Ninja BN701 Professional Plus Blender with Auto-iQ Review

The Nin­ja BN701 Pro­fes­sion­al Plus Blender is a very pop­u­lar gad­get among afford­able blenders for around $100. It is glo­ri­fied in a num­ber of infomer­cials by some famous peo­ple. Does it do per­forms as well as the adver­tis­ing claims, or is it just infomer­cial hyp­ing? Read the review to find out the answer.

Dis­clo­sure: As an Ama­zon Asso­ciate, we may earn an affil­i­ate com­mis­sion for pur­chas­es you make when using the links on this page.

Alter­na­tive­ly, check our articles:

• Best Coun­ter­top Blender Under $100
• Best Blender for Smooth­ies and More – Buy­ing Guide 2022
• Best Blender under $200 – Is There Real­ly Cheap­er Alter­na­tive to Vitamix?

Functionality

Smooth­ie: The Nin­ja BN701 Blender is only able to pul­ver­ize prop­er­ly soft fruits and veg­eta­bles. Tough ingre­di­ents are blend­ed into a grainy con­sis­ten­cy drink with some big­ger chunks present no mat­ter how many min­utes you blend and what set­ting you use. The car­rots or green leafy ingre­di­ents nev­er get ful­ly liq­ue­fied into a prop­er smooth con­sis­ten­cy. So this machine will not pro­duce any decent green smooth­ie even if you will process it for a few min­utes. This gad­get could also not han­dle the straw­ber­ry, blue­ber­ry, and oth­er berries seeds but leave seed­ed residues in the drinks.

Crush­ing Ice: The Nin­ja Nin­ja BN701 Pro­fes­sion­al Plus Blender is designed to crush ice well in drinks. This Nin­ja gad­get is per­fect­ly suit­ed to make frozen desserts and pow­er­ful enough to pro­duce snow cones out of pure ice cubes even with­out any liq­uid added.

Juice: Although it is adver­tised as a juicer, it does not make any clas­sic type of juice that sep­a­rates liq­uid from the fiber. It is also unable to make the very smooth smooth­ie, aka “whole juice”. So this machine is by no means suit­ed for squeez­ing juice or even mak­ing “whole juice” drinks.

Puree­ing: No mat­ter what set­ting you run, this blender is just unable to pro­duce per­fect, con­sis­tent puree. The best result it can achieve is grainy chop­ping, even if you add extra liquid.

Soup/ hot ingre­di­ents: This machine can­not heat liq­uid from fric­tion, and even it is not designed to han­dle hot liq­uids. So, this machine is not suit­able for mak­ing bul­let­proof cof­fee. To process ingre­di­ents for soup, they must be cooled prop­er­ly; oth­er­wise, the hot liq­uid could cause the con­tain­er to crack or melt.

Chopping/food prep: This machine is good at doing the chop­ping and mix­ing job. But it will process food up into a course chop even at the high­est speed. So this Nin­ja is just per­fect for mak­ing all kinds of shop­ping for coleslaw; it will be good at mak­ing mari­nades, sal­ad dress­ings, and mixes.

Nut milk: This machine is not very good for mak­ing nut milk because it will not be able to liq­ue­fy nuts well in liquids.

Nut but­ter: Nin­ja BN701 Pro­fes­sion­al Plus machine is hard­ly suit­able for mak­ing nut but­ter as it is not designed to puree food prop­er­ly; the max­i­mum it will achieve fine chop­ping nut consistency.

Dough/batter: It is not able to knead the dough but is able to make pan­cakes, cook­ies, and oth­er types of batter.

Grinding/milling: This Nin­ja machine can­not grind the seeds, herbs, or grains to a good qual­i­ty pow­der con­sis­ten­cy. It is also not suit­able for grind­ing cof­fee beans. But it will do the coarse grind­ing of oats or oth­er sim­i­lar soft ingredients.

Over­all, the Nin­ja BN701 Pro­fes­sion­al Plus Blender is not designed to pro­duce smooth smooth­ies and cer­tain­ly will not be able to make decent qual­i­ty green smooth­ies. The only task this machine per­fect­ly per­forms is ice crush­ing, and it is also able to do a good chop­ping job. So, it is not the blender for smooth­ies and sim­ply can­not cre­ate a vor­tex to blend any­thing effec­tive­ly apart from ice.

Speed Settings and Programs

Nin­ja BN701 Pro­fes­sion­al Plus Blender comes with a smart touch­screen con­trol pan­el and illu­mi­nat­ed con­trol but­tons. The con­trol pan­el is equipped with:

• POWER (ON/Off) button,
• Three speeds func­tions (LOW, MED, and HIGH),
• Pulse func­tion acti­vat­ed by the PULSE button,
• Three Auto-iQ pro­grams (SMOOTHIE, ICE CRUCH, and ICE CREAM).

The SMOOTHIE pro­gram is designed for blend­ing fresh/frozen fruits, milk/yogurt, and pro­tein shakes. The ICE CRUSH pro­gram is for pro­cess­ing Mar­gar­i­tas, daiquiris, and milk­shakes. And ICE CREAM pro­grams are for mak­ing sor­bet, sher­bet, and frozen yogurt.

