Ninja Professional Blender BL660 Review

Nin­ja Pro­fes­sion­al Blender BL660: In recent years, Nin­ja Pro­fes­sion­al blender rapid­ly forced its way into the mar­ket and quick­ly won one of the lead­ing posi­tions among the pow­er­ful coun­ter­top blenders for home use sell­ing for under two hun­dred dol­lars. This blender has a very mod­ern-look­ing and inno­v­a­tive design and has a few gen­uine­ly unique fea­tures. As a result, it is very pop­u­lar among cus­tomers and has become one of the most want­ed blenders in many parts of the world.

Read this review of Nin­ja Pro­fes­sion­al (BL660) to get some insight into the details and fea­tures and to decide if this blender is real­ly as good as the pro­duc­er and adver­tis­ers declare.

Think­ing about an alter­na­tive option? Check here our articles:

• Best Coun­ter­top Blenders under $100
• Best Blender for Smooth­ies and More – Buy­ing Guide 2020

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

Functions

The Nin­ja BL 660 is essen­tial­ly two blenders in one, the coun­ter­top blender with a 72 oz large pitch­er and the per­son­al blender with a small 16 oz cup.

Smooth­ies: Large Nin­ja pitch­er makes a decent smooth­ie only from soft fruits. Apples and pears should be cored before blend­ing; oth­er­wise, the con­sis­ten­cy will be slight­ly rough. If you add some nuts to your drink for pro­tein, then you can expect small pieces of nuts in the smooth­ie. This machine also has trou­ble pul­ver­iz­ing veg­eta­bles and greens very well, and the smooth­ie made from greens will be a lit­tle tex­tured with around 85% solu­tion. To achieve a smoother con­sis­ten­cy, try to play with the pro­por­tions of liq­uid and greens.

Accord­ing to many cus­tomers, the sin­gle-serve Nin­ja cup assem­bly pul­ver­izes fruit and green smooth­ies to a fin­er con­sis­ten­cy than the 72 oz pitcher.

Ice-crush­ing/frozen desserts: This gad­get is capa­ble of crush­ing ice and han­dles frozen fruits and veg­eta­bles fair­ly well.

Nut but­ter: Nin­ja is able to make nut but­ter, but not of good qual­i­ty. This chal­leng­ing task gen­er­al­ly requires a tam­per to push down ingre­di­ents, and this gad­get does not have one. For a rea­son­able result, you have to soak the nuts for a few hours before blend­ing and add some water before pro­cess­ing. Also, using the pulse mode helps to achieve the desired fine­ness. How­ev­er, remov­ing the nut but­ter from the con­tain­er is quite tricky, espe­cial­ly from the blades.

The blender makes a fine puree from soft ingre­di­ents, like boiled veg­eta­bles, but chunky from raw veg­eta­bles. So if you intend to use Nin­ja for baby food, just remem­ber you can make the ful­ly homog­e­nized puree using cooked ingre­di­ents only.

Chopping/food prep: It is able to chop veg­eta­bles well at pulse speed.

Hot ingre­di­ents: This machine does not heat the liq­uid and is not suit­able for knead­ing dough.

Grinding/milling: It also grinds cof­fee, herbs, and chops nuts, turn­ing the ingre­di­ents into an excel­lent qual­i­ty pow­der. The sin­gle-serv­ing assem­bly works the same way as the grinder, and it uses one pulse speed for operating.

Alto­geth­er, Nin­ja is a rea­son­ably ver­sa­tile machine with the great con­cept of a coun­ter­top and per­son­al blender in one; it is capa­ble of a vari­ety of tasks. This machine will suit those who do not intend to spend more than one hun­dred fifty dol­lars on this kind of gad­get and plan to use it for morn­ing smooth­ies, baby food, and some lim­it­ed food pro­cess­ing tasks. The per­son­al blender acces­so­ry is a great addi­tion for peo­ple who are going to make a lot of sports shakes or plan to take smooth­ies outside.

Operating and Cleaning

Set­ting up to run the 72 oz. the con­tain­er can be quite a com­pli­cat­ed task. Since this machine has a sharp remov­able blade con­struc­tion, it requires a very secure lock­ing mech­a­nism for the con­tain­er and lid. The pitch­er must first be placed on the base unit, then twist­ed clock­wise until you hear a click. To close the lid, the user aligns the white arrows of the lid with the white arrow of the con­tain­er han­dle. Then the lid han­dle must be pushed down to close until you hear a dis­tinct lock­ing sound. The machine will not run if you assem­ble it incor­rect­ly and will sig­nal with a flash­ing red light on the pow­er button.

