The Breville Fresh & Furious, Vitamix 5200, and KitchenAid Pure Power Blender with Glass Jar emerge as the top-performing kitchen appliances for preparing smoothies, frozen drinks, soups, and purees, offering varying trade-offs in power. Recent testing of kitchen gear highlights how these appliances handle everything from morning smoothies to evening soups and frozen drinks.
Blender technology has evolved to include high-speed contraptions capable of making peanut butter in less than a minute. While blenders are commonly used for healthy smoothies with greens and nut milk or full-fat dairy and cocoa powder, the best models function as kitchen workhouses for dips, soups, and frozen beverages.
Top Overall Performance and Features
The Breville Fresh & Furious is recognized as the best overall option, priced at $150 down from $200 at Amazon. It stands out as one of only three tested blenders capable of crushing ice without requiring a tamper or a splash of water. Although its blades offer a mix of blending and food processing functionality, testing showed it shredded rather than chopped carrots. It quickly produced a bright-green pesto and a smoothie, though both retained slightly more texture compared to the Vitamix results. Additionally, it features a tightly fitting lid with a loop for easy removal and comes in seven colors.
Luxury Testing and Smoothness
The Vitamix 5200 is named the very best luxury blender, priced at $413 at Walmart. Across testing rounds, it consistently produced the smoothest products, yielding luscious results for smoothies, soups, and pesto while preventing green and purple smoothies from turning muddy. It turned a chunky soup into a puree in less than a minute, whereas competitors required 90 seconds or more. The appliance features an on/off switch, a switch for high or variable speed, a central dial ranging from zero to 10, a pulse function for chunkier items like salsa, and an included tamper.
