The Cuisinart Smart Stick Cordless Hand Blender is a battery-powered immersion blender. You can use it to blend hot ingredients directly in a pot or pan without managing the power cable or using a nearby outlet. Also included are a whisk attachment and a 32-ounce beaker that you can use for blending.
Our Verdict
The Cuisinart Smart Stick Cordless Hand Blender isn't a good multi-purpose blender. You can use it to blend hot ingredients directly in a pot or pan, and it's battery-powered, so you can easily move around the kitchen with it. However, it struggles to completely blend fibrous ingredients like kale or broccoli, especially in bigger batches. Like most immersion blenders, it's not good at crushing ice or making nut butter. That said, it comes with a beaker for blending and a whisk attachment, so it can help with making things like salad dressing and hollandaise sauce.
- Easy to clean by hand.
- Beaker included.
- Doesn't completely crush ice cubes.
- Makes a grainy blend with fibrous ingredients.
The Cuisinart Smart Stick Cordless Hand Blender is passable for single-serve smoothies. It comes with a 32-ounce beaker that you can use to blend single-serve drinks like smoothies. However, it makes a fairly grainy puree with fibrous ingredients, so if your recipe includes something like kale or blueberries, it won't be silky-smooth. It's also inconvenient to use since you have to hold onto the blender and keep the power button pressed. On the plus side, it's very easy to clean.
- Beaker included.
- Doesn't completely crush ice cubes.
- Makes a grainy blend with fibrous ingredients.
The Cuisinart Smart Stick Cordless Hand Blender is disappointing for making multiple servings of smoothies. The 32-ounce beaker isn't big enough to make more than one or two smoothies at once. You can blend in another container, but it struggles to fully process larger volumes of fibrous ingredients, which results in a very grainy puree if your smoothie includes something like leafy greens. It's not easy to use for this purpose, especially because of the long blending time. It's very easy to clean, though.
- Beaker included.
- Doesn't completely crush ice cubes.
- Makes a grainy blend with fibrous ingredients.
The Cuisinart Smart Stick Cordless Hand Blender isn't good for crushing ice. It struggles to completely break down ice cubes and makes unevenly crushed ice.
- Doesn't completely crush ice cubes.
The Cuisinart Smart Stick Cordless Hand Blender is excellent for making soups. You can use it to process hot ingredients directly in a pot or pan, and its battery-powered design means you don't need to manage a power cable at the same time. However, it struggles to make a smooth puree with fibrous ingredients, so recipes like broccoli soup may not have a perfectly smooth texture. You have to hold down the power button to blend, which is a little inconvenient. That said, it's very easy to clean when you're done using it.
- Easy to clean by hand.
- Can be used for hot blending.
- Makes a grainy blend with fibrous ingredients.
The Cuisinart Smart Stick Cordless Hand Blender is very bad for professional use. While it's decently well-built and comes with a 32-ounce jar, it's not very good at processing fibrous ingredients, so it's not ideal for making smooth kale smoothies or pureed broccoli soup. It's not suitable for making nut butter or crushing ice, which is typical for an immersion blender. However, its cordless design means you don't need to worry about where to plug it in. There's a whisk attachment included that can help with whipping cream or preparing emulsions like mayonnaise.
- Beaker included.
- Doesn't completely crush ice cubes.
- Makes a grainy blend with fibrous ingredients.
Changelog
- Updated Feb 23, 2023: Added a note that the Crux Artisan Series Cordless Immersion Blender is lighter.
- Updated Dec 16, 2022: Revised text to match Test Bench 1.0 results.
- Updated Jul 28, 2022: Converted to Test Bench 1.0.
- Updated Oct 05, 2021: Review published.
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Differences Between Sizes And Variants
There's only one variant of the Cuisinart Smart Stick Cordless Hand Blender (CSB-400CD), which comes in 'Silver'. You can see the label for the model we tested here. If you come across another variant, let us know in the discussions, and we'll update our review.
Popular Blender Comparisons
The Cuisinart Smart Stick Cordless Hand Blender is a battery-powered immersion blender. It's much sturdier than some other cordless models we've tested, including the KitchenAid KHBBV53 and the Cuisinart EvolutionX RHB-100, but isn't as good for blending fibrous ingredients like leafy greens in a soup. Like many immersion blenders, it's not good for tougher tasks like making nut butter or crushing ice.
If you're looking for other options, take a look at our recommendations for the best immersion blenders, the best blenders for smoothies, and the best blenders.
The Braun MultiQuick 5 is better than the Cuisinart Smart Stick Cordless Hand Blender. The Braun is better built and quieter and makes a smoother blend with fibrous ingredients in recipes like smoothies or soup. On the other hand, you might prefer the Cuisinart blender's cordless design.
The Braun MultiQuick 7 is better than the Cuisinart Smart Stick Cordless Hand Blender for most purposes. The Braun is better built and makes a smoother blend with ingredients like kale or broccoli. It also includes a food processing bowl with blade assemblies for chopping, shredding, and mashing. The Cuisinart is battery-powered, which you might find more convenient, especially if your kitchen is short on outlets.
