The KitchenAid K400 blender is great for most uses and looks and feels durable enough for even professional environments. This bulky blender comes with a big 56-ounce jar, so you can make large quantities of smoothies or soups at a time. It's very versatile as it can blend both cold and hot liquids, and it creates bar-quality ice quickly. Unfortunately, the jar's lid isn't the easiest to clean, but both it and the jar are dishwasher safe.
Our Verdict
The KitchenAid K400 blender is excellent for multi-purpose use. It's ideal for making a smooth blend with fruits and vegetables for recipes like smoothies, soups, and sauces. It can make snow-like crushed ice and process hot ingredients. It can also produce smooth, spreadable nut butter, but it's difficult to use for that purpose. It can be somewhat difficult to clean the blades by hand, but the jar and lid are dishwasher-safe.
- Creates bar quality ice.
- Dishwasher-safe.
- Very well-built.
- Can blend hot liquids.
- Blades can be tricky to clean by hand.
- Difficult to use for nut butter.
The KitchenAid K400 is fantastic for making single-serving smoothies. It's easy to use to process small batches and makes an extremely smooth blend with fibrous elements like kale or fruit skin. It's also well-built, decently easy to clean by hand, and the jar is dishwasher-safe.
- Very well-built.
- Smoothly blends fibrous ingredients.
- Blades can be tricky to clean by hand.
The KitchenAid K400 is incredible for making multiple servings of smoothies. Its 56-ounce main jar can fit multiple servings, and it makes a very smooth blend with fibrous ingredients. It has no problem crushing ice cubes. However, some blenders can make a big batch of smoothies a little faster.
- Very well-built.
- Smoothly blends fibrous ingredients.
- Blades can be tricky to clean by hand.
The KitchenAid K400 blender is fantastic for crushing ice. It quickly pulverizes ice cubes into snow-like crushed ice perfect for slushies or cocktails.
- Creates bar quality ice.
- Dishwasher-safe.
- Very well-built.
- Blades can be tricky to clean by hand.
The KitchenAid K400 blender is superb for soups. You can use it for blending hot ingredients directly from a pot or pan, and it makes a very smooth blend with fibrous ingredients like kale or broccoli, so it can make silky pureed soups and sauces. It's also well-built and has a 56-ounce capacity for big batches. It's decently easy to clean and the jar is dishwasher-safe.
- Dishwasher-safe.
- Can blend hot liquids.
- Smoothly blends fibrous ingredients.
- Blades can be tricky to clean by hand.
The KitchenAid K400 blender is great for professional use. It's well-built and offers versatile performance. It can hot blend, make silky smoothies and sauces, and crush ice. However, it's not easy to use for thick mixtures like nut butter.
- Creates bar quality ice.
- Very well-built.
- Can blend hot liquids.
- Smoothly blends fibrous ingredients.
- Blades can be tricky to clean by hand.
- Difficult to use for nut butter.
Changelog
- Updated Sep 20, 2024: We've updated the results to more accurately reflect the blender's performance. The scores for Fibrous Ingredients (Small Batches) and for Fibrous Ingredients (Full Capacity) processing both changed from 10 to 8.5 because of the blending time.
- Updated Nov 09, 2023: Added details about variants that come with different accessories in the 'Differences Between Variants' section.
- Updated Sep 14, 2023: The blender's build quality has been re-evaluated, and the score has changed from 8.5 to 8.0, partly because the motor base has plastic gears.
- Updated Dec 05, 2022: Revised text to match Test Bench 1.0.
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Differences Between Sizes And Variants
This blender comes in many different colors, including 'Almond Cream', 'Beetroot', 'Blue Velvet', 'Candy Apple', 'Contour Silver', 'Matte Black', 'Passion Red', and 'White'. It's sometimes sold with a tamper in various colors, including 'Blue Velvet, 'Contour Silver', 'Dried Rose', 'Matte Black', 'Milkshake', 'Passion Red', 'Pistachio', and 'White'. There's also a variant that comes with a tamper and a personal jar. That variant comes in 'Contour Silver' or 'Matte Black'.
We tested the basic version that only comes with the 56oz jar main in 'Matte Black'. We expect the other variants to perform similarly as long as you're using the main jar. However, we don't know how the personal jar will perform. The tamper will also affect the blender's performance since it lets you stir ingredients without removing the lid.
If you encounter another variant, let us know in the forums, and we'll update the review.
Popular Blender Comparisons
The KitchenAid K400 is a great all-around blender that performs well regardless of what you're blending. It also supports hot blending, so you can do soups or other hot mixes, like most KitchenAid blenders we've reviewed. It's also very well-built.
If you're looking for other options, look at our recommendations for the best blenders, the best blenders for frozen drinks, and the best blenders for smoothies.
