Best Countertop Blender Under $100 – Buying Guide 2020

Choos­ing the best blender that fits your bud­get can be quite a chal­leng­ing task. It is easy to get lost with such a vast vari­ety of mod­els and brands avail­able on the mar­ket. In par­tic­u­lar, when so many Chi­na pro­duced kitchen gad­gets flood­ed the mar­ket. Adver­tise­ments also deliv­er often con­fus­ing infor­ma­tion, insist­ing that you can buy a blender or Vita­mix qual­i­ty or bet­ter, for the price of around $100. To be hon­est, that is absolute non­sense, but it is pos­si­ble to find a decent blender for an afford­able price of under $100 that will make your blend­ing expe­ri­ence pleas­ant.

Read this arti­cle to find out about the 7 best blenders you can buy with­out break­ing the bank.

If you are look­ing for the Best Sin­gle serve type Blender check the Best Afford­able Bul­let Blenders arti­cle.

How the Ratings Were Assigned

Before apply­ing our cri­te­ria, we select­ed 15 of the most pop­u­lar blender mod­els between $50 and $100 on Ama­zon and Wal­mart that pro­duced by well-known brands with a blender man­u­fac­tur­ing his­to­ry. We inten­tion­al­ly exclud­ed all Chi­na pro­duced mod­els, the rea­son for this is clar­i­fied in Best Vita­mix Knock­off Blenders Under $100 arti­cle.

Then we stud­ied var­i­ous sources such as the manufacturer’s prod­uct man­u­als, the motor con­struc­tion specs, com­pared pitch­ers, blade types, read many reviews on a few retail­ers’ sites, and stud­ied prod­uct reports tests. We then eval­u­at­ed the blend­ing qual­i­ty of dif­fer­ent ingre­di­ents from videos, pho­tos, and cus­tomer reviews and came out with the best deal with a price range between $50 and $100. The results are quite inter­est­ing.

#1 Oster Pro 1200 Blender

The Oster Pro 1200 Blender is avail­able in three pack­ages – 1)with glass jar and per­son­al size cup; 2)with glass gar, sin­gle-serve cup, and food proces­sor attach­ment; 3)with a large Tri­tan pitch­er and food proces­sor attach­ment. It also has a few oth­er nice fea­tures.

Motor: First of all, it is equipped with a very pow­er­ful motor of 1200 Watts, an all-met­al dri­ve­train, and anoth­er gear strip­ping. It makes the Oster motor very stur­dy and durable.

Con­tain­er: Anoth­er good fea­ture is the 48 oz. resis­tant-to-ther­mal-shock glass con­tain­er. It also includes BPA-free poly­car­bon­ate 24 oz. sin­gle-serve cup and food proces­sor attach­ment (option­al).

It comes with a remov­able blade sys­tem inter­change­able between the jar and sin­gle-serve cup.

Con­trols and using: This blender has 7 con­trol but­tons to con­trol the blend­ing process — 3 pre-set pro­grams and low, mid, and high speed and Pulse func­tion.

It is fair­ly easy to set-up and clean.

Func­tion­al­i­ty:

• Most impor­tant­ly, it makes per­fect­ly smooth smooth­ies, even from hard fruits and veg­eta­bles, and greens, suits for green smooth­ies;
• Suit­able for whole juice;
• Crush­es ice very well, able to make snow cones;
• Han­dles well hot ingre­di­ents, but does not heat with fric­tions;
• Purees well-cooked and raw veg­gies and suit­able for mak­ing Baby food;
• Makes dress­ings, chops veg­gies makes dips includ­ing hum­mus;
• Able to make nut but­ter, although with efforts;
• Grind herbs, cof­fee, oats, and even make flour of rea­son­able qual­i­ty.

War­ran­ty: Besides, Oster Pro 1200 comes with 3 years lim­it­ed war­ran­ty, with 10 years lim­it­ed war­ran­ty for its motor. Oster cus­tomer ser­vice is polite and help­ful.

Sum­ma­ry: Most of all it comes with very desir­able by many cus­tomers good qual­i­ty Glass Jar. Besides, you have the option to buy this machine with the food proces­sor attach­ment. Alto­geth­er, it is a very ver­sa­tile and good-qual­i­ty gad­get in our selec­tion of under $100 deal.

