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NutriBullet Blender Review

This budget blender holds its own with the top-tier products fairly well
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NutriBullet Blender Review
Credit: Jenna Ammerman
Price:  $130 List
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Manufacturer:   NutriBullet
By Austin Palmer, David Wise  ⋅  Jun 3, 2022
80
OVERALL
SCORE
  • Smoothies - 30% 8.3
  • Ice - 20% 10.0
  • Convenience - 20% 5.2
  • Pureeing - 15% 10.0
  • Grinding - 15% 6.7

Our Verdict

The NutriBullet is a simple, budget-friendly blender. Its performance is slightly less impressive than the more expensive options, for a fraction of the price. It crushes ice in 10 seconds and makes a decent margarita, although you can smell the motor overheating a bit. It is relatively easy to clean and can be placed in the dishwasher, excluding the lid. The pitcher must be placed on the top rack, and food gets stuck underneath the blades, but this is a small inconvenience for the price. The Bullet purees nut butters and soups with ease. While it does not offer presets, the simple and well-labeled low, medium, high, and pulse options give it some versatility. If you are looking for a budget-friendly option, the NutriBullet is solid, but there are better versions available in our review of today's best blenders.
REASONS TO BUY
Great blended drinks
Excellent at pureeing
Solid at making nut butter
REASONS TO AVOID
No presets
No digital timer
Food sticks under blade
Motor overheats and smells
Editor's Note: This review was updated on June 3, 2022, to include additional testing results and information on competing products worth considering.

Our Analysis and Test Results

The NutriBullet pitcher is slightly smaller than others in our test suite but still offers a 64-ounce blending capacity. The main features that this model lacks compared to some of the best blenders are preset blending functions and a digital timer. This means you have to manually control the speed and duration when blending, but we don't find this to be an issue. Additionally, you can also get a combo pack that includes some personal smoothie cups if you want an easier way to take your smoothies on the go. Read on to see how this budget-friendly option holds up to our testing.

Performance Comparison


nutribullet blender - the nutribullet made some excellent smoothies.
The NutriBullet made some excellent smoothies.
Credit: Jenna Ammerman

Smoothies


Accounting for 30%, our smoothie metric consisted of four different beverages: green, berry, and fruit & oat smoothies, as well as an Oreo malt.


The NutriBullet performs well above average on all four of our individual smoothie tests, but our judges rate it just behind the top models in terms of taste and texture.

nutribullet blender - this blender did a great job blending leafy greens, which many other...
This blender did a great job blending leafy greens, which many other products struggled with.
Credit: Austin Palmer

We run the NutriBullet on high power for 70 seconds for our green smoothie test, which produces a very good, albeit foamy, drink. It is one of the best green smoothies in our testing.


It can be difficult to blend leafy greens in with frozen fruit, but the NurtiBullet does a great job. Our green smoothie tastes amazing, and this blender obliterates almost all of the frozen fruit, spinach, and kale aside from one small chunk.

nutribullet blender - unfortunately, the nutribullet couldn't completely obliterate all of...
Unfortunately, the NutriBullet couldn't completely obliterate all of the berry seeds.
Credit: Austin Palmer

This blender performs just a little bit worse in our berry smoothie test. The beverage is well blended, but it struggles with the berry seeds. After 60 seconds of blending, most of the berry seeds remain intact, giving the berry smoothie a grainy texture. If you don't mind the seeds, then this is a non-issue, but we recommend cutting your berry smoothies with banana, mango, or some other less seedy fruit.


The fruit & oat smoothie is one of our harder blending tests, as there is hardly any liquid in the recipe, only strawberries, almonds, yogurt, oats, bananas, and maple syrup. The NutriBullet struggles a bit more with this beverage — as expected — but still produces an overall good showing. It leaves quite a bit of unblended food on the sides of the pitcher, and the resulting mixture is somewhat granular. However, our judges unanimously agree that the smoothie is still perfectly palatable.

nutribullet blender - it took a little persuasion to get going but the znbf30400z...
It took a little persuasion to get going but the ZNBF30400Z eventually made a great malt.
Credit: Austin Palmer

The NutriBullet finishes out this metric with a solid showing when it comes to making a malt. It tastes great, with every judge emptying their glass, but the texture is a bit grainier than the malts made by the premium blenders. It also takes a little effort with the tamper to get the mixture blending.

nutribullet blender - the nutribullet made some excellent blended cocktails.
The NutriBullet made some excellent blended cocktails.
Credit: Austin Palmer

Ice


For our ice metric, worth 20%, we rank and score how well the NutriBullet crushes ice cubes and creates a perfectly blended margarita. This blender is jam-packed with power and delivers a phenomenal performance in both of these tests.


This blender doesn't struggle when it comes to crushing ice cubes, obliterating them in about 10 seconds. The ice is crushed fairly uniform and doesn't leave any large chunks that escape the blades.


The margarita is also of uniform slushiness and has the correct texture for a blended cocktail.