It is also quite com­pli­cat­ed to dis­as­sem­ble the 72 oz. con­tain­er after use. The biggest prob­lem is the lid, which is tight. You must press the release but­ton, then lift the han­dle up to a 90° angle to the lid. The blades must be removed care­ful­ly, as they are very sharp and can eas­i­ly injure the user.

You can­not eas­i­ly place any ingre­di­ents into a pitch­er while blend­ing; for this pur­pose, you have to stop the blender and fol­low all pro­ce­dures to open the lid, place extra food and then close it to con­tin­ue. It is also not very con­ve­nient to fill the pitch­er with ingre­di­ents as you have to put the pylon blade first into the pitch­er and then fill the ingredients.

Set­ting up the sin­gle-serv­ing con­tain­er is a much eas­i­er mis­sion. It is designed like most per­son­al blenders and requires only that you screw the blade attach­ment onto the sin­gle-serve con­tain­er and turn the cup upside down. Put on the base, and it is ready to go. A sep­a­rate sin­gle-serve but­ton oper­ates it. The sin­gle-serve cups do not have any capac­i­ty marks on the sides, and a spe­cial mea­sur­ing cup is pro­vid­ed for mea­sur­ing the MAX line.

Clean­ing can be a chore with this gad­get. The remov­able blades are very sharp and dif­fi­cult to wash. There is a chance you can cut your­self. The lid has some lit­tle crevass­es which are dif­fi­cult to clean, but it is dish­wash­er safe, as are the con­tain­ers. The sin­gle-serve cup has a sim­ple design and is very easy to clean.

Speed Settings and Programs

This machine has 3 speeds and a pulse but­ton to oper­ate the big con­tain­er, so four speeds in all. The sin­gle-serve assem­bly is oper­at­ed with a sep­a­rate pulse speed but­ton. The pulse but­ton must be held dur­ing oper­a­tion. The three oth­er speeds run until you turn them off.

Motor and Power

Nin­ja has 1100 Watts of Pro­fes­sion­al Per­for­mance Pow­er. The base is made of alu­minum with rub­bery plas­tic mount­ing and lock­ing parts for the con­tain­ers. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the rub­bery plas­tic is quite frag­ile and usu­al­ly wears out with­in one to a year.

Ninja Professional Blender (BL660) Containers

The Nin­ja 660 comes with one 72oz. poly­car­bon­ate con­tain­er and two 16oz poly­car­bon­ate sin­gle-serve cups. The con­tain­er with the lid looks very inno­v­a­tive, and it has amount­ed spig­ot to pour the drink in after blend­ing and before remov­ing the lid. The sin­gle-serve cups can both be used as a part of the assem­bly for the per­son­al blender or as a ready-to-go con­tain­er. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the ready-to-go lids are not spilled-proof, so you can­not place them in a lunch bag.

The user man­u­al spec­i­fies that both con­tain­ers are BPA-free but do not dis­close any BPS con­tent infor­ma­tion. This poly­car­bon­ate mate­r­i­al is def­i­nite­ly not a pre­mi­um qual­i­ty mate­r­i­al and looks quite cheap. Accord­ing to cus­tomers, the bot­tom of the con­tain­er is also made of rub­bery plas­tic, which is not durable.

Blades

The blade con­struc­tion for the 72 oz. the pitch­er is unique. A plas­tic pylon goes from the top of the blender to the bot­tom, with three 2‑prong steel blades inter­posed around the pylon. The blades are very sharp and can be removed for clean­ing. The sin­gle-serve con­tain­er has sharp stain­less steel and a 6‑prong blade.

The blades are made of stain­less steel as per the rust-proof user man­u­al and are dish­wash­er safe. How­ev­er, cus­tomers com­plain that the blades become dull over time. The sin­gle-serve blade assem­bly also has a dura­bil­i­ty prob­lem with the rub­ber o‑gasket.

