Ninja AMZ493BRN Compact Kitchen System Review

Nin­ja AMZ493BRN Com­pact Kitchen Sys­tem with Auto iQ is an ama­zon exclu­sive upgrade for Nutri Nin­ja Bl492 and Bl494 Blender mod­els. The blender was released in 2021. It comes with the stan­dard for most Nin­ja coun­ter­top blenders large blend­ing con­tain­er, a food proces­sor bowl with chop­ping and knead­ing func­tion, and a well-known Nin­ja per­son­al blender attachment.

In the review below, you will learn about all these pop­u­lar gad­gets’ strong and weak sides.

Alter­na­tive­ly, check our articles:

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

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

Functionality and Versatility

Smooth­ie: The Nin­ja AMZ493BRN Com­pact Kitchen Sys­tem sin­gle-serve attach­ment makes rel­a­tive­ly smooth drinks, includ­ing green smooth­ies with hard and leafy ingre­di­ents. The blender homog­e­nizes well nuts and chia seeds in drinks but is unable to blend berries prop­er­ly, leav­ing often unprocessed straw­ber­ry and blue­ber­ry seeds residues.

The 72 oz jar is not able to make smooth smooth­ies leav­ing a few chunks of drinks and unprocessed food on the wall of the container.

The 40 oz bowl (used with tow­er food proces­sor style blades) pro­duces rather grainy drinks no mat­ter what func­tion is used and how many cycles are run. How­ev­er, the 40 oz bowl is good at food pro­cess­ing jobs.

Juice: The Nin­ja Com­pact Kitchen Sys­tem does not include any juic­ing attach­ment and thus can­not make text­book juice that sep­a­rates the fiber from the liq­uid. But the sin­gle-serve attach­ment with enough liq­uid added is quite capa­ble of pro­cess­ing fair­ly smooth smooth­ies, aka “whole juice.”

Frozen ingredients/desserts: Both the sin­gle-serve attach­ment and 40 oz. The bowl crush­es ice cubes and frozen ingre­di­ents into a snow-like con­sis­ten­cy with­out any liq­uid added. Thus, they both can pro­duce ice cream, frozen yogurts, and oth­er frozen desserts. The frozen ingre­di­ents with liq­uids added in smooth­ies and oth­er alco­holic and non-alco­holic drinks are no wonder.

Puree­ing: The 40 oz con­tain­er is designed to puree raw and cooked fruit and veg­gies well. It can eas­i­ly make hum­mus, pesto, mashed pota­to, or baby food. The only prob­lem is that it does not have any tam­per and may require stop­ping the blender for man­u­al mix­ing and cre­at­ing a prop­er vortex.

The sin­gle-serve attach­ment is not very suit­able for puree­ing tasks.

Soup/ hot ingre­di­ents: The instruc­tions clear­ly state that the Nin­ja Com­pact Kitchen Sys­tem is not designed for pro­cess­ing hot liq­uids. So it is not suit­able for blend­ing hot ingre­di­ents for soups with­out pri­or cool­ing or mak­ing bul­let­proof coffee.

Chopping/food prep: The 40 oz. bowl s per­fect­ly capa­ble of chop­ping veg­gies for sal­sa, sal­ad mix­es, and mari­nades. In addi­tion, the blender is able to shred cheese, grat­ed crumbs, and chop nuts.

Nut milk: The sin­gle-serve attach­ment is able to make decent nut milk, but for the best qual­i­ty, you may require to use a milk bag to strain the processed liquid.

Nut but­ter: Pro­cess­ing nuts into nut but­ter is chal­leng­ing for even more pow­er­ful blenders than the Nin­ja Com­pact Kitchen Sys­tem. Besides, this task usu­al­ly requires using a tam­per to remove air pock­ets and push ingre­di­ents for a bet­ter vor­tex. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this machine does not come with a tam­per. Thus, the blender is not able to make decent nut butter.

Dough/batter: The blender comes with the dough hook to use with the 40 oz. con­tain­er and are quite good at knead­ing dough, pie crust, and muf­fin batter.

Grinding/milling: The blender is able to grind some flax­es or chia seeds and soft grains like oat. But not capa­ble of pro­duc­ing bak­ing qual­i­ty flour from tough grains. Sin­gle-serve con­tain­er grinds slight­ly bet­ter than 40 oz. container.

Over­all, the Nin­ja AMZ493BRN Com­pact Kitchen Sys­tem is a fair­ly ver­sa­tile device. The sin­gle-serve cups make decent smooth­ies and are able to process even ingre­di­ents well. The 40 oz Bowl with tow­er food proces­sor-type blades adds func­tion­al­i­ty to the blender and is good at light food pro­cess­ing tasks and knead­ing the dough. While the 72 ounces con­tain­er is designed to process a larg­er amount of food for smooth­ies, it is not as good at this task as a sin­gle ‘serve attachment.

