Other blenders we’ve tested
Vitamix A3500 Ascent Series Smart Blender
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.
Vitamix Ascent X5
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.
Breville Fresh and Furious Blender
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.
Vitamix Explorian 310
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.
Hurom Hexa Power High Speed Blender
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 Gourmet High-Performance Blender
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.
Magic Bullet Combo Blender
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.
Nutribullet Full-Size Combo Blender
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.
Blendtec Classic 575 Blender
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.
Breville Super Q
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.
Breville Super Q Pro
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.
Hamilton Beach Power Elite Blender
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.
K150 3-Speed Ice Crushing Blender
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.
KitchenAid High-Performance Blender
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.
Cleanblend Commercial Blender
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.
SMEG Professional Blender
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 Soho Blender
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.
Vitamix Venturist Pro Blender with Self-Detect Technology (Costco Exclusive)
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.
