My husband and I have been making smoothies for years on a regular basis. 5 days per week as a quick on the go healthy breakfast since mornings can get pretty hectic. We’ve always used frozen fruit instead of ice to avoid the smoothie getting watered down. That kind of use on a typical blender motor wears it out quickly! We broke several inexpensive name brand blenders this way. Each time one broke, we would buy one that was a bit stronger (and more expensive!). After we burned up the motor in a third one (in less than six months of use this time!), we decided it was time to get a high quality blender.
Because it’s just what I do, I researched. I looked into juicers, but most of them were only capable of making juice. Don’t get me wrong, I love healthy juice, but we make blended smoothies, so we needed a different capability. We decided to get the Ninja since it has three sets of really sharp blades, and a strong motor – a 1,000 watt motor to be exact. We went with the professional series that came with the single serve attachments and blade. This was perfect for what we needed. We use the large attachment when making smoothies for more than one, and the single serve when only one of us needs to make a smoothie.
We’ve had this blender since mid-2012, and it’s still going strong! Let me tell you, we don’t play when it comes to making smoothies, especially with the Ninja. We put in large clumps of frozen fruit & they turn to mush quickly! Add milk & it’s turned into a smoothie! When I use fresh unfrozen fruit the blender turns it into liquid within just a few seconds. It’s quite impressive! We’ve actually saved money on blenders since buying the Ninja. We’re no longer replacing an $80 blender every 6 months or so. If we had continued to do that over the period we have owned our Ninja we would have spent $480 if the prices for the same quality of blender stayed the same for three years. Instead we bought our Ninja on sale for $149. That’s a savings of $331 over the three years we’ve owned it. As it continues to last, it will continue to save us money on replacing lower quality blenders.
A few things to note: 1) it has suction cups on the base to keep it in place on the counter & they are strong! 2) the blender is not the best when it comes to food processing – if you’re looking for finely chopped instead of liquid, make sure you get the processor version (and pulse instead of using a steady blend), 3) if the blade and lid or not secure it will not start – that is for user safety since the blades are sharp and the motor is strong 4) you cannot take the lid off while the blade is moving for safety reasons. It took a bit of getting accustomed to at first, but that’s because I was used to blenders with low-powered motors.
Overall, this is a great product. For us it has been well worth the price. Because we use it so often, we definitely got our money’s worth out of the Ninja blender. We loved it so much we also got the food processing Ninja, which by the way also works for smoothies larger than single serve but not quite big enough to use the large blender for. It also travels well because the motor sits on top of the blender lid. It’s great for when we go on road trips and still want to have our blended Shakeology smoothies. We took it on a trip with us last year when we visited my niece and it was used to make cranberry orange relish and gravy for the turkey. Absolutely a must have in our kitchen!
Hopefully you’ve found this review helpful. If you have any questions about the blender please feel free to contact me and I’ll be glad to help! The blender is available in my Amazon store here: http://astore.amazon.com/mycrnoli-20
As always, thanks for stopping by! I hope you had a Happy Healthy Thanksgiving!
My Crazy Nontoxic Life 