The Hamilton Beach Single-Serve Blender is a budget-friendly personal blender. It's not very powerful and doesn't do a great job with most recipes, including smoothies with fibrous fruits and vegetables like kale. However, it's very cheap for a personal blender, and it's easy to clean and quiet when running.
Our Verdict
The Hamilton Beach Personal Creations Blender is poor for multi-purpose use. This personal blender has a sub-par build quality, so it doesn't feel very durable. It also can't hot blend, and it fails to crush ice and make almond butter. While it makes a passable smoothie, it doesn't fully blend fibrous ingredients like kale, so there are leafy, grainy chunks left in the blend. On the upside, you can wash the jar and the lid in the dishwasher, and it's also easy to wash by hand.
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Dishwasher-safe and easy to clean.
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Can't hot blend.
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Can't crush ice.
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Sub-par build quality.
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Struggles to fully process fibrous ingredients.
The Hamilton Beach Personal Creations Blender is disappointing for smoothies and protein shakes. It struggles to blend the usual smoothie ingredients, like ice cubes, fruit, and leafy greens. Smoothies with fibrous ingredients like kale have a grainy texture. However, it's easy to clean and quiet when running. If you use soft ingredients like bananas or mangos, it'll do a better job.
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Dishwasher-safe and easy to clean.
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To-go lid included.
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Can't crush ice.
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Sub-par build quality.
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Struggles to fully process fibrous ingredients.
The Hamilton Beach Single-Serve Blender is bad for multiple servings of smoothies. The jar has a small 14oz capacity, so it's only suitable for making one smoothie at once. It also takes a while to blend ingredients, so using it for several batches in a row is inconvenient. It makes a grainy blend with fibrous additions like leafy greens and struggles to crush ice cubes. It's easy to clean and quiet, but not a good choice if you need to serve a crowd.
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Can't crush ice.
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Sub-par build quality.
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Struggles to fully process fibrous ingredients.
The Hamilton Beach Personal Creations Blender is awful for crushing ice. Even if you work in small batches of about four cubes at once, they tend to bounce around on top of the blades. It eventually makes slushy, uneven ice but leaves behind lots of unprocessed chunks.
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Dishwasher-safe and easy to clean.
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Can't crush ice.
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Sub-par build quality.
The Hamilton Beach Personal Blender isn't suitable for soups. It can't be used for hot blending, like most personal blenders, and its small jar won't fit most soup recipes in a single batch. It doesn't completely process fibrous ingredients, so pureed soups with kale or broccoli will be grainy or leafy.
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Can't hot blend.
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Sub-par build quality.
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Struggles to fully process fibrous ingredients.
The Hamilton Beach Personal Creations Blender is awful for professional use. It doesn't feel very durable, and its 14-ounce capacity main jar isn't suitable for making large batches of food. It can't hot blend or handle difficult blends like making nut butter or crushed ice. It's mostly meant for single-serve smoothies, but also struggles to make a smooth blend with common ingredients like kale. On the upside, its components are dishwasher-safe, and it's very easy to clean with soap and water.
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Dishwasher-safe and easy to clean.
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Can't crush ice.
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Sub-par build quality.
- 4.1 Multi-Purpose
- 5.6 Smoothies (Single Serving)
- 3.9 Smoothies (Multiple Servings)
- 3.9 Ice Crushing
- 1.9 Soups
- 2.6 Professional Use
- Updated May 15, 2023: Updated text to match Test Bench 1.0.
- Updated Aug 25, 2022: Reviewed the Magic Bullet Essential and added that it's better for processing fibrous ingredients.
- Updated Aug 08, 2022: Converted to Test Bench 1.0.
- Updated Oct 19, 2020: Review published.
- Updated Oct 08, 2020: Early access published.
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Differences Between Sizes And Variants
This blender comes in several color variants, including Black, White, Red, Raspberry, Blue, and Green. We tested the Black variant; you can see the label for the model we tested here. We expect the other color variants to perform similarly.
Some retailers let you buy this blender with an additional 14-ounce jar. Since this jar is identical to the 14-oz main jar we tested, we don't expect a difference in performance. If you encounter any other variants of this blender, let us know in the discussion section below so we can update our review.
