Ninja Blender, Compact Kitchen System, 1200W, 3 Functions for Smoothies, Dough & Frozen Drinks with Auto-IQ, 72-oz.* Blender Pitcher, 40-oz. Processor Bowl & 18-oz. Single-Serve Cup, Grey, AMZ493BRN

The Ninja is incredibly versatile and powerful. I use it for smoothies, sauces, and food prep, and it handles everything with ease. The blending power is excellent, and having both a blender and food processor in one system saves time and space in the kitchen. It’s very easy to use and clean, making it perfect for everyday cooking. I’m very happy with this purchase and highly recommend it

Bought this blender to replace another Ninja blender. I love this blender/food processor. Easy to use, great overall design of the product. I have not had any leakage problems. And the speed and power of this blender are unmatched in my opinion. I do not leave my blender on the counter, so I do not have a problem with how it fits on my counter. It makes great smoothies without leaving any frozen fruit intact. The one problem is that the fan is very powerful, which can cause some unwanted noise. I also bought this on sale at a great price.

If you're in the market for a versatile and reliable blender, look no further than the Ninja! This blender has become my go-to appliance for everything from morning smoothies to dinner sauces. The sturdy construction and sharp blades ensure consistent results every time. A must-have for any kitchen!

STRAWBERRY SPLURGE Make a great frozen drink! by Andrew Roller Ninja AMZ493BRN Compact Kitchen System, 1200W, 3 Functions for Smoothies, Dough & Frozen Drinks with Auto-IQ, 72-oz.* Blender Pitcher, 40-oz. Processor Bowl & 18-oz. Single-Serve Cup, Grey. Cost: $159.99 My brother, Pierre, was working in the kitchen. This surprised me. Pierre had never shown any interest in culinary pursuits. Pierre was adding ingredients to our family’s blender. It was a traditional model. The blender was tall, with its blades built into the base. Pierre turned it on. The blades whirled around. Then, Pierre poured out what he’d put into the blender. What came out didn’t surprise me, once Pierre told me what it was. He was mixing an alcoholic drink. I left him to his drink and, for the next four decades or so, I left the world of the blender. I’ve now rejoined it. Here’s how: In my room, I have a lot of carbohydrates. Potato chips, pretzels, cheese popcorn; a night’s meal, if you need to get full. What I keep exhausting is my supply of protein. I needed a way to obtain protein, without constantly making trips to the grocery store. ( On foot. I don’t have a car. ) I hit on an idea. Buy protein powder. I purchased the following at amazon ( dot ) com: Muscle Milk Genuine Protein Powder, Vanilla Crème, 4.94 Pound, 32 Servings, 32g Protein, 2g Sugar, Calcium, Vitamins A, C & D, NSF Certified for Sport, Energizing Snack, Packaging May Vary. Cost: $51.09. This review is not about Muscle Milk. I have yet to open the Muscle Milk container. Instead, it’s about how to make a great strawberry flavored drink! ( To which you can add Muscle Milk, if you desire. ) My Ninja blender arrived from Amazon. The version that I bought isn’t the least expensive Ninja blender at Amazon. So, if you decide to do as I’ve done, make sure you buy the same model. I chose this version of the Ninja because, doing research, I discovered the following: you need a powerful motor. A Ninja with a 1200W motor is powerful. ( The “W” stands for “watts”. ) I’ve since learned something more. According to author J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, “W” doesn’t signify power. That is, my blender doesn’t put out 1200 watts of power. It consumes 1200 watts of power! All I can say is this: my 1200 watt blender crushes what I need it to crush. So, I’m happy. If you buy this version of the Ninja blender, you’ll also want to buy something else: leather gloves. This blender comes with three “blade assemblies”. ( Blade attachments. ) According to an Amazon reviewer, who tested them with his fingers, the blades on the blade attachments are “insanely sharp”. I never handle the blade attachments without first donning leather gloves. Also, I have a dishwasher. If you don’t have a dishwasher, don’t buy this blender. You’re told to wash the blender in “warm, soapy water”. ( Ninja Owner’s Guide, page 18. ) Imagine washing three separate blade attachments in a sink, with your hands! Ninja recommends washing the blade attachments with “a dishwashing utensil with a handle”. ( A scrub brush. ) ( Ibid. ) My advice: don’t try it. The blade attachments are large and dangerous. No matter how careful you are, you’ll probably cut yourself. You’ll also need someplace to put the blade attachments. Each blade attachment can be placed into a Ninja container. However, I’ve found that I use two of the three Ninja containers to hold the frozen drink that I make. This leaves two blade attachments lying around, unused. They have to be stored somewhere. Currently, my unused blade attachments are sitting in a cardboard box. ( There is, in fact, a fourth blade attachment. It’s called a “Dough Blade Assembly”. It doesn’t look sharp, but I haven’t tested it with my fingers. ) So, to review, you’ll need the following items, if you buy this version of the Ninja blender: 1. A dishwasher. 2. Leather gloves. 