Base Unit and Motor Power

Nin­ja AMZ493BRN Com­pact Kitchen Sys­tem’s motor base is made of plas­tic and comes with a pow­er­ful 1200 watts motor enough to per­form light to heavy duties. In addi­tion, it has suc­tion cups that make this gad­get sta­ble on a counter dur­ing operation.

The blender is also equipped with a safe­ty sys­tem that pre­vents dam­age to the motor and dri­ve sys­tem. So if it is over­loaded, the auto­mat­ic shut-off will stop the motor.

How­ev­er, the gad­get has a weak fea­ture. The plas­tic-made motor with blade cou­pling, includ­ing the sock­et and gear, makes this machine not very durable.

Speed Settings and Programs

 

Nin­ja AMZ493BRN Com­pact Kitchen Sys­tem con­trol pan­el equipped with dig­i­tal count-up and count-down LCD dis­play and five (5) but­tons – START/STOP, PULSE, SMOOTHIE, FROZEN, and DOUGH/MIX. So it has one speed, three (3) pre-set pro­grams, and a Pulse func­tion. The base unit is able to iden­ti­fy which con­tain­er is installed on the motor base, and the func­tions for a par­tic­u­lar con­tain­er will illu­mi­nate once the con­tain­er is installed.

START/STOP is pressed to turn your unit on or off, run the blender con­tin­u­ous speed cycle, or it could be used to stop any pro­gram before the set cycle time.

So apart from the three (3) pre-set pro­grams, this blender is designed to run with one sin­gle speed; by press­ing the START/STOP but­ton, the one-speed 60 sec­onds cycle will ini­ti­ate; you can stop at any time dur­ing the cycle or repeat it after it ends.

PULSE func­tion runs a burst of pow­er. It is acti­vat­ed by hold­ing it down and stop­ping when you release it, short press­es for short puls­es and long press­es for long puls­es. This func­tion is very use­ful for break­ing the ice or chop­ping vegetables.

SMOOTHIE, FROZEN, and DOUGH/MIX AUTO-IQ pre-set pro­grams ini­ti­ate blend­ing cycles with peri­od­ic speed changes, paus­es, and auto­mat­ic shut-off. If you want to stop blend­ing before the end of the cycle, you have to press the cur­rent­ly active but­ton again or the START/STOP button.

SMOOTHIE is a 60 sec­onds cycle and can be used for soft ingre­di­ents, smooth­ies, shakes, pro­tein drinks, and frozen cock­tails or for blend­ing hard, leafy, or fibrous ingre­di­ents like kale or celery.

MIX/DOUGH but­ton ini­ti­ates 30 sec­onds low-speed cycle. This func­tion is use­ful for pro­cess­ing thick mix­tures, knead­ing the dough, or for food prep jobs like sal­sa, chop­ping veg­gies, nuts, cheese, or meat.

FROZEN DRINK is 75 sec­onds pre-set pro­gram. It han­dles all types of frozen recipes well, includ­ing those with a lot of ice. It can mix frozen cock­tails, make slash­es, and crush ice.

So, the SMOOTHIE, FROZEN, and DOUGH/MIX pre-set pro­grams are very con­ve­nient for those users who want to press a but­ton and come back for per­fect­ly blend­ed drinks with­out the need to mon­i­tor the process.

Containers

Nin­ja AMZ493BRN Com­pact Kitchen Sys­tem comes with a 72 ounces Total Crush­ing Pitch­er, 40 ounces Pre­ci­sion Proces­sor Bowl, and 18 ounces sin­gle Serve Blender attach­ment. The blender is equipped with elec­tron­ics that can iden­ti­fy the con­tain­er you set on the base unit, so the con­trol pan­el will illu­mi­nate the avail­able func­tion for the par­tic­u­lar jar.

• The 72 oz (with 64 oz max­i­mum line for liq­uids) Total Crush­ing Pitch­er is a blend­ing con­tain­er made from qual­i­ty poly­car­bon­ate and is intend­ed to process a large por­tion of drinks such as mak­ing smooth­ies, cock­tails, pro­tein shakes, and oth­ers. It is paired with the pitcher’s lid with a pour spout cap that you can use not only for pour­ing ready drinks but also for adding extra ingre­di­ents dur­ing processing;
• 40 oz (5 cups) poly­car­bon­ate Pre­ci­sion Proces­sor Bowl with a secure­ly locked lid that could be used as a chop­per, dough mix­er (makes up to 2 lb. of dough), or even for pro­cess­ing smoothies;
• The 18 oz. sin­gle serve high-qual­i­ty Tri­tan co-poly­ester cup and attach spout lid to take your blend­ing on the go;

The device is also equipped with an addi­tion­al safe­ty fea­ture, so if the con­tain­er or lid is not appro­pri­ate­ly set, the timer will show “… …” and the motor will not start.

