iCucina Portable Bullet vs. Magic Bullet 250W Side-by-Side Comparison

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.

In this test, the two minutes and ten seconds we spent with the Magic Bullet produced an undrinkable result. While all the oatmeal was broken down pretty well, most of the blueberries and almonds came out completely intact. As a result, the drink was too chunky to sip on. It also lacked the fruity flavor that our recipe prides itself on. If you want to use this blender for a protein shake, we recommend just using soft ingredients.

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.

By our 2-minute cutoff point, the Magic Bullet hadn't fully processed all the ingredients so we considered it to have failed the test and awarded it no points. To be fair, though, the final result was not too bad. While this blender still left behind strawberry chunks, it blended through other ingredients pretty evenly. The smoothie came out smooth; our straw didn't get clogged with hard bits after we removed the two partially blended chunks. It was just quite thin since the blending process was so long that the frozen fruit had time to thaw thus diluting the overall consistency.

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.

If you’re looking for a personal blender that can handle leafy vegetables along with other fiber-filled foods, the Magic Bullet is up to the challenge but will not wow you. 

In this test, its mission was to break down kale, spinach, and celery in 20 seconds. Perhaps, you will get a better result if you blend for longer than we did, but this time frame is adequate for us to evaluate this blender’s efficiency. To check the result, we drained the completed drink through a mesh strainer. As such, we noticed a vast number of leafy chunks remained unblended. The pulp also looked coarse and non-uniform. Still, this outcome is more impressive than those produced by its counterparts, namely the Hamilton Beach and the KOIOS Pro.

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.

Our Magic Bullet couldn’t blend through 6 oz ice cubes thoroughly not only because of its weak motor power but also because its blending cup is too small to handle such an amount of ice. For the most part, the ice got stuck in the blade and prevented it from turning. Even when we undocked the cup and shook it, this still couldn’t help much. If you want something that can be up to this sort of blend, consider the NutriBullet, Ninja Fit, and Ninja Nutri Pro.