3. A storage box. ( Ninja doesn’t provide one. You’ll have to improvise. ) 4. Metal tongs. ( Mentioned below. ) 5. Ear protectors. ( Mentioned below. ) You could buy more items: drink containers. I’m speaking of drink containers that can be sealed, and stored in your refrigerator. I don’t have any drink containers, except the ones that came with my Ninja blender. That’s why I have to store my spare blade attachments in a cardboard box. The Ninja’s three blade attachments are dangerous. Do they provide a benefit? Yes. First, you’ll be able to crush what you need to. Second, the fact that this Ninja blender can be fully disassembled makes it very easy to clean. When your blender arrives, put it in your dishwasher. Put the small items on the top rack of the dishwasher. Turn the big items upside down, and put them on the bottom rack of the dishwasher. Ninja writes: “It is recommended that the lids, containers, and blade assemblies be placed on the top rack of the dishwasher ONLY.” I put my blender’s lids and blade attachments on my dishwasher’s top rack. However, I put my containers ( which are large ) on the bottom rack. I’ve had excellent results, doing this. The “motor base” does not go in the dishwasher! This is self-evident, but I figured I’d mention it. The Ninja blender is easy to assemble. Put the “Total Crushing Pitcher” onto the motor base. The Ninja blender was built for right-handed people, so the pitcher’s handle will be on the right, when you put the pitcher onto the base. Once the pitcher is on the base, grasp it with both of your hands. Give it a firm twist to the left. ( In essence, you’re twisting the pitcher toward you. ) The blender will not operate until you’ve turned the pitcher toward the left. On page 12 of the Ninja Owner’s Guide, you’ll see a drawing. It shows how the pitcher will look, once you’ve twisted it to the left. You’ll need your blender to look like that. Next, put the lid on the pitcher. You’ll need to line up the spout on the lid with the spout on the pitcher. The spout will be opposite to the handle. ( I failed to line the spout up properly. I was trying to jam the lid down onto the pitcher. That didn’t work. ) There is a handle on top of the lid. The handle is sticking up. I tried to shove the lid’s handle down, when the lid wasn’t on the pitcher. That didn’t work. The handle will only go down when the lid is on the pitcher. The lid of the Total Crushing Pitcher has a spout. The spout has a cover. I can’t get the cover to pop up. It’s stuck on the lid. I could exert more force, but I’m afraid that I’ll break it. The lid of the Precision Processor Bowl has a spout. The spout has a cover. I am able to open and close this cover. The same is true of the cover on the Single-Serve Cup. I make my frozen drink in the Total Crushing Pitcher. This pitcher is too big to store in my refrigerator. So, I do the following: 1. I make my frozen drink. 2. I remove the lid. ( Press the button on the lid, in order to remove the lid. ) 3. Remove the blade attachment from the pitcher! I forgot to do that. I poured out my drink from the pitcher. Liquid came out of the pitcher. Then, to my horror, out came the blade attachment! It fell, upside down, into the container that I was pouring my drink into. At that point, I resorted to metal tongs. I used the metal tongs to take the ( upside down ) blade attachment out of the container that it had fallen into. So, here’s another item that you should buy, when you buy a Ninja blender: Buy metal tongs. I didn’t see any way to retrieve the blade attachment, except by grasping its blades. No way was I doing that. ( I may seem squeamish. Trust me: these blade attachments are nasty. I’m surprised that Ninja can sell them. You’ll definitely want to keep small children, pets, and clumsy people away from your Ninja blender. Joe Biden: stay away from this blender! ) A common refrain about a microwave is the following: don’t use the popcorn button. If you use the popcorn button on your microwave, you’re likely to overcook, or undercook, your popcorn. Currently, I use the button marked “frozen” on my blender. It delivers a wonderful drink that consists of small crystals of crushed ice. However, the ice will melt. Since the joy of the drink lies in the fact that it contains crystals of ice, your drink soon becomes a smoothie. My advice: simply turn on the blender. Crush the ingredients until you’re satisfied with the result. However, don’t crush everything in one go. That is, load all of your ingredients into your blender. Then, turn your blender on. Next, before the crushing is finished, turn your blender off. Wait. Let the ingredients settle. Then, turn your blender on again. Do this several times. This is called “pulsing” the blender. If you press the “frozen” button, you’ll notice that it, too, pulses the blender. That is, the blender turns on and off, repeatedly, until it fully crushes your ingredients. What result am I aiming for? I want larger ice crystals. That way, it will take longer for them to melt. I pour my result from the Total Crushing Pitcher into the Precision Processor Bowl. Some of my drink remains in the Total Crushing Pitcher. So, I pour the rest of my drink into the Single-Serve Cup. I am able to store both the Precision Processor Bowl and the Single-Serve Cup in my refrigerator. The Total Crushing Pitcher, its lid, and its dangerous blade attachment go straight into my dishwasher. When you turn on your Ninja blender, you’ll find that it’s very loud! So, here’s another item to buy: ear protectors. I wear ear protectors when I operate my blender. The single serve cup can be described as “a sippy cup meets a thermos.” It’s a large, sealable container. I drink out of it. It’s not insulated. Making my drink, I was tempted to put ice cubes into the bottom of my blender. That’s not what Ninja recommends. According to Ninja, you put the lightest items into your blender first. You put the heaviest items in last. Here’s the drink that I made: Strawberry Splurge ( My recipe. ) 1. Two twelve ounce cans of Black Cherry soda. 2. Three single-serve containers of strawberry yogurt. 3. One bag of whole frozen strawberries. ( You can use sliced frozen strawberries, if you desire. ) 4. Three handfuls of ice. The result is a delicious fruity drink! Recommended with this: Snyder’s of Hanover “Snaps Pretzels”. ( Not the butter version. )

This Ninja system is an absolute powerhouse. I’ve used plenty of blenders before, but this one doesn’t even flinch at frozen fruit, ice, or anything remotely tough. The 72-oz pitcher is perfect for big smoothie batches, and the to-go cups are super convenient when I’m heading out the door. The food processor bowl is what really impressed me — it actually chops evenly and doesn’t leave random big chunks behind. I’ve made dips, spreads, and even quick salsa, and it handled everything like a champ. The controls are simple, the preset functions are spot-on, and the whole thing feels sturdy and well made. Cleanup isn’t bad at all, and the parts lock in easily without fighting them. Overall, it’s one of those appliances you end up using way more than you expected because it just does everything well. If you’re looking for a blender/processor combo that actually delivers power without being ridiculously loud or complicated, this one’s a winner.

I love it. The blades are SOOOO SHARP! If you're like me living in the stone age without a dishwasher, BE CAREFUL washing the blades, particularly the inside edges where it meets the center. I cut my hand open accidentally about 4 times just by accidentally touching that part, and it will slice the sponge clean in half if I'm not careful. So, clean it with a brush!! I like the different attachments, although I cannot recommend using the dough mixer for bread. As someone who bakes bread pretty regularly, it's not worth the hassle and cleanup. You'd be better off using a stand mixer or just hand-kneading. It's fine for cookie dough though, and overall this beast works very well for: hummus, smoothies, cheese grating, veggie chopping/slicing, vanilla bean paste, date caramel, and ok for cookie / other non-yeast dough. The vanilla bean paste is quite an accomplishment too, because the whole bean needs to be chopped down into pieces the same size as the tiny individual seeds inside for the texture to be right - and it did it! Many will say this can't be achieved without a Vitamix but I did it with my ninja and was quite pleased! Neutral comment - it's a little loud but very powerful. The auto /smart settings are a little hard to get used to but they are useful if you give it a chance. One complaint I have, and it's a minor one but still annoying, is the inside of the big pitcher is such a pain to clean or even scrape out/scrape down. There are these stupid... lines... Bumps?that cause little extra nooks and corners on each side and stuff likes to stick in there - and makes it nigh on impossible to scrape out whatever you've made with a silicone spatula. Or to easily scrape down the sides as one does when one is mixing something thicker. Honestly this stupid design flaw was in part why I said it isn't worth it to make bread in this thing. Cleaning a sticky yeast dough off anything is never fun, but especially when your main piece has dough stuck in these stupid little pointless corners that seem to serve no purpose but to get in the way of being able to use a spatula to scrape out whatever you've made cleanly. Without these arbitrary, useless, cumbersome bits on the inside of the main pitcher, this thing would absolutely be 5 stars, hands down. Anyway aside from that completely terrible design flaw I love this thing.

Great all-in-one ninja food processor with single serve smoothie cup for homemade fruit smoothies. The ninja cup blends ingredients so well that the fruit texture becomes smooth and creamy. The smoothie cup is slightly weighted, but not heavy and made with long-lasting quality, blending blades are sharp to crush ice, and seeds like flax seeds if needed. It’s a great attachment for a quick salad dressings as well.

I bought the 1600 W version, and I really like it. I mostly use it for making my morning smoothie with ice cubes, sometimes frozen fruit and other stuff. I did end up buying the bigger cup (32 oz) because the stuff I put in my smoothie filled it too full. Yesterday I took a head of cabbage and cut it up for cole slaw. The food processor works tremendously well. It was easy to clean afterwards, and I got a whole huge zip lock bag of shredded cabbage. It's not that loud on the food processor setting. I did get an error at the end for some reason, but I just unplugged it, plugged it back in and it was fine. Not sure why that happened. So far, I really love this. I do let it run for 2 cycles on the smoothie setting though to smush up all the strawberry seeds.