Ninja Blast review: a fun portable blender with a sippy-cup lid

One-minute review

The Ninja Blast is Ninja’s first portable blender, but it packs much the same punch as we’ve come to expect from the minds behind some of the best blenders you can buy. It’s stylish, it’s compact, and most importantly it makes quick work of smoothies.

Portable blenders make a fantastic addition to smaller household’s kitchens, and they’re perfect for putting in your gym bag as an easy way to guzzle down some nutrients post-workout, and the Ninja Blast is laser-focused on meeting these specific needs. 

The blender is immensely portable thanks to its to-go lid, handle, lightweight design and two extra caps – one to cover the blades and one to screw onto the bottom of the main blending chamber for when you’re out and about and don’t want to carry the heavy base.

It’s entirely cordless, and with a full battery can blend 10-15 times before it needs to be charged via the supplied USB-C cable, which takes approximately two hours. 

Design-wise, the Ninja Blast sports a stylish, slightly retro feel. From its colorways to the ribbed edges of its jar, it oozes both fun and sophistication, which is great for when you’re taking it on the road. The base sports a square start / stop button surrounded by an LED indicator, which will let you know the progress of your blend as well as any other status indicators you might need, such as when the blades are jammed or the blender is running low on power. 

There are no speed settings; every blend lasts for 30 seconds (unless you choose to stop it early), and while this does make it supremely easy to operate, it can be a little irritating when you’re certain the job’s not quite done. Thankfully, much of the time, one cycle is all you’ll need for effortless and consistent smoothies.

The main jar and the lid are both dishwasher-friendly, but it’s also very easy to clean the blades and vessel by simply adding some water and a drop of dish soap and running a 30-second cycle.

Now onto the drawbacks. As it’s a portable blender, it’s got to be light and easy to carry, and this comes at the expense of capacity, which is just 18oz / 510ml. At a push, you can make two smaller smoothie portions, but generally speaking this is a blender that’s best suited to single servings, though it’s worth noting this is a larger capacity than most personal and portable blenders offer. 

It’s powerful enough to handle most fibrous ingredients, but if you try to pack in your fruits and vegetables too tightly the Ninja Blast will get jammed, which happened to me more than once with harder ingredients like carrots. The Blast makes a good effort with ice, and can at the very least break cubes down a fair amount, but the results are far from even. 

All in all, though, this is a brilliant little blender that does what it’s designed to do very well.

Ninja Blast review: price and availability

•  List price: $59.99 / £49.99 / AU$99.99

The Ninja Blast launched in 2023 and costs $59.99 / £49.99 / AU$99.99, which is fairly affordable for a portable blender this capable - by way of comparison, the Smeg Personal Blender sells for $169.95 / £109.95. It’s available directly from Ninja’s online store, as well as through retailers including Amazon, Target in the US, and Very in the UK. 

It arrives neatly packaged in a cylindrical cardboard box with the base, a sip lid with a built-in handle, and vessel as well as a USB-C cable and two caps, one to cover the blades when they’re not in use, and the other to seal the bottom of the vessel when you want to take your smoothie on-the-go.

It’s available in three colorways; Denim Blue, Black, Cranberry, Forest Green, Passion Fruit and White (at the time of writing, only Denim Blue is available in the UK.)

• Value score: 4.5/5

Ninja Blast review: specifications

Ninja Blast review: design and features

• Lightweight, stylish and portable design
• 18.0oz / 532ml capacity is sizeable for a portable blender
• To-go lid with flip-open cap and built-in handle

Standing at 10.6 x 3.5 x 3.3 inches/ 27 x 9 x 8.5cm (H x W x L) with its base attached, the Ninja Blast is a petite and stylish addition to your kitchen or your gym bag. It’s lightweight at just 2.4lbs / 1.09kg, making it easy to carry, too.

The Ninja Blast features a screw-on to-go lid not unlike a sippy-cup, with a see-through pop-open cap and a built-in handle for when you’re out and about. Below the lid is a 18.0oz / 532ml vessel, with bevels on the inside which Ninja claims are intended to create a vortex and draw ingredients down onto the blades. On the front of the vessel are measurement indicators all the way up to the max fill line of 16oz / 455ml. Both the lid and vessel are dishwasher safe.

