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Looking for the best bullet blender? After researching over 30 different models, we bought the best models to test side-by-side. Our kitchen experts went to work, blending up garbanzo beans, coffee, fruits, and veggies — all in the name of testing. We made delicious hummus and smoothies and evaluated the consistency repeatedly. We also assessed features, settings, clean-up, and storing ability. After months of testing, we offer you our recommendations, founded on our unbiased and in-depth research, designed to help you explore the best options on the market.
Editor's Note: We updated this article on February 2, 2024, to remove some discontinued models from our lineup and offer alternative purchase suggestions for each award winner.
Impeccable performance and quality construction earned the Ninja Fit the top spot in our review. The mid-range power of 700 watts hits the sweet spot of satisfying all your blending needs without going full-on pro. The Fit passed our blending test with flying colors from drinks to dips. We are particularly fond of the exceptional quality and design of the dual blending cups, alongside the matching leakproof lids.
As for what we weren't fond of, there wasn't much. The one improvement we would recommend is incorporating an on/off switch. The current design requires you to press down the jar to operate, making it impossible to multi-task. Other than this minor detail, we recommend the Fit to anyone in the market for a bullet blender. But if you're a busy home cook who needs to streamline prep, consider the NutriBullet RX. It's more of an investment, but it comes with all the bells and whistles including hands free timed blending.
The Fit stood out from the competition with its exceptional quality, capacity, and blending performance.
Over the years, the NutriBullet Magic Bullet has built up a cult following and is one of the most recognizable bullet blenders on the market. After testing the Magic Bullet, we see what the hype is all about; it boasts a classic design, great performance, and an affordable price tag. The multiple blending cups are ideal for food prep, making this an excellent option for getting dinner ready when entertaining guests.
The drawback is the low wattage motor. This design increased our blending time when attempting to reach the desired consistency. It does come at a cost, but it also comes with an array of additional accessories. We believe that the Magic Bullet is a solid buy that will stand up to repeated use. However, if you can spend a little more, the powerful blending performance of the Ninja Fit is well worth the additional expense.
Various cup sizes make this bullet more versatile.
The NutriBullet RX has a lot of tricks up its sleeve. This blender comes with a hardbound recipe book that features quizzes corresponding to color-coordinated recipes. While this is certainly a perk, the Nutri RX doesn't need a fancy book to convince us of its worth. This bullet blender can produce hot or cold recipes, making it highly versatile. We loved how its high-power pulverized ingredients with minimal effort and created the creamiest smoothies of all the products we tested.
While we always appreciate versatility, there's a learning curve for how to operate the hot and cold functions and how all the gigantic pieces fit together. Once you get the hang of it, though, we think you'll dig the temperature functions as much as we do. But if you don't plan on taking advantage of these features and prefer something more user-friendly with a budget-friendly price, we think you'll appreciate what the NutriBullet Magic Bullet has to offer.
This gigantic blender is matched by exceptionally high power.
Credit: Carissa Stanz
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Why Trust GearLab
For this review, we considered more than 30 potential contenders to purchase and test. We settled on a selection of impressive products and conducted side-by-side testing to evaluate the attributes of each bullet blender. We used the same ingredients and quantities in our blending tests and noted how easy each product was to use and clean. We carefully examined the quality and determined the versatility by assessing power, capacity, and performance during testing. Each blender was used multiple times and evaluated compared to the competition.
Our testing of bullet blenders covered 5 test metrics:
Blending Performance (25% of overall score weighting)
Versatility (20% weighting)
Quality and Durability (20% weighting)
User-Friendliness (20% weighting)
Ease of Cleaning (15% weighting)
Carissa Stanz is our main tester for this review. From barista to product tester, she has spent over a decade working in the food and beverage industry, and she brings a wealth of knowledge to this review. When she's not testing products, you can find her in the kitchen, testing her own recipes.
Quality travel lids should be durable, leak-proof, and easy to drink out of.
Analysis and Test Results
We meticulously tested and evaluated each bullet blender in a side-by-side comparison. We rated each one according to quality and durability, blending performance, versatility, user-friendliness, and ease of cleaning.
What's the Best Value?
It seems like a given that higher-priced products will perform better, but we've found over our decade of product testing that there can be exceptions to this rule. Likewise, sometimes you can get quality performance out of a bargain product. In the category of bullet blenders, we find the Ninja Fit and NutriBullet Magic Bullet to have an excellent price-to-performance ratio. If you use your blender less with less frequency and don't need it for big jobs, one of the low-cost options we tested may suit your needs.