Blades

The Nin­ja AMZ493BRN Com­pact Kitchen Sys­tem comes with 3 blades assem­bly and a dough hook:

• The Stacked Blade Assem­bly for 72 oz jar has a food proces­sor design with 6 stain­less steel sharp blades stag­gered around the plas­tic tow­er. The blades could only be used with 72 ounces blend­ing container.
• Chop­ping Blade Assem­bly for Pre­ci­sion Proces­sor Bowl has a sim­i­lar design as blend­ing blades but is small­er in size. This blade is used only with the Proces­sor bowl;
• The dough hook is made of plas­tic and fits into a 40 oz Pre­ci­sion Proces­sor Bowl only for mix­ing dough and batters;
• Pro Extrac­tor Blade assem­bly is designed to be used with sin­gle-serve cups. It has a stan­dard design with 4‑prongs stain­less steel blades attached to the plas­tic assembly.

Ease of Using and Cleaning

Assembling/disassembling/operation: The 72 oz Blend­ing con­tain­er and 40 ounces Proces­sor Bowl come with a tow­er-like sharp blade assem­bly, con­tain­er lid, and con­tain­er-motor base lock­ing sys­tem, so it takes some skill to assemble/disassemble. The user has to:

• Place the con­tain­er on the base unit, align the tab on the con­tain­er to the tab on that motor base, and turn clock­wise until the click;
• Posi­tion the tow­er-type blades inside of the container;
• Fill the jar with ingre­di­ents that are not the eas­i­est task because the tow­er blade does not allow freely placed ingredients;
• Lock the lid the right way by push­ing down the lever and seal­ing it;
• The Nin­ja con­trol pan­el will iden­ti­fy which con­tain­er is con­nect­ed to the motor base by illu­mi­nat­ing appro­pri­ate lights.

The secure­ly locked lid is quite incon­ve­nient dur­ing use because it does not allow adding large-size extra ingre­di­ents or mix­ing food when need­ed with­out stop­ping a blender and open­ing the lid.

Assembling/disassembling the sin­gle-serve cup is a sim­pler task and just requires:

• Add ingre­di­ents to the cup or container;
• Screw the Pro Extrac­tor blade assem­bly tightly;
• Turn the cup upside down and place it onto the motor base align­ing the tabs on the cup with the motor base;
• Rotate clock­wise until you hear a click;
• Once the cup is locked, the pro­grams avail­able for the attach­ment will illuminate;
• Once you fin­ish blend­ing, remove the blade sys­tem and screw instead of the Sip & Seal lid, which is ready to take out.

Clean­ing: The Nin­ja AMZ493BRN Com­pact Kitchen Sys­tem is not dif­fi­cult to clean. The 72 oz., 40 oz. con­tain­ers, all Tri­tan sin­gle-serve cups, and blade assem­blies are top-rack dish­wash­er safe.

How­ev­er, after blend­ing thick or stub­born ingre­di­ents, you bet­ter apply a self-clean­ing pro­ce­dure – add a few drops of soap halfway of water in a con­tain­er and run for 60 sec­onds, then rinse and dry.

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Special Features

Col­ors: The Nin­ja AMZ493BRN Com­pact Kitchen Sys­tem is avail­able only in one col­or, black and silver.

Cer­ti­fied Refur­bished: No cer­ti­fied refur­bished blenders are cur­rent­ly avail­able for these models.

Use in coun­tries out­side of the USA/Canada: The Nin­ja AMZ493BRN Com­pact Kitchen Sys­tem comes with a 110–120 volt­age sys­tem for use only in the USA/Canada and oth­er regions with appro­pri­ate volt­age sys­tems. The blender could be used over the volt­age trans­former. How­ev­er, these mod­els’ 220–240 volt­age ver­sions are avail­able in many Euro­pean coun­tries and the UK. While still unavail­able in Australia.

Noise

The Nin­ja Com­pact Kitchen Sys­tem is not the nosiest Nin­ja machine; how­ev­er, the user has to be real­ly mind­ful of neigh­bors and home dwellers when using this blender ear­ly in the morn­ing. It out­puts about 95 deci­bels when blend­ing iced ingredients.

The clas­si­cal advice for noise reduc­tion is when using the blender to place a rub­ber mat under the base unit.

