Dash Chef Blender vs Nutri Ninja Blender with 1200-Watt Auto-iQ (BL642)

Dash Chef Series and Nin­ja Blender Duo with Auto-IQ are well-known gad­gets with tech­ni­cal para­me­ters close to high-end blenders. They both claim to com­pete with Vita­mix and Blendtec. Although there are no com­pelling rea­sons for this, they are both new to the mar­ket, and Chi­na out­sourced machines with­out seri­ous invest­ment from man­u­fac­tur­ers to the engi­neer­ing side of pro­duc­tion. But these two machines can indeed com­pete with each oth­er and sim­i­lar units.

Please read our arti­cle to dis­cov­er the best blender choice between these two machines.

Alter­na­tive­ly, check our arti­cles here. 

• Best Blender for Smooth­ies and More – Buy­ing Guide 2022
• Best Blender under $200 – Is There Real­ly Cheap­er Alter­na­tive to Vitamix?

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Dash Chef Series Digital Blender

The Dash Chef Series comes with a high-pow­er 1400 watts motor, all-met­al dri­ve-to-blade cou­pling, and a fan­cy dig­i­tal con­trol pan­el. Hence, the Dash machine pack­age includes:

• Motor base with 1400 watts motor and dig­i­tal con­trol panel;
• 64 oz. Tri­tan copoly­ester jar with irre­mov­able blade assembly;
• 2‑parts rub­ber lid with closed/measuring cap;
• Cus­tom tamper;
• User Man­u­al with few recipes.

It is equipped with a high-qual­i­ty 64 oz. shat­ter, and tem­per­a­ture-proofed Tri­tan copoly­ester jar and per­ma­nent­ly inbuilt stain­less steel into it, which is very sim­i­lar to Vita­mix. The blade assem­bly, dri­ve shaft with mesh­ing cogs, and retain­er nut are all made of metal.

The gad­get also comes with a tam­per, which is a very use­ful tool for pro­cess­ing thick ingre­di­ents like nut but­ter, frozen mix­ers, and oth­ers. The machine also has a vent­ed lid, which allows the use of a tam­per dur­ing blend­ing with­out stop­ping the machine and is designed to release any excess heat accu­mu­lat­ed dur­ing the pro­cess­ing of hot ingredients.

The Dash dig­i­tal con­trol pan­el has ten (10) speeds, pulse func­tion, and six (6) pre-set pro­grams — Rinse, Puree, Soup, Smooth­ie, Crush, and Frozen. The great option of speeds and pulse func­tion allows a user a lot of flex­i­bil­i­ty when prepar­ing dif­fer­ent recipes. So, this machine is capa­ble of per­form­ing the fol­low­ing tasks:

• Pro­duce good qual­i­ty smooth­ies, includ­ing the green ones made from leafy and tough food;
• Blend frozen ingre­di­ents in drinks or crush ice into the snow-like con­sis­ten­cy for mak­ing snow cones, ice cream, and oth­er frozen treats;
• Able to process hot food and heat them to 170 F, so it makes hot soups from scratch and suit­able for pro­duc­ing bul­let prod coffee;
• Puree cooked and raw veg­gies to pre­pare var­i­ous mash­es, dips, spreads, and baby food;
• Capa­ble of mak­ing nut but­ter and nut milk;
• Chops food to pro­duce sal­ad sauces, mix­es, mari­nades sal­sa and oth­er, chops veg­gies for coleslaw and oth­er recipes;
• Grinds cof­fee beans and herbs to pro­duce bak­ing qual­i­ty flours for a vari­ety of grains;

Dash Chef Series comes with one (1) year (2 years could be upgrad­ed once reg­is­tered online with a man­u­fac­tur­er) and a 7‑year motor Lim­it­ed war­ran­ty. The cus­tomer ser­vice is good and read­i­ly solves prob­lems, includ­ing replac­ing faulty parts and units.

Weak point – design fault in the retain­er nut makes it wear out soon and devel­ops pitch­er cracks con­nect­ed with the retain­er nut.

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Ninja BL642 Countertop and Personal Blender with 1200-Watt Auto-iQ Base

Nutri Nin­ja BL642 Per­son­al and Coun­ter­top Blender with 1200-Watt is a coun­ter­top blender with per­son­al blender attach­ment. The gad­get comes with 1500 watts pow­er­ful motor, non-durable with many plas­tic parts dri­ve to blade con­nec­tion, a large plas­tic pitch­er, a selec­tion of sin­gle-serve cups, and/or food proces­sor attach­ments. So the pack­ages for this machine include:

• Base Unit 1500 Watts/2HP;
• XL 72 oz. (2.15 L) con­tain­er with lid;
• Blades assem­bly for XL 72 oz. jar;
• 32 oz., 24 oz., and 18 oz. sin­gle-serve cups;
• Blade assem­bly for Sin­gle Serves cups;
• Sip & Seal Lids;
• Instruc­tion Book;
• Selec­tion of recipe books.

