Nutri Ninja Personal and Contertop Blender 1200-Watt Auto-iQ (BL642) Review

The Nutri Nin­ja Per­son­al and Coun­ter­top Blender with 1200 Watts is a very pop­u­lar machine that appeared on the mar­ket not a long time ago. It comes with a per­son­al blender attach­ment with a selec­tion of con­tain­ers and recipe books includ­ed in the package.

Are you also inter­est­ed in alter­na­tive options? Check here our arti­cles: 

• Best Blender for Smooth­ies and More – Buy­ing Guide 2021
• Best Blender under $200 – Is There Real­ly Cheap­er Alter­na­tive to Vitamix?
• Dash Chef Series Dig­i­tal Blender vs. Nin­ja Blender with 1200-Watt Auto-iQ BL642
• Clean­blend Blender vs. Nin­ja Blender with 1200-Watt Auto-iQ.

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Functionality and Versatility

Smooth­ie: The XL 72 oz. pitch­er blends quite chunky drinks even from soft fruit and veg­eta­bles no mat­ter how many min­utes it was run and what speed and set­tings were used. The blade is con­struct­ed the way that it blends only 1‑inch ingre­di­ents at the bot­tom. So man­u­al mix­ing is nec­es­sary, help­ing to cre­ate the prop­er vor­tex. This machine is also not able to pul­ver­ize straw­ber­ries, and black­ber­ries seeds and leave them intact as residues. No won­der it will not han­dle any decent green smoothies.

How­ev­er, the sin­gle-serve attach­ment with the pro extrac­tor blade (sin­gle-serve blade assem­bly) is able to pro­duce decent qual­i­ty smooth­ies and will eas­i­ly process hard ingre­di­ents like the car­rot of leafy veg­eta­bles for green smooth­ies. It usu­al­ly will grind straw­ber­ries, and oth­er seeds with­out any residues left.

Juice: The Nin­ja Blender with 1200-Watt Auto-iQ will not make clas­sic text­book juice as it does not include any juice attach­ment and will not sep­a­rate fiber from the liq­uid. How­ev­er, the sin­gle-serve attach­ment is able to pro­duce decent rea­son­ably smooth smooth­ies, aka “whole juice”.

Frozen ingredients/desserts: Both the main con­tain­er and sin­gle-serve attach­ment are designed to shave ice-pro­duc­ing snow cones and able to make quite decent frozen desserts like frozen yogurts. How­ev­er, some­times low-qual­i­ty plas­tic con­tain­ers may devel­op cracks due to the heavy load caused by ice processing.

Puree­ing: All four mod­els of this machine are able to puree cooked veg­eta­bles quite well but will not make smooth puree from the raw ones. There is an option­al Food proces­sor attach­ment you can buy for this Nin­ja Blender mod­el that is capa­ble of per­form­ing a wider range of recipes such as mash pota­to, hum­mus, pâté, baby food, and oth­ers; how­ev­er, some recipes will require adding some liq­uid for easy pro­cess­ing. It may also require stop­ping the machine occa­sion­al­ly to mix the ingre­di­ents and scrape the walls for a bet­ter vor­tex to avoid machine overheating.

Soup/ hot ingre­di­ents: This machine is not designed to cook the hot soup from the cold as Vita­mix and oth­er high-end blenders, but it can puree the soup ingre­di­ents (a bit grainy, though) if you cool them before the pro­cess­ing. This machine, accord­ing to the user man­u­al, can han­dle a tem­per­a­ture up to 180°F/82°C. So it also will not suit mak­ing bul­let­proof coffee.

Chopping/food prep: The Nin­ja Blender Duo with Auto-iQ will per­fect­ly chop nuts and veg­gies for sal­sa, dips, sal­ad dress­ing, sauces, and sal­ad mix­es using the 72 oz. pitch­er or the sin­gle-serve cup. If you buy an option­al food proces­sor attach­ment, you will be able to per­form a wider vari­ety of tasks such as meat grind­ing, grat­ing cheese, and bread crumbs.

Nut milk: The XL 72 oz. con­tain­er with total crush­ing blades is not suit­able for mak­ing nut milk. How­ev­er, the sin­gle-serve cup with the pro extrac­tor blade is quite capa­ble of mak­ing rea­son­able nut milk after siev­ing it through a nut bag.

Nut but­ter: This machine is capa­ble of mak­ing nut but­ter using the XL jar; how­ev­er, the lack of a tam­per will make this task time and labor-con­sum­ing with the not very smooth final result. The option­al Food Proces­sor attach­ment bowl, although with some effort but will pro­duce decent qual­i­ty nut butter.

Dough/batter: The BL642 mod­els are not designed to make any cook­ie bat­ter or bread dough. How­ev­er, the BL682 mod­el that comes with a food pro­cess­ing bowl and dough hooks is per­fect for knead­ing all dough and mak­ing a vari­ety of bat­ters and cake mixes.

