7 best blenders, tried and tested for super-quick smoothies, sauces and nut butters

Designed to offer flexibility, this blender comes with three different attachments. One 2.1l jug that, well, has more capacity. It will chop, blend and mix, as well as knead doughs with the attachment’s included. The cup attachment is also designed for smoothies and has the capacity to make a single drink and can then be taken on the go with you. The “power nutri bowl” is for making smoothie bowls and thick desserts, such as frozen yoghurt as well as nut butters. Best of all, every cup and blade is dishwasher safe – hurrah!

The easy-to-operate dial will let you choose from the programmes including blend, mix, crush and chop. The base will know which cup or bowl you have attached and offer you the right programmes for that attachment. Seriously clever. We were thoroughly impressed by this very smart blender. It did more than we ever knew we wanted a blender to do.

Clear out some cupboard space, this bad boy comes with a lot of “gubbins”. But highly useful gubbins, we should add. The expert prep pro blended anything we threw at it with ease, including a very smooth nut butter that was absolutely delicious, thank you very much. The 550W motor seemed to be unphased by thick and claggy mixtures, and it was relatively quiet too.

As well as blending, the expert prep pro can grate, dice, slice, spiralise and mix. It has two different sized bowls, and various-sized feed tubes to minimise this. Gloriously, the accessories come in a lockable display box, so when you open that cupboard you have cleared out for it, everything doesn’t fall on top of you.

Simple, but gets the job done, this glass blender is pretty straight up. It won’t take up loads of space in your cupboard, but will blend smoothies and soups to smooth perfection. True, it’s quite loud when it’s on, but it made short work of everything we threw at it. The slightly tapered style of the glass jug meant ingredients slid towards the blades without us having to stop and scrape down every so often. The lid also allows you to add ingredients as you go – good for hollandaise and other sauces in particular. However, the blender will operate without the lid on so beware...

We liked the flexibility of this blender. Sure, all it does is blend, but we are here for the best blenders and so we can’t complain. There’s an LED dial where you can ramp up or down the blending power by hand, then you just hit start/stop and blend away hands free. Or you can select from three programme buttons along the bottom: ice crushing, smoothies or interval.

The ice crushing did the job – we ended up with ice fit for a daiquiri. The smoothie option turned out a silky smooth drink in a matter of seconds. Just know that the lid on the Gastroback is one of those you can take off and the blender will still work, so blitz with caution. But it does have a refill opening so you can add ingredients as you go along.

We’ve met a lot of stick blenders in our time, and this one is by far the best. It’s cordless, so it’s easy to use over a hot hob when blending a pan of soup, without worrying you’re going to melt the power cable. It comes with a charge stand, so you can leave it charging until you need to grab it. And because of all the genuinely useful attachments, you’ll find yourself reaching for it often.

It has a whisk attachment for making smooth, silky sauces and fluffy-as-you-like pancake batter. And the masher attachment is genius. This attachment is also made completely of plastic so you don’t have to worry about scratching up for your pan. The downside of this is that it is on the heavy side. However, as it’s so powerful it should make pretty short work of whatever you’re whipping up.

If you want to get the max amount of vitamins from your smoothies, this Bosch vacuum blender is the way to go. Load up the generous 1.5l jug, pull down the arm and then press go. The blender sucks all the air out of the jug as it blends, so there’s no bubbly like texture in your smoothies, and it stops the veggies and fruit from oxidising. There’s an ice crushing mode, vacuum blending and pulse options, so most textures are possible.

If you want to store whatever you’ve made, the Bosch comes with two different-sized vacuum bowls and one vacuum bottle. This means you can store your smoothies, sauces and soups for longer and lock in more nutrients.

Oh this blender just looks good on a kitchen work surface, doesn’t it? But looks aside, it’s also very capable. It’s been designed to take on nuts, seeds and any fruit or veg you want to throw at it. Our smoothies came out, well, smooth – and the blender didn’t seem to break a sweat. KitchenAid has installed an intelligent motor in it, so it senses what’s in the jug to make sure it’s whizzing at just the right speed.

There are also three food settings: crushed ice, icy drinks and smoothies and – praise be – a self-cleaning function. Is there anything worse than washing up a blender? We think not. Anyway, the jug and lid are also dishwasher safe so that’s an extra tick from us.