iCucina Portable Bullet vs Ninja Nutri Auto-iQ 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.

The Ninja Nutri is essentially a single-serve blender but refinements to its blades and motor’s power have brought it many advantages over the competition. 

You might notice the blade assembly looks like nothing else in the market. Design-wise, it is attention to detail with four sharp, sophisticated prongs. Beyonds spinning extremely speedy, the prongs are towards various sides to allow for more food contact at a time. And such combos did make our Ninja Nutri among the fastest blenders in this test, taking one minute and ten seconds to yield a serving of protein shake. Not to mention the 1000-watt motor which helped churn through ingredients like almonds, dried berries, oatmeal, with super ease. 

As efficient as it was, this blender still underperformed by a few seconds against two top competitors (the Ninja Fit and the NutriBullet), though. The texture it delivered also had room for improvement since while the oatmeal was completely broken down, small amounts of almonds and berries remained solid. Considering the price, we had wished for a chunky-free texture which was exactly similar to those we got from its counterparts. 

Overall, unless you’re really interested in its professional look and hi-tech features, there are some alternatives that can actually blend your drink better and do so at less than half the price.

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.

The Nutri Ninja was excellent at this test. Again, its distinctly-designed blades and higher-powered motor were good things for a quick, even outcome. They allowed the blender to power through all the frozen mango, strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries to perfection in just over one minute. And we remember everything was very easy and simple here, which you will rarely experience with other weaker personal blenders. Just noting that the process was fifteen seconds slower than that of the NutriBullet, but this wasn’t a huge gap. You might be willing to wait a bit longer as long as you get good results. 

Initially, we intended to use the Auto-IQ Ultra Blend setting, but the testing trials then suggested us shifting to the regular one. When running on the Auto-IQ Ultra Blend mode, your blender will blend in short intervals in 60 seconds and there will be a unique pulsing and pausing pattern after each interval. This is meant to force all the clogged ingredients back down onto the blades to even out the blend. That being said, we don’t think this is highly necessary in making icy smoothies; frozen fruits need to blend as fast as possible, but the pausing intervals give them time to thaw and then dilute the consistency. Perhaps, the Auto-IQ technology is better for dry-grinding harder ingredients like whole ice cubes and raw nuts.

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 blender’s ability to process leafy vegetables was above average. The final drink came out acceptably uniform but with a gritty texture. We don’t think you’ll get too many complaints if you run everything through a mesh strainer before drinking. Given its high-end price tag, however, we expected better results with fewer leafy chunks.

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.

As a personal blender, this Nutri Ninja didn’t perform half bad, grinding 6 oz of whole ice cubes in just 22 seconds. None of the other blenders we tested could do the same; some took longer to entirely break up the ice while others were simply not powerful enough to churn through such a solid ingredient. (For example, the KOIOS Pro and the Oster)The crushed ice didn’t have a snow-like texture, but would be good enough for your cocktails.