Ama­zon rat­ing – 3.8 — 4.1

Oster Pro 1200 Blender, via Ama­zon

#2 NutriBullet ZNBF30400Z 1200 Watt Blender

There is two Nutribul­let almost iden­ti­cal mod­el are avail­able on the mar­ket. The first is ZNBF30400Z 1200 Watt and the sec­ond NutriBul­let ZNBF30500Z Com­bo 1200 Watt mod­el. The Com­bo mod­el comes with the sin­gle-serve attach­ment and costs over $100. How­ev­er, the Basic one has the same func­tion­al­i­ty but comes only with the full-size pitch­er and priced under $100.

Motor: The NutriBul­let ZNBF30400Z 1200 Watt blender comes with a pow­er­ful 1200 Watts motor. Although all the motor to blades cou­pling sys­tem is made of plas­tic it looks stur­dy.

Func­tion­al­i­ty:

• Makes per­fect qual­i­ty smooth­ies even from hard ingre­di­ents, excel­lent green smooth­ies mak­er;
• Process ice and frozen ingre­di­ents only with enough liq­uids added;
• Able to pro­duce nut but­ter with some oil added;
• Does not han­dle hot ingre­di­ents, will not heat soup with fric­tions, purees only cooled ingre­di­ents for soup;
• Make a vari­ety of sal­ad dress­ings, chops veg­gies, and makes dips includ­ing hum­mus and pesto;
• Suit­able for mak­ing baby food;
• Grinds cof­fee beans, herbs but not able to pro­duce flour for bak­ing.

Con­trols and Oper­a­tion: This NutriBul­let 1200Watts machine is very easy to use and includes a tam­per for bet­ter pro­cess­ing of thick and frozen ingre­di­ents. It has the 3 speeds (Low, Mid, and High) and Pulse func­tion that allows fair good con­trol over the blend­ing.

Con­tain­er: The pitch­er is made of BPA-free poly­car­bon­ate with 64 oz. capac­i­ty. Blades are not remov­able, which makes it easy to use and clean.

War­ran­ty: It has a 1‑year lim­it­ed war­ran­ty. Cus­tomer ser­vice is polite but not help­ful.

Sum­ma­ry: It is a very nice coun­ter­top mod­el of NutriBul­let blender. Although, it is quite a sim­ple blender with lim­it­ed con­trols but does all the basic to med rage func­tion very well. Most impor­tant­ly, it pro­duces very good qual­i­ty smooth­ies. This gad­get set includes a very good-qual­i­ty recipe book.

Ama­zon rat­ing — 4.7

NutriBul­let ZNBF30400Z 1200 Watt, via Ama­zon

#3 KitchenAid KSB1570 Blender

There are 3 very sim­i­lar KitchenAid blenders avail­able on the mar­ket. All have iden­ti­cal pow­er and base unit but dif­fer by the con­tain­er type and con­trol pan­el func­tion­al­i­ty. How­ev­er, KitchenAid KSB1570 5‑Speed Blender the only one that is avail­able under $100.

Motor: KitchenAid KSB1570 comes with a 670 Watts motor, which is one of the low­est in our selec­tion. How­ev­er, it has all met­al and stur­dy motor and cou­pler that adds dura­bil­i­ty to this machine. The gear that con­nects to the base is coat­ed for qui­et oper­a­tion. This machine alto­geth­er is sol­id and looks durable with the die-cast met­al base unit.

It is also equipped with a motor pro­tec­tion sys­tem that shuts off the machine auto­mat­i­cal­ly if the blender is over­loaded or over­heat­ed.

Con­trols and Oper­a­tion: It is oper­at­ed with 5 speeds but­tons, 30 sec­onds Crush Ice pre-set pro­gram, and Pulse modes. Pulse mode oper­ates while you hold the pulse but­ton.

This machine is easy to use and clean.

Con­tain­er: The 56 oz. the con­tain­er is made of BPA-free poly­car­bon­ate, the blade is inbuilt and not remov­able.

Func­tion­al­i­ty:

• Makes good qual­i­ty smooth­ies, just slight­ly tex­tured, espe­cial­ly when frozen berries are used;
• Able to process whole juice only in 2–3 min­utes of the blend;
• Crush­es ice well for snow cones, but not very good at crush­ing frozen ingre­di­ents in smooth­ies;
• Does not han­dle hot ingre­di­ents, purees only cooled soup ingre­di­ents;
• Purees food only with some liq­uid added, suites for baby food;
• Very good at mak­ing sal­ad dress­ings, sal­sa, sauces and may­on­naise, chops veg­gies and nuts well also;
• Grinds well herbs, cof­fee beans, flaxseeds, and oth­er, but not relay able to grind flour for bak­ing.

