The Ninja Professional Plus Blender with Auto IQ makes great smoothies, thick and creamy oat milk, and well-crushed ice.
When testing, we were surprised at how reasonably priced this option is for such a capable blender. However, it is loud and while there is nothing offensive about the design, you can feel that it is not made from the highest quality materials.
Despite being noisier and more difficult to clean than other models, its overall price and performance make it one of the best blenders You can buy it regularly for less than $100. If you want to know why, read our Ninja Professional Plus blender with Auto IQ details.
Ninja Professional Plus Review: Price and Availability
The Ninja Professional Plus Blender with Auto IQ can be purchased directly from ninja or from online retailers like Best Buy and Bed bath and beyond. It sells for $119, but typically goes on sale for around $100, and if you’re willing to pay a little more, you can also purchase the Professional Plus Kitchen System BN801, which comes with a food processor attachment and a single-serve blender.
Ninja Professional Plus Review: Design
The Ninja Professional Plus Blender with Auto IQ is an attractive and powerful blender that comes with more accessories than alternatives like the Breville Super Q. In addition to the included recipe book, you can spend a little more for the BN801 version that features a 64-speed blender. oz precision processor bowl with chopping and kneading blades and lid; a 72 oz grinder jar with stacked blade assembly and lid; and two 24 oz single serve cups with professional extractor blades and spout lids.
The suction cup legs stabilize this blender well and the lid locking mechanism offers confidence that nothing will fly away while blending. The blender’s pour spout creates a very nice, precise pour into the glass (much smoother than jars and cups without a pour spout) that, with a little attention, doesn’t even drip. A carefully designed small flap also helps keep the contents tasting fresh between servings.
The thick rubber grip that runs from top to bottom on the jug handle improves ergonomics. While the twist mechanism that secures the jar to the base offers confidence that the blender is secure and ready for the next batch.
There’s no dedicated cleaning cycle, but running the Ninja on its highest setting with a tablespoon of liquid soap and warm water is usually enough to remove any remaining contents. That said, the stacked blade assembly on the Ninja Professional Plus Blender with Auto IQ requires a little more attention during cleaning as it tends to slide out.
Ninja Professional Plus Review: Ease of Use
The Ninja Professional Plus Blender with Auto IQ has a noticeably more complicated cleaning process due to its inherent design and number of parts. Although there is no dedicated cleaning cycle, shake and splatter protein powder can be removed by running the blender on the highest setting with soap and water and doing a quick rinse. Hummus, however, was another story.
Cleaning the hummus from the jar still required hand washing after running the 1-minute rinse cycle, as the blades had sprayed ingredients everywhere inside the jar and onto the lid. Plus, the multitude of moving parts and the opening of the lid mean that there are plenty of nooks and crannies where the hummus liquid gets drizzled out as it blends. The rinse cycle did not remove all residue.
The triple blade arrangement also needs to be handled carefully. Although the blades are designed to be removed for rinsing, they can also easily fall off by accident.
However, the clear handle component of the jar can be removed for cleaning; All you have to do is press a small tab button and unscrew the bottom.
Ninja Professional Plus Review: Performance
The Ninja Professional Plus Blender with Auto IQ produced better smoothies than virtually every blender we tested (the only two that beat it were the Vitamix A3500 and the Breville 3x Bluicer), but it was an extremely noisy process. Pressing the Ninja’s pre-programmed shake button unleashes a sudden, sharp calamity, initially in a burst of intermittent stop-and-go action for 55 seconds, before unleashing all 1,400 watts of power in a final 10-second burst. Fortunately, the end result is smoothie-like shakes that are thick, frothy, and free of any protein powder chunks or clumps.
We also found that the blender could easily grind the grains into a fine powder, turning simple rolled oats and water into smooth oat milk. Initially, the oat milk sip has a smooth, milk-like flavor, then returns slightly to a slightly watery second half. Testing produced a good oatmeal flavor, but none of the pleasant sweetness that the Breville produced. The pour spout allowed for very precise pouring and the oat milk would have scored an impressive 7/10 (most oat milk tests were around 4-5), if it weren’t for the high-pitched noise that accompanied the mixing.
While overall noise reaches a reasonable 94.9 dB, we found that the blender produced a painfully loud, high-pitched noise during the one-minute ice crushing mode. It hurt one of our testers’ ears and made them shiver in surprise, as it produced a much higher-pitched and louder noise than what was recorded during sound tests.
Aside from the piercing noise of the ice crushing mode, the three-level blade is quite effective at crushing ice, producing an even amount of crushed ice in about 20 to 30 seconds. The final texture was reminiscent of Hawaiian shaved ice rather than extra-fine Taiwanese snow ice, but there were no chunks to be found in the mix. The crushed ice mixture came out of the jar as a large chunk which then broke once in the glass.
Ninja Professional Plus Review: Verdict
The Ninja Professional Plus Blender with Auto IQ produces great smoothies, great oat milk, and great crushed ice. It topped our first overall pick in the smoothie department and tied it with crushed ice. Despite its stealthy name, the Ninja can be terribly loud, especially when chopping ice. If you like to keep your kitchen quiet, this is not the blender for you. However, if you are looking for great performance, price, and lots of accessories, this could be an ideal choice.
