iCucina Portable Bullet vs. Ninja BN401 Nutri Pro 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.

If your idea of a protein shake includes raw nuts or dried fruits, the Ninja BN401 Nutri Pro may never let you down.

In this test, it took only 1 minute to turn all the oatmeal into liquid form, which was by far faster than average. And this blending time means you’ll always have a quick snack or protein sip at hand whenever you want. There is quite a bit of almonds and dried blueberries still remaining solid, making the final drink relatively lumpy. But overall, it was considered much smoother than some of those produced by the rivals, such as the Magic Bullet. 

Most importantly, our chefs agree that you’ll get a more savory sipping experience if you let everything be blended a little bit longer. Soaking the nuts prior to blending makes it easier for a quick, chunk-free texture as well.

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.

For certain treats, like icy smoothies, blending time particularly matters as frozen ingredients thaw quickly at room temperature so if you don’t blend fast enough, your beverage will be thinner than expected. Fortunately, the Ninja BN401 Nutri Pro is good enough to give you complete control over the texture you’d like to sip on. 

Contrary to the protein shake test, all the ingredients came together so quickly in this smoothie. Although our testing recipe had a high level of difficulty since the fruits were tough and all frozen, we otherwise got a perfect smoothness in only one minute. 

On a more pragmatic note, the Ninja BN401 operates very smoothly in even heavy-duty blends. While most other personal blenders we tested repeatedly had their ingredients got clogged under the blades, such as the Ninja Fit, this unit works and ensures all the  fruits can circulate freely. Sometimes, we noticed a couple chunks clinged to the cup’s sides, but quickly enough, they were forced to back down onto the blades without our interference.  

All things considered, it’s apparent that the Ninja BN401 Nutri Pro is a perfect way to turn your healthy favorite fruits into refreshing breakfast and post-workout smoothies, especially for a busy morning.

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 speed and power of the Ninja BN401 Nutri Pro makes it a useful personal blender when you want to incorporate more leafy greens into your daily meals. 

In this test, it was assigned to create a smooth blend of celery, kale, and spinach in only 20 seconds and as an able performer, it did successfully deliver. 

Of all the machines we’ve experienced with, the Ninja BN401 Nutri Pro was among the few ones that could finely blend the entire veggies that fast, thus retaining all of their nutritious fiber and antioxidants. You might see there was only a small amount of pulp that was left behind in the mesh strainer. Whereas, some of its rivals just got half finished within this time period, while the others were too weak to grind the ingredient finely.  

The mixture would’ve had a finer consistency if we had blended it for longer, but even so, it was not eventually a pulp-free mixture and this is typical for this sort of blend. If you prefer your drink to be perfectly smooth, you’ll need to strain it through a filtration bag to remove all the pulp.

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.

The blade spins very fast and is sturdily designed. This combined with a mighty 1000-watt motor allows the Ninja BN401 to tear apart the ice without even a struggle. Believe it or not, six ounces of ice cube were turned into a like-snow consistency in just 14 seconds! Even the toughest ingredients like whole ice cubes couldn’t pose a problem for this blender, so clearly enough, it will be easier than ever to entertain your guest or your family with any icy-cold drinks mixed by different types of whole-food.