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Also, this machine is quite loud—the loudest of any personal blender by a mile, which was a little off-putting for its size. For a large-and-in-charge high-performance blender, we recommend the Vitamix 5200. If you plan on handling heavy-duty tasks like making nut butter, crushing ice, and grinding grains on a regular basis, the price and size of this blender will pay off. Buy the Cuisinart Hurricane Pro if you don’t mind the heavy base.
While almost every blender we tested was of the high-performance variety , we kept seeing extremely positive reviews for this conventional KitchenAid model. And in fact, this one pulsed and crushed ice and basic smoothie ingredients better than its high-performance counterpart from KitchenAid, which we also tested . However, because it isn’t high-performance, it isn’t as well-equipped to hander studier ingredients; you won’t be cuisinart soup maker able to make nut butters or milks in this model. Perhaps you aspire to fill your diet with nutrient-packed smoothies, homemade almond milk, or tropical cocktails. If so, finding the best blender—full-size or personal, depending on your needs—is crucial. Blenders range from straightforward ice-crushing machines to button-laden beats with tons of extra features, so finding the right model for you can be a bit of a challenge.
With only 250 watts to it’s name, it took a long time to blend the smoothie and still left a lot of larger chunks; all the extra cups, lids, and rings didn’t outweigh its shortcomings. Cuisinart has been a trusted brand for cooking for over 40 years. Founded in 1971, Cuisinart’s first appliance, a food processor, became immensely popular among home cooks. Shop appliances, cookware, gadgets and cutlery on HSN to take your cooking to the next level. This nicely-designed model has a powerful motor, plenty of smart features, and a reasonable price. The Beast Blender ($138) is a looker, there’s no doubt about it.
In each of our annual blender testings, this high-performance Cuisinart model has ranked among the top performers. The smoothie it blends is smooth and velvety with plenty of air incorporated throughout and zero bitterness. The Hurricane Pro also crushes ice effectively into small pellets. However, it has a humongous base and would have to live on the counter permanently or require a bit of manual labor to bring out of storage. We crushed ice, made smoothies, and blitzed batches of pesto to find the best full-size and personal blenders on the market.
It’s not worth the high price when you could get the very best blender, a Vitamix, for a similar or lower cost. The brand’s high-performance model, the Hamilton Beach Professional ($180) produced even grains of ice and a smooth-textured smoothie. However, we found the smoothie to be thick and slightly warm, suggesting that the motor was overworked. The Blendtec Classic Blender ($250) is another high-performance blender.
Keep in mind that Cuisinart does charge shipping fees, so you’ll have to pay a bit even under warranty. The Cuisinart HB-155PC Smart Stick Stainless Steel Hand Blender is an electric immersion blender that’s compact and easy to use but has less functionality and doesn’t cuisinart griddler elite feel very durable. This model’s 500-watt motor is reasonably strong, though we found the blades less durable. Our least favorite feature was the plastic gears, which break easily. Cuisinart does offer replacement parts, along with a good three-year warranty.
If you’re looking to use mostly powders and liquids, this would be a good tool, but for everything with more mass than that, the BlendJet 2 falls short. The Hamilton Beach Power Elite Blender ($30) was lightweight and flimsy, and the smoothie it made was full of chunks of almond and fibers of kale, even after an extra minute of blending.
If you’re particularly sensitive to noise, you may prefer the quieter operation of an immersion blender or one with a less powerful motor. The second power consideration is the motor’s wattage or horsepower level. A one-horsepower motor has cuisinart pots and pans set the equivalent of about 746 watts of power. A motor with over one horsepower will be able to handle blending tougher materials like ice and frozen fruit. If you mostly blend softer ingredients, you may not need such a powerful motor.
Initially, it was a little hard to figure out how to operate the Smart Stick because two buttons, the unlock button and the on button, have to be held down at once to get it started. While this is an effective safety feature, we had limited use of one arm, due to a medical procedure, which made it difficult to turn the blender on. Other than that one, potentially aggravating feature, the Smart Stick is very easy to use. The Nutribullet Pro 1000 ($80) is highly powered; it’s name comes from the 1000 watts it’s packing.