Grinding/milling: The Nin­ja Duo with Auto-iQ is not designed for grind­ing cof­fee beans and milling grains. But it is pos­si­ble to mill herbs or soft grains like oats using an XL pitch­er or food proces­sor attach­ment. Again, the sin­gle-serve cup will per­form the task with a slight­ly bet­ter result.

This machine is capa­ble of per­form­ing a vari­ety of tasks; how­ev­er, the food proces­sor attach­ment only will do the food pro­cess­ing tasks, includ­ing pro­cess­ing heavy mix­tures like dips, pates, and humus, while BL462 is designed for few­er functions.

Speed Settings and Programs

The Nin­ja with 1200-Watt Auto-iQ BL642 machine con­trol pan­el comes with 9 but­tons — three speeds (Low, Mid, and High), pulse func­tion, two pre-sets for XL pitch­er (Frozen Drinks/Smoothies and Puree), and oth­er two 2 pre-sets for sin­gle-serve attach­ment (Blend and Ultra Blend). The pre­set will auto­mat­i­cal­ly stop oper­a­tion at the end of the cycle. The timed oper­a­tion may be stopped with the press of the pow­er but­ton. The con­trol is also equipped with the time, which shows the time from the start of the pro­gram or from the begin­ning of the timed operation.

The food proces­sor attach­ment is oper­at­ed only using any of three speeds (Low, Mid, and High) or pulse func­tion. For exam­ple, the food pro­cess­ing bowl with a knead­ing hook is sup­posed to be used at low speed for knead­ing dough or mix­ing bat­ter. On the oth­er hand, the minc­ing and grat­ing tasks could be done on pulse func­tion, and chop­ping may be per­formed using any of the three 3 speeds.

Ease of Using and Cleaning

Oper­at­ing: Assem­bling this machine when using XL pitch­ers for oper­at­ing is not real­ly straight­for­ward. First, the stacked blade sys­tem should be care­ful­ly placed into the pitch­er onto the dri­ve gear; the blade sys­tem is loose­ly fit­ted onto the dri­ve gear. The pitch­er should then be aligned the right way with the base and locked prop­er­ly oth­er­wise;, the lender will not run. After these steps, the user can add food that is not very handy as the blade shaft occu­pies some space inside the pitch­er and makes it dif­fi­cult to fill with ingre­di­ents, so they must be chopped into small­er sizes to fit the pitch­er. Besides, the lid on the XL con­tain­er is quite com­pli­cat­ed to lock and must be done the right way; oth­er­wise, the blender again will not run. Final­ly, after com­plet­ing all these com­plex pro­ce­dures, the blender is ready for running.

The blender is not equipped with a tam­per, so adding extra ingre­di­ents or mix­ing the con­tent of the pitch­er must be done man­u­al­ly every time which also includes open­ing and clos­ing the lid. It also must be men­tioned that the XL pitch­er blades are very sharp, and they should be han­dled with extra care in order not to injure yourself.

Assem­bling the Nutri Nin­ja sin­gle-serve attach­ment is quite easy. The user first fills the cup with ingre­di­ents, screws the blade assem­bly with the cup tight­ly enough oth­er­wise it may leak, and places it upside down on the base unit, then turns clock­wise until it clicks. Now users can press the pow­er but­ton and choose the need­ed speed or pro­gram. The lid open­ing after oper­a­tion must be done with care as it tends to build pres­sure dur­ing the blend­ing and may explode con­tent when it is unscrewed (like open­ing a bot­tle of Champaign).

Clean­ing: All the Nin­ja Blender Duo with Auto-iQ parts are dish­wash­er safe (although they may devel­op some minor dam­age after dish­wash­ing), so they are easy to clean if you plan to do it in a dishwasher.

How­ev­er, it is not an easy task for those who pre­fer hand clean­ing. The stacked blade sys­tem is very sharp and could injure the user if not han­dled with extra care. On the oth­er hand, the sin­gle-serve and food proces­sor attach­ment parts are no prob­lem to clean by hand. The sin­gle-serve cup also could be washed with the self-clean­ing pro­ce­dure — add halfway water in the cup with a few drops of soap and run the blender for 30 sec­onds. 

Base Unit and Motor Power

The Nutri Nin­ja with 1200-Watt Auto-iQ BL642 comes with a very pow­er­ful 1200 watts at peak motor and should be able to per­form eas­i­ly almost any heavy-duty task. How­ev­er, any blender’s real pow­er rat­ings depend much on over­all motor design, the shape of the blade, and con­tain­ers. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the Nin­ja motor was not made very well, with an aver­age life expectan­cy of about 1.5–2 years.  The blade to motor dri­ve cou­pling and gear shaft of this machine is made of plas­tic, so no won­der it does not last.

