Ninja – Foodi Power Blender Ultimate System 72-Oz. Blender, Smoothie Bowl Maker, Food Processor – Platinum

Love all the options, use the shake portion at least once a day. Dinner use the slicing a and shedding for dinner. Using extra ice turns a powdered energy drink into a nice refreshing icee. A lot of fun trying different things.

I’m new to the world of Ninja products as a consumer, and went into this new system as an owner of an (older) blender with smoothie attachment, a food processer, and a famous-name-brand-heavy-as-heck countertop mixer. I stay connected to the blender to make meal replacement shakes every day, my daughter is a huge fan of smoothie experimentation, and my wife is endlessly prepping something different to bring variety to the kitchen table every night. The amount of devices that has my family whipping, blending, chopping, kneading and mixing require more kitchen real estate than we have, and inevitably involves someone trucking down to a distant part of the house to get the right tool out of storage. The Ninja Foodi Power Blender Ultimate System is a jack of many trades that more than adequately answers the bell for whatever the task calls for, providing an array of solutions in a small footprint.
In terms of what you get in the ultimate system, it’s pretty abundant: a 1600 watt motorized base, a 72 ounce power blender pitcher and lid, a chopping and crushing blade assembly (yes, like many other reviewers, it is sharp and drew blood when I handled it a bit carelessly), a dough blade assembly, a disc spindle with separate grating and slicing discs, and two different blending containers in a 18 oz smoothie bowl maker and a 24 oz. nutrient extraction cup. It also includes a feed shoot lid with pusher, and a pretty neat bookolet of recipes designed to leverage every inch of what the device can do.
One of the biggest selling points to me was the raw power. This thing pushes 1600 watts, which was almost double my older 900 watt blender/smoothie machine. This motor muscled through whatever we threw at it, and to start the bench testing I went straight to the recipe booklet they provided and chose the one that seemed the most obvious to start with – a fresh citrus margarita. Because…margarita. This was actually a great recipe to start with because it started to walk me through the other really important feature of this device – the technology. I’m used to blenders with a limited selection of power options, but the Ninja AutoIQ technology is next level. This essentially offers you preset blending options tailored to whichever container is connected, and built for the recipes you would use those containers for. If my daughter wants to blend a smoothie or make some of her homemade nut butter in the smoothie bowl, she sees options for ‘Extract’, ‘Smoothie’, ‘Spread’ or ‘Bowl’ to choose from once you set the single serve cup or XL bowl container in. If my wife or I want to go to town using the larger pitcher with things like chopped veggies, or making some silky smooth homemade hummus (a staple in our house), fresh cookie dough or even more margaritas when I finish the first batch, we see options for ‘Spread’, ‘Smoothie’, ‘Bowl’, ‘Chop’, ‘Dough’ or ‘Disc’. If none of those preset options of power or pulse make sense for what we are doing, we can press a separate ‘Manual’ or ‘Pulse’ button and customize the blend to how we want it. All of these options present on a clean interface of a simple rotary dial with a dark face and dark band around it that both have LED indicators which turn on when activated. The whole build is really satisfyingly simple and clean, but with a commercial grade feeling in weight and quality.
I also love the construction of how the pieces interact, in that any of the containers need to be inserted and ‘twist-locked’ into the base for the base to actually provide options. I had an issue with my last blender in that, as it got older, I had to be careful about making sure the smoothie cup was clearly and tightly inserted…sometimes the blender would go on while the plastic spindle head at the bottom wasn’t quite inserted, and it slowly started stripping and making awful melted plastic smells. Doesn’t feel like that will ever be an outcome with this setup. I also like how the lids interact with the containers. The large 72 oz pitcher has a flat lid with an inset handle that lifts outwards to lock/unlock, and a release button to allow removal rather than just pulling right off. It also has a liftable cap for just a pouring spout if you want access to the finished product that way, which is a nice feature. It also has a feed chute lid for food processing projects with similar lock/seal capabilities. The smaller 18 and 24 oz containers have a really neat feature (to me) in that the cover/blade base assembly twists onto the top of either with ridges inside the containers, rather than how you feel the ridges on the outer edge on the top of a bottle or jar. It makes for an noticeable locking seal that you can feel trying to remove it after a blend, and again is really clean in terms of appearances. The cutting/chopping and grating spindles and blades are pretty straightforward (and sharp- drew blood just taking it out of the box), and the cleanability of the system overall is pretty impressive and simple.
All in, we love the versatility of the Ninja Foodi Blender, and the Ultimate System really ends up being a veritable swiss-army-knife of kitchen devices. While we still will have some of the dedicated go-to devices for bigger cooking or baking productions that may warrant them, the Foodi does a great job of allowing us to tackle a large variety of food-based challenges while keeping the kitchen uncluttered, and keeping the treks down to storage to a minimum. First time to the Ninja Family, and it definitely feels like we may stay awhile.