The best blenders can do much more than whip up your morning smoothie. These versatile kitchen appliances can help you tackle a wide range of tasks, without the need for a cupboard full of different gadgets. Whether you’re making soups, nut butter or getting through everyday food prep, a good blender will be a trusty tool year-round.
The term ‘blender’ covers a few different types of appliance. Hand blenders are ideal for blitzing ingredients directly in a pan or jug, while jug blenders are likely to be more powerful, and food processors tend to offer extra functions, with some models able to chop and slice as well as mix and blend.
Which should you choose? Look at the amount of space the blender will take up – remember to take into account all those attachments, too. Many blenders are designed to slot into cupboards, but you’ll want to consider where and how you’ll store your blender before you invest.
Think about what you’ll use your blender for, too. If you regularly tackle lots of chopping and grating, a food processor-style model with a powerful motor and multiple attachments may be the best choice. If you’ll only use your blender for soups during the colder months, a slimline hand blender should do the job nicely. Jug blenders, meanwhile, are ideal for smoothies, soups, curry pastes and more. Read on for my pick of the best models.
Read more: Best juicers, tested
The best blenders for 2026 are:
- Best overall – Ninja foodi power blender three-in-one: £149.99, Amazon.co.uk
- Best budget buy – Judge glass blender: £36, Amazon.co.uk
- Best compact design – Zwilling Enfinigy personal blender: £49.95, Zwilling.com
- Best for soups – Braun powerblend 9 jug blender: £149, Amazon.co.uk
Read more: Best slow cookers, tested
Ninja foodi power blender three-in-one
Best: blender overall
Why we love it
- Flexible
- Dishwasher safe
- Easy to use
I was thoroughly impressed by Ninja’s foodi power blender three-in-one. It did more than I ever knew this type of appliance could do and it was the best blender I tested.
Designed to offer flexibility, the Ninja blender comes with three different attachments. One 2.1l jug that has more capacity. It will chop, blend and mix, as well as knead doughs with the attachments included.
The cup attachment is designed for smoothies and has the capacity to make a single drink and can then be taken on the go with you. The “power nutri bowl” is for making smoothie bowls and thick desserts, such as frozen yoghurt, as well as nut butter. Best of all, every cup and blade is dishwasher safe.
The easy-to-operate dial will let you choose from the different programs, including blend, mix, crush and chop. The base will know which cup or bowl you have attached and offer you the right programs for that attachment. Seriously clever.
Key specifications
Buy now £149.99, Amazon.co.uk
Judge glass blender
Best: budget blender
Why we love it
- Simple
- Easy to use
- Lower price point
Take note
- Fairly loud when in use
- Not hugely versatile
This Judge glass blender is pretty straight up – it’s simple but gets the job done. It won’t take up loads of space in your cupboard but will blend smoothies and soups to smooth perfection. It’s quite loud when it’s on, but it made short work of everything we threw at it. The slightly tapered style of the glass jug meant ingredients slid towards the blades without us having to stop and scrape down every so often. The lid also enables you to add ingredients as you go – good for hollandaise and other sauces in particular. However, the blender will operate without the lid on, so beware.
Key specifications
Buy now £36, Amazon.co.uk
Dualit 700W hand blender
Best: hand blender
Why we love it
- Small
- Easy to use
- Handy attachments
Take note
- Not super powerful
- A faff to wash
I was instantly impressed with this Dualit hand blender. The chrome finish is sleek and doesn’t have the same plastic feeling that other hand blenders tend to have. Owing to its lightweight and compact design, it can fit in a drawer or cupboard fairly easily. In terms of performance, I was impressed with its chopping power on onions using the chopper bowl attachment, finely cutting the onion without pulverising it into a paste. If you need to add food gradually, you can also feed ingredients into the bowl as you chop. The chopping bowl has a small capacity though, so there’s only space to chop one onion at a time, and when I attempted sturdier vegetables, such as carrots, it wasn’t up to the job. What it is good for though is making chunky dips or purees for weaning babies.
