NutriBullet RX vs Vitamix S30/S50/S55

NutriBul­let and oth­er Chi­na out­sourced blenders are often pre­sent­ed in their flashy infomer­cial as true com­peti­tors of Vita­mix machines. It is very sus­pi­cious to expe­ri­enced blender users even at first look, while many inex­pe­ri­enced con­sumers can eas­i­ly be caught by pro­fes­sion­al adver­tis­ing. Nev­er­the­less, peo­ple look for the best option and, most impor­tant­ly, for the best cheap­er option; thus, NutriBul­let Rx seems real dis­cov­ery. Accord­ing to the adver­tis­ing, it is pow­er­ful, ver­sa­tile, and twice cheap­er than Vitamix.

Here is our com­par­i­son between the NutriBul­let Rx machine and the Vita­mix per­son­al gad­gets S30, S50, and S55 mod­els that will reveal the truth about all pros and cons of these well-known blenders.

Con­sid­er alter­na­tive options? Check our arti­cles Best Blender under $200 – Is There a Cheap­er Alter­na­tive to Vita­mix? and Best Afford­able but Pow­er­ful Per­son­al Blenders.

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NutriBullet RX Blender

The NutriBul­let Rx comes with a very pow­er­ful 1700 watts motor but a num­ber of design flaws. The blade assem­bly shaft which goes into the dri­ve is made of plas­tic and thus has a risk of break­ing or melt­ing eas­i­ly. The blade assem­bly is also bad­ly designed and has two prob­lems — the seal­ing gas­ket is often chewed up by the blades. The blade assem­bly screw­ing thread can­not con­nect con­tain­ers prop­er­ly and thus often leaks dur­ing the blending.

The machine’s 3 con­tain­ers are also made from a very poor qual­i­ty poly­car­bon­ate mate­r­i­al that has a high risk of crack­ing when exposed to high loads. Thus con­tain­ers are not durable and need to be replaced at least once a year or more often.

The machine’s oper­a­tion is sup­posed to be sim­ple and suit­able for novice users, but in fact, it is prim­i­tive. The machine starts oper­a­tion by sim­ply drop­ping the cup on the top of the base unit and does not have any speed reg­u­la­tor, or pulse func­tion but 1 minute pre-set pro­gram for all types of blend­ing and 7 minute pre-set for mak­ing soup. Such lim­it­ed speed con­trol sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduces the range of func­tions this machine is able to perform:

• Makes good qual­i­ty smooth­ies, includ­ing the green from leafy and tough ingredients;
• Crush­es ice only with enough liq­uid added, this machine is not able to make snow cones, ice cream, and oth­er frozen treats;
• Designed to make hot soup from scratch and even equipped with a ded­i­cat­ed soup pre-set pro­gram and pitch­er, but heats liq­uids to mod­er­ate 150F and the process takes so long that it is bet­ter to do using a cooker;
• Not able to chop food, make dress­ings, sal­sas, and oth­er food prep due to the speed limitations;
• Makes nut but­ter, but the qual­i­ty is very poor;
• Purees food with only liq­uid added and not able to han­dle thick mix­tures well;
• Grinds cof­fee beans and herbs but not suit­able for flour making;
• It does not make any dough and bat­ter.

In addi­tion, it comes with a very short 1‑year lim­it­ed war­ran­ty and very unhelp­ful cus­tomer service.

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Vitamix S30, S50, S55 Blenders

The Vita­mix has three per­son­al blender mod­els – S30, S50, and S55. All mod­els come with iden­ti­cal tech­ni­cal para­me­ters but dif­fer by the only avail­abil­i­ty of pre-set pro­gram options. The machines have mod­er­ate com­pared to NutriBul­let Rx only 790 watts motor. How­ev­er, as with all Vita­mix motors, this one is also based on ball-bear­ing tech­nol­o­gy, thus so effi­cient and func­tion­al that it is able to per­form a large range of functions.

The S30, S50, and S55 machines come with pre­mi­um qual­i­ty Tri­tan poly­ester con­tain­ers that are stress and tem­per­a­ture resis­tant. The blade assem­bly is also well-made, although it has a plas­tic col­lar and base all-met­al blade to dri­ve cou­pling; thus is very strong and durable.

The machine also comes with a well-equipped con­trol pan­el that has 10 vari­able speeds and pulse func­tions while the S50 mod­el and S55 mod­els are pro­vid­ed with an addi­tion­al 2 and 4 pre-set pro­grams respec­tive­ly. So this machine is designed to per­form a vari­ety of fol­low­ing functions:

• Pro­duce excel­lent qual­i­ty drinks even from the tough­est and fibrous ingre­di­ents; it is more than suit­able to make green smoothies;
• Nut milk is no prob­lem for this machine;
• Crush­es ice with and with­out liq­uid added, able to make excel­lent snow cones, frozen desserts, and ice creams;
• Makes excel­lent hot soup heat­ing the liq­uid fric­tion with­in 6–7 min­utes, the con­tain­ers han­dle well hot liq­uids thus suit­able for mak­ing bul­let­proof coffee;
• Silky nut but­ter is not a prob­lem for the machine; it comes with a tam­per, which is a great help for this task;
• Pure eas­i­ly cooked and uncooked ingre­di­ents, make excel­lent deeps and spreads;
• Chop veg­eta­bles to pre­pare var­i­ous food prep recipes such as sal­sa, mix­es, mari­nade coleslaw, and others;
• Grind­ing and milling any ingre­di­ent, cof­fee, herbs, and grains even pro­duce bak­ing qual­i­ty flours from hard grains;
• Knead the dough and mix batters.

