The 5 Best Blenders For Frozen Drinks - Spring 2025

The Vitamix A3500 is the best blender for frozen drinks that we've tested. This high-end blender makes quick work of big batches of ice cubes with its 'Frozen Drinks' blending program. Using its 48oz jar, it quickly crushes a dozen ice cubes into snow-like crushed ice for cocktails and frozen drinks. It also makes a nearly perfectly smooth blend with fibrous ingredients, so it can make very well-blended frozen drinks with fruit like pineapple or strawberries.

It's very well-built, which is especially important if you blend a lot of hard ingredients like ice cubes. It's decently quiet, easy to clean by hand, and comes with dishwasher-safe components. However, it's an expensive option, and you can find cheaper blenders that crush ice just as well. If your frozen drink recipes mostly include ice and liquid, and you don't care as much about performance with other types of recipes or build quality, you might prefer a cheaper option below.

The Breville The Q is a great upper mid-range option if you want something less expensive with comparable performance. It's not quite as well-built as the Vitamix A3500 and doesn't perform quite as well for some purposes, like blending smaller batches of ingredients for recipes like single-serve smoothies. However, it makes very uniform, snow-like crushed ice in its 68oz pitcher. The 'Ice Crush/Auto Pulse' blending program makes it a very easy process, although the Vitamix can do it a bit faster.

It makes a nearly perfectly smooth blend with fibrous ingredients, so it's a good choice for fruit-based frozen drinks and smoothies. This blender is decently quiet, like the previous pick, and even easier to clean by hand since the jar's wide base makes it easy to reach under the blades.

The Ninja Detect Power Blender Pro is the best blender we've tested for margaritas and other frozen drinks in the mid-range price bracket. Using its 'BlendSense' automatic program, it can crush a big batch of ice very quickly, making it a great option for frozen drinks like slushies. That said, it's not as versatile as the previous pricier picks. It doesn't blend fibrous ingredients as smoothly, so recipes with fruit will have more unprocessed bits left over.

It comes with a 72oz jar that can be used for multiple servings and has a lid with a pouring spout, so you can easily serve blended margaritas or slushies from the pitcher without spilling. However, it's louder than the Breville The Q. Its spiral blade design makes cleaning it by hand annoying. The blades are very sharp, so you must be careful not to cut yourself. That said, all of its components are dishwasher-safe.

The Ninja Professional Blender 1000 is the best budget blender for frozen drinks that we've tested. This blender easily makes snow-like crushed ice in its 72oz jar, and like the previous pick, it comes with a lid with a pouring spout. The downside is that it doesn't blend fibrous ingredients as smoothly, so recipes like fruit won't come out as smooth.

It has simple controls, with a few manual blending speeds and a pulse mode, but no automatic blending programs. If you want a blender that stops at the end of a blending cycle, you might prefer the Ninja SMOOTHIEiQ, which has an almost identical design with the addition of a 'Smoothie' blending program. However, it's mainly available at Costco (U.S.), so it's not as easy to get your hands on.

If you like making frozen drinks for a crowd at summer parties, you may want a blender with a large-capacity pitcher, like the other full-size blenders listed here. On the other hand, if you're not usually serving a lot of people or want to save space in your kitchen, the Ninja TWISTi High-Speed Blender DUO is the best small blender for frozen drinks we've tested. In terms of size, it's between a full-size blender and a personal blender. Its 34-ounce main jar can fit enough to serve one or two people and easily crushes ice for recipes like blended margaritas and slushies. There's also a personal jar included if you want to make a smaller batch.

The lid has arms built into it that you can rotate to stir your recipe as it blends. This 'built-in tamper' feature can make it easier to process thicker mixtures, like drinks with a lot of ice or frozen fruit like strawberries. This blender also makes a smooth blend with fibrous elements like blueberry skin, so your frozen drink will be free of unprocessed bits and grains. It's sturdy and offers a few automatic blending programs. Unfortunately, it's the loudest blender on this list, which will get annoying if you use it to make several batches in a row.