The KitchenAid K400 is better than the KitchenAid K150. The K400 makes a smoother blend with fibrous ingredients like kale and more uniform crushed ice. It has a bigger capacity, a better build quality, and a few automatic blending programs. On the other hand, the K150 is quieter and more compact.
The Vitamix 5200 is a better blender for most uses than the KitchenAid K400. The Vitamix is better built, much easier to use for recipes like nut butter, and easier to clean by hand. On the other hand, the KitchenAid blender has a few automatic blending programs. Its controls include a few automatic blending programs for different recipes.
The Vitamix Explorian E310 is a better blender than the KitchenAid K400. The Vitamix is better built and much easier to use for recipes like nut butter. Its smaller jar is better suited for blending small batches, like a single-serve smoothie. It comes with a tamper and has a wider range of speed settings. It's also easier to clean by hand. However, the KitchenAid K400 has a slightly bigger capacity and a few automatic blending programs.
The KitchenAid K400 and the nutribullet Blender Combo have different strengths. The KitchenAid is a sturdier multi-purpose blender that comes with one 56oz jar. It's better for crushing ice and making nut butter. However, the nutribullet comes with personal jars that help it blend smaller batches of fibrous ingredients faster, so you might prefer it for single-serve smoothies.
Test Results
The KitchenAid K400 blender is quite similar to the KitchenAid K150 in terms of dimensions and is a bit bulky. It's not as tall as other blenders, though. However, it's very heavy, so you'll likely want to store it directly on your counter, as moving it around frequently can be a bit of a nuisance.
It has a great build quality. The base and its gears are made of plastic but feel sturdy. The gear on the bottom of the jar is made of metal, which is more durable. The control buttons also feel solid rather than flimsy. However, the jar doesn't feel as solid as other blenders', like the Wolf Gourmet Pro-Performance.
It comes with one pitcher that has a 64-ounce capacity.
The jar is made of plastic and can go in the dishwasher.
The blade assembly has four very sharp blades. Unfortunately, you can't remove them from the jar for cleaning, but the jar along with the blades is dishwasher-safe.
The jar's lid is made from a stiff plastic material. It's difficult to clean, but luckily it can be put on the top rack of a dishwasher. The center part of the lid doubles as a measuring cup, which is handy when adding ingredients mid-blend.
The power cord is long enough to reach an outlet on your counter, but you may need to use an extension if all your outlets are near the ground. Unfortunately, the blender doesn't have a compartment to hide the cable when not in use.
It's fantastic for making small batches of fibrous ingredients. It's very easy to use to make a virtually perfectly smooth blend of small batches of ingredients like kale, which is great for recipes like single-serve smoothies and protein shakes. However, some blenders can produce the same results a bit faster.
It's fantastic for processing fibrous ingredients at full capacity. If you use the 'Smoothie' program followed by around 30 seconds of blending on 'High' speed, it easily blends fibrous ingredients like kale into a nearly perfectly smooth puree. However, it's not as fast as some blenders.
It's a superb blender for crushing ice. It makes snow-like crushed ice with little effort on your part. It takes a little longer compared to the very best ice crushing blenders, like the Vitamix A3500.
It's okay for nut butter. You have to stop the blender frequently, especially at the beginning of the process, remove the lid, and stir the ingredients to keep them moving. While it's a time-consuming and hands-on process, it ultimately makes very smooth, spreadable nut butter.
If you want to make nut butter in your full-size blender, you may prefer the Ninja Foodi Power Blender & Processor System, which comes with a smaller additional jar that makes it very easy to make nut butter, although it has a limited capacity.
It's not particularly loud for a full-size blender, but the noise will get irritating if you stand next to it for more than a few minutes. If you're looking for a quieter blender, you might prefer options like the Hamilton Beach Professional Quiet Blender.
Despite showing options from 1-5, you can hear the motor progress through 22 different speed increments as you slowly move the dial, giving you a good number of options for fine-tuning the blending speed.
There's a dial with indications for speeds 1-5 as well as four automatic blending programs: 'Icy Drink', 'Smoothie', 'Crushed Ice', and 'Self Clean'. The speed dial rotates smoothly instead of clicking from set speed to set speed, so you can make small adjustments. Turning the dial counterclockwise (as if selecting a speed before 1) activates pulse mode. The blender can hot blend but doesn't have any dedicated mode for soups and can't warm up cool ingredients.
This blender is decently easy to clean. Running the blender with soap and water in the jar takes care of a good amount of residue. However, the angled non-removable blades make it hard to easily clean the jar, and you may need to spend some time scrubbing them with a brush. If you want a full-size blender that's easier to clean, check out the Vitamix Explorian E310 or the Oster Pro 1200.