This machine has mul­ti­ple attach­ments and parts, and all of them are not very good qual­i­ty. The blender’s main 72 o. pitch­er and sin­gle-serve cups are made from a non-durable poly­car­bon­ate mate­r­i­al that cracks eas­i­ly and often requires replac­ing. The main pitch­er blade assem­bly, which is pro­mot­ed to have unique con­struc­tion for bet­ter food homog­e­niz­ing, is quite inef­fec­tive in use. It has a very bulky design with six (6) very sharp stain­less steel blades stag­gered around a plas­tic shaft. The plas­tic shaft is worn quick­ly, and the blades become dull with­in one (1) year of use. The sin­gle-serve blade sys­tem has a stan­dard design, and although it blends well, it has a few issues with ear­ly wear out of the gasket.

The gad­get does not include a tam­per and thus has trou­ble pro­cess­ing thick food that requires stop­ping it dur­ing the blend­ing of the mix­ing ingre­di­ents and remov­ing air pockets.

This machine con­trol pan­el has 3 speeds (Low, Medi­um, High), pulse func­tion, 2 pre-set pro­grams for the main pitch­er (Frozen Drinks/Smoothies, Puree), and 2 pre-set pro­grams for sin­gle-serve attach­ment (Blend, Ultra Blend). Such a restrict­ed selec­tion of speeds does not allow much flex­i­bil­i­ty to a user over the blend­ing process. How­ev­er, this machine is designed to accom­plish the fol­low­ing duties:

• The 72 oz pitch­er makes pret­ty grainy drinks and thus hard­ly can pro­duce decent green smooth­ies; while the sin­gle-serve attach­ment does good qual­i­ty drinks, includ­ing those made from leafy and hard ingredients;
• Process frozen ingre­di­ents and ice well with and with­out any liq­uid added, per­fect­ly suit­able for mak­ing frozen desserts, mar­gar­i­tas, and oth­er concoctions;
• Does not han­dle hot food or heat the liq­uids via fric­tions, so not suit­able for prepar­ing hot soups or for pro­cess­ing bul­let­proof coffee;
• It makes nut but­ter but not the smooth one;
• Able to chop and mince food to pre­pare sal­sa, coleslaw, mari­nades, and oth­ers, the mod­els with food pro­cess­ing attach­ment have out­stand­ing chop­ping functionality;
• Makes fair­ly chunky purees, dips, and spreads from cooked ingredients;
• Per­son­al blender attach­ment grinds cof­fee beans and herbs, also mills soft grains such as oats only;
• Will not knead dough or mix batter;

Nutri Nin­ja with 1200-Watt Auto-iQ BL642 comes with a mod­est 1‑year lim­it­ed war­ran­ty that must reflect the dura­bil­i­ty of the machine and very igno­rant and unhelp­ful cus­tomer service.

Weak point – crack­able pitch­er and cups, inef­fi­cient blade sys­tem for the main pitch­er, non-durable blades for sin­gle-serve cups. Very dif­fi­cult to assem­ble, dis­as­sem­ble, and use. The motor is not strong, and many plas­tic parts make them wear quickly.

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Dash Chef Series Digital and Nutri Ninja with 1200-Watt Auto-iQ (BL642) BL642Z/BL682/BL682Z) Differences and Features

