The 4 Best Cheap Blenders - Spring 2021 Reviews

The best cheap personal blender that we've tested is the Magic Bullet Mini. It's small, compact, and won't take up very much room on your kitchen counter or in a cupboard. The 13-ounce main jar comes with a lip ring and to-go lid so you can drink directly from it or take it with you on the go.

It has a simple, easy-to-use design and makes a good, uniformly-textured smoothie in less than two minutes. While you may need to shake the jar to make sure all the ingredients are incorporated, it does a good job of processing fibrous greens like kale. It's easy to clean if you've been working with liquid ingredients since a quick rinse with water takes care of most debris. There's also an eight-ounce additional jar, which is a bit small for smoothies, but it's a good size for whipping up dips and dressings.

Unfortunately, it's not a very versatile blender since it can't hot blend or crush ice. It takes more than 10 minutes to make poor, sticky almond butter, so it's not well-suited for that purpose. That said, if you want something cheap and compact to use for your morning smoothie, it's a solid choice.

When it comes to immersion blenders, the best cheap blender we've tested is the KitchenAid Variable Speed Corded Hand Blender. It's the corded variant of the KitchenAid KHBBV53, and it's a great choice for making soups since it can hot blend ingredients. Also, thanks to its trigger button, you have a lot of control over its speed as you blend ingredients.

It offers a fairly versatile overall performance. It makes a good smoothie, and it can easily incorporate leafy ingredients like kale into a smooth though slightly grainy blend. It even comes with a beaker with a lid that you can use to blend ingredients. It can also crush ice, though its performance is a bit disappointing.

Unfortunately, this blender really struggles to make almond butter, resulting in a dry, chunky blend that isn't very spreadable. Also, its blade shaft isn't dishwasher-safe, and it can be difficult to clean off stickier messes like almond butter, especially because its blade sticks upwards and may cut you. However, if you're on a very tight budget, it's still a solid choice for blending stewed ingredients for soups and sauces.

The Ninja Professional Plus Blender with Auto-iQ is the best budget blender that we've tested. If you don't mind spending a little more than for the other options on this list, this full-size model comes with a 72-ounce jar, which can process a lot of food in one go. Cleaning is very simple since the jar, lid, and blade assembly are all top-rack dishwasher-safe.

Although it's a fairly simple model that doesn't come with any additional attachments, it has a few preset modes as well as speed settings that give you some control over your blends. It can make snow-like crushed ice in under a minute, which is fantastic if you like to make frozen drinks. It's alright for making smoothies, although it has a bit of trouble processing leafy or fibrous food like kale. Even though it's made from plastic, it also has a great build quality that feels solid and durable.

Unfortunately, it can't hot blend, so it's not recommended for processing soups or warm dips. It also has a hard time processing harder foods like nuts, and if you want to make almond butter, it can take several minutes to produce a mix that's dry, unevenly processed, and difficult to spread. That said, if you have a little more room in your budget for a full-size model, it offers a more versatile performance well-suited to feeding several people at a time, making it the best blender for your money.