Ninja Detect Power Blender Plus Processor Pro Kitchen System with BlendSense Review

Ninja Detect Power Blender Plus Processor Pro Kitchen System with BlendSense Review

Buy it at Amazon: Ninja Detect Power Blender Plus Processor Pro Kitchen System with BlendSense [Affiliate Link]

Takeaway: Versatile all-in-one blender and food processor, easy to clean, fast, smooth results.

You’ll receive the motor base, 72 oz blender pitcher, 64 oz food processing bowl, plastic dough blades, spindle and dual-sided slicing and shredding disc, 24 oz blender cup, drink lid, and illustrated color manual with recipes. The 1800-Watt motor base. It measures 8” wide, 9” deep, and 9” tall. There are 5 buttons on the front: power, manual, BlendSense, Mode, and Pulse. There's a rotary dial for menu selections that you’ll press to start or stop a selected program.

All the vessels install quickly and easily with a simple twist-to-lock mechanism. At the back of the machine is a 2.5 ft 2-prong power cord with included Velcro cable tie and on the bottom are air flow vents and four suction cup feet to prevent the unit from moving or sliding during operation.

The single-serve blender cup is made of a clear, durable plastic. It has 8 blades positioned at various angles for blending and pureeing food easily. The cup has volume measurements in both ounces and milliliters from 4 to 16 cups. The max liquid level for the cup is 21 oz or 644 mL. For storing, pouring, or drinking from the cup, a sports lid with a capped spout is included for on-the-go convenience. I like that the lid snaps up, out of the way when you want to drink or pour from the cup.

The blender pitcher measures 10” tall, 8” wide, including the handle, with a 6” square footprint. On top, is a flip up lid over the corner pour spout. When the handle is snapped in place, the lid will be locked on securely and can’t be pried off. The 3-tier blade spindle must be removed from the pitcher before pouring out its contents, as they’re not attached, and would simply fall out otherwise. The pitcher is marked in ½ cup increments from 1 to 8 cups and 8 to 64oz which is the liquid max capacity. One thing to note is that the handle of the lid cannot be laid flat unless it’s installed on the pitcher. This is to ensure that you store the lid and pitcher together with the blades secured inside.

The food processing bowl allows you to shred, slice, and make dough. It measures 9” wide including the handle, the bowl has a 7” diameter and is 10.5” tall. It comes with a plastic pusher for the food chute and is pre-installed with the 3-tier metal chopping blades, but is compatible with the plastic dough blade and spindle for the slicing and shredding disc. The max capacity of the bowl is 64 oz or 8 cups and 1.8L if using metric. As with the blender pitcher, the blades for the bowl aren’t attached to anything and will fall out if you try to pour out its contents with them installed, so be sure to remove the blades after use, before emptying the bowl. Be extra careful handling any of the blades as they are extremely sharp. All vessels, blades and accessories are dishwasher safe.

The blender base weighs about 6.5 lbs and the rubber feet on it work extremely well. The blender cup is great for making smoothies, salsas, chutneys, and dips. Just remember to stack your ingedient from softest to hardest and that a fuller cup will result in a more thorough and consistent blend.

When you turn the machine on, the default mode is BlendSense, which will detect the contents of the vessel and automatically select the power and amount of time for blending to a smooth result. You can press the button again at any time to stop the program. The blender is quite loud, though I suppose that’s the trade-off for the amount of power it outputs. The final texture of my smoothies made in the cup were silky and not gritty, even with seeds in the mix. I liked that the drink top has a leak-free seal, however, I found when pouring, the shape of the spout was prone to leaving drips on the mouth piece. Just remember that you can’t put hot ingredients in the personal blender cup as the pressure inside could build up potentially causing it to explode, nor can you store blended food with the blades still attached, a vacuum seal may form making it difficult or impossible to open later.

I really like having the food processor bowl as part of this set because it saves me some cabinet space with one less appliance. The modes for this vessel are large/small chop, mince, and disc. Large chop, small chop, and mince all perform a similar function with timed pulses for a set amount of time to acheive the desired result. The disc blade is double-sided and can shred on one side and slice on the other. However, I did have an issue with shredding a block of semi-soft cheese where some cheese got trapped between the blade and the lid. Unfortunately, this caused the disc tilt high enough to scratch the bottom of the plastic pusher,so that’s something to watch out for. You can make bread dough just using BlendSense mode, which detects the dough and lowered the speed on its own.

The blender pitcher did a nice job with hot ingredients, blending my soup stock and veggies down to a smooth puree using the BlendSense mode. If you’d like to have more control over what the blender is doing, go ahead and switch to manual mode and you choose a speed from 1 to 10; the machine will automatically stop after 60 seconds.

For easy cleaning, fill the vessel half with warm soapy water and run Blendsense. Be careