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Whether you want to blend healthy smoothies in the morning or impress dinner guests with homemade recipes like soup, sauce, or pesto, a blender is a useful tool to have in your kitchen. However, if you're looking for the best of the best, you might face a hefty price tag. Thankfully, if you want the advantages of a blender but don't want to spend hundreds of dollars on an appliance, there are still plenty of good options.
The KitchenAid K150 is a cheaper alternative to some of the more premium blenders out there. It's very well-built and can help with almost any recipe that needs blending. Its 56-ounce jar has a 2-part lid that allows for hot blending, and it does a really good job of smoothly blending fibrous ingredients like kale and fruit, which many blenders have trouble fully processing. It also has no problem crushing ice.
Depending on your blender, spreadable, spoonable recipes like nut butter and hummus take more time and effort. The KitchenAid isn't the easiest to use for thick recipes, especially since it doesn't have a tamper. Still, if you don't mind removing the lid and stirring a few times, it'll make smooth, spreadable nut butter. This blender has a very sturdy, compact design, so it takes up less counter space than many blenders. It's also pretty quiet for a full-size model.
This blender can't hot blend and isn't as versatile as the KitchenAid K150, but it comes with a bigger jar and makes quick work of big batches of ice cubes, making it a great option if you're in charge of supplying frozen drinks at your next party. It can make snow-like ice with a batch of a dozen ice cubes in about 30 seconds. The 72-ounce jar has a pouring spout, so you can serve drinks directly from the jar without spilling.
However, if you like fruit smoothies and want the silkiest possible blend, there are better options than this since it'll leave more grains behind than the KitchenAid. It's also more difficult to use for recipes like nut butter and has very sharp blades that make it hard to clean by hand, especially when working with sticky ingredients.
Depending on what kinds of recipes you make, a personal blender is a good, affordable option. This blender has a smaller capacity than a full-size blender — its biggest jar holds 15 ounces, so it can't fit multiple servings. However, it takes up less space in your kitchen and comes with a to-go lid, so you can easily use the 15-ounce jar as a travel cup. It makes a very smooth blend with fibrous ingredients, so it'll do a fantastic job of blending just about any smoothie recipe.
It's decently easy to use for small batches of dips and spreads, too. In addition to the 15-ounce jar, you get a 13-ounce jar and a 4-ounce cup that you can use to blend small amounts of salad dressing or salsa. However, it has a plasticky build, and because of its design, you can't blend hot ingredients. It's also not meant for crushing ice without liquid in the jar, so you can't use it to make a batch of ice to add to cocktails. Then again, adding ice as part of a smoothie or protein shake recipe is fine.
If you like to cook soups and sauces but want to avoid pouring hot ingredients into a jar, consider an immersion blender instead of a traditional full-size or personal one. The NutriBullet Immersion Blender is a simple model that you can get for an affordable price. It has a long blending arm that you can stick into pots or pans when making broccoli soup or cauliflower puree. The arm is detachable and easy to rinse, so you don't have to worry about cleaning a separate jar. Another benefit of immersion blenders is easy storage: you can fit the motor body and blending arm into a drawer, which helps save valuable counter space.
However, it isn't the best for blending fibrous ingredients like leafy greens and fruit skins, especially raw ingredients, which are harder to process. It also struggles to blend thick recipes, which is normal for an immersion blender, so it's probably not for you if you want a truly multi-purpose machine.
There are plenty of premium blenders on the market, but you don't have to sacrifice good performance if you want a more affordable option. If you're looking to save money, it's a good idea to consider what recipes you blend most often. While full-size blenders offer the most versatility, a personal blender might provide more value and convenience if you mostly blend smoothies. If you want to puree soups and sauces, you can skip a bulky full-size model and go for an immersion blender that you can use directly in a pot or pan.
Written by Theresa Ketterling, RTINGS.com
Disclaimer: The prices displayed are accurate at the time of publication. We'll do our best to keep them as up-to-date as possible, but you may see slight changes. The products in this list are ranked by independent third parties. Rankings are based on both reviews and independent testing.