The Hamilton Beach makes a decent smoothie without breaking the bank.
Credit: Carissa Stanz
Blending Performance
The best bullet blenders can shred, dice, grind, pulverize, puree, and crush whatever you throw at them. We whipped up numerous smoothies, ground coffee, and thick, creamy hummus to test the blending performance.
At the top of the class was the Ninja Fit, which excelled at all three of these. The blades of this bullet sliced through all the ingredients with ease, never seized up, and achieved the perfect consistency. The NutriBullet Rx made the creamiest smoothies, hands down. This result is primarily due to the ridiculously powerful motor.
We blended an assortment of ingredients, including coffee, testing for consistency.
Credit: Carissa Stanz
While we love how the Magic Bullet gives us numerous cup options to suit our blending needs, we found the performance to be about average. Given the lower wattage, this is to be expected.
We blended the same quantity of coffee for 10 seconds in each blender. Here are the results.
Credit: Carissa Stanz
Versatility
Ideally, a bullet blender is equipped with the capacity and power to handle everything from thin dressings to thick dips, making it incredibly versatile. There's no question the NutriBullet Rx blew the competition out of the water in this category. This massive blender features hot and cold functions, which was not an option with any of the other products we tested. These temperature functions mean you can make creamy, effortless soups for dinner and blend big batches of frozen beverages, all with the push of a button. Blended margarita crowd, we're talking to you.
The Ninja Fit can do everything else for foods that don't need to come out piping hot. It's powerful enough to make various recipes and yields excellent results.
A good blender can puree frozen fruit without seizing up.
Credit: Carissa Stanz
The Magic Bullet is an honorable mention as it includes various sizes of additional blending cups, which increases its versatility. We liked how the smallest cup ground coffee while the largest cup was best for smoothies during our testing.
We love how creamy the Fit made our smoothies.
Credit: Carissa Stanz
Quality and Durability
For this metric, we carefully examined the construction of all the blender components, how well they fit together, and the materials used to assess product quality and durability. The Ninja Fit and NutriBullet Rx stood out from the competition for their thick plastic blending cups that are not likely to crack or break with persistent use.
The Ninja Fit design appeared to be the most durable. We especially loved the to-go flip-top lids. The majority of the competition had flimsy lids that were likely to break. These lids are quality material, fully leakproof, and highly durable.
Sharp blades with a well designed plate are key to pulverizing ingredients.
Credit: Carissa Stanz
The NutriBullet Magic Bullet is a quality product. This blender may not have super thick plastic cups, but it is well constructed and more than likely to keep chugging with repetitive use. On the other hand, we weren't too keen the Hamilton Beach, which has a cheaper blending cup with a leaky lid.
A sturdy and well crafted motor base are more likely to last blend after blend.
Credit: Carissa Stanz
User-Friendliness
Our next metric was user-friendliness. We measured this by determining how easy it was to follow directions, assemble, operate, and disassemble each bullet blender. The Nina Fit and NutriBullet Magic Bullet were the top performers in this category. We found the operation to be intuitive and easy to navigate.
While we liked that the Nutri Bullet RX had an on/off switch, figuring out the hot and cold functions took some education. They also have the potential to be problematic. The blender automatically shuts off after extraction; however, it remains in “on” mode unless you physically turn it off. If you forget and place the blending cup into the blender without putting on the lid, you'll wind up with a mess.
We examined the quality of every lid and checked for leaks.
Credit: Carissa Stanz
Ease of Cleaning
If you dread cleaning your blender, you may avoid using it. This issue is why we tested ease of cleaning as our final metric. We assessed this by the amount of effort required to dismantle, scrub, wash, rinse, and dry each blender. We found the majority of products took about the same level of effort and time to clean. The Ninja Fit stood out a bit for how easy it was to clean the blade plate. Even when blending hummus, we found most of the food slid right off when tilting the plate.
The worst performers in this metric were the NutriBullet Rx and the Hamilton Beach. In our testing, food easily stuck to the grooves on the oversized blade plate of the NutriBullet Rx. Unfortunately, the blades of the Hamilton Beach cannot be removed from the blending cup, making it hard to clean underneath without the use of a cleaning brush.
We hand washed all the blending cups, lids, blades, and additional accessories.
Credit: Carissa Stanz
Conclusion
A quality bullet blender takes all the frustration out of personal blending and opens your kitchen to more possibilities and potentially less mess. We conducted rigorous testing to find the best options and highlight the advantages of each product. We believe this review has a bullet blender for everyone, no matter what your needs or budget may be. If you need a full-size model, head on over to our review of the best blenders.
