The Best Blenders for Making Smoothies, Soups, and Sauces

When using a personal blender, the secret to avoiding claggy results and burned-out motors is getting the liquid levels right. I’ve been caught out one too many times making disappointingly thick cement-style dishes, but not this time. I loaded up the Ultra Personal Blender with chickpeas, lemon zest, tahini, and plenty of olive oil, and by using the pulse option, I had fabulous tasting hummus in 30 seconds.

The Ultra is one of the more stylish Nutribullet designs, with two control buttons on the front that light up when the cup is twisted into place. This, along with its deep gray finish, adds a little luxury. The controls are simple, with one button for pulsing and one that gives you a 30-second blend for smoother consistencies. The Rapid Extractor Blade has a stainless-steel platform, titanium coating, and generous five-year limited warranty for peace of mind.

With a 1200-watt motor, it's one of Nutribullet's most powerful personal blenders, but also one of the quietest. It did, however, ramp up to a noisy 94 dB when crushing ice and frozen berries.

The base has suction cup feet, but I needed to make sure these were firmly in place before starting to blend to avoid any slippage on the countertop. And while I found the 30-second blend powerful, I needed to give the cup a shake and then blend for another 30- seconds to get the smoothie properly silky. —Emily Peck

I’ve always been put off by how bulky and aggressive Vitamix blenders look, and at 8 inches wide and 18 inches high, the Explorian commandeers my countertop. But its performance is undeniably impressive. With a simple speed dial that ramps up from one to 10, you can go from slow and steady to manic blitz in seconds. There’s both an on/off and pulse function that can be actioned by a simple flick of the switches, which takes the headache out of trying to identify complex control icons.

The stainless steel blades crushed through cashews to make a silky nut milk in less than 10 seconds. Hazelnuts did well here too, and as the speed controls are so powerful, I was able to make almond milk without having to presoak the almonds. Ice cubes and frozen berries instantly surrendered to the aircraft-grade blades here without intervention—although there’s a tamper in the set that does well to nudge rogue ingredients down should you need it. While I found the Vitamix to be loud on its highest setting, where I measured it at 94.9 dB(A), I was able to calm things down to 64.2 dB(A) on the lowest setting, which blended ingredients slowly but evenly. —Emily Peck

This Braun reminds me of the Vitamix E320 Explorian Blender. It’s stylish, durable, and built to perform. The jar is made from Tritan, rather than glass, which is a shame, but it is solid with a large 8-cup capacity (64 fluid ounces), so you can easily cook generous servings of soup for a family of four.

Just like the Vitamix, it has a large dial that can be simply adjusted from 1 to 10 depending on how powerful you want the blend. It has German stainless steel Blades and the 1600-watt motor ramps up the speed impressively. It gets quite loud at 93.7 dB on the fastest setting, but my hummus was smooth in 30 seconds.

What sets the Braun apart is the attractive touchscreen display with useful preset modes. There’s a standard smoothie, chop and ice crush quick starts, and also a frozen dessert, soup, and spread option. Intrigued by the latter, I made nut butter. On spread mode, I could choose my desired finish using iTextureControl. It adjusts to 50 seconds for a “coarse” consistency, 60 seconds for a “medium” finish, and 140 seconds for a supersmooth finish. This worked well.

The control freak in me would always choose the manual mode when using this blender, but I really appreciate just how accurate the timings are on the preset modes. They provide useful shortcuts to meal times at the touch of a button and take out the guesswork. —Emily Peck

Unlike the rest on test, the C2 is a dual design with a single motor base and interchangeable units for juicing and blending. This makes it a great space-saving option, but it’s worth bearing in mind that at 21 inches high and 21 pounds, it remains a large piece of kit to store.

It is extremely expensive, but you do get what you pay for, which is essentially two superb quality appliances. You can switch between juicing fruit and vegetables, making nut milks and sorbets, and blending smoothies, sauces and soups. The juicing chamber offers all the benefits of the Nama J2 (WIRED: Best All-Rounder) with a wide hopper that allows you to put all your ingredients inside in one go.