The machine is also equipped with an auto­mat­ic shut-off and will stop oper­a­tion once it is overloaded.

The gad­get base unit is fair­ly light­weight but equipped with suc­tion cups that make it sta­ble on the counter dur­ing oper­a­tion. 

Containers

The Nin­ja Duo with Auto-iQ BL642 comes with 72 oz. XL main con­tain­er, selec­tion of 3 sin­gle-serve cups with a capac­i­ty of 32 oz. (jum­bo), 24 oz.(regular), and/or 18 oz. (small).

All con­tain­ers are made from quite a low-qual­i­ty poly­car­bon­ate mate­r­i­al. As a result, the main pitch­er often devel­ops cracks at the bot­tom of the con­tain­er near the dri­ve shaft with­in 1 year of use. The same prob­lem has the sin­gle-serve cups, which also have the ten­den­cy to crack due to over­loads and often require replace­ment after 1 year of use. The sin­gle-serve cups also may be very tough to screw/unscrew when con­nect­ing to the blade assem­bly; oth­er­wise, they may leak dur­ing the blend­ing process.

Blades

The Nin­ja Duo with Auto-IQ comes with two sets of blade sys­tems Total Crush­ing Blades and Pro Extrac­tor Blade for the BL462 mod­el and two addi­tion­al Chop­ping Blade and Dough Hook for BL482 and BL482Z mod­els. All four-blade sys­tems are removable.

Total Crush­ing Blades for the XL 72 oz jar is designed as a plas­tic shaft with 6 very sharp stain­less steel blades stacked around it. This con­struc­tion is more suit­able for the food proces­sor bowl. So it is no won­der why this blade is so inef­fi­cient in pro­cess­ing smooth­ies. In addi­tion, this type of blade sys­tem makes it a bit dif­fi­cult to fill the con­tain­er with ingre­di­ents and sub­stan­tial­ly reduces its over­all capac­i­ty of it. The edges of blades are also worn out quite quick­ly and become use­less even more, so they need to be replaced fair­ly often.

Pro Extrac­tor Blade for Sin­gle Serve cups has the stan­dard for sin­gle-serve blade assem­bly design. It comes with a 6‑prong stain­less steel blade con­nect­ed to the plas­tic base. The spline mech­a­nism that con­nects the blade sys­tem to the motor dri­ve is also made of plas­tic which does not add dura­bil­i­ty to the blade assem­bly. The sin­gle-serve blade has the same prob­lems as the main pitch­er blade it becomes dull with 1 year of reg­u­lar use.

Chop­ping Blade and Dough Blade have a very sim­i­lar design to the XL main pitch­er blade assem­bly sys­tem. How­ev­er, the Chop­ping Blade is a bit short­er and has the met­al blades stag­gered around the plas­tic spin­dle. The dough hook is com­plete­ly made of plastic.

Special Features

Col­ors: The BL642 mod­el comes in black and sil­ver col­or, and the BL482 and BL482Z mod­els include slight­ly more sil­ver trimming.

Tam­per: This gad­get pack­age does not include any tamper.

Cer­ti­fied Refur­bished: None of these machine mod­els are avail­able in cer­ti­fied refur­bished condition.

Use in coun­tries out­side of the USA/Canada: The Nin­ja Blender Duo with Auto-iQ comes with a 110–120 volt­age sys­tem in the US and Cana­da. How­ev­er, it is avail­able in many coun­tries around the world and local­ly sold with the appro­pri­ate to the region volt­age. It also could be oper­at­ed using the volt­age trans­former but not rec­om­mend­ed for every­day use and is advis­able only for occa­sion­al use while abroad.

Noise

The Nin­ja Blender Duo with Auto-iQ is a very noisy machine that exceeds the lev­el of noise of oth­er blenders with com­pa­ra­ble pow­er out­puts. So it must pro­duce a noise of around 100 decibels.

Warranty and Customer Service

The Nin­ja Duo with Auto-iQ BL642/BL682/BL682Z machine comes with a 1‑year lim­it­ed war­ran­ty. The man­u­fac­tur­er charges an extra fee for ship­ping when the unit has to be sent for repair; many replace­ment parts are also sub­ject to extra charges. The Nin­ja cus­tomer ser­vice earns an unpleas­ant rep­u­ta­tion over the last years. So recent­ly, the Nin­ja ini­ti­at­ed a few spe­cial offers which sold the blender with a life­time lim­it­ed war­ran­ty. How­ev­er, it is hard to say how well this life­time war­ran­ty will be undertaken.

Optional Accessories and Attachments

It is pos­si­ble to buy replace­ment blades, cups, and lids from the man­u­fac­tur­er and oth­er online retail­ers for all mod­els — BL642, BL682, and BL682Z. There is also a cof­fee & spice grinder attach­ment and food proces­sor bowl attach­ment kit avail­able for this machine.