The motor struggles a bit while blending harder material like ice, which is made obvious through a slight change in pitch and a burning smell. The blended ice drinks still come out flawless, but a burning motor may indicate a shorter lifespan for this budget option.

nutribullet blender - the nutribullet mixed up a great blended margarita that had a very...
The NutriBullet mixed up a great blended margarita that had a very uniform texture.
Credit: Austin Palmer

Convenience


Our convenience metric is responsible for 20% of the final score and assesses how user-friendly each blender is. We awarded points based on how easy it is to clean each blender after use, how intuitive the interface is, and any other convenience features that it might have. The NutriBullet isn't the easiest blender to use that we've tested, but it still performs admirably.


The NutriBullet pitcher, lid, and blade are dishwasher safe and fairly easy to clean by hand. The pitcher has a nice wide mouth, but it can take some work to clean under the blades. We missed bits of food trapped there multiple times throughout testing, so you will want to pay close attention when cleaning to ensure no trapped food starts molding or rotting.

nutribullet blender - even though we were able to easily run a cleaning cycle with the...
Even though we were able to easily run a cleaning cycle with the timed Extract program, without any good way to try the blender on the motor base, we needed to use a dishrack.
Credit: Jenna Ammerman

The lid is very easy to clean and remove from the pitcher, but it must be placed on a drying rack as there is no way to place it on the base to allow adequate airflow underneath to dry it out.

nutribullet blender - the nutribullet doesn't have any preset settings for different...
The NutriBullet doesn't have any preset settings for different blending tasks.
Credit: Jenna Ammerman

The labels on this blender are easy to read, as it has very simple controls: low, medium, high, and pulse. As previously mentioned, this blender lacks any automatic presets, which keeps things simple but makes the machine a little less versatile.

nutribullet blender - the nutribullet did a great job in our pureeing tests, holding its...
The NutriBullet did a great job in our pureeing tests, holding its own against other products that cost significantly more.
Credit: Austin Palmer

Pureeing


Next, we moved on to some of the more difficult blending tasks for these products. In our pureeing metric, assess how the NutriBullet blends nut butter and tomato soup. We also test whether or not it can heat the soup while pureeing. It delivers another excellent set of results, responsible for 15% of the final score.


This blender does a great job of churning up almond and peanut butter, creating a smooth and creamy spread in about eight minutes. The motor doesn't seem to struggle too much, but we had to add about half a tablespoon of oil to get the mixture going.

nutribullet blender - even though it didn't hit ideal serving temperatures while blending...
Even though it didn't hit ideal serving temperatures while blending, we were still super impressed with the heating ability of this blender.
Credit: Austin Palmer

The NutriBullet also whips up a great tomato soup. After running the blender on high for six minutes, the resulting puree is extremely fine and very uniform, pouring through a mesh sieve like water. Even better, the NutriBullet heats the soup to a proper serving temperature while blending. Our tomato soup reached a temperature of 152.1°F in six minutes. It releases a surprising amount of steam when removing the lid, so be careful not to burn yourself.

nutribullet blender - the blades generate a bit of heat, which results in some clumping of...
The blades generate a bit of heat, which results in some clumping of an otherwise fine-ground parmesan cheese.
Credit: Austin Palmer

Grinding


For the remaining 10% of the total score, we push the NutriBullet to its limits with some of the hardest tasks you can set for a blender: milling corn flour, powdering sugar, and grinding hard cheese.


After 60 seconds of blending, the NutriBullet reduces the vast majority of the granulated sugar to a powder. However, the result isn't quite as light and fluffy as some of the top appliances. Additionally, our sieve caught a decent amount of larger granules that escaped the blades. It does about the same with the parmesan cheese, struggling a bit at the start but easily reducing the bulk of the cheese to fine particles. Some larger chunks remain, but we doubt you would even notice them if served on a pasta dish or similar.

Unfortunately, the performance drops a bit when milling corn kernels. Only about 75% of the finished product makes it through the sieve after 60 seconds of milling, with the remaining pieces being much larger and less evenly ground.

nutribullet blender - a non-trivial amount of the corn kernels were still too coarse to...
A non-trivial amount of the corn kernels were still too coarse to pass through the sieve.
Credit: Austin Palmer

Should You Buy the NutriBullet Blender?


We would highly recommend the NutriBullet to anyone who is shopping for a new blender on a limited budget and yet doesn't want to make any huge concessions regarding performance. The lack of presets and a timer detracts a bit from user-friendliness, but it costs so much less than the top-tier models that we think the NutriBullet is well worth the added effort.

What Other Blenders Should You Consider?


If you do a lot of blending or value top-performance, you might want to consider a blender that offers more over the long term. Based on our extensive testing, to get better performance than the NutriBullet, there is a significant step up in price. We'd recommend you look at the Cuisinart Hurricane Pro and the Vitamix A2500 Ascent Series, both of which are top-performing blenders that would make an excellent long-term investment.

Austin Palmer, David Wise