In addi­tion, this machine comes with a great per­son­al type blender with 5 years full war­ran­ty that cov­ers all wear and tear and has the best in the indus­try cus­tomer service.

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NutriBullet RX and Vitamix S30/S50/S55 Differences and Features

	NutriBul­let RX	Vita­mix S30, S50, S55
Motor	1700 watt with the plas­tic motor to the blade connections;	790 watts with the all-met­al motor to the blade couplings;
Blades	One remov­able blade assem­bly suit­able for all 3 containers;	One remov­able blade assem­bly that is inter­change­able between two containers;
Con­tain­ers	34 oz. upright pitch­er, 32 oz. and 45 oz. bul­let cups, all made from cheap and crack­able plastic;	40 oz. upright vent­ed pitch­er and 20 oz. bul­let cup made from high-qual­i­ty shat­ter-resis­tant Tri­tan copoly­ester, the 20 oz. the cup has dou­ble insulation;
Using & Cleaning	Easy to set up for run­ning but requires efforts to screw con­tain­er tight­ly to blades assem­bly, could be hard to dis­as­sem­ble after using; very easy to use; quite com­pli­cat­ed to clean.	Sim­ple to assem­ble for run­ning and very easy to use; very easy to clean with the self-clean­ing process.
Con­trol panel	Only 2 pre-set pro­grams have no speed option of pulse mode;	S30 comes with 10 vari­able speeds and puls­es mode, S50 with addi­tion­al 2 pre-set pro­grams, and S55 with 4 addi­tion­al pre-set programs;
War­ran­ty	1‑year lim­it­ed war­ran­ty. Bad rep­u­ta­tion Cus­tomer Service.	5‑year Full war­ran­ty with the best Cus­tomer Ser­vice in the industry.
Per­for­mance	Makes good smooth­ies from soft and hard ingre­di­ents, includ­ing green ones; Crush­es ice only with liq­uid added; Crush­es ice only with liq­uid added; Heats soup via fric­tions but is not very practical; Grinds cof­fee beans, herbs but it is a tricky process; Makes nut but­ter but is not good quality.	Blends high-qual­i­ty drinks includ­ing green smoothies; Crush­es ice makes ice cream and frozen desserts; Chops and minces veg­eta­bles and meat; Makes hot soup with­out pre-cooking; Makes nut but­ter and nut milk; Purees raw and cooked vegetables; Mills grain flours includ­ing rice well; Grinds herbs and cof­fee beans; Make a dough.
Dimen­sions	The foot­print is 5 1/2 inch­es in diam­e­ter; the pro­file height is 17 3/8 inch­es with the 45 oz. cups and 18 ¾ inch­es with the soup pitch­er on the top of the base unit. Weight is 14.7 pounds. It requires a lot of space for acces­sories storage.	The foot­print is 5.9 x 8.34 inch­es; the pro­file height is 14.55 inch­es with the 20-oz cup and 15.66 inch­es with the 40 oz. the jar on the top of the base unit and lid in place Weight is 6.2 pounds.

How to Choose Between the Two Blenders

Vita­mix sin­gle-serv­er mod­els are supe­ri­or machines in com­par­i­son to the NutriBul­let Rx. Despite the fact, that the S30, S50, and S55 gad­gets have only 790 watts motor which is almost 2.5 times less pow­er­ful than the NutriBul­let Rx motor, Vita­mix machines com­plete­ly out­pace their func­tion­al­i­ty. The NutriBul­let Rx blender, which is equipped with such enor­mous pow­er, can only pro­duce good qual­i­ty smooth­ies and can­not even crush ice with­out liq­uid added. It is also not designed to do chop­ping tasks, pro­duce puree or han­dle any thick mix­tures. The NutriBul­let Rx soup-mak­ing sig­na­ture fea­ture is also so imprac­ti­cal that it hard­ly will be used by the major­i­ty of the customers.

While Vita­mix sin­gle-serve mod­els are able to per­form a leg­endary vari­ety of full-size Vita­mix machine tasks from excel­lent smooth­ies, hot soup to ice cream, and mak­ing bak­ing flour, so, the low wattage S30, S50, and S55 motor must be treat­ed as the advan­tage fea­ture that could save some mon­ey on the cus­tomer elec­tric­i­ty bill.

In addi­tion, Nutribul­let has quite a few con­struc­tion faults that make this machine high­ly unre­li­able. While Vita­mix’s design is so elab­o­rate that it almost does not have any weak points apart from its high price.

Summary

The Vita­mix S30, S50, and S55 are very expen­sive per­son­al blenders, but they are also the most ver­sa­tile and durable machines in this mar­ket seg­ment. Which hard­ly will require any main­te­nance out­lays over the 5‑year peri­od that is served by a full war­ran­ty with all wear and tears cov­ered.  More­over, these machines are most like­ly to serve 10 + years with­out any issues.

NutriBul­let is 1.5 times cheap­er than S30, S50, and S55 but comes with a 1‑year lim­it­ed war­ran­ty and has on aver­age 1–2 year life expectan­cy. That dur­ing the 5–10 year exploita­tion peri­od will cost con­sumers 5–6 times more than expen­sive Vita­mix machines.

There­fore, Vita­mix S30, S50, and S55 are obvi­ous choic­es for any con­sumer who is look­ing for reli­able and mul­ti­func­tion­al per­son­al blender gadgets.

Alter­na­tive­ly, check our arti­cles Best Blender under $200 – Is There a Cheap­er Alter­na­tive to Vita­mix? and Best Afford­able but Pow­er­ful Per­son­al Blenders.