The Smeg Personal Blender PBF01 is a high-end personal blender with a 50s-style design. It has a small, lightweight design, and like the brand's bigger full-size blender, the Smeg BLF01, it comes in several glossy colors. It comes with a pair of 20-oz jars along with drinking lids for recipes like smoothies. It's also one of the few personal blenders with multiple speed settings. However, its push-to-blend design isn't the most convenient, and the blender doesn't perform well for most recipes.
Our Verdict
The Smeg Personal Blender is poor for multi-purpose use. It's a personal blender mostly meant for making single-serve drinks like smoothies. However, it struggles with blending fibrous ingredients and crushing ice. Using it for recipes like nut butter is time-consuming. It's decently well-built, and most of its parts, aside from the blade assembly, are dishwasher-safe.
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Decent build quality.
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Most parts dishwasher-safe.
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Doesn't fully process fibrous ingredients.
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Struggles with ice cubes.
The Smeg Personal Blender is sub-par for making single-serve smoothies. It can't fully blend common smoothie additions like leafy greens and fruit skins from blueberries or apples, producing grainy or leafy smoothies. However, its 20oz jars are a good size for single-serves.
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Doesn't fully process fibrous ingredients.
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Struggles with ice cubes.
The Smeg Personal Blender is poor for multiple servings of smoothies. It's not meant for big batches and can only fit enough ingredients for about one smoothie per batch. It can't smoothly blend fibrous ingredients like leafy greens and fruit and makes grainy smoothies. You must hold the jar down to blend, which is particularly inconvenient if you need to make multiple batches.
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Two 20 oz jars included.
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Doesn't fully process fibrous ingredients.
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Struggles with ice cubes.
The Smeg Personal Blender is bad for crushing ice. The manufacturer says you should add a maximum of four ice cubes per batch, but even if you follow the instructions, you must stop and shake the jar frequently, and it doesn't manage to crush all the ice cubes. A few ice cubes as part of a smoothie recipe is less of an issue, but it's not good for making crushed ice for cocktails or icy drinks like slushies.
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Decent build quality.
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Struggles with ice cubes.
The Smeg Personal Blender isn't suitable for making soups. Like most personal blenders, it can't hot blend, so you'll have to let ingredients cool down before blending. It can't fully blend fibrous ingredients like kale or broccoli, so pureed soups won't be completely smooth. Also, its 20 oz jars can't fit most soup recipes in one batch.
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Doesn't fully process fibrous ingredients.
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Can't hot blend.
The Smeg Personal Blender is poor for professional use. As a personal blender, it's not meant for multi-purpose use and is designed for making single-serve drinks. While it can make smooth, spreadable nut butter, it's a long process. It can't make a completely smooth blend with fibrous fruits and vegetables or produce a batch of snow-like ice. Overall, it doesn't offer enough versatility or ease of use for professionals.
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Decent build quality.
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Most parts dishwasher-safe.
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Doesn't fully process fibrous ingredients.
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Struggles with ice cubes.
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Can't hot blend.
- 4.9 Multi-Purpose
- 5.5 Smoothies (Single Serving)
- 4.5 Smoothies (Multiple Servings)
- 3.6 Ice Crushing
- 2.3 Soups
- 4.8 Professional Use
- Updated Jul 14, 2023: Review published.
- Updated Jul 10, 2023: Early access published.
- Updated Jul 06, 2023: Our testers have started testing this product.
- Updated Jun 26, 2023: The product has arrived in our lab, and our testers will start evaluating it soon.
- Updated Jun 14, 2023: We've purchased the product and are waiting for it to arrive in our lab.
Differences Between Sizes And Variants
The Smeg Personal Blender comes in various colors: White, Black, Pastel Blue, Pastel Green, Pink, Cream, and Red. We tested it in Black, but expect our results to be valid for all versions. You can see the label for the unit we tested here.
If you come across another variant or your blender is different, let us know in the forums, and we'll update our review.
Compared To Other Blenders
The Smeg Personal Blender is a high-end personal blender that rounds out Smeg's line-up of blenders, which also includes a full-size blender, the Smeg BLF01, and an immersion blender, the Smeg HBF02. It's quite compact and has an appealing 50s-style design, but it doesn't offer great performance. Other premium options like the Beast Health Blender and Breville Boss To Go Sport, and even budget-friendly options like the Ninja Fit, are better at processing ingredients for recipes like smoothies, protein shakes, and slushies.
For more blenders, check out our lists of the best blenders for smoothies, the best personal blenders, and the best bullet blenders.
The NutriBullet Pro 900 is better than the Smeg Personal Blender PBF01 for most purposes. The NutriBullet makes a much smoother blend with fibrous ingredients, which is important for well-blended smoothies. It has more convenient controls since you don't need to hold the jar down. However, the Smeg is smaller and lighter.