Blending performance is equally as impressive. The controls are easy to switch between and there are five blending presets, including those for smoothies, ice crushing, soups, milling, and even cleaning. It is one of the louder machines I've tested as it measured 96.8 dB in use, but the results were exceptional. With my berry smoothie, it drew the ingredients down to the blade within seconds resulting in a super silky drink. —Emily Peck

Nutribullet is best known for its personal “bullet“ style blenders, but it also sells a range of classic jug blenders. The Blender Combo gives you the best of both. You can use this base to switch between a traditional pitcher jug for larger quantities up to 64 ounces and one of the bullet-style jugs with a 32-ounce capacity. With its powerful 1200-watt output, the Blender Combo can perform a range of jobs from crushing ice to blending warm liquids. Not all blenders take on warm liquids successfully, but the large, vented pitcher on this does—handy when you’ve made a soup and don’t want to have to wait for it to cool down before blending smoothly or pulsing to a chunky finish.

The design is evenly balanced—the bullet top clicks on as smoothly as the jug pitcher. It comes with three variable speed settings and a pulse function, which makes it easy to make a range of dips, sauces, nut butters, smoothies, and batters with different consistencies—from super-smooth soup to chunkier guacamole. There’s also an extract button that can be used to break down whole fruits, vegetables, and ice for nutrient-rich smoothies. While I found this created quite a few bubbles when used, these soon disappeared and the texture proved consistent and the taste delicious.

In addition to soup and dip, I made a raspberry, cocoa, and banana smoothie with ice and oak milk. While it isn’t the quietest blender I’ve come across, I was impressed with how quickly it crushed the ice and blitzed the raspberry seeds so they didn’t leave that grainy texture you can sometimes get when blending berries. Overall, I’d say this is a great option if you’re after a flexible design that doesn’t have too many fiddly parts to contend with. Its streamlined and fuss-free design and dishwasher-safe parts also mean it’s easy to wash after use. —Emily Peck

The luxury car of the blender world, Breville's Super Q (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is stylish and powerful. There are a few presets, notably a high-functioning smoothie button that lets you wander off to butter your toast while your kale is being liquified. It also has a smoothie cup that you can blend in and drink from, which saves space in the dishwasher. You shall never want for something with more oomph, even when making something like a nut butter that might melt the motor of the inferior competition. You can even use that power to make something like a green-pea soup, heated to serving temperature using nothing but the friction of the blades, a trick that will never cease to amaze me.

I loved using it as a spice mill for jobs larger than my Krups spice grinder can handle, along with liquefying onions and garlic for a barbecue sauce. I loved it for whizzing up a Simon Hopkinson green sauce one day and a butter chicken sauce for a Madhur Jaffrey recipe on another. On a hot summer day, I made frozen margaritas that left no one disappointed and everyone pleasantly giddy. I do wish the vortex in the blender jar were a bit stronger, and while the "Q" in its name is for "quiet," it isn't. —Joe Ray

This is perhaps the best example of a kitchen product pared down to elemental perfection. With just two switches and a dial, along with great design and power to spare, the 5200 can do it all. Of course, testing included smoothies, lassis, frozen margs, and salad dressings, but I steered hard into Bricia Lopez and Javier Cabral's excellent cookbook, Oaxaca: Home Cooking From The Heart of Mexico, which relies on blenders to make moles, adobo, and chileajo. With dried avocado leaves in the mix with black bean paste, chiles, garlic, and onion, pasta de frijol negro sounds like it might leave you picking little bits of dried leaf from your teeth after dinner, but in the Vitamix, it's silky smooth.

It always conquered whichever potentially difficult-to-blend ingredient I threw in the jar, yet it can still function delicately enough to pull off a whipped cream for dessert. Much of the ease of use comes from the comparatively tall and skinny blender jar, which creates the perfect vortex, effectively sucking everything down into the blades, ensuring a perfect purée. —Joe Ray

Everything about this blender feels premium. It comes in a matte black or silver finish, and is developed in Germany and designed in Italy. I loved its clever LED display that is hidden when the blender is off and comes alive at the touch of the dial. In addition to six settings for pulsing, smoothies, cocktails, ice cream, crushing ice, and cleaning, there’s a dial that allows you to set your desired speed. Combined with a 1400-watt motor, this blender is fast and powerful, although at 93.4 dB(A) when blending nut milk on its highest setting, it’s pretty noisy.

