The 4 Best Glass Jar Blenders - Black Friday 2024

The best glass jar blender we've tested is the Ninja Foodi Cold & Hot Blender. This model differs from most Ninja blenders for a few reasons: its 56oz main jar is made of glass, of course, but it also has a heating element built into its base. This allows it to heat and cook ingredients as they blend. It has no problem powering through ice cubes to make snow-like crushed ice for cocktails or blended drinks like slushies. It's fairly easy to use for thicker recipes like nut butter or hummus. It makes a very smooth bend with small and big batches of fibrous ingredients like kale, fruit, and broccoli, so it can make well-blended smoothies and soups, although it needs a long blending time to produce the best results.

While it has limited manual speed settings, it has several blending programs for different recipes. However, it's more difficult to clean than most full-size blenders since you can't immerse the jar in water because of the heating element. That means you must be careful when cleaning it by hand in the sink, but you can always run the blender with warm water and soap in the jar first to help dislodge sticky ingredients.

If you want a less expensive option or won't use the previous pick's heating element, the Oster Pro 1200 is the best glass blender we've tested. This blender comes with a 48oz glass jar and a 24oz personal jar, but only the main jar is made of glass. It can't heat ingredients but can blend hot ingredients fresh from the stove or oven for soups and sauces. It makes a smooth blend with fibrous ingredients faster than the Ninja and has a few dedicated blending programs for different recipes, including smoothies.

Like the previous pick, you only have three speed options for manual blending. Using it for thicker recipes like nut butter and hummus requires some hands-on work: you must stop the blender partway through to stir and scrape the ingredients toward the blades. It can only handle about six ice cubes at once, which is half the Ninja Foodi Cold & Hot Blender's capacity, and it tends to leave small unprocessed chunks. Overall, it doesn't feel as well-built.

The Black+Decker Quiet Blender with Cyclone Glass Jar is a solid option for a budget-friendly price. This blender is similar to the Oster Pro 1200 in many ways. It comes with a 48oz glass main jar and a plastic personal jar. While it doesn't blend fibrous ingredients quite as smoothly as the Oster and leaves behind a few more grains left over in smoothies and soups, it can still make very well-blended purees with fruits and leafy greens. It can also make very smooth, spreadable nut butter, although, like the Oster, it takes a few minutes, and you have to stop the blender to stir partway through.

However, it's not as good at crushing ice. It has a lower motor power than the Oster, and even if you only use six ice cubes at once, ice tends to build up under the blades, and it doesn't fully crush all the ice cubes. However, adding liquid to the jar makes ice easier to process. Plus, as its name suggests, this blender is quieter than the previous picks on the list. Its removable blades make it very easy to clean by hand.

The Hamilton Beach Wave Crusher Multi-Function is one of the cheapest full-size blenders we've tested. As you might expect from a blender that costs less than $50, it comes with some compromises in terms of performance and build quality. The glass jar feels thick and sturdy, but the rest of the blender is made of flimsy plastic. Its motor isn't very powerful, and it's not great for tougher blending tasks like ice crushing or nut butter.

That said, if you just want a blender for smoothies and other liquid recipes like soups, it's good at blending fibrous ingredients. It makes a less smooth blend than the previous picks, so you'll notice more grains left over in recipes like kale smoothies and broccoli soup, but the unprocessed pieces are small and uniform, and overall, it still produces a good result. You can use it to hot blend, although the manufacturer says not to add more than 25oz of hot food to the 40oz jar. Unfortunately, it has no automatic blending programs, so you'll have to stop it manually.