The Smeg Personal Blender PBF01 and the Smeg BLF01 have a similar appearance but perform quite differently. The Smeg BLF01 is a full-size blender. It doesn't feel as sturdy but does a much better job of processing fibrous ingredients like kale and crushing ice. The PBF01 looks like a smaller version of the BLF01 and comes with a pair of 20oz jars. However, It does a much worse job of pureeing fibrous ingredients. Its smaller jars are better for blending hard ingredients like nuts, but it's still not ideal for that purpose.
The Ninja Foodi Power Nutri DUO is better than the Smeg Personal Blender PBF01. The Ninja is a much sturdier blender, and it does a better job of blending fibrous ingredients and crushing ice. It's also easier to clean by hand. However, the Smeg is much quieter when it's running.
The ZWILLING ENFINIGY Personal Blender is better than the Smeg Personal Blender PBF01 for most purposes. The ZWILLING has a much better build quality and does a much better job of processing fibrous fruits and vegetables, which is important for smoothies. It's also significantly quieter.
The Beast Health Blender is better than the Smeg Personal Blender PBF01. The Beast has a better build quality, is quieter, and offers a better blending performance, so it can make silkier smoothies and more snow-like crushed ice.
Test Results
It's a small, light personal blender. It weighs less than the Beast Health Blender and the Ninja Foodi Power Nutri DUO and doesn't take up too much space on your counter. You can also undock the jar to save vertical space.
This blender doesn't feel as expensive as it looks, but it's still well-built. It's made in a retro 50s style and has a glossy finish with chrome accents. The cable feels solid, and the base sits on four feet, which helps with ventilation. However, it's entirely made of plastic, including the gears on the motor base. The 2-speed dial can be slippery and difficult to grab onto when wet. The jars are made of ordinary plastic and don't feel particularly sturdy.
It comes with a pair of jars with a 20 oz capacity, a good size for single-serve drinks like smoothies.
The jars are made of plastic and are dishwasher-safe, along with the drinking spouts and carrying loops. There's a measuring mark at 20 oz (about 591mL) and 600mL.
There are four sharp blades that point in different directions. Unlike the jars and lids, the blade assembly isn't dishwasher-safe.
The blade assembly screws onto the jars like a lid. When you want to use the jars as travel cups, you can use the drinking lids. The spout lid fits onto the jar and has a small hole for drinking. The cover fits on top and seals the hole to avoid spills when walking around. It also has a plastic loop for easier carrying or attaching to a backpack or bag. You can see how the lid works in a video here.
The cord is long enough to reach a nearby outlet. When it's not in use, you can wrap up the cable underneath the blender to keep it out of the way.
- Smeg Personal Blender motor base
- Blade assembly
- 2x 20 oz jar
- 2x Bottle cap
- 2x Bottle cap cover
- Instruction manual and warranty booklet
It does a poor job of processing small batches of fibrous ingredients. You have to hold the jar down to blend. If you make something like a kale smoothie, you need to blend for several minutes, and holding the jar down for that long can get annoying. Ultimately, it doesn't fully process stubborn fibrous ingredients, so you end up with lots of grainy, leafy bits left over in the drink. If you like the blender's design, you may be better off with the brand's full-size model, the Smeg BLF01, which makes a much smoother blend with fibrous ingredients.
It's sub-par for processing fibrous ingredients at full capacity. The process is still long and less than convenient since you must constantly hold the jar. However, filling the jar to its full capacity seems to help the blender create a better vortex, and the results are a bit better than with a small batch. Still, it doesn't fully blend fibrous ingredients and produces a grainy puree.
It's bad at crushing ice. The manufacturer recommends adding no more than four ice cubes per batch. However, even if you follow those instructions, you need to stop and undock the jar and shake it to dislodge any ice around the blades. Ultimately, it can produce some crushed ice but can't process all the ice cubes. Using a smaller batch can make more uniform crushed ice, but more of it melts, so the result is somewhat watery.
It's decent for nut butter. Like with other recipes, it's not that easy to use because you have to hold the jar down to blend. You also need to undock and shake the jar often to ensure all the ingredients reach the blades, and once everything is crushed, you need to stop the process a few times and use a spatula to scrape the mixture off the sides of the jar. However, putting in the time and effort can make fantastic nut butter with a smooth, spreadable texture.
It's not extremely loud for a personal blender. Still, it makes more noise when running than more powerful blenders, like the Beast Health Blender and NutriBullet Pro 1000.
It has two speed settings, which is rare for personal blenders. However, there's not a huge difference between the two speed presets, so you can't adapt the speed to suit different recipes. It has less motor power than many other personal blenders we've tested, especially other high-end models like the Beast Health Blender.
The motor base has a dial that allows you to select one of two speed presets. To blend, you push down on the jar. Releasing the jar stops the blender.
It's decently easy to clean. Running it with soap and water in the jar helps remove some sticky residue, but doesn't completely clean the jar walls. You may not be able to fit your hand in the jar, so cleaning it requires a brush with a handle. The blade assembly also needs some attention with a brush, because food can get trapped in the inside rim of the assembly where it screws onto the jar.