Key specifications
Buy now £89.99, Amazon.co.uk
Sage super Q blender
Best: luxury blender
Why we love it
- Very powerful
- Easy to clean
- Versatile
Take note
- Noisy
- Expensive
This is a big investment. Sage claims it’s a commercial-grade blender, so it’s a great pick for large-scale cooking. Thanks to the powerful 2400W motor, it whipped up an absolute storm during testing, producing silky smooth soups and nut butter without breaking a sweat. My one gripe is that it is loud – it does have a noise reduction feature on it, but it was still reverberating around my house and probably my neighbour’s too. I loved the versatility of it – it took on nuts and root vegetables easily. The dial allows you to adjust the texture of what you’re creating from stirring right up to milled. This is great for whole spices and if you want to make your own flour or nut milk (I salute you for having the time for this endeavour).
As well as a hefty 2l jug, there’s a personalised 700ml cup too, which I found handy for making use of the two smoothie settings. There are also soup and frozen dessert options, but it won’t heat soup or freeze your ice creams in the way that soup makers and ice cream makers do. You simply add the hot pre-cooked ingredients for soup or add the frozen ones for desserts. While I was impressed with the soup-making option, I would go for a traditional soup maker over this if soup-making was the sole purpose of buying it. What I loved was how easy it was to clean – blitz some warm water and washing-up liquid and it’s pretty much clean.
Key specifications
Buy now £499.95, Sageappliances.com
Zwilling Enfinigy personal blender
Best: personal blender
Why we love it
- Small
- Modern design
- Dishwasher friendly
Take note
- Not the most powerful
- Only one bottle size
Modern and stylish, the Zwilling personal blender can fit in small spaces but still packs a punch. Fill the attractive BPA-free bottle with your ingredients and then tighten the blade on top, flip it upside down and lock it into the blender base. The Zwilling offers 600W of power, which isn’t the most powerful model within this review, but it handled jobs like smoothies and sauces well. I made an impressive pesto sauce in mine.
When testing, I liked that this blender offered a greater degree of control than other blenders in this format; there’s a dial to switch between blend and pulse to allow you to get the texture you want. Clean-up was relatively easy as the bottle is dishwasher safe (although handwashing is going to prolong the life of your blender). There’s a lid for the bottle, so you can take your smoothie with you on the go without having to decant.
Key specifications
Buy now £49.95, Zwilling.com
Braun powerblend 9 jug blender
Best: blender for soup
Why we love it
- Customisable textures
- Powerful motor
- Relatively lightweight
Take note
- Only one jug size
The Braun jug blender perhaps offers the best range of programs in this review. There are six food programmes – smoothie, soup, chop, ice, frozen dessert and spread – from there you can choose from three textures: coarse, medium or smooth. You can of course also pulse. I found it made a mean chunky peanut butter using the coarse and spread options.
The soup and frozen dessert options are similar to Sage’s blender in that the machine won’t cook ingredients, but it will warm them up through the friction from the blade. It also won’t freeze ingredients – these need to be pre-frozen before the blending. However, it did perform impressively well and offers a dizzying range of options. The clean function also makes light work of washing up, as I just filled the jug with water and a drop of fairy liquid, pressed the clean function and it was pretty much done.
Key specifications
Buy now £149, Amazon.co.uk
Cuisinart expert prep pro
Best: blender for versatility
Why we love it
- Versatile
- Great for food prep
- Loads of attachments, including storage boxes
Take note
- Takes up a lot of space
- Expensive
Clear out some cupboard space, as this bad boy comes with highly useful extras. It blended anything I threw at it with ease, including a very smooth nut butter that was absolutely delicious, thank you very much. The 550W motor seemed to be unfazed by thick and claggy mixtures, and it was relatively quiet, too.
As well as blending, the expert prep pro can grate, dice, slice, spiralise and mix. It has two different-sized bowls, and various-sized feed tubes to minimise this. Gloriously, the accessories come in a lockable display box, keeping everything neat and tidy.
Key specifications
Buy now £201, Amazon.co.uk
Gastroback vital mixer pro
Best: mid-range blender
Why we love it
- Three programmes and a pulse
- Easy to use
- LED dial
Take note
- Not the most versatile
I liked the flexibility of this Gastroback blender. Sure, all it does is blend, but I am here for the best blenders, so I can’t complain. There’s an LED dial where you can ramp up or down the blending power by hand, then you just hit start/stop and blend away, hands-free. Or you can select from the three programme buttons: ice crushing, smoothies or interval.
