The 8 Best High-Powered Blenders of 2024

Best Overall

Vitamix Explorian Blender

View On Amazon $330 View On Wayfair $330 View On Walmart $330

Vitamix has long been considered the gold standard of high-performance blenders and is still the brand favored by many professional chefs for its power, design, and durability. Its blenders are expensive, but their incredible performance and durability make them worth the high price tag.

The Explorian range is Vitamix's new entry-level blender, offering high power at a more manageable price. It's still not cheap, but it's hundreds less than the brand's flagship Professional Series. In our head-to-head testing of Vitamixes, the Explorian performed just about as well as the rest. Its 1,400 watts of power breeze through smoothies, sauces, dips, hot soups, doughs, nut butters, non-dairy milks, and more. What most impressed us, however, is how easy it is to clean: Add a drop of dish soap and hot water, then run for a few seconds. (This even worked after making sticky peanut butter!)

The control panel here is very basic, offering 10 different speeds and a pulse function but no preset programs. The 48-ounce pitcher, made of heavy-duty, BPA-free plastic, is a bit smaller than some of our other picks as well, but it's dishwasher-safe.

Capacity: 48 ounces | Power: 1,400 watts | | Speed settings: 10 | Dimensions: 11 x 8 x 17 inches

Best Smart

Vitamix A3500 Ascent Series Smart Blender

View On Amazon $650 View On Wayfair $650 View On Williams-Sonoma $650

Vitamix's top-of-the-line model is only a tiny bit more powerful than the Explorian above, but it's a heck of a lot smarter and quieter. The Ascent comes with 10 speeds and five on-board blending programs, plus wireless connectivity and the Perfect Blend app, which lets you control the blender from your phone as well as download new programs for all sorts of specific recipes.

We put the A3500 through its paces and found amazing results with smoothies, peanut butter, whipped cream, cheesecake batter, potato pancakes, and mayonnaise—this is a really versatile machine. Maybe the most impressive thing it can do is cook food: The blades can spin so fast that the friction heats up the contents of the jar. It can bring soup to steaming in about 10 minutes, and we used it to make a smooth, lump-free chocolate pudding even faster than on the stovetop.

There are a bunch of useful Vitamix Ascent accessories available, too. These include a food processor, a container for milling grain into flour, a special aerating blade for whipping cream, shaking cocktails, and making emulsified sauces and dressings. There are also small bowls and cups you can use to take a smoothie or dip to go. And the machine senses the attachment automatically, adjusting its settings and options accordingly.

But then there's that eye-watering cost. This is a super-powerful luxury blender, sold for a luxury price. (If you're planning to upgrade from another Vitamix model, you should note that older attachments are not compatible with the Ascent series.)

Capacity: 64 ounces | Power: 1,440 watts | Speed settings: 10 | Dimensions: 11 x 8 x 17 inches

Best Personal Blender

Nutribullet Pro 900 Personal Blender

View On Amazon $90 View On Wayfair $86 View On Walmart $102

Personal blenders are smaller in capacity than full-size models, but this one really isn't much less mighty. When we tested personal blenders, the NutriBullet Pro 900 crushed the competition—along with a lot of ice—and we named it our best overall pick. It comes with two 32-ounce cups, each big enough for an extra-large smoothie and with separate handled and flip-top lids.

The 900-watt motor on this machine is less powerful than the rest of this list, but when it comes to small-footprint personal blenders, that's a lot. It had no problem breaking down and fully incorporating berries, kale, frozen banana, and peanut butter in testing, all within 60 seconds. It's also super-easy to use: Push the cup into the base, twist, and it locks and turns on. Twist the cup the other way, and it unlocks and turns off. The cups and lids are dishwasher-safe, and the removable blade unscrews for easy washing by hand.

The NutriBullet Pro 900 is perfect if you're a daily smoothie drinker looking for a smooth and delicious breakfast. On the other hand, that's about all it can do. The single speed setting means you can only puree; don't try to achieve any kind of chunky texture. And the small capacity limits its usefulness for larger meals.

We love, though, that it is cheaper than other high-powered blenders on the market but much smaller and ultimately easier to clean. Throughout testing, we've also found that it is very easy to store right on your countertop since the base is tall and lean.