Special Features

Nin­ja 660 pro­fes­sion­al blender comes in one col­or. Oth­er pack­ages for this blender are avail­able with extra ready-to-go cups, and the price dif­fer­ence between this and the stan­dard mod­el is around $30.
Cer­ti­fied Refur­bished blenders (via Ama­zon) are avail­able for this kitchen gad­get. How­ev­er, they have such bad reviews that they should not be con­sid­ered for purchase.

Noise

This machine is very noisy, and with the 1100-watt motor, this is to be expect­ed. How­ev­er, this depends on what you are blend­ing. Crush­ing ice is obvi­ous­ly nois­i­er than blend­ing your morn­ing smoothie.

Warranty and Customer Service

The Nin­ja comes with a one-year LIMITED War­ran­ty that must be reg­is­tered with­in 10 days of pur­chase. LIMITED means the cus­tomer is charged twen­ty dol­lars for one-way replace­ment ship­ping even if the item arrives defec­tive. Accord­ing to cur­rent Nin­ja cus­tomers, Cus­tomer Ser­vice will try to charge you for any and every­thing pos­si­ble. It is also dif­fi­cult to con­vince cus­tomer ser­vice that human mis­use was not involved, so there is cov­er­age under the LIMITED warranty.

Optional accessories

No extra acces­sories are avail­able for this mod­el. How­ev­er, there are replace­ments for all cups, blades, lids, and pitch­ers, and they can be pur­chased from the Nin­jaK­itchen web­site.

Set Includes

User man­u­al, base unit, 72 oz con­tain­er, blade mech­a­nism for 72 oz con­tain­er, two 16 oz sin­gle-serve con­tain­ers, a blade assem­bly for 16 o. cup, cup mea­sure (sin­gle-serve cups do not have mea­sur­ing marks need­ed to fill to required MAX vol­ume), 1 sip­ping lid. Each of the 16 oz con­tain­ers is suit­able for the sip­ping lid or the blade assembly.
This machine does not include a recipe book. How­ev­er, you can find some recipe ideas on the Nin­ja website.

Dimensions

9.2 x 12 x 16.4 inch­es with 10.8 pounds of ship­ping weight.

Pros and Cons

Pros: It is a ver­sa­tile, two-in-one blender. It includes ready-to-go con­tain­ers, which are very trendy now and fit well into a hec­tic lifestyle.

This machine is pow­er­ful for the price range and capa­ble of crush­ing ice quite well.

Cons: The blend­ing qual­i­ty is not per­fect; green smooth­ies and hard veg­eta­bles come out in chunky consistency.
It has an unusu­al design and is not sim­ple to set up, use, or clean. In addi­tion, sharp blades can cause the user injury.

The pro­duc­tion of the machine is out­sourced to Chi­na, and it is not durable. On aver­age, the Nin­ja lasts about 18 months if it is used on a dai­ly basis. How­ev­er, it has a few weak or prone to-break parts: the blades get dull; the main blade bot­tom knob wears out with­in a year to a year and a half and makes the blade use­less; the rub­ber gas­ket for the sin­gle-serve con­tain­er also wears out quick­ly; the con­tain­ers are made of cheap plas­tic and are not durable, either; and, the rub­bery plas­tic part of the base and bot­tom of the con­tain­er is rel­a­tive­ly frag­ile and do not last long.

Also, poor Cus­tomer Ser­vice and the Lim­it­ed War­ran­ty do not help.

Ninja Professional Blender (BL660) Consumer Reviews

Cus­tomers are gen­er­al­ly hap­py with the blender as long as it does not break after the war­ran­ty period.

Price

Ama­zon offers a real­ly com­pet­i­tive price for this blender. How­ev­er, it fluc­tu­ates with­in a twen­ty-dol­lar range, and some­times the price drops under one hun­dred dollars.

BUY NOW

Summary

Nin­ja Pro­fes­sion­al 660 is an excel­lent choice for those not look­ing for a durable gad­get and con­sid­er­ing it a tem­po­rary option. It allows you to try it and decide if you real­ly need a pow­er­ful blender on your kitchen coun­ter­top. It is a good machine with a nice con­cept of two blenders in one, and it also gives you a chance to test a trendy per­son­al blender gad­get. But if you are look­ing for a blender that lasts for years, you will have to con­sid­er oth­er alternatives.

Think­ing about the alter­na­tive option? Read our articles:

• Best Coun­ter­top Blenders under $100
• Best Blender for Smooth­ies and More – Buy­ing Guide 2020