The ice crushing did the job – I ended up with ice fit for a daiquiri. The smoothie option turned out a silky-smooth drink in a matter of seconds. Just know that the lid on the Gastroback is one of those you can take off and the blender will still work, so blitz with caution. However, it does have a refill opening, so you can add ingredients as you go along.
Key specifications
Buy now £91.99, Robertdyas.co.uk
KitchenAid artisan blender
Best: blender for good looks
Why we love it
- Looks great
- Powerful 1200W motor
- Three programmes
- Easy to clean
Take note
- Expensive
This KitchenAid blender looks so good on a kitchen work surface but, looks aside, it’s also very capable. It’s been designed to take on nuts, seeds and any fruit or veg you want to throw at it. Our smoothies came out, well, smooth, and the blender didn’t seem to break a sweat. KitchenAid has installed an intelligent motor in this model, so it senses what’s in the jug, to make sure it’s whizzing at just the right speed.
There are three settings – crushed ice, icy drinks and smoothies and (praise be) a self-cleaning function. Is there anything worse than washing up a blender? We think not. Anyway, the jug and lid are also dishwasher safe, so that’s an extra tick from us.
Key specifications
Buy now £296, Johnlewis.com
Ninja blendboss tumbler blender
Best: on-the-go blender
Why we love it
- Easy to take drinks on the go
- Intelligent presets
- Takes up little storage space
Take note
- Only makes one drink at a time
This blender is perfectly suited to people who want to make a smoothie quickly and take it on the go with them. I found it quick and easy to remove the blade attachment and replace it with the tumbler lid and straw.
It has three auto presets (smoothie, blend and crush), which blend down ingredients easily, without you needing to stop and manually readjust things. However, there is also a manual pulse mode, should you need it.
The crush mode was particularly effective for blending ice but, because the tumbler is on the smaller side, you have to be very slow and careful about removing the blade, in order not to lose a lot of the compacted crushed ice with it.
The machine is easy enough to clean but I did find I needed to use a pipe cleaner to really get in around the blade when whipping up thicker drinks.
It’s only big enough to make one drink at a time, so it is much better suited to singles or couples, rather than larger households. The upside of this is that it doesn’t take up too much storage space, which is ideal if, like me, you live in a smaller flat.
It’s on the pricier side for a blender that only makes one drink at a time but if time is of the essence when it comes to your morning routine, it’s a great option.
Reviewed by Sarah Michael
Key specifications
Buy now £104.99, Argos.co.uk
Your questions about blenders answered
What is the best blender?
The Ninja foodi power blender takes the top spot as the best blender I tested. The combination of the various bowls, jugs and the dial combined with the 1200W motor makes for a beautiful cocktail. Whether it’s a smoothie for one or meal prep for a large family, I think it is a great option. If you’re just here for smoothies and nothing else, Zwilling is a great option, and I loved how much control I had with the Braun.
How I tested blenders
I tested each blender in a busy family kitchen. During testing, I looked at six main factors. These were:
Blender vs food processor vs stick blender – which should I buy?
Blenders: These tend to have tall jars with only one blade, and generally work best with wet recipes, such as smoothies, milkshakes, cocktails or soups. So, if you’re looking for an appliance to make drinks and other liquid concoctions, a blender could be right for you.
Food processors: Featuring multiple blades within a wider jar (compared with blenders), these devices more often than not also feature varying modes, such as slicing or shredding, as well as blending and pureeing. These different features are achieved by different blades or discs, some even come with whisk attachments. If you’re looking for a multi-use appliance, a food processor may be what you need, just make sure you have plenty of space, as these appliances are often bigger than the average blender and all those accessories require additional storage, too.
Stick blenders: Also called immersion blenders, these are definitely the more streamlined option, taking up much less real estate in the kitchen than blenders and food processors. The idea is to immerse the blades into the ingredients rather than the other way around. They are able to achieve the same results as blenders, although they may take more time to get recipes completely lump-free. If you’re strapped for space and don’t mind a bit of elbow grease, stick blenders are a great alternative to chunkier appliances.
Why you can trust IndyBest reviews
Zoë Phillimore has reviewed many home products for IndyBest, including mattresses, lawn mowers, trampolines and more. She knows which features to look for, including user-friendliness, settings and value for money. Zoë has used all of the blenders in this review in real-world conditions and has made dishes like smoothies, soups and juices in each and every one, similarly to how you would be using them in your own home.
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