	Dash Chef Series Dig­i­tal Blender	Nin­ja with 1200-Watt Auto-IQ (BL642)
Motor	Well-made 1400 watt all-met­al sock­et dri­ve and oth­er parts of the blade to the motor connections;	Non-durable 1500 watt with near­ly all plas­tic motor to the blade coupling;
Blades	Per­ma­nent­ly built into con­tain­er stain­less steel 6‑prongs blades with all-met­al assembly;	Remov­able blade sys­tem for 72 oz. jar and per­son­al blender attachment;
Con­tain­ers	High-qual­i­ty shat­ter­proof and tem­per­a­ture resis­tant 64 oz. Tri­tan con­tain­ers and 2‑parts vent­ed rub­ber lid;	Low qual­i­ty and easy break­able poly­car­bon­ate 72 oz. and sin­gle-serve cups;
Using & Cleaning	Very easy to assem­ble, use, and clean; not proofed for dish­wash­ing and suit­able only for hand and self-cleaning;	Dif­fi­cult to assem­ble, use and dis­as­sem­ble, has the lid and pitch­er-base lock­ing sys­tem; although most parts are dish­wash­er safe, very sharp blades are unsafe to han­dle and thus not easy to clean;
Con­trol panel	Equipped with 10 speeds, pulse func­tion, and 6 pre-pro­grammed set­tings — Rinse, Puree, Soup, Smooth­ie, Crush, and Frozen;	It comes with 3 speeds (Low, Medi­um, High), pulse func­tion, 2 pre-sets for the main pitch­er, and 2 pre-sets for sin­gle-serve attachment;
War­ran­ty	1‑year (or 2 years) on all parts and 7 years of motor Lim­it­ed war­ran­ty and help­ful Cus­tomer Service.	1‑year Lim­it­ed war­ran­ty only; Cus­tomer ser­vice is not helpful;
Per­for­mance	Blends decent drinks and green smooth­ies, process well tough ingre­di­ents includ­ing leafy greens, nuts, and seeds in drinks; Crush­es frozen food in smooth­ies and ice for mak­ing frozen desserts and frozen drinks; Designed to han­dle hot liq­uids, makes soup from scratch and suit­able for oth­er hot liq­uids pro­cess­ing tasks; Designed to process nut but­ter and nut/rice milk; Purees veg­gies to make mash­es, dips, spreads, and baby food; Chops veg­eta­bles for mak­ing sal­sa, mari­nade, coleslaw, able to grind meat; Mills cof­fee beans, herbs, bak­ing qual­i­ty flours, and gluten-free grains.	The main pitch­er makes grainy drinks and is not suit­ed for green smooth­ies; the sin­gles serve attach­ment pro­duce good qual­i­ty drinks and are able to make green smoothies; Excel­lent at crush­ing ice and frozen food into drinks; makes snow cones, frozen treats, and alco­holic drinks concoctions; Does not able to process hot liquids; It makes crunchy nut butter; Purees only cooked vegetables; Chops and mince well ingre­di­ents for sal­sas, mari­nades, dress­ing, and oth­er sim­i­lar recipes; Only sin­gle serve attach­ment grinds, herbs, cof­fee beans, and mills soft grains; Will not knead dough;
Dimen­sions	The foot­print is 8.75 inch­es in diam­e­ter; the pro­file height is 21.5 inch­es with 64 oz. jar, so it does not fit under stan­dard kitchen cab­i­nets. The weight is 11 pounds.	The foot­print is 7 inch­es x 10 inch­es (with a plas­tic guard in the back), pro­file height is 17 inch­es with 72 oz. con­tain­er on the top of the motor base. Needs a lot of room for stor­age because of the many attach­ments. Weight is 10.1 pounds.

How to Choose Between the Two Blenders

Dash Chef Series Dig­i­tal and Nutri Nin­ja Blender with 1200-Watt Auto-iQ have pow­er­ful motors, but the Dash blender is more ver­sa­tile with a bet­ter blend­ing qual­i­ty. The Dash pro­duces excel­lent smooth­ies, includ­ing the green ones, while the Nin­ja can make only grainy drinks. The Dash han­dles hot ingre­di­ents and is able to make hot soup from cold ingre­di­ents, while Nin­ja is not even able to han­dle hot liq­uids. The Dash makes bak­ing qual­i­ty flour when Nin­ja can han­dle only soft grains.

Like all high-end blender designs, Dash Chef Series Dig­i­tal per­forms all tasks with one pitch­er with an inbuilt set of blades. At the same time, the ver­sa­til­i­ty of Nin­ja is achieved by the mul­ti­ple attach­ments, which are a has­sle to change for each task and requires space to store them.

The Dash machine has a great choice of speed, which increas­es its ver­sa­til­i­ty, and is very easy to use and clean.

Summary

No doubt, the Dash Blender wins this local com­ple­tion. Although both machines are pow­er­ful, Dash is more ver­sa­tile, eas­i­er to use, and clean. How­ev­er, the most impor­tant thing is that the Dash Chef Series Dig­i­tal is much bet­ter built than Nin­ja, with all the fea­tures the pre­mi­um blender like Vita­mix has. Fur­ther­more, though Dash has some prob­lems with the retain­er nut, it is still a more durable machine than Nin­ja, with an aver­age life expectan­cy of 2.5–3 years instead of Ninja’s 1–1.5 years. More­over, there is a chance that Dash man­u­fac­tur­ers will cor­rect the retain­er nut prob­lem, then the blender may become a real win­ner for the mar­ket as a cheap­er alter­na­tive to high-end blenders.

Alter­na­tive­ly, check here our arti­cles: 

• Best Blender for Smooth­ies and More – Buy­ing Guide 2022
• Best Blender under $200 – Is There Real­ly Cheap­er Alter­na­tive to Vitamix?