Compared To Other Blenders
The Hamilton Beach Single-Serve Blender is a personal blender that doesn't perform very well. While its 14-ounce main jar and to-go lid are designed to be used as a travel cup, its motor isn't as powerful as some of the other personal blenders we've tested, like the Ninja Fit or Magic Bullet Mini. It has a sub-par build quality, so it doesn't seem very durable, either.
If you're looking for other options, check out our recommendations for the best personal blenders, the best bullet blenders, and the best blenders for smoothies.
The BlendJet 2 is a better blender than the Hamilton Beach Single-Serve Blender. The BlendJet makes a smoother blend with fibrous ingredients, can crush ice, and has significantly better build quality. On the other hand, the BlendJet is battery-powered, and some users may prefer the Hamilton Beach's corded design.
The NutriBullet Pro 900 is a much better personal blender than the Hamilton Beach Single-Serve Blender. The NutriBullet is significantly sturdier and has a better blending performance since it can make nut butter and produce a smooth puree with fibrous ingredients like kale.
The Magic Bullet Mini is a better personal blender than the Hamilton Beach Single-Serve Blender. The Magic Bullet is better built and makes a smoother blend with fibrous ingredients like kale. Unlike the Hamilton Beach, it can make smooth nut butter, but it's not easy to use for that purpose.
Test Results
The Hamilton Beach Personal Creations Blender is a fairly small, compact model. You can easily store it on your kitchen counter or in a cupboard without taking up much space. You can even remove the jar for easier storage. If you want a personal blender that's portable as well as compact, check out the cordless NutriBullet GO.
This blender has a sub-par build quality. It's mostly made of plastic, which doesn't feel very premium or durable. It doesn't have any anti-slip pads to help keep it stable while blending. The plastic lid also feels quite cheap, as it's very thin and doesn't fit tightly on the jar.
The jar has a 14oz blending capacity, so it's only suitable for blending small batches, like single-serve smoothies or protein shakes.
The jar and lid are dishwasher-safe. The jar has measuring marks in mL and ounces up to 400mL/14oz.
This blender has an unusual design for a personal blender. The blades are fixed in the bottom of the jar instead of attached to a blade assembly that screws onto the jar like a lid. The blades are always attached when you use the jar as a travel cup.
The lid seals on the jar using friction. There's also a sliding spout on the lid designed for drinking.
The power cord isn't as long as some of the others we've tested, but it'll still reach nearby outlets as the blender itself is small, so it's easier to find a place for it on your counter. There isn't a stowaway compartment to hide the cord when it's not in use.
It's poor for small batches of fibrous ingredients. You need to hold the button constantly to blend, which makes it inconvenient to use, especially because it takes several minutes to get the best results. Even then, it makes a grainy blend with many unprocessed bits of kale left over.
It's not good for bigger batches of fibrous ingredients. If you use the jar's full capacity, it takes nearly five minutes to achieve the best results when blending ingredients like kale. You need to hold the button constantly to blend, which is annoying for such a long blend time, and it doesn't smoothly process the ingredients.
It's bad for crushing ice. You can push and release the button to pulse, which helps break up the cubes, but it struggles to crush a full batch of four cubes. The ice cubes on top tend to bounce around instead of getting crushed, so you must pour out the crushed ice and put any remaining chunks back in the jar to be processed. Ultimately, it makes unevenly crushed ice with lots of chunks left over. Still, the ice is suitable for adding to cocktails, and the blender may perform better with even fewer ice cubes in the jar.
It can't make nut butter. Like almost all blenders, it can roughly chop the nuts, but after that, it can't process them any further. Even if you undock the jar and shake it often, it can't pull the crushed ingredients into a vortex. The result is a powdery mix that can't be called nut butter.
It's quiet for a blender, partly because of its lower motor power. You can find more powerful personal blenders that are still quite quiet, like the NutriBullet Pro 1000.
It has only one speed setting, like most personal blenders. It's quite fast, which is usually suitable for smoothly blending fibrous ingredients like kale. Still, it doesn't perform well for that purpose, possibly because the motor isn't very powerful compared to most personal blenders.
The motor base has one button that you need to press constantly to blend. Simulating a pulse mode by pressing and releasing in short intervals is also easy. However, blenders with programs or that run continuously after one push of a button are more convenient since this design means you can't multi-task while your smoothie blends.