War­ran­ty: This machine has a 1‑year Full War­ran­ty from the date of pur­chase.

Sum­ma­ry: Con­sid­er­ing that it has only 670 watts motor but able to per­form a range of basic to medi­um range blender func­tions. Thus, the gad­get is fair­ly ver­sa­tile. At the same time, it will save elec­tric­i­ty con­sump­tion.

Ama­zon rat­ing — 4.2

KitchenAid KSB1570 Blender, via Ama­zon

#4 Oster Reverse Crush Blender

The Oster Reverse Crush blender is designed for crush­ing ice and though it is not very ver­sa­tile, how­ev­er, it makes its main job very well.

Motor: This Oster mod­el also has quite a pow­er­ful 1000 Watts motor. Like all the Oster brand mod­els, it comes with a durable, all-met­al motor dri­ve cou­pling. With a met­al-paint­ed base unit, it looks nice and stur­dy.

Func­tion­al­i­ty:

• Makes per­fect-qual­i­ty fruits and greens smooth­ies with­out any lumps, you may need to run 2 Frozen Drink cycles for the bet­ter result;
• Designed espe­cial­ly for crush­ing ice, so it does its job very well;
• Purees well soft food, for hard­er food, needs more liq­uids, suites for baby food mak­ing;
• Even though it is designed for crush­ing ice, it can process hot ingre­di­ents;
• Very good at chop­ping foods for sal­ads and oth­ers, makes good dips, sal­sas, and mix­es;
• Not very good at mak­ing nut but­ter, but pos­si­ble with many efforts;
• The blender is not designed for grind­ing any food.

Con­tain­er and blades: Oster Reverse Crush Blender has a qual­i­ty shock and tem­per­a­ture resis­tant a 6‑Cup (48 oz.) Boro­class glass pitch­er. The machine is equipped with stain­less steel 6 point star blade remov­able blades that are spe­cial­ly designed with reverse action for crush­ing ice.

Con­trols and Oper­a­tion: Its con­trol pan­el has 3 speeds (Low, Mid, and High), along with Low Pulse, High Pulse func­tions, and 2 pre-set pro­grams (Frozen Drink and Food Chop), mak­ing it 7 in total.

This machine is fair­ly easy to use and clean.

War­ran­ty: This Oster blender also comes with 3 years lim­it­ed war­ran­ty for the blender, and 10 years lim­it­ed war­ran­ty for the motor.

Sum­ma­ry: The Oster Reverse Crush gad­get, although it is not very ver­sa­tile but well made, durables and makes good smooth­ies and crush­es ice well. Anoth­er good fea­ture, it also com­pat­i­bles with oth­er Oster Blenders acces­sories such as dif­fer­ent blades and even Food Proces­sor Attach­ment. So with extra acces­sories, you may expand this machine ver­sa­til­i­ty.

Ama­zon rat­ing — 4.0

Oster Reverse Crush Blender, via Ama­zon

#5 Cuisinart CBT-1000 PowerEdge 1.3 HP Blender

Cuisi­nart CBT-1000 Pow­erEdge is a mid-range blender from a well-known brand. It com­bines a very styl­ish exte­ri­or design with a fair­ly pow­er­ful motor.  

Motor: This gad­get has a pow­er­ful 1000 Watts motor. It has a met­al gear dri­ve in the blender is a met­al and rub­ber­ized plas­tic gas­ket under­neath the main pitch­er that tends to wear fast from the inter­ac­tion with met­al parts.

Cuisi­nart CBT-1000 heavy-duty die the cast met­al hous­ing is sta­ble and secure on your coun­ter­top. It has a very heavy base unit with rub­ber feet that notice­ably lim­its any vibra­tion and noise.

Con­tain­er and blades: The 62 ounces pitch­er is made of pre­mi­um qual­i­ty East­man Tri­tan copoly­ester mate­r­i­al. This machine has remov­able sharp 6 prongs tur­bo-edge stain­less steel blades.