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Basi­cal­ly, any attach­ment made for the Auto IQ line will be com­pat­i­ble with the Nin­ja Blender Duo with Auto-iQ.

Set Includes

Set Includes/Ninja Model	BL642
Base Unit 1200 Watts/2HP	yes
XL 72 oz. (2.15 L) con­tain­er with lid	1
32 oz. cup	1
24 oz. cup	1
18 oz. cup	1
64oz. Food Proces­sor Bowl with Lid and Driz­zle Hole	0
Total Crush­ing Blades for XL 72 oz. jar	1
Pro Extrac­tor Blade for Sin­gle Serve cups	1
Chop­ping Blade and Dough Hook	0
Sip & Seal Lids	3
Instruc­tion Book	1
Auto-iQ Pro­gram Guide	yes
75 Recipe Cookbook	yes
40 Recipe Inspi­ra­tion Guide	no
Rachel Beller Healthy Liv­ing & Recipe Book (Eat to Lose, Eat to Win)	no

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Dimensions

Nin­ja Blender Duo with Auto-iQ is a very big and bulky machine that demands con­sid­er­able space for stor­age. It comes with 7 inch­es x 10 inch­es (with a plas­tic guard in the back) foot­print and a height of 17 inch­es with the XL jar on the top of the base unit. This machine must fit under the stan­dard kitchen cab­i­net but occu­pies some space on the counter because of the mas­sive foot­print. 

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• The Nin­ja Blender Duo with Auto-iQ BL642/BL682/BL682Z is a pow­er­ful machine that includes a few acces­sories that make this blender quite ver­sa­tile, espe­cial­ly the mod­els BL482 and BL482Z with food pro­cess­ing attachments.
• The sin­gle-serve attach­ment with a nice vari­ety of cups allows you to make drinks and take them out, which is very con­ve­nient for many busy people.

Cons:

• The Nin­ja Blender Duo with Auto-IQ BL642/BL682/BL682Z machine with XL jar makes quite clumpy smooth­ies and shakes and is not even able to pul­ver­ize berry seeds. More­over, con­sid­er­ing a very pow­er­ful motor, it indi­cates design faults in pitch­er and blade construction.
• It comes with a low-qual­i­ty plas­tic con­tain­er that tends to devel­op cracks with­in 1 year of use.
• Although the sin­gle-serve attach­ment blends good qual­i­ty drinks, it has a prob­lem with blades, which become dull over time.
• This gad­get can­not han­dle hot liquids.
• The con­struc­tion of blades for the XL pitch­er and lid makes this machine very dif­fi­cult to assem­ble for use.
• The motor-to-blade cou­pling for both XL pitch­er and sin­gle-serve attach­ment is made with a lot of plas­tic that sub­stan­tial­ly reduces the dura­bil­i­ty of this machine.
• The com­pli­cat­ed sys­tem for open­ing the lid and lack of tam­per equip­ment makes this machine dif­fi­cult to use and often requires stop­ping dur­ing oper­a­tion for man­u­al food mixing.
• This machine is very big and bulky and requires con­sid­er­able space to store it.

Ninja Blender Duo Consumer Reviews

Even though this blender has quite a few con­struc­tion flaws, pro­fes­sion­al adver­tis­ing keeps this gad­get among the most desir­able blenders on the mar­ket. It is no won­der it has very good reviews and rat­ings at most online retail­ers’ sites.

Price

The Nin­ja Blender Duo with Auto-iQ price fluc­tu­ates under$200 depend­ing on the mod­el. How­ev­er, many retail­ers often offer the gad­get at a dis­count, so it is quite pos­si­ble to buy this machine at a very com­pet­i­tive price.

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Summary

In gen­er­al, the Nutri Nin­ja Blender with 1200-Watt Auto-iQ BL642 is a very pow­er­ful machine with a pow­er­ful motor but over­all poor con­struc­tion and design. The XL pitch­er and blade assem­bly are more suit­able for a food proces­sor than a blender, so it is not capa­ble of mak­ing even decent smooth­ies. The sin­gle-serve attach­ment is quite good but has some draw­backs, such as poor qual­i­ty cups and the prob­lem with tight screw­ing and leak­ing. It achieves ver­sa­til­i­ty with mul­ti­ple attach­ments and not with an impec­ca­ble design like the typ­i­cal high-end machines.

Alter­na­tive­ly, check here our arti­cles 

• Best Blender for Smooth­ies and More – Buy­ing Guide 2021
• Best Blender under $200 – Is There Real­ly Cheap­er Alter­na­tive to Vitamix?
• Dash Chef Series Dig­i­tal Blender vs. Nin­ja Blender with 1200-Watt Auto-iQ BL642
• Clean­blend Blender vs. Nin­ja Blender with 1200-Watt Auto-iQ.