What is a bullet blender you might ask?
Well, remember the Nutribulllet craze a few years ago, when pulverizing fruit and veg into smoothies and soups became the new healthy eating (and totally took over from juicing)? That’s a bullet blender.
It can make tasty smoothies, juices and shakes from fresh or frozen fruit and vegetables, blend chunky veg mixes into smooth soups and sauces (just let them cool down before putting them in the blender), make hummus and curry pastes, whip up a cocktail or sorbet, or a dip or dressing.
There are, of course, many other brands available on the market, in various sizes, motor powers and degrees of gadgetry but as the Nutribullet has just released an app compatible with its newest model, it sounds like it’s still ahead of the game.
Or is it?
I bought one many years ago at the height of its popularity (curious about the hype and tired of painstakingly removing bits of pulpy fruit from the inner mechanism of the juicer). I was delighted with my new purchase, proudly showing it off in my local café just after I bought it only to be told by a fellow customer that he’d put on several pounds after a few months of fruit smoothies – all those natural sugars!
So I halved the fruit quantities and added in veg and it’s served me very well since. But now it’s time for an upgrade. Will the Nutribullet still be the leader of the pack? Or it is time for a usurper? The suspense is killing me…
Here’s our pick of the best bullet blenders.
Best bullet blenders at a glance:
- Best overall: Nutribullet Balance - £99.99, OnBuy
- Best for more than a bullet blender: Sage Super Q SBL920BSS Blender - Stainless Steel - £599.99, Currys
- Best for a tried and true, value-for-money favourite: Nutribullet Blender Combo - £130, Argos
- Best for style on the go: Smeg PBF01 blender - £110, Argos
- Best for sleek sophistication: Cuisinart Cordless On the Go Blender - £69.99, Amazon
- Best for value-for-money: VonShef UltraBlend Smoothie Maker - £42.99, Vonhaus
- Best for stability: Salter NutriPro 1000 Multi-Purpose Blender - £59.99, Robert Dyas
- Best for hi-tech excellence: Ninja Foodi Power Nutri Blender 2-in-1 with Smart Torque & Auto-iQ - £99.99, Ninja
- Best for vacuum technology: Tefal Freshboost Stainless Steel Blender - £99.99, Amazon
- Best for small square footage: Tower T12060MNB Cavaletto 300W Personal Blender - £29.99, Robert Dyas
Nutribullet Balance
Best overall
Weighing in as the second priciest model on the list, the Nutribullet goes a step beyond the others with a downloadable free app that offers recipes and nutrition advice, letting you track calories and set goals.
I was the third person in the room as my phone and the blender chatted – the app even measures the ingredients as you add them to the blender cup and shows you their calories, fat, total carbs, fibre and protein (the base has a built-in weighing scale). You can personalise your usage by telling the app your dietary goals and restrictions – while also saving your own recipes for future use.
Choose from a list of pre-loaded recipes or tell the app what’s in your ‘pantry’ and it will suggest suitable recipes. Select what you want to make for the week and the app will make a shopping list for you – I’m waiting for the upgraded version when the app goes to the supermarket and does my shopping for me.
Once you’ve added everything to the blender cup, just press the on button and the app counts down the seconds to the finish. A powerful 1200-watt motor makes it reasonably noisy to operate – a passing cat leapt about five feet into the air and ran for the hills yowling when the motor kicked in, but if you’re a human, it won’t bother you unduly. It comes with two large cups, and each one has a flip-top lid for drinking.
Buy now £99.99, OnBuy
Sage Super Q SBL920BSS Blender - Stainless Steel
Best for: more than a bullet blender
The Sage brand, made with Heston Blumenthal’s seal of approval, has become synonymous with clever design features for increased performance - and they’ve done it again. Using a high-tech Kinetix blade system, this bullet blends even really tough ingredients with ease to ultimate smoothness. It features a neat push and twist button that’s lovely to use and a grind and mill unit for nuts and seeds, while every element exudes high quality in its comfortable, easy grip and drink cup shapes and overall design. An overall winner that’s top quality, albeit expensive.
Buy now £599.99, Currys
Nutribullet Blender Combo
Best for: a tried and true, value-for-money favourite
You’ll be hard-pressed (ahem) to find someone who doesn’t know about the beauty of the Nutribullet. It is one of the most straightforward appliances on the market; add fruit to one of the many containers included, twist the lid shut, slot onto the base, push - and you’re in the money.