Although, the remov­able blades take some efforts to assem­ble (needs twist­ing the cut­ting assem­bly clock­wise until tight­ened) while in gen­er­al, the blender is fair­ly easy to use.

Con­trols and Oper­a­tion: It has a very mod­ern look with a back­lit count-up timer with a beep after 4 min­utes of blend­ing time. The con­trols are basic, it has 2 speeds (Low and High), pre-pro­grammed set­tings (30 sec­onds Smooth­ie and 22 sec­onds Ice Crush), and Pulse mode that works with Low or High speeds.

Func­tion­al­i­ty:

• Makes smooth drinks and has no prob­lem pul­ver­iz­ing hard veg­eta­bles, green smooth­ies requires to run 2–3 cycles for best result;
• Crush­es ice per­fect­ly;
• Boil­ing ingre­di­ents should be cooled down before plac­ing into a pitch­er blender jar;
• Can make may­on­nais­es, sal­sa, sal­ad dress­ing, dips, make hum­mus;
• Not designed for nut but­ter, but pos­si­ble to make after some strug­gle;
• Chops nuts, cheese, and veg­gies
• Purees cooked and raw veg­gies, suit­able for baby food, puree cooled ingre­di­ents for soup;
• Very good at grind­ing cof­fee and herbs, not suit­able for mak­ing bak­ing flour.

War­ran­ty: The blender comes with a rea­son­able 3‑years lim­it­ed war­ran­ty and has good cus­tomer ser­vice.

Sum­ma­ry: Over­all, the Cuisi­nart CBT-1000 Pow­erEdge per­for­mance is pret­ty good for 1000 Watts blender. This machine is not over­ly noisy. Alto­geth­er, with very styl­ish design this machine is worth con­sid­er­ing.

Ama­zon rat­ing – 3.5

Cuisi­nart CBT-1000 Pow­erEdge 1.3 HP Blender, via Ama­zon

#6 Hamilton Beach Sound Shield Blender

Hamil­ton Beach comes with a good qual­i­ty quite sound enclo­sure mak­ing it a qui­et blender. It is also avail­able in 3 mod­els – 3‑speed blender, 3‑speed with addi­tion­al trav­el attach­ment, 5‑speed with addi­tion­al trav­el attach­ment — and all of the mod­els are priced under $100. 

Motor: It comes with a 950 Watts motor. The base unit and blades con­nec­tions have a lot of plas­tic parts but have a noise baf­fling pad that also helps to reduce noise com­ing from the blender.

Func­tion­al­i­ty:

• Makes good qual­i­ty smooth­ies from soft food and a bit chunky con­sis­ten­cy from leafy and strained ingre­di­ents;
• Process ice fair­ly well, but often with efforts;
• Per­fect for mak­ing a vari­ety of sal­sas, dress­ings, and dips, can chop veg­gies, nuts and make bread crum­bles;
• Glass jars han­dle any hot ingre­di­ents;
• Will not able to make nut but­ter;
• Has not enough pow­er for grind­ing.

Con­tain­er: All mod­els come with a 52 oz. sol­id thick glass con­tain­er, and 20 oz. glass trav­el cup. It also has 4 tines remov­able blade sys­tem that is inter­change­able between the large jar and trav­el cups.

Con­trols and using: This machine very basic con­trol pan­el that includes 3 or 5 speeds depend­ing on mod­el and pulse func­tion.

This basic blender is very easy to use and clean.

War­ran­ty: The blender is equipped with 3 years lim­it­ed war­ran­ty for U.S. and 5 years lim­it­ed war­ran­ty for Cana­da and help­ful cus­tomer sup­port.

Sum­ma­ry: Although, this blender is very basic and not very ver­sa­tile it has a glass con­tain­er and good qual­i­ty sound shield that make this blender is the qui­etest one in its pow­er range.

Ama­zon rat­ing — 3.7

Hamil­ton Beach Sound Shield Blender, via Ama­zon

#7 Ninja Pro BL660 Blender

The Nin­ja Pro Bl660 blender comes with a large jar and two per­son­al blender cups with its own blades sys­tem mak­ing two blenders in one.

Motor: Nin­ja has a pow­er­ful 1100 Watts motor, but it is not the most pow­er­ful in our selec­tion. This machine has a lot of plas­tic parts such as the base unit hous­ing, the part which locks the con­tain­er to the base, and part­ly-plas­tic blades, which makes this gad­get fair­ly frag­ile.