AUTO-iQ PROGRAMS com­bine unique puls­ing, blend­ing, and paus­ing pat­terns and auto­mat­i­cal­ly stop the blender at the end of the pro­gram. To select the pro­gram, just touch the appro­pri­ate but­ton. To pause the unit at any time, press the acti­vat­ed but­ton again or press the Pow­er but­ton to can­cel. The timer counts down in the sec­ond’s units the time left until the end of the program.

LOW speed is designed for chop­ping soft ingre­di­ents for prepar­ing sal­sas, mari­nades, and puree soft veg­gies, cheese, nuts, and oth­ers; it will also han­dle ice crush­ing for snow cones and chilled drinks.  Med speed will mix dip, sauces, and spreads. While the HIGH speed actu­al­ly sup­posed to process smooth­ies and shakes.

PULSE func­tion is quite a use­ful fea­ture and is used not only for chop­ping tasks but also helps to remove air pock­ets dur­ing blend­ing with­out a need to open the jar to mix it with a spatula.

Low and High speeds will run con­tin­u­ous­ly until turned off. The PULSE set­ting will run only when touched. When you are done blend­ing, press the LOW, MED, or HIGH but­tons again to stop blending.

This blender has a good selec­tion of pre-sets and speeds and thus allows decent con­trol over the blend­ing process.

Ease of Using and Cleaning

Oper­at­ing: Nin­ja BN701 Pro­fes­sion­al Plus Blender design of blade assem­bly, the lid, and pitch­er lock­ing sys­tem makes it not straight­for­ward to assemble/disassemble. In order to assem­ble this machine, the user has to place the jar put the pitch­er on the base at a 45-degree align­ment, and twist it to snap in.  The very sharp 6‑prong blade tow­er has to be placed inside the pitch­er (it sits loose). Now you are ready to place all the ingre­di­ents and liq­uids first, soft and sol­id, in that order. Final­ly, put the cap on and snap it down to lock it in.

This unusu­al con­struc­tion makes this machine not only com­pli­cat­ed to assem­ble but also used. For exam­ple, the bulky blade tow­er, which must be fit­ted into con­tain­ers, makes the pro­ce­dure of fill­ing the jar with ingre­di­ents very chal­leng­ing as the blade occu­pies sig­nif­i­cant space inside the con­tain­er. The blades are very sharp, mak­ing this blender quite dan­ger­ous to han­dle safe­ly when assembling/dissembling and mak­ing it tricky to pour the drink after pro­cess­ing because the blade tends to pop out from the place and may cut the user. The com­pli­cat­ed lock­ing lid sys­tem and lack of a tam­per do not allow the user to add extra ingre­di­ents or remove air pock­ets eas­i­ly dur­ing blend­ing because the user has to remove the lid for this purpose.

Clean­ing: This gad­get pitch­er, lid, and blade tow­er are, accord­ing to the user man­u­al, dish­wash­er safe, which must make the job of clean­ing the machine quite easy. The lid and the blade assem­blies should be washed on the top rack only. The pitch­er can be washed on either rack. But the blade sys­tem is quite bulky and will take up con­sid­er­able space in the dish­wash­er rack and jar; although sup­posed to be dish­wash­er safe, many cus­tomers report that it may devel­op melt­ed after the dish­wash­ing pro­ce­dure edges or cracks make the pitch­er use­less as a result.

The hand clean­ing of this blender is also quite an uneasy pro­ce­dure. The blades are very sharp and not very safe to han­dle. The tow­er itself is quite tall and nar­row, so it isn’t easy to clean it with a sponge or wash­cloth. The pitch­er lid has so many dif­fer­ent cav­i­ties that it leaves a lot of room for bac­te­ria to devel­op and drop into the drink.

Base Unit and Motor Power

Nin­ja BN701 Pro­fes­sion­al Plus Blender comes with a fair­ly pow­er­ful 1400 Watt Motor that must han­dle low to medi­um-duty jobs. How­ev­er, the motor con­struc­tion is not of the best qual­i­ty with a lot of plas­tic parts; the almost com­plete­ly plas­tic blade-to-motor cou­pling makes the motor very frag­ile. So, this gad­get’s report­ed aver­age life expectan­cy ranges from 1 to 2 years.

The base unit is made of plas­tic, it is not very heavy, so it may trav­el dur­ing blend­ing if you process tough ingredients.

Containers

This Nin­ja comes with 72 oz. BPA-free poly­car­bon­ate con­tain­er with a max­i­mum capac­i­ty of 64 oz. The qual­i­ty plas­tic is not of good qual­i­ty, and the dura­bil­i­ty prob­lem of the con­tain­er is a com­mon issue with this blender. The plas­tic is not tem­per­a­ture and is stress-resis­tant. So the con­tain­er can­not han­dle hot liq­uids, and you will need to cool the ingre­di­ents before liq­uidiz­ing them. Crack­ing is also a com­mon prob­lem with the blender; the stress cracks occur at the bot­tom near the blade assem­bly and all over the pitcher.

