The Best Blenders for Making Smoothies

We at Perfect Smoothie.com have personally owned 5 different blenders and have been making smoothies regularly for about 10 years. Some products may specifically market themselves as "smoothie blenders", "smoothie makers", or "smoothie machines", but they are all just basically blenders and have the same principal working parts. We have researched, used, and tested the most popular blenders from all the top manufacturers and below are our findings and reviews for each: (updated for 2011)

High End Blenders

• Vitamix 5000 / Vitamix 5200

  
  (our top pick)
  The Vitamix 5200 (formerly known as the Vitamix 5000) is our smoothie blender of choice. It is the best smoothie blender on the market that we have used. Because this blender handles frozen and whole uncut fruits with ease, you don't have to mess around and waste any time. In fact, we guarantee that if you are making smoothies every day this blender will pay for itself in less than a year. This is a serious machine that should be looked at as a positive investment toward your own health.

• Blendtec Total Blender

  
  This is also a very popular blender. One great feature of this blender is that it has a self timer which means you can start it up and it will turn off automatically when the blending cycle is finished. It will also auto-adjust if it needs more power to finish. It has a 1500 Watt motor, a futuristic electronic display, no knobs or dials, and includes a 64-ounce jar along with a book of over 100 recipes.

Lower Priced Blenders

• The Magic Bullet

  
  A newer blender to the market, we highly recommend this blender as a first purchase to test out whether making smoothies is something you want to commit to before spending the big bucks. The best feature about this blender is how there is relatively no cleanup as the small self contained jar is easily washed and produces just one or two servings. Another advantage of the smaller size is that you can physically shake the blender while in use and you don't have to worry about bigger pieces not blending due to physics.

• Oster Beehive

  
  This is a good looking stainless steel 500 Watt blender that can blend most non frozen items and looks fantastic on your counter with its retro beehive design. It's like a piece of art on your kitchen counter. It has a simple knob control with 2 speeds. The jar is made out of glass and is relatively easy to keep clean. We used this blender exclusively for about a year before upgrading to the Vitamix 5200 in order to blend frozen items and whole fruits to save time and money.