend' button, then turn it the right way up and start sipping. No need to undo anything first.
Drinking directly from the part of the blender containing the blades and motor might seem alarming, but it's totally safe. The blender won't activate with the sip lid open, and the blades are well away from your mouth.
When it comes to the blending itself, the Nutribullet Flip makes light work of most ingredients and will whip protein powder, fresh berries, banana, and your choice of milk into a delicious smoothie in a single minute-long blending cycle. If you want to incorporate some leafy greens into the mix, I found that the Flip needed two cycles to properly process kale to avoid little bits that stick to your teeth.
Ice was no issue for the Flip (the iced coffees I made with it were divine), but frozen berries required two cycles as well – particularly chunky strawberries. The results are worth it, though, with the blender turning them into a fresh, fruity slush.
Read my full Nutribullet Flip review
3. Beast Blender Mighty 850 Plus
The aptly named Beast Blender is the only appliance I've tested to date that can turn blackcurrants into smooth puree, with no seeds. Usually, I try to avoid adding frozen currents to my smoothies because the results are almost always unpleasantly gritty, but the Beast Blender made light work of these tricky little customers.
This particular version of the Beast comes with three different-sized vessels and a choice of lids, including one that can accommodate a reusable silicone straw for easy sipping. Unlike with the Nutribullet Flip above, you'll need to remove the blade and motor unit and replace it with a cap before drinking, but in my experience this wasn't a particularly messy process (especially since this isn't a cordless blender, so you won't be doing the actual blending outside your kitchen).
I'll bring you a comprehensive review of the Beast Blender Mighty 850 Plus very soon, once I've tried it with a generous handful of kale thrown into the mix. Considering how well it copes with tiny pips, I've got high hopes.
Recipe ideas
If you need some inspiration, here are some slushies and smoothies that you can make with your brand new blender (including a couple of boozy evening options):
- Strawberry watermelon mocktail from Ninja Test Kitchen
- Spiked strawberry lemonade from Ninja Test Kitchen
- Pink power smoothie from Nutribullet
- The ultimate sangria from Nutribullet
- Watermelon coconut sparkler from Beast Health
- Cherry cream smoothie from Beast Health
