Blenders are the real Swiss army knife of the kitchen, capable of whipping up soups, smoothies, nut butter and even taking care of chopping during food prep. If you’re short on space in your kitchen and wondering which appliance is going to cover the most ground, we’d recommend a blender above anything else.
The term blender is actually a bracket for a great number of appliances. There are stick blenders for whizzing around a pan of soup, or in a jug – although these more often than not come with other attachments for greater versatility. There are also jug blenders and food processors.
When choosing the right blender for you, start with space. What will fit in your kitchen? Then look at the real estate space a blender will take up – remember to take into account all those attachments. Many blenders are designed to slot into cupboards, and some offer lots of different attachments.
Also, it’s important to think about what you’ll be mostly using the blender for. If you do loads of food prep – be that chopping or grating, especially on a big scale – a food processor-style blender might be better as it has a powerful motor and tends to have more food-prep attachments.
If you want to make soup and cannot face pouring soup from the pan into a jug to blend, a hand blender is the answer. These often have chopping bowl attachments and whisks too, which are great if you want to chop an onion quickly or whisk up a sauce. Jug blenders are best for nut butter and making curry pastes, as well as smoothies and soups. They can be heavy to lug out of cupboards though.
How we tested
We tested in a busy family kitchen, where we make big batches of food on the regular and need something powerful and versatile, but that ideally doesn’t take up loads of space. During testing, we used blenders for food prep – trying out chopping functions on soft and hard veg like onions and carrots. We also tried our hand at nut butter and smoothies, soups and pastes. We looked at how easy the blenders were to operate, and also – vitally – clean. We wanted the perfect balance of versatility without being fiddly. And we also looked at value for money, testing products across all price points.
The best blenders for 2024 are:
Ninja foodi power blender three-in-one
Designed to offer flexibility, this blender comes with three different attachments. One 2.1l jug that has more capacity. It will chop, blend and mix, as well as knead doughs with the attachments included.
The cup attachment is designed for smoothies and has the capacity to make a single drink and can then be taken on the go with you. The “power nutri bowl” is for making smoothie bowls and thick desserts, such as frozen yoghurt, as well as nut butters. Best of all, every cup and blade is dishwasher safe.
The easy-to-operate dial will let you choose from the different programs, including blend, mix, crush and chop. The base will know which cup or bowl you have attached and offer you the right programs for that attachment. Seriously clever. We were thoroughly impressed by this smart blender. It did more than we ever knew we wanted a blender to do.
Buy now £149.99, Ninjakitchen.co.uk
Judge glass blender
This glass blender is pretty straight up – it’s simple but gets the job done. It won’t take up loads of space in your cupboard but will blend smoothies and soups to smooth perfection. It’s quite loud when it’s on, but it made short work of everything we threw at it. The slightly tapered style of the glass jug meant ingredients slid towards the blades without us having to stop and scrape down every so often. The lid also enables you to add ingredients as you go – good for hollandaise and other sauces in particular. However, the blender will operate without the lid on, so beware.
Buy now £39.95, Amazon.co.uk
Dualit 700W hand blender
As soon as we took it out of the box, we were impressed with this Dualit hand blender. The chrome finish is sleek and doesn’t have the same plastic feeling that other hand blenders tend to have. Owing to its lightweight and compact design, it can fit in a drawer or cupboard fairly easily. In terms of performance, we were impressed with its chopping power on onions using the chopper bowl attachment, finely cutting the onion without pulverising it into a paste. If you need to add food gradually, you can also feed ingredients into the bowl as you chop. The chopping bowl has a small capacity though, so there’s only space to chop one onion at a time, and when we attempted sturdier vegetables, such as carrots, it wasn’t up to the job. What it is good for though is making chunky dips or purees for weaning babies.
Buy now £77.99, Amazon.co.uk
Sage super Q blender
This is a big investment. Sage claims it’s a commercial-grade blender, so it’s a great pick for large-scale cooking. Thanks to the powerful 2400W motor, it whipped up an absolute storm during testing, producing silky smooth soups and nut butter without breaking a sweat. Our one gripe is that it is loud – it does have a noise reduction feature on it, but it was still reverberating around our house and probably our neighbour’s too. We loved the versatility of it – it took on nuts and root vegetables easily. The dial allows you to adjust the texture of what you’re creating from stirring right up to milled. This is great for whole spices and if you want to make your own flour or nut milk (we salute you for having the time for this endeavour).
As well as a hefty 2l jug, there’s a personalised 700ml cup too, which we found handy for making use of the two smoothie settings. There are also soup and frozen dessert options, but it won’t heat soup or freeze your ice creams in the way that soup makers and ice cream makers do. You simply add the hot pre-cooked ingredients for soup or add the frozen ones for desserts. While we were impressed with the soup-making option, we would go for a traditional soup maker over this if soup-making was the sole purpose of buying it. What we loved was how easy it was to clean – blitz some warm water and washing-up liquid and it’s pretty much clean.
Buy now £599.95, Sageappliances.com
Zwilling Enfinigy personal blender
Modern and stylish, the Zwilling personal blender can fit in small spaces but still packs a punch. Fill the attractive BPA-free bottle with your ingredients and then tighten the blade on top, flip it upside down and lock it into the blender base. The Zwilling offers 600W of power, which isn’t the most powerful model within this review, but it handled jobs like smoothies and sauces well. We made an impressive pesto sauce in ours.
When testing, we liked that this blender offered a greater degree of control than other blenders in this format; there’s a dial to switch between blend and pulse to allow you to get the texture you want. Clean-up was relatively easy as the bottle is dishwasher safe (although handwashing is going to prolong the life of your blender). There’s a lid for the bottle, so you can take your smoothie with you on the go without having to decant.