The Blender Combo model brings the juicing element into the equation, allowing you to blitz your favourite fruits and vegetables with ease. Thanks to an innovative OneTouch technology, the Blender Combo can utilise a pre-programmed nutrition extraction cycle to ensure you’re getting the most out of your juices. The 1.8-litre jug blender can blend hot and cold in any one of the three Nutribullet vessels included in the set.
The brand has also recently launched The Juicer to further streamline the process.
Buy now £130.00, Argos
Smeg PBF01 blender
Best for: Style on the go
This is one of the latest additions to the Smeg range and it takes the idea of a mini blender and runs with it. The pint-sized kitchen gadget would almost be a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it-device if it wasn’t for the signature aesthetically-appealing 50s design that will fit seamlessly among the brand’s other toasters, kettles and the likes. It comes in seven colourways that include pastel pinks and blues as well as the classic red and black.
The Italian appliance label has produced one of the most minuscule blenders on the market that is ideal for smaller kitchens, but it doesn’t end there. Alongside the compact 33.5cm x 14.2cm base is not one but two ready-to-go 600ml containers, the same that are set inside the base. This means all it takes is switching out the blending attachment for the lid to take your milkshake on the move. Twist this lid and you have an easily sippable smoothie. It has 300W power and minimal buttons, just push down for the mixing magic. What’s more, the blender has been made from 50 per cent certified recycled content.
Buy now £110.00, Argos
Cuisinart Cordless On the Go Blender
Best for: sleek sophistication
With its sleek silver body and polished chrome trim, this is so beautiful and shiny that I preened like a magpie when it came out of the box. It’s an on-the-go blender that is so gorgeous that you’d be proud to be seen with it anywhere.
The idea is that you charge it up (a two-hour charge makes eight smoothies) and take it with you – to the office, to the gym, to the park, wherever. Once charged you can whip up a beverage just about anywhere – in a board meeting, while lifting weights, peddling a paddleboat across a lake. You name it.
But, would you want to? It may be lightweight and cordless once you’ve charged it – but you still have to haul all of the ingredients around to make your smoothie. I can’t see it myself.
Of course, you can just leave it at home on the worktop, its compact size and battery power (no ugly trailing cords) make it ideal for small kitchens and cramped worktops – an important consideration when viewed against a lot of the other models on the market with their sizeable footprints – all of those hefty bases, blending cups and lids have to live somewhere.
This one has a neat base fitted with a power button and one slimline lidded 450ml bottle. On the plus side, this takes care of storage issues, on the downside, it’s only suitable for one person. Plus, this type of style comes with a hefty price tag. But if you want a bit of gadget glamour in your chic studio apartment, this one’s for you.
Buy now £69.99, Amazon
VonShef UltraBlend Smoothie Maker
Best for: value-for-money
This is a good mid-price buy and is clearly chuffed with its 1,000-watt motor capacity, proudly displaying the fact in silver lettering on the front. I put in some chunky carrot pieces, broccoli stems, cabbage stalks and lemon peel to test it out – and it coped very well, nicely diced up, no lumpy chewy bits and all blended beautifully. And luckily, more power doesn’t equal more noise.
It works very simply – there are no bells, whistles or buttons, just press down the blending cup on the base and it does its thing. The instructions are also very basic – just one leaflet with a series of illustrated how-to’s – no colour pictures and no recipe suggestions (which was slightly disappointing, being quite partial to recipe suggestions). It also comes with a tall 800ml and medium-sized 500ml cup, one flat lid and one lid with a drinking flap.
Buy now £42.99, Vonhaus
Salter NutriPro 1000 Multi-Purpose Blender
Best for: stability
This also doesn’t have the bells and whistles of some of the others but it’s nice and simple to use and does a good job. Plus it has a slightly more powerful motor (1200 watts) than the other model in the mid-price range.
It has two blend modes: push down to pulse and twist to blend - with the latter working continuously while you walk away and admire it doing its thing. The sturdy base has suction feet for increased stability while the motor is running. It comes with a 1 litre and 800ml cup and two lids - one flat, the other has a drinking flap. One detail that I loved on this model was the max fill symbol (marking the level to which you can add liquid) - which is indented so you can feel and see it.
