Top blenders for your kitchen

A blender can add variety to your diet, letting you whip up smoothies and icy drinks, purée soups and even make ice cream, but do you have to pay a lot to get a great one?

Consumer Reports tested more than 50 blenders that cost anywhere from $40 to $600.

Along with the usual Cuisinarts and KitchenAids, testers evaluated Food Network star Sandra Lee's $45 blender, a $60 Ninja and a $130 blender from Bon Appétit.

On the high end, Consumer Reports also sized up a Blendtec and two Vitamix blenders.

"Blenders are one of those appliances that can do a bunch of different tasks, but performance varies, so we really put them through their paces," said Dan Diclerico of Consumer Reports.

Testers crushed ice and ran the blenders for 20 seconds to see how uniform and snow-like the end results are. They also puréed soup and made piña coladas.

The Bon Appétit blender didn't deliver on frozen drinks, leaving chunks of ice in the beverages.

But far worse was Sandra Lee's blender: It could barely crush ice and there were whole ice cubes left in the piña coladas. It had the lowest overall score out of every tested model.

The $450 and $600 Vitamix blenders did an excellent job in all of Consumer Reports' tests, but testing revealed you don’t need to spend that much to get a really great blender.

The super-versatile $60 Ninja Master Prep Professional also aced the tests, puréeing smooth soups and mixing up a great icy drink.

Consumer Reports also recommends the KitchenAid blender, model number KSB565. While it wasn’t as good at puréeing as the Ninja blender it offers a glass container instead of plastic, five speeds and a sleek touchpad control. It’s available for around $100. The Ninja blender is available online at Amazon, Costco and other sites.