Best Blenders of 2025 – CNET

The test of blenders is not only making smoothies and crushing ice. There are many other recipes that blenders work well and these tests highlight how capable each model is when it comes to dry, thick and coarse 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 reach the finished and crushed ice gives a good indication of the cutting power in the real world. The three blenders we recommended above did well.

Smoothies

A classic blender recipe, fruit smoothies were high on my list of recipes to try. This shouldn’t be a big stress test for any decent blender and 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 gave very similar results, a few worked faster than others. Not all blenders come with presets, but those that do almost always include a smoothie function. When possible, this is the way we use it. If there was no smoothie blender function, we followed the blender’s manual recommendation for smoothie preparation. This was usually about a minute high.

This is a relatively easy test and most blenders handle frozen ingredients well. Some were more frothy and some were slushier, but only the Black & Decker model left large chunks of unblended frozen strawberries.

Walnut flour and butter

Blenders aren’t all about drinks. There are many other uses, including grinding dry ingredients. For our test of dry ingredients, we put a cup of almond pieces (without toast) in each blender and pulse until those pieces are reduced to a fine flour. A bit of a challenge for some blenders, but most were able to do this in about 10 to 20 pulses, with the Hamilton Beach model producing noticeably thicker results.

Nut butter is a different story. Most blenders are not really designed for the long times and level of processing required to make a butter like almond butter or peanut butter. In fact, we highly recommend not running the blender for more than a few minutes at a time.

Only one Vitamix model showed real signs of progress towards almond butter in our tests with nut flour, and it stalled before reaching a good consistency. Most models simply replace the dry ingredients in the hard-to-wash crevices of their lids. If you are making nut butter, we recommend a model like the Oster with a processing kit included, or a separate food processor.

cheese

Did you know that blenders can shred cheese? It’s true; some blenders can. Place an 8 ounce block of cheese in each blender and pulse until the entire block is blended. This brought to light a few interesting design choices among several models. The Ninja, for example, lost the round of cheese because several levels of blender blades make it impossible to fit the block of cheese in the blender. I had to cut it into pieces.

Both Vitamix models had some trouble with this particular test and they punched holes in the block of cheese without actually mixing it, simultaneously melting the little cheese that had been shredded while the machine was heating up. Meanwhile, the NutriBullet, Ninja, instant Pot, Breville Super Q and Hurom Hexa have dealt with grating the block of cheese in less than five pulses.

Pancake batter

If you have seen our list of the best waffle makersIt should come as no surprise that pancake batter made an appearance in our blender test. While I was happy to remove the plate and flip some cakes, mixing the dough is an important test. It measures how easy or difficult it is for the blender to mix wet and dry ingredients.