Add Your Own Review The Ninja Professional Blender looks cool, feels solid, isn’t too loud, and has a short but sweet range of speeds. It’s easy to clean, and you can toss the pitcher components in the dishwasher. The lid design makes using the Ninja a little clumsy, and the cord's too short. The Ninja does an adequate job with simple tasks like blending drinks. It looks cool, but for less cash you could get a basic blender that performs the same or better. The manufacturer, Massachusetts-based Euro-Pro, has made a specialty of marketing midrange housewares and small kitchen appliances under various names (Bravetti, Shark), positioned as gadgets with stepped-up design and performance. The Ninja has been marketed on TV, infomercial style, and the cool-looking packaging has the brash look and bold call-outs we'd expect. Stainless-steel blades sprout from the bottom and near the top of the tall blade assembly tower, so instead of all the action happening at the bottom of the pitcher, puréeing and pulverizing can theoretically happen at dual shred points.

There’s a large, 72-ounce pitcher made of BPA-free SAN plastic; it's not recommended for foods hotter than 180 degrees Fahrenheit. The cord is a short two feet, and there’s a stuff box in the base. The 1,000-watt motor is relatively powerful, with four options: a pulse setting and three speeds, labeled simply 1 through 3. The control pad is flat for easy cleanup. The pitcher locks into the base, and the rather complicated-looking square lid locks into the pitcher, with a handle that has to be secure before the motor turns on—understandable as a safety feature, considering the ferociousness of the multitier blade assembly. You don’t want to be able to stick your fingers into the machine. There’s a relatively small pour spout situated off-center, at one of the lid’s corners. You can clean the pitcher, the lid, and the blade assembly in the dishwasher. The Ninja’s instruction manual comes with recipes covering a pretty wide range of tasks. We chose five for testing: chopping vegetables for pico de gallo salsa;

and making a frozen pineapple daiquiri. Pico de gallo salsa: The instruction manual’s salsa recipe says to pulse large pieces of fruits and vegetables three to four times, and shows a picture of beautifully diced mango and tomatoes. For our pico de gallo, we dropped in half a quartered onion, four Roma tomatoes (each cut into eight pieces), two quartered serrano chiles, and a few cilantro sprigs, then pulsed six times. The results were uneven: some parts slushy and puréed, others still in big hunks. We scraped down the jar and gave it six more pulses. The results were foamy, pink, and slushy, more like soup than salsa. Crushed ice: The instruction manual says to use speed 2 for crushing ice. We dumped 6 cups of cubes into the pitcher, turned it on at speed 2, and let it run for 15 seconds. The result: fluffy drifts of crushed ice. Chopped almonds: We dumped a cup of whole almonds into the jar and, following the instructions in the manual, turned it on at speed 2. After 10 seconds the nuts were a pretty even medium-fine chop—perfect for a crumble topping or to decorate the sides of an iced carrot cake.

After another 30 seconds at speed 2, the almonds were a nice, fine meal, just right for a nut torte or to mix into muffin batter. Ground Parmesan: Our Parmesan started out as 2-inch hunks in the blender jar. We closed the lid and turned it on at speed 2. The Ninja seemed a bit unstable—we felt like we had to keep our hand on top of the lid to steady the machine so it wouldn’t wobble off the counter. cuisinart cb-600 fp blenderAfter 20 seconds, we had a medium-coarse grind; kitchenaid mixer model 45ssafter another 45, it was medium fine—good for topping gratins or melting into sauces, though perhaps too grainy to sprinkle over pasta at the table. vitamix costco canada roadshow price

Frozen daiquiris: The ultimate test of any blender—can it make a good frozen drink? We loaded the pitcher with frozen pineapple chunks, ice cubes, rum, simple syrup, and lime juice and turned it on at the Ninja’s highest speed, 3. After nearly 30 seconds, we still saw chunks of ice being hoisted up the blade assembly tower. Our standard KitchenAid blender turned the same ingredients into a perfectly slushy drink in 30 seconds, but the Ninja still had clunkers lurking here and there. parts for kitchenaid blender ksb5mc4We gave it another 30 seconds, and there were still small ice chunks. kitchenaid mixer ksm95er accessoriesFinally, after 2 minutes of blending at speed 3, the daiquiri was slushy and relatively smooth, with lingering mini ice shards. margaritaville drink mixer dm1000

Upcoming NinjaNutrininja IqIq TechnologyModern LivesNinja BlendersIq RecipesBlender ReviewsAuto IqGuyForwardA new technology has recently emerged among some of the new and upcoming Ninja blenders that is pretty impressive. It’s known as auto IQ technology. What is auto IQ?If you’re ever up late at night and watching the boob tube, you may have already seen this next product on the hundreds of Nutri Ninja DUO infomercials that air when everyone else is sleeping. shimono blender for saleIf you haven’t, though, the Nutri Ninja BlendMax DUO with Auto-iQ is an all-in-one blender system that uses both the traditional blade/pitcher setup alongside an innovative smoothie cup attachment to make eating healthy on the go easier than ever before. But at such a cheap price, can the 1600 HP motor really do everything you need it to in record time? Read on in my Nutri Ninja BlendMax DUO with Auto-iQ blender review to find out!

Summary: The Nutri Ninja BlendMax DUO with Auto iQ makes a fine smoothie with minimal effort on your part using the included 24oz cups, but the blade system in the MAX 880z pitcher could still use a little work. The Nutri Ninja BlendMax DUO’s design borrows and shares many of its aesthetic notes from the larger Ninja iQ system we reviewed last month. As we already noted there, while the blender certainly maintains a certain “futuristic” look thanks to its black-on-silver color scheme and LED lit display, all this extra noise on the touch panel may not be the preferred method of control for true blender purists out there. Related: Best Blender for Smoothies 2016 At 7 x 10 x 17.5 inches around and just over 10lbs standing weight, lugging the Ninja DUO around isn’t especially easy, but not that hard either. The main difficulty comes from the ultra-sticky suction cups on the bottom of the unit, which would grab onto our granite countertops so tight that just getting it from underneath the cabinet took me pulling as hard as I could with both arms.

Unlike the original Ninja system which comes with an included food processor option, the DUO is just that: two pieces of equipment for two different jobs. The first is the main MAX 88oz “Total Crushing” pitcher unit with a three-sided spiraled blade that goes up right the middle, while the second is a more traditional four-pronged blade that screws onto the bottom of one of the included 24oz or 18oz to-go smoothie cups. The Nutri Ninja Auto iQ Blender system uses a 1600-Watt, 2 HP motor to power its base, which gives it exactly 100 more horses than the Auto iQ. The similarities between the iQ and the DUO continue on with many of the same settings available on each, including those for changing the power level, or enabling the “Auto iQ” system which is essentially just a series of programmed spin cycles that change on the fly depending on the type of pitcher/jar you’re using at the time. Unfortunately, these presets don’t always match up the way you’d expect.

For example, you can use the “Smoothie” setting when the MAX pitcher is locked into the base – but as was the case with the original Ninja – the spiral-style blade is terrible for anything except chunkier soups or grinding up spices/coffee/ice. When we tried to make smoothies inside the MAX, we got a chunky, unpalatable mess that never lived up to the “smooth” part of the drink’s name, no matter how long we blended for. If you’re really a smoothie nut then, we’d recommend using the “Extract” option on the Ninja cups instead. Blending in the cup is significantly more powerful and reliable than what you might find on something like the Magic Bullet, and outclasses the MAX pitcher in almost every instance save for a few specialty meals. The best part is that once you lock the cup onto the base and hit start, you can just walk away from the unit while it goes into spin cycle for a minute-thirty, or use that valuable time to clean up any mess before it’s done.

Nutri Ninja also went and fixed up the impossible-to-sip-from lids that were a pain to deal with on the last to-go cups, and the new style works wonders as long as you don’t plan on chugging your entire smoothie in a single go. Look, there’s no way around it: if you value the health of your eardrums or those of your family, the Ninja DUO is going to be a challenge to keep around. We ran the Nutri Ninja through three separate tests to determine its loudness profile: once dry with the MAX pitcher, one with ice in the MAX pitcher, and once in the smoothie cup filled with various smoothie ingredients. Of those tests the smoothie was the quietest, thanks to the muffling effect of the ingredients weighing down on the blade assembly. At the peak RPM we read a dB rating of 83.4, a number which climbed to 101.3dB during the dry run. Unsurprisingly the ice test was the worst offender of the bunch, registering an ear-splitting 109.8dB from over 5ft away. If you make smoothies early in the morning before your family is up you might be able to get away with it without waking anyone, but it’ll probably be a good idea to hold off on that 6AM margarita until daylight hours at least.

Overall the performance of the Nutri Ninja BlendMax DUO with Auto-iQ is a bit of a grab-bag, with pros and cons on both sides of the equation. On the one hand it’s perfect if you want a fast, simple, and effortless way to make smoothies in the morning so you can reclaim those valuable minutes in the morning back from standing in front of your blender. On the other, the MAX pitcher (or rather the blade system inside) is still not quite up to the task, and was beat out in product smoothness almost every time by the cup’s more traditional four-pronged style. Related: Blendtec Designer 725 Review When it comes to the Nutri Ninja DUO vs Vitamix debate, one is crowded and complicated but feature-rich, while the other is simplicity at its finest. That said, given the Ninja Duo is 1/2 the price of the Vitamix, this isn’t really so much a competition between the two as it is a mutual agreement between two products that occupy vastly different skews in the market. With the Ninja Duo, for $199 you get a decent full-sized blender that can handle general tasks, with a Magic Bullet that’s hundreds of times more reliable and powerful.