The instructions are easy to follow and while it doesn’t come with a recipe book, the box informs me that there are 50 healthy ‘getting you started’ recipes online. Which is useful - but not as good as an actual recipe book.
Buy now £59.99, Robert Dyas
Ninja Foodi Power Nutri Blender 2-in-1 with Smart Torque & Auto-iQ
Best for: hi-tech excellence
‘More than smoothies’ says the Ninja Foodi and so I thought I’d try out one of its ‘extra-curricular’ activities and make hummus – using its very handy recipe book. All of the ingredients (mainly a tin of chickpeas and some spices) went into the blender cup and onto the stand with its handy LED display, I selected ‘mix’ and 20 seconds later I had my first ever homemade hummus. And it was good.
Easy and quick – the recipe book said it would take 5 minutes, but they had clearly allowed an over-generous 4 minutes to open a tin of chickpeas and some spice jars. In the book, there are also some other great recipes on offer - including smoothies, fruit bowls, butter, parfait, pâté, pesto, and guacamole.
In fairness, all of the bullets will make hummus, but the Ninja makes the process a bit easier. A paddle attachment at the top of the blender cup pushes the ingredients down towards the blades at the bottom which keeps everything moving so that nothing sticks to the side.
The LED display on this model is a nice touch, with pre-set options for blending (smoothies and shakes), crushing (ice, tough fibrous whole fruits and veg), mixing (smoothie bowls and frozen yoghurt), power mixing (nut butter and hummus) and pulsing. Or you can just use the stop/start option for manual use.
I made a smoothie later using the ‘blend’ button, watching proudly as it counted itself down from 40 seconds. It has a powerful 1100-watt motor which did make me jump when I first turned it on but it takes all the guesswork – and in fact all the work – out of blending.
It also comes with a 400ml bowl with a paddle for blending thicker textures, a 700ml cup for smoothies and dressings, a flat lid and a drinking lid.
Buy now £99.99, Ninja
Tefal Freshboost Stainless Steel Blender
Best for: vacuum technology
You get a lot of kit with the Tefal – owners of small kitchens be warned. As well as a hefty stainless base with 80-watt motor and a four-setting dial, there are two 600ml cups for blending, two flat lids, two lids with drinking flaps and a large vacuum dome for extracting air.
The ‘extracting air’ feature is a clever touch and sets this model apart. Place all of the ingredients into the blender cup and attach to the base, then place the vacuum dome over it, slide the lock to ‘air out’ and press to start. You’ll hear a high pitched whining noise, but don’t be alarmed – it’s just the air being sucked out. I confess though, that no matter how many times I used this, the sound of the motor kicking into action once the air had been sucked out made me jump every time – if that cat had still been around, she would have had a heart attack on the spot. And the noise of it blending was a bit like foxes fighting – this won’t win any prizes for quiet operation.
On the plus side though, there is no frothy foam at the top of the drink once blended and the ingredients don’t separate – no matter how long you leave it to sit. This is a nice advantage over all of the other models – just check the vicinity for frightened cats before you switch it on. It comes with nicely detailed instruction books, a handy quick-start guide and a colour recipe book.
Buy now £99.99, Amazon
Tower T12060MNB Cavaletto 300W Personal Blender
Best for: small square footage
Such a neat little model. To any of you with spatially challenged worktops, this is the perfect buy. With a small footprint, though, comes a short wire, so you will need to place it fairly near a socket.
Easy to use, just click the blending cup into place, push the button on the front and it mixes like a dream. The blending cup comes with its own lid so you can turn it into a bottle and carry it away with you – or just pop it in the fridge to top up your drink throughout the day. It’s a good size, holding a max of 600ml - while they’ve even included a second 600ml bottle for a flatmate or to pop in the kid’s lunchbox.
With a 350-watt motor, it’s not as powerful as some of the more expensive models so you might find small pieces of fruit skin in your smoothie. Not enough that you’d really notice though, and it offers great value for money.
Buy now £29.99, Robert Dyas
Verdict
It turns out that the Nutribullet Balance does range supreme – the calorie-tracking, ingredient-explaining app gives it the edge over the competition, although with it being priced at way over 100 pounds, you’re certainly paying for the privilege.