Blades

Nin­ja BN701 Pro­fes­sion­al Plus Blender machine comes with an unusu­al blade, which is con­struct­ed as 6 stain­less steel blades stag­gered around the plas­tic shaft. Although this design pre­sent­ed by Nin­ja as unique will improve the machine’s per­for­mance, it caus­es a few prob­lems for the user. First, the blade sys­tem occu­pies con­sid­er­able space which sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduces the jar’s usable capac­i­ty and makes it dif­fi­cult to fill it with ingre­di­ents. Hence, the user has to stop the blender a few times dur­ing pro­cess­ing to put food in.

Sec­ond, the very sharp blade assem­bly is not locked inside the jar, which makes them very secure, eas­i­ly falls out, and dur­ing pour­ing the drink, and injures the user. In addi­tion, the sharp blade tends to dull after a few months of use and makes them less pro­duc­tive. Final­ly, all the blade con­struc­tion is even adver­tised as unique and very effi­cient but could be dan­ger­ous and not per­form well in real life.

Special Features

Col­ors: This gad­get avail­able in black only but has very is a sleek design.

Tam­per: This machine does not include a tamper.

Cer­ti­fied Refur­bished: There are no cer­ti­fied refur­bished mod­els yet avail­able for the Nin­ja BN701 Pro­fes­sion­al Plus Blender model.

Use in coun­tries out­side of the USA/Canada: This machine sold in the USA comes with a 110–120 volt­age sys­tem suit­ed to be used only in the USA and Cana­da. How­ev­er, this blender is avail­able in many oth­er coun­tries, and if the machine will be used in a coun­try with a 202–240 volt sys­tem, it is bet­ter to buy it in the rel­e­vant coun­tries. But for con­sumers who wish to use the machine while trav­el­ing, the volt­age trans­former could be pur­chased separately.

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Noise

Nin­ja BN701 Pro­fes­sion­al Plus Blender mod­el is a very loud blender that pro­duces around 100 deci­bels even when it process­es soft ingre­di­ents. The ice or oth­er tough ingre­di­ents must out­put even more noise. The stan­dard advice for noise home appli­ances is to place rub­ber matt under­neath the blender while in use.

Warranty and Customer Service

This gad­get comes with a 1‑year lim­it­ed war­ran­ty and may apply extra charges for repair and replace­ment parts ship­ping. Most of the replace­ment parts also usu­al­ly apply extra charges. Over­all, the war­ran­ty and cus­tomer ser­vice for Nin­ja are not the best in the indus­try. The com­pa­ny often is very reluc­tant to resolve issues with the blender.

Optional Accessories and Attachments

This machine does not have any extra attach­ments and acces­sories avail­able. And the pitch­ers, blade sys­tem, and oth­er attach­ments are not inter­change­able between dif­fer­ent Nin­ja mod­els. There­fore, it is only pos­si­ble to buy replace­ment parts from this machine.

Set Includes

• 1400 Watts of Nin­ja BN701 Pro­fes­sion­al Plus Blender base unit;
• 72 oz. poly­car­bon­ate pitcher;
• 6 prongs blade assembly;
• Pitch­er Lid;
• Instruc­tion Book;
• Inspi­ra­tion Guide.

Dimensions

This gad­get is only 17.32 inch­es tall and will usu­al­ly fit under a stan­dard kitchen cab­i­net but will take some space on the counter space with a foot­print of 10.82 x 8.86 inch­es. In addi­tion, the fair­ly light 9 pounds unit is not very sta­ble on the counter and may move dur­ing oper­a­tion. The blender also stores the unused cord under the base unit.

Ninja BN701 Professional Plus Blender Pros and Cons

Would you like to look at alter­na­tive options? Check here our arti­cle on the Best Coun­ter­top Blender Under $100.

Consumer Reviews

Despite the fact that this blender is made from the best qual­i­ty mate­ri­als and per­forms low to medi­um qual­i­ty blend­ing, it has quite high reviews. It con­firms that infomer­cial has great pow­er on con­sumers, espe­cial­ly those who have nev­er used the good qual­i­ty pow­er­ful blenders before and will write their prais­ing reviews with­in a few days of using them and con­tin­ue to love them despite all the faults it show. Of course, some­times these reviews could be mis­lead­ing, and it is the case with the Ninja.

Ninja BN701 Professional Plus Blender Price

This gad­get’s price ranges are usu­al­ly under $100, depend­ing on the retail­er. Ama­zon usu­al­ly offers a very com­pet­i­tive price for this blender.

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Summary

The Nin­ja BN701 Pro­fes­sion­al Plus Blender has a mod­ern, attrac­tive design and looks nice. How­ev­er, it def­i­nite­ly will not suit some­one who is look­ing for a blender that will make decent smooth­ies quick and easy. It is not able to pro­duce smooth smooth­ies but out­put qual­i­ty of the typ­i­cal under $100 blender, while it is quite an effi­cient gad­get for crush­ing ice.  It is way more glo­ri­fied than it should be, con­sid­er­ing that there are more than enough decent qual­i­ty blenders avail­able for under $100 but are less known and advertised.

Alter­na­tive­ly, check our articles:

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