Warranty and Customer Service

The Nin­ja AMZ493BRN Com­pact Kitchen Sys­tem comes with only a 1‑year lim­it­ed war­ran­ty. The lim­it­ed means that cus­tomers will be charged an extra pay­ment for repair and replace­ment ship­ping. Some replace­ment parts can also require pay­ing extra.

The Nin­ja blenders are known to be not very durable, with aver­age qual­i­ty cus­tomer support.

Optional Accessories and Attachments

All the replace­ment parts and option­al acces­sories and attach­ments are avail­able to buy for the Nin­ja AMZ493BRN Com­pact Kitchen Sys­tem via the man­u­fac­tur­er or oth­er online retailers:

• The large 72 oz. con­tain­er with 64 oz. max liq­uid capac­i­ty and blade assembly;
• 12 oz., 18 oz., and 24 Tri­tan copoly­ester sin­gle-serve cups;
• 7 FINS Extrac­tor Blades Replace­ment Part.

Set Includes

• 72 ounces Blend­ing Con­tain­er (64 oz. max liq­uid capac­i­ty) with Lid;
• 40 ounces Pre­ci­sion Proces­sor Bowl with Lid;
• Blend­ing Blade Assembly;
• Dough Blade Assembly;
• Chop­ping Blade Assembly;
• Per­son­al Blender Blades Assembly;
• 18 oz. Sin­gle Serve Cup and Spout Lid;
• 15-Recipe Inspi­ra­tion Guide;
• User Man­u­al.

Dimensions

The Nin­ja AMZ493BRN Com­pact Kitchen Sys­tem has quite a large 7.50 inch­es X 8.25 inch­es foot­print and will occu­py some space on your counter. Nev­er­the­less, the blender will fit under most of the kitchen cab­i­nets and mea­sure 17.25 inch­es with the tallest 72 ounces pitch­er on the top of the base unit. It is not a very heavy machine and weighs only 8.10 pounds with the largest container.

How­ev­er, mul­ti­ple attach­ments that are not real­ly stack­ing into each oth­er will require con­sid­er­able space in your kitchen for storage.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• The Nin­ja AMZ493BRN Com­pact Kitchen crush­es ice into the snow-like con­sis­ten­cy with­out liq­uid added;
• It comes with a few safe­ty features;
• The machine is fair­ly ver­sa­tile with the sin­gles serve attach­ment and food proces­sor accessories;
• The blender is rea­son­ably priced and has inex­pen­sive replace­ment parts;

Cons:

• Nin­ja AMZ493BRN Com­pact Kitchen does not han­dle hot liquids;
• Although it comes with a food pro­cess­ing bowl, it can only chop and will not slice or shred food;
• Mul­ti­ple attach­ments need a lot of place for storage;
• The 72 ounces pitch­er does not pro­duce aver­age-qual­i­ty smoothies.

Consumer Reviews

Nin­ja AMZ493BRN Com­pact Kitchen is very pop­u­lar with con­sumers. This machine has a sin­gle-serve attach­ment for blend­ing drinks and a large bowl for chop­ping and light food pro­cess­ing tasks. No won­der all Nin­ja sin­gle-serve blenders are fair­ly well-made and process qual­i­ty drinks, while the coun­ter­top Nin­ja blenders with tow­er-type blades are bet­ter at ice-crush­ing and food-pro­cess­ing tasks and not so good at blend­ing smoothies.

Besides, unlike oth­ers, this blender comes with pre­mi­um qual­i­ty Tri­tan co-poly­ester cups, so it has few­er com­plaints and bet­ter reviews.

Ninja AMZ493BRN Compact Kitchen System Price

The price for the Nin­ja AMZ493BRN Com­pact Kitchen Sys­tem varies with dif­fer­ent retail­ers. Nev­er­the­less, it is a rea­son­able price for such a func­tion­al device.

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Summary

The Nin­ja AMZ493BRN Com­pact Kitchen is a good blender option for those who are keen on the Nin­ja brand. The blender comes with a nice sin­gle-serve attach­ment that makes good qual­i­ty drinks and 40 oz bowls for light to mod­er­ate food pro­cess­ing tasks. The major strength of this gad­get is the abil­i­ty to process ice up to a snow-like con­sis­ten­cy. But it also has some of the com­mon Nin­ja weak­ness­es — the plas­tic gear and rel­a­tive­ly mod­er­ate life expectan­cy. Com­pared to oth­er Nin­ja mod­els, this par­tic­u­lar machine’s upgrade is a good qual­i­ty sin­gle-serve container.

How­ev­er, if you are unsure about this blender, you can alter­na­tive­ly check our articles.

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