Capacity: 32 ounces | Power: 900 watts | Speed settings: 1 | Dimensions: 7.7 x 12 x 15.9 inches

Best Budget

Oster Pro 1200 Blender with Glass Jar

View On Amazon $120 View On Wayfair $120 View On Walmart $176

This Oster model offers high power and quality at a very affordable price. It has a 1,200-watt motor that can tear through tough ingredients like kale, and comes with a heavy-duty glass pitcher that’s dishwasher-safe and resistant to thermal shock. As a bonus, the blender comes with a 24-ounce plastic cup that screws right onto the blade base for a quick and easy single-serving smoothie to go.

On the downside, it has only three speeds (low, medium, and high) and three preset programs (smoothie, milkshake, and salsa). For this price, however, it's also pretty replaceable. (If you'd like an even more multipurpose version of this machine, you can spend a bit more a get the Oster Pro 1200 with a food processor attachment.)

Capacity: 48 ounces | Power: 1,200 watts | Speed settings: 3 | Dimensions: 7.3 x 8 x 14.3 inches

Best Large-Capacity

Blendtec Classic 575 Blender

View On Amazon $420 View On Wayfair $380 View On Walmart $326

Blendtec is a family-owned, U.S.-based manufacturer that produces ultra-powerful blenders beloved in professional kitchens. (You might know it from the "Will It Blend?" series of viral videos that use its robust motor and blades to reduce things like golf balls and iPhones to dust.) This household model features a 90-ounce jug, big enough to make six smoothies all at once. It's made of BPA-free plastic and is dishwasher-safe.

With 1,560 watts of power, the Blendtec Classic is the second-mightiest on this list. The motor can create hot soups through friction alone, and the unit has five speed settings plus four pre-programmed cycles. While it is expensive, this is a blender that can handle anything you throw at it. It's incredibly quick and effective, albeit a bit noisy. If you regularly make smoothies for large groups, large batches of soup, silky sauces or dips for entertaining, or icy blended cocktails, this workhorse of a blender is a solid investment. You could even use it to pulverize home electronics, though we wouldn't recommend that.

"I got this blender at a thrift store (best thrifting find of my life), and even though it had been used for an unknown number of years before me, it stood up to years of heavy use in my kitchen," Katya Weiss-Andersson, Small Appliances Expert for The Spruce Eats, says. "I was a professional chef developing recipes every day and couldn't have gotten by without it."

Capacity: 90 ounces | Power: 1,560 watts | Speed settings: 5 | Dimensions: 8 x 7 x 15 inches

Best for Soups

Ninja Foodi Heat-iQ Blender

View On Amazon $175

Some high-powered blenders have a special soup mode that warms up the contents of the jar using only the friction generated by the high-speed blade. This one goes even further, with a built-in heating element that can cook food before, during, or after blending. The Ninja Foodi Heat-iQ features a 1,400-watt blending motor and a separate 800-watt heat source for precision control. It includes an impressive array of preset programs that let you throw in some raw ingredients, press a button, walk away, and come back later to a ready-to-eat soup.

With the heat turned off, this machine is a beast of a blender, with a large jar able to handle smoothies, cocktails, sauces, and all the other things the other blenders on this list can. The heating element is incorporated into the pitcher itself, which makes cleaning a bit complicated—you can't really put it under running water in the sink. However, the blade and innards have a nonstick coating, and there's a self-clean function that needs just water, a few drops of dish soap, and the included brush to work. Another plus, though: The blender also comes with a tamper.

Capacity: 64 ounces | Power: 1,400 watts | Speed settings: 3 | Cooking programs: 12 | Dimensions: 8.8 x 7.9 x 17.9 inches

Best Professional-Grade

Cleanblend Commercial Blender

View On Amazon $169

Looking to open a smoothie window or frozen daiquiri shop of your own? This ultra-powerful blender could be the right choice. With a 1,800-watt motor, the Cleanblend can take on ice, kale, bananas, peanut butter, and any other tough ingredients. It also has a variable knob that goes all the way down to low speed for gently chopping veggies into salsa. The precise controls let you crank the speed up and down evenly and get a very smooth result.

With all that power, the Cleanblend carries an extremely reasonable price. It isn't the cheapest on our list, but it's close. The 64-ounce pitcher can only be washed by hand, which is a bit of a pain but not the end of the world.

Capacity: 64 ounces | Power: 1,800 watts | Speed settings: Variable | Dimensions: 15 x 13 x 18 inches