Its blade is rather special too, and has a serrated edge and “piranha teeth” that is unlike anything I’ve used. It is easy to clean, and worked effortlessly when mixing a smoothie and crushing ice. Coarse and hard ingredients didn’t stand a chance. Soaked almonds whizzed up beautifully to create a smooth and creamy nut milk too. Decanting and loading ingredients into its BPA-free, 64-fluid-ounce Tritan jar was a breeze, as there’s a useful lever covering the jar which I found easy to lift off. This might not sound like a big deal, but it makes all the difference when you're in a hurry to deliver. —Emily Peck

A KitchenAid appliance will always look great on your countertop. I’ve had my trusty KitchenAid stand mixer for 10 years, and it’s my go-to when baking fluffy cakes and meringues. I know KitchenAid products are built to last, and even when my stand mixer is covered in cake mix and dusted with flour, guests still coo over its rainbow-top finish. Like the stand mixer, the K400 is a design classic. It now comes in a vivid, lush Hibiscus finish that is KitchenAid’s color of the year for 2023. But the blender also has intuitive design features that let you easily manage everything from almonds to ice to vegetables.

The K400 blender has an Intelli-Speed 1.5 HP motor that correctly estimates the ingredients inside the ribbed jar to maintain the optimal speed. This KitchenAid has a stainless-steel blade that can tackle all types of food, and the control dial that adorns the die-cast metal base is simple to use. Soups are particularly easy, as you can choose between five speeds and a pulse option to create the perfect texture—from chunky to velvety. Green smoothies are also a hit, as the blade is able to pull down fibrous and leafy vegetables and blitz them into a delicious drink. —Emily Peck

Aesthetically this Smeg is hard to beat. Its generous 6-cup, BPA-free Tritan plastic jug is scratch resistant and surprisingly light. The base is sturdy and the anti-sleep feet work a treat. There’s a spatula, tamper, and cleaning brush included in the set, plus a small measuring cup that doubles up as the jug cap.

A vacuum pump sits atop the jug and a simple press sucks the air out. It is designed to reduce oxidation and preserve the nutrients, flavor, and color of your blend, and certainly my smoothies looked more appetizing than normal after being left in the fridge for a few hours.

Smoothies worked well though, with the powerful 1400-watt motor blitzing ice, seeds, and pith. I found the nine-speed control with LCD display was easy to adjust, while the preset buttons for pulsing, smoothies, green smoothies, frozen dessert, and crushing added to its user friendliness. There’s also an auto clean setting that provides short bursts of power for up to a minute. It’s not too noisy either, measuring 81.9 decibels on the highest speed setting while making nut milk. —Emily Peck

With its 1200-watt motor and ActiveBlade technology, this immersion blender from Braun employs an up-and-down motion to smooth ingredients. It’s 60 percent faster than previous models—a noticeable difference. But while its hand blender tool is excellent at making smoothies, the MultiQuick works more like a mini food processor. It comes with all the tools needed to blend, chop, mash, whip, and knead. It also has attachments that let you quickly slice, shred, and julienne vegetables and the like.

The handle has clearly marked options for pulse and low- and high-speed modes. But there are a lot of parts to contend with in the 9-in-1 kit, and I suggest clearing out a section of your kitchen cupboard to house them after use—it’s no fun scrabbling around for a lost part when you’re trying to make a frozen Margarita on Friday night.

It took me some trial and error to identify each tool and how best to use it—like inserting the French fry disc into the base and switching to the kneading tool to make a homemade pizza base. But I was impressed by how quickly the device blended soup and chopped herbs for a pesto sauce, and the specific tools for tasks such as crushing ice, pureeing sauces, and mashing potatoes make prepping and cooking all manner of meals a pleasure. —Emily Peck