The top-rated blenders for every budget (and smoothie!).
Whether you’re whirling up bananas and berries for smoothies or making a pitcher of frozen margaritas, a quality blender should be able to process your ingredients into smooth, creamy perfection. In the Good Housekeeping Institute Kitchen Appliances and Technology Lab, we’ve tested more than 75 blenders over the years to find these high-performance blenders.
To test these blenders over the years, we ground about 10 pounds of whole coffee beans, blended nearly 30 pounds of frozen strawberries, and pulverized over 2,000 ice cubes. We also made kale smoothies, milkshakes, and frozen drinks. When testing, we rate the helpfulness of the owner’s manual and evaluate how easy each model is to assemble, use, and clean. We also consider how noisy each blender is while operating.
Finally, we check how well blenders resist staining from tomato sauce, and measure the damage after 14 cycles in the dishwasher. These are the best blenders you can buy in 2020, according to a combination of testing and in-home use.
3X Bluicer Pro
$399.95
We love this smart combination appliance for blending or juicing! The juicer attachment works just like Breville’s popular centrifugal juicer that performed very well in our juicer test – it juiced apples, carrots, kale, and celery without any pulp. It aced our separation test in which we store the juice in the fridge for three days to see if and how much the juices separate. The blender is powerful and makes thick smoothies. In our tests, we had to experiment with the blender speed to achieve drinkable smoothies.
This highly popular Cuisinart blender/food processor combo has a low-profile 40-ounce glass jar, which has the benefit of not discoloring, scratching or absorbing food smells like a plastic jar may. This 500-watt blender is not the most high-powered. It features seven blending and processing options that are clearly marked and easy to use. We love that it comes with a compact food processor for chopping, stirring, and even shredding. All parts are dishwasher-safe.
This well-priced and high-powered blender comes with three jars: a 64-ounce pitcher for large batches, and two different personal-sized cups (32 ounces and 24 ounces with a handle.) Both cups have lids that make it easy to take your smoothie to-go. It features an “extract” button that blends smoothies in preprogrammed variable speeds. We blended kale smoothies in all three jars – there were no flecks to be tasted! It also blasted through frozen strawberries effortlessly to make a delicious, evenly processed daiquiri. The base is not much larger than previous NutriBullet bases and it has suction cups on the bottom that reliably prevent it from shifting around. Just remember to unscrew the personal blending cups from the base instead of the cups–it’s easy to accidentally make a mess.