Con­trols and Con­trols: It has a mod­est 3 speed and the pulse set­ting.

Con­tain­ers and blades: Nin­ja 72 large jar and two 16 oz. sin­gle-serve cups are made of poly­car­bon­ate. The jar has sharp and bulky remov­able blades and a sep­a­rate sin­gle serve attach­ment blades sys­tem.

This gad­get is very dif­fi­cult to set up for run­ning and to dis­man­tle after use. It has a com­pli­cat­ed secure lid lock, very sharp blades, which is not safe for a user to take out and clean.

Func­tion­al­i­ty:

• The large jar makes quite chunky smooth­ies, espe­cial­ly when pro­cess­ing greens and hard veg­eta­bles, the sin­gle-serve attach­ment makes fine smooth­ies even from the green ingre­di­ents;
• Crush­es ice rel­a­tive­ly well, the per­son­al blender though makes it bet­ter;
• Able to make nut but­ter, though a bit chunky;
• Does not han­dle hot ingre­di­ents but can puree cold ingre­di­ents for soup;
• Can be used for baby food;
• Can chop veg­gies and make a vari­ety of sal­sas dips, sal­ad dress­ing, the per­son­al blender is the bet­ter option for these tasks;
• Sin­gles serve attach­ments can grind cof­fee beans, herbs, and grainy qual­i­ty flour;

War­ran­ty: Also, it has only 1 year of the lim­it­ed war­ran­ty and very poor cus­tomer ser­vice.

Sum­ma­ry: This gad­get does not look stur­dy, and cus­tomers have com­plained that it wears off, on aver­age, with­in 1.5 years. This machine is also very loud. Despite all the issues, this gad­get is very pop­u­lar and has one of the high­est rat­ings of 4.4 we decid­ed to include it in our selec­tion.

Ama­zon rat­ing — 4.4

Nin­ja Pro 610 Blender, via Ama­zon

Summary

If you expect from the under $100 gad­get high-qual­i­ty blend­ing, ver­sa­til­i­ty, and stur­di­ness, we think you should con­sid­er the Oster Pro 1200 machine.

How­ev­er, the NutriBul­let only mar­gin­al­ly los­es to the Oster. They are the two best machines on the mar­ket for this price in terms of blend­ing qual­i­ty among the estab­lished and well-known brands. Oster Pro wins because of its glass pitch­er, all-met­al motor and cou­pling strip­ping, long war­ran­ty, and very rea­son­able price. NutriBul­let 1200 Watt, with the same per­fect-qual­i­ty blend­ing as the Oster, comes with tam­per and a nice recipe book.

The KitchenAid machine. Though not very pow­er­ful but has a sol­id built and rep­utable man­u­fac­tur­er. The Oster Reverse Crush gad­get is not ver­sa­tile but also worth to con­sid­er for cus­tomers who intend to process iced drinks. The Cuisi­nart CBT-1000 Pow­erEdge is a very styl­ish blender and will suit those who pay a lot of atten­tion to the blender’s exte­ri­or.

Sur­pris­ing­ly, the Oster Pro, Nin­ja 610, and NutriBul­let 1200 Watt are the major best­selling com­peti­tors on ama­zon these days. Nin­ja has the high­est rat­ing and more reviews than any oth­er machine on our list. How­ev­er, our research shows that Nin­ja does not even come close to the qual­i­ty of blend­ing that Oster or NutriBul­let 1200 Watt offer. The dura­bil­i­ty and con­struc­tion para­me­ters of Nin­ja are much weak­er than the oth­er blenders in our list.

It seems that most peo­ple do not do thor­ough research before decid­ing to pur­chase this kitchen gad­get, instead of rely­ing heav­i­ly on aggres­sive adver­tise­ment cam­paigns, which Nin­ja con­duct­ed in recent years.

How­ev­er, by now, with the help of our research, you should under­stand all the pros and cons of the under $100 blenders, and make your per­son­al, inde­pen­dent deci­sion.

Alter­na­tive­ly, if you look for per­son­al blenders check the Best Afford­able Bul­let Blenders arti­cle, or if you con­sid­er gad­gets from unknown Chi­nese knock­off brands check our arti­cle Blenders Vita­mix Knock­off Blenders for under $100.

Check the Best Blender for Smooth­ies and More arti­cle for more options.