Moving down to the base, there are six non-removable blades, meaning cleaning can be a little tricky, especially considering that the base isn’t fully waterproof. On the front is the sole control for the Ninja Blast: a square stop-start button, surrounded by an LED light which illuminates purple to indicate the progress of the blend cycle, and in a variety of other colors to communicate the status of the blender. The USB-C charging port is on the rear of the motor unit, and there are rubber feet on its underside to prevent the blender from slipping on surfaces.

Our review unit came with two screw-on caps, one for the base of the vessel and one to cover the blades; however, user reviews have indicated that certain models and regions don’t include these.

• Design score: 4/5

Ninja Blast review: performance

• Handles most fibrous fruits with ease
• Struggles a little with frozen fruits and ice cubes
• Gets stuck if the ingredients are too large

The Ninja Blast is operated by pressing the start / stop button on the base to begin its 30-second blend cycle. For a personal and portable blender, it’s pretty powerful; on a par with others we’ve been impressed with at TechRadar like the Smeg Personal Blender. 

I tried several different recipes to test the Ninja Blast’s moxy, and it performed consistently well, albeit, as can be expected, never quite as well as a traditional countertop blender might. 

First up, I tried a personal favorite recipe of mine for when I’m feeling under the weather: carrots, an orange, water, honey and turmeric. Here’s where I encountered my first hurdle: hard veggies. I’d cut the carrot into batons, and they got drawn right down to the blades and almost immediately jammed them. I removed them and cut them down to size further, and after ample poking and prodding managed to blend the mix down to a relatively smooth blend with two 30-second cycles. It was still a little bitty in places, but enjoyable to drink nonetheless.

Up next was our standardized TechRadar test: banana, spinach, greek yogurt, apple juice and pineapple chunks. I had to blend this one twice too, and there was one solitary pineapple piece that wasn’t broken down even then, but overall it was a decently smooth blend. Small pieces of spinach leaves were still visible, but they were small and evenly sized.

Lastly, I wanted to try a dryer, thicker blend, so I opted for a mix of frozen berries, cocoa powder, peanut butter and kefir with a dash of oat milk. As I expected, this was a bit of a struggle for the Ninja Blast; it got stuck a few times, and required two and a bit full cycles with some fierce shaking in between to break down the ingredients. However, the results were silky smooth and delicious. 

Despite Ninja’s assertion that the Blast is more than capable of crushing ice, there are three major caveats here. First, due to the shape, size and capacity of the vessel, it’s pretty hard to fit in more than a couple of cubes. Second, with the above in mind, it’s sometimes hard for the cubes to actually reach the blades at first, so you end up using multiple cycles and shaking the blender around a fair bit. Lastly, even when you’ve overcome the aforementioned hurdles, you then have to contend with an uneven blend that never really manages to sort itself out. If you add a small amount of water (up to the recommended liquid line on the front of the vessel) the process becomes a lot easier.

It’s nice and easy to clean the Ninja blast – you simply put a drop or two of dish soap into the vessel and turn on a 30-second clean cycle. You’ll probably need to rinse the vessel again, and clean the lid by hand; alternatively, both of these components are dishwasher safe. 

Considering that you have to cut ingredients down to a fairly small size if you don’t want to run the 30-second cycle twice, the battery often didn’t quite last as long as I’d hoped, making only 5-6 smoothies instead of the 10 suggested by the battery’s promised 10-cycle capacity. Thankfully, it’s quick to charge, taking just two hours. 

• Performance score: 4/5

Should I buy the Ninja Blast?

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How I tested the Ninja Blast

• I used the Ninja Blast for two weeks and made smoothies most days
• I tried a variety of recipes and ingredients
• I drained the battery and recharged it multiple times

I used the Ninja Blast as my main blender for two weeks, using it to make a variety of recipes with various ingredients. These ingredients included fibrous foods like spinach, kale, and pineapples, powdery and thick substances like flaxseed, protein powder, and nut butters, as well as hard ingredients such as carrots and ice. 

I tried putting in ingredients of various sizes to test how powerful the motor was and identify how easily it became blocked, and strained my smoothies to see how successfully the blades mixed and pulverized the ingredients.

I’ve used a variety of blenders, and compared my experience with the Ninja Blast to using countertop devices, as well as TechRadar’s reviews of comparable models. 

Read more about how we test.

[First reviewed Novembers 2023]