Ninja prints "turns ice to snow" on the packaging, and the Crush cycle delivers: a cup of ice came out a fine snow in under a minute, as good as any full-size blender we have used.
How We Tested
We ran the Blast Max through daily use in our test kitchen, timing every blend, checking texture and noise, and tracking blends per charge.
Test 1: Frozen Fruit Smoothies
A berry breakfast smoothie finished in 35 seconds with only a few tiny flecks of blueberry skin. Large frozen strawberries pulverized on the Crush setting into a silky, non-grainy drink in a single cycle, a result the original Blast needed two cycles to match.
Test 2: Ice Crushing
Five standard ice cubes became small, evenly crushed shards in about a minute, no hand-stirring, and three large freezer-fresh cubes plus a splash of water turned into snow-like slush in about 60 seconds. The liquid-first rule held in every run: plain ice stalls the blades until there is enough liquid.
Test 3: Protein Shakes and Dips
A 30-second blend on the manual mode produced a protein shake that was well mixed and not grainy, clearly better than a shaker bottle, though not as creamy as a full-size blender.
Thick dip batches do not faze it. A hummus made from a full can of chickpeas with lemon, cumin, and olive oil came out relatively smooth with a few chunks, though the mixture was thick enough that we had to shake the vessel to keep working the top layer of chickpeas down onto the blades. The blades never stalled outright, and the result was exactly what we would expect from a corded bullet blender. A drier, low-liquid pesto was the one batch that stalled, twice, until we added lemon, olive oil, and a splash of water.
Test 4: Kale and Fibrous Ingredients
Kale and blueberries blended into a silky, drinkable smoothie in one Smoothie cycle, with no shreds left behind. Adding protein powder and nut butter meant a second Smoothie cycle before the greens cut down to flecks.