Buy now £99.95, Zwilling.com
Braun powerblend 9 jug blender
The Braun jug blender perhaps offers the best range of programs in this review. There are six food programmes – smoothie, soup, chop, ice, frozen dessert and spread – from there you can choose from three textures: coarse, medium or smooth. You can of course also pulse. We found it made a mean chunky peanut butter using the coarse and spread options.
The soup and frozen dessert options are similar to Sage’s blender in that the machine won’t cook ingredients, but it will warm them up through the friction from the blade. It also won’t freeze ingredients – these need to be pre-frozen before the blending. However, it did perform impressively well and offers a dizzying range of options. The clean function also makes light work of washing up, as we just filled the jug with water and a drop of fairy liquid, pressed the clean function and it was pretty much done.
Buy now £148.97, Amazon.co.uk
Cuisinart expert prep pro
Clear out some cupboard space, as this bad boy comes with a lot of “gubbins”. Highly useful gubbins, we should add. The expert prep pro blended anything we threw at it with ease, including a very smooth nut butter that was absolutely delicious, thank you very much. The 550W motor seemed to be unfazed by thick and claggy mixtures, and it was relatively quiet, too.
As well as blending, the expert prep pro can grate, dice, slice, spiralise and mix. It has two different-sized bowls, and various-sized feed tubes to minimise this. Gloriously, the accessories come in a lockable display box, keeping everything neat and tidy.
Buy now £238.12, Amazon.co.uk
Gastroback vital mixer pro
We liked the flexibility of this blender. Sure, all it does is blend, but we are here for the best blenders, so we can’t complain. There’s an LED dial where you can ramp up or down the blending power by hand, then you just hit start/stop and blend away, hands-free. Or you can select from the three programme buttons: ice crushing, smoothies or interval.
The ice crushing did the job – we ended up with ice fit for a daiquiri. The smoothie option turned out a silky-smooth drink in a matter of seconds. Just know that the lid on the Gastroback is one of those you can take off and the blender will still work, so blitz with caution. However, it does have a refill opening, so you can add ingredients as you go along.
Buy now £99.90, Gastroback.co.uk
Cuisinart 3-in-1 cordless hand blender
We’ve met a lot of stick blenders in our time, and this one is by far the best. It’s cordless, so it’s easy to use over a hot hob when blending a pan of soup, without worrying you’re going to melt the power cable. It comes with a charge stand, so you can leave it charging until you need to grab it – and, because of all the genuinely useful attachments, you’ll find yourself reaching for it often.
It has a whisk attachment for making smooth, silky sauces and fluffy-as-you-like pancake batter. The masher attachment is genius, too. This attachment is also made completely of plastic, so you don’t have to worry about scratching your pan.
The downside is it is on the heavy side. However, as it’s so powerful, it should make pretty short work of whatever you’re whipping up.
Buy now £142.99, Amazon.co.uk
Bosch vacuum blender
If you want to get the max amount of vitamins from your smoothies, this Bosch vacuum blender is the way to go. Load up the generous 1.5l jug, pull down the arm and then press go. The blender sucks all the air out of the jug as it blends, so there’s no bubbly texture in your smoothies, and it stops veg and fruit from oxidising. There’s an ice-crushing mode, vacuum blending and pulse options, so most textures are possible.
If you want to store whatever you’ve made, the Bosch comes with two different-sized vacuum bowls and one vacuum bottle. This means you can store your smoothies, sauces and soups for longer and lock in more nutrients.
Buy now £299.00, Ao.com
KitchenAid artisan blender
This blender looks so good on a kitchen work surface but, looks aside, it’s also very capable. It’s been designed to take on nuts, seeds and any fruit or veg you want to throw at it. Our smoothies came out, well, smooth, and the blender didn’t seem to break a sweat. KitchenAid has installed an intelligent motor in this model, so it senses what’s in the jug, to make sure it’s whizzing at just the right speed.
There are three settings – crushed ice, icy drinks and smoothies and (praise be) a self-cleaning function. Is there anything worse than washing up a blender? We think not. Anyway, the jug and lid are also dishwasher safe, so that’s an extra tick from us.
Buy now £299.00, Amazon.co.uk
Blenders FAQs
Blender vs food processor vs stick blender – which should I buy?
Blenders: These tend to have tall jars with only one blade, and generally work best with wet recipes, such as smoothies, milkshakes, cocktails or soups. So, if you’re looking for an appliance to make drinks and other liquid concoctions, a blender could be right for you.
Food processors: Featuring multiple blades within a wider jar (compared with blenders), these devices more often than not also feature varying modes, such as slicing or shredding, as well as blending and pureeing. These different features are achieved by different blades or discs, some even come with whisk attachments. If you’re looking for a multi-use appliance, a food processor may be what you need, just make sure you have plenty of space, as these appliances are often bigger than the average blender and all those accessories require additional storage, too.
Stick blenders: Also called immersion blenders, these are definitely the more streamlined option, taking up much less real estate in the kitchen than blenders and food processors. The idea is to immerse the blades into the ingredients rather than the other way around. They are able to achieve the same results as blenders, although they may take more time to get recipes completely lump-free. If you’re strapped for space and don’t mind a bit of elbow grease, stick blenders are a great alternative to chunkier appliances.
The verdict: Blenders
For the second year in a row, the Ninja’s foodi power blender takes the top spot. The combination of the various bowls, jugs and the dial combined with the 1200W motor makes for a beautiful cocktail. Whether it’s a smoothie for one or meal prep for a large family, we think it is a great option. If you’re just here for smoothies and nothing else, Zwilling is a great option, and we loved how much control we had with the Braun.
Looking for more kitchen appliance recommendations? Read our guide to the best air fryers