The KitchenAid Go Cordless Hand Blender is a better battery-powered immersion blender than the Cuisinart Smart Stick Cordless Hand Blender. The KitchenAid makes a smoother blend with fibrous ingredients, like kale or broccoli, that are common in recipes like soups and sauces. It comes with a plastic pan guard to protect non-stick pans and a lid for its beaker. However, only the Cuisinart comes with a whisk attachment for mixing salad dressing or making whipped cream.
The Cuisinart Smart Stick Two-Speed Hand Blender is better than the Cuisinart Smart Stick Cordless Hand Blender. The Two-Speed makes a much smoother blender with fibrous elements like kale and broccoli in smoothies and soups, and it's easier to clean by hand. On the other hand, you might prefer the Cordless Blender's battery-powered design. It also comes with a whisk attachment, which helps make whipped cream or homemade mayonnaise.
Test Results
The Cuisinart Smart Stick Cordless' blending shaft will be long enough to reach the bottom of deep pots and dutch ovens. It's also removable for easier storage in a kitchen drawer. However, if you want a lightweight immersion blender that's easy to hold onto, the Crux Artisan Series Cordless Immersion Blender is smaller and lighter.
It has a decent build quality. The motor body is made of plastic and stainless steel, while the blending shaft itself is made of metal. However, the connection point between the two parts is plastic. The blending shaft simply clicks into place on the motor body without any need to twist it, unlike some other immersion blenders, like the NutriBullet Immersion Blender. Unfortunately, the beaker feels like it's made out of cheap plastic and is easily scratched when you use it for blending.
The jar has a 32-ounce capacity, which is a good size for blending a single-serve smoothie or a batch of something like dip or dressing.
It comes with a 32-ounce beaker that you can use for blending. The manual doesn't say if it's dishwasher-safe.
There are two sharp, non-removable blades. The blending shaft is dishwasher-safe, unlike the Cuisinart Smart Stick Two-Speed Hand Blender's.
This blender doesn't come with a lid for its beaker.
It comes with a power cable and adapter for charging. According to the manual, it takes about 2.5 hours to charge fully, and a full battery provides 20 minutes worth of blending. You can't use the blender while it's charging. To verify the battery life, we ran the blender continuously at maximum speed in a beaker full of water. We measured 14.5 minutes of blending before the battery died. However, the manual warns that battery life depends on what you're blending, and the blender did seem to run out of power much more quickly when used to make nut butter. We also experienced an issue where we expected the blender would be fully charged, and it could only blend for a few minutes before requiring another charge. That might be limited to our unit, and in general, battery performance tends to vary.
- Cuisinart Smart Stick Cordless Hand Blender motor body
- Blending shaft
- 32-oz beaker
- Whisk assembly
- Whisk attachment
- Charging cable and A/C adapter
- Manuals
It's passable for small batches of fibrous ingredients. Since it's an immersion blender, you need to hold onto it and move the blending arm up and down to keep the ingredients moving. You also need to keep the power button pressed to blend, so it's not a very convenient process overall. After about two minutes of blending, there are lots of unprocessed bits leftover in the mix, so if you make a kale smoothie with it, it will have a grainy texture.
It's bad for processing fibrous ingredients at full capacity. If you fill the beaker, it struggles to break down fibrous kale, and there are lots of roughly chopped bits left over in the final mix. The result is worse than when you're working with a smaller volume of ingredients, and it takes around five minutes of blending. The long blending time is especially annoying because you need to hold the blender and keep the power button pressed to blend.
The Cuisinart Smart Stick Cordless isn't a good ice crusher. The bell guard is bigger than the Vitamix Immersion Blender's and helps hold the ice cubes so they can be crushed by the blades. However, it doesn't consistently crush every ice cube, so you end up with chunky and uneven crushed ice. A bit of ice can also form under the blades, so you need to clear it out between batches.
It isn't suitable for making nut butter. It can break down the nuts into a paste but isn't powerful enough to keep blending once the mixture builds up around the blades. You can use a spoon to clear the blades, but even after 10 minutes of work, it doesn't produce spreadable nut butter.
It's not particularly loud for an immersion blender. However, some models we've tested are much quieter, like the cordless KitchenAid KHBBV53.
It has five different speed presets. The minimum speed setting is quite slow, which is helpful when you want to start at a low speed to avoid splattering.
The Cuisinart Smart Stick Cordless has a safety feature that requires you to press the power button and the unlock button at the same time to start blending, similar to the Cuisinart Smart Stick Two-Speed Hand Blender. There are also five speed settings that you can select with a switch near the power button. There's a strip of blue LED lights above it that light up one by one as you increase the speed and an LED battery indicator bar above that. On the other side, there's also a button that you need to push to detach the blending shaft from the base.
