Bella Rocket Blender 12-Piece Set vs. Icucina Portable Bullet Side-by-Side Comparison

In this test, the BELLA blender produced a nearly perfect protein shake in one minute and thirty seconds. There was a small smattering of partially intact berries and almonds found after straining, but the oatmeal was mostly blended well so this didn’t detract much from the overall quality of the drink. With a little bit of tweaking by letting it blend longer or soak the nuts prior to use, we would even get a chunk-free consistency. You’ll find lots of personal blenders in this class, but rarely of them might provide as smooth and quick results. Some took up to four minutes to liquify oatmeal entirely, while others' blades were too weak to churn through such solid fruits (for example, the Magic Bullet, the La Reveuse, and the Icucina).

The iCucina may be a good choice for you to prepare any protein shakes that use fresh plant-based food, but if you want to level up your workout drinks with raw nuts and dried fruits, we recommend going with other models, such as the Ninja Fit, Nutri BN401, or the NutriBullet. This blender is inefficient enough to liquify and combine such ingredients fully. 

For this test, our protein shake is designed to include oatmeal, almonds, protein powder, and dried blueberries. Throughout the blending process, we noticed that this blender didn’t have much hard time grinding the ingredients; it worked quite smoothly, indeed. All the oatmeal was turned into liquid form in approximately two minutes, which seemed not to be so fast yet acceptable enough. The final drink, unfortunately, couldn’t get the most flavor out of almonds and berries, since about a third of the fruits were still solid.

The BELLA is a classic example of why a cheaper blender isn't always worse because its smoothie-making capability proved to be even on par with those of higher-powered models, namely the Nutri Ninja Auto-iQ. This can be attributed to several factors, including blade design, motor strength, and blending speed.

The sturdy blade spined relatively fast. Working with a 240-watt motor, it took only one minute and ten seconds to blend and mix all the ingredients together. A very quick blending time for this class of blender, this speed is crucial when it comes to blending frozen ingredients as it helps to preserve the ice-cream-like texture that people look for in frozen fruit smoothies. 

For the smoothie’s consistency, while there were still small bits of raspberry skin and strawberry seeds present, this is to be expected when blending ingredients of this nature. Overall, these small bits didn’t impair the smoothie’s quality at all.

Berries are the favorite superfoods of many people but their skins and seeds are typically a little bit hard to be liquified entirely. That’s why our recipe for this test calls for four berry varieties; we want it to be a practical way to test for the smoothie-making capacity of our personal blenders, including this iCucina, and fortunately, it does. 

Preparing frozen fruit smoothies with the iCucina asked us to compromise on texture. This was because while this blender could break down all the fruits in one minute and fifty seconds, after such a duration, the smoothie it delivered did lose its thick, icy consistency we prefer. 

Simply put, for an ice-cold treat to come out perfectly, your blender should blend as fast as possible so the frozen ingredients don’t have time to thaw and therefore dilute the overall consistency. But as we learned from our tests, this blender isn’t capable enough in this regard. We recommend using crushed ice instead of freezing your ingredients in advance if you prefer a smoother icy blend.

Upon conducting a 20-second blending cycle, we found the BELLA couldn’t perform up to its usual standards being somewhat suboptimal in processing high-fiber foods, including kale, celery, and spinach. Strain analysis of the mixture revealed a substantial volume of greens remaining partially unblended which led to a grainy texture and an inadequate extraction of the green’s nutrients, in the end. 

On the contrary, some other blenders, like the Ninja Fit and the Ninja BN401, produced a smoother outcome with a significantly smaller volume of visible flakes. As such, our conclusion is that your BELLA is not well equipped to handle high-fiber foods and may fall short of the desired performance criteria for such applications.

We blended kale, spinach, and celery in the time benchmark of 20 seconds to see how well this iCucina would incorporate fibers to your meals. Eventually, we found this blender underperformed significantly against top competitors, again. There was a ton of fibrous pulp left behind when we strained the mixture through a mesh strainer. This suggested that our final drink didn’t get the greatest nutritional value. 

Perhaps, you might think it isn’t necessary to blend that quickly, blending a little bit longer is concede as long as your desired consistency can be achieved. For the most part, we agreed this is entirely possible with the iCucina.

The BELLA appeared to lack the necessary strength for such a tough application. As a result, all the ice cubes remained virtually intact despite its significant effort. To be fair, though, this is a common limitation among personal blenders. Should you desire crushed ice with a fluffy, snow-like consistency or intend to incorporate more ice into your smoothies, consider the NutriBullet or anything with at least a 700-watt motor.

Typically, personal blenders aren’t designed with a focus on ice-crushing capability, and the iCucina is not an exception. The lack of strength prevented it from powering through the ice. We noticed that the blade couldn't even spin so most of the ice came out virtually untouched. Sometimes we undocked the cup and shook it on purpose to even out the blend, but this still couldn’t help much. If you particularly have a need for this sort of blend, you’d be better served by something that is packed with a higher-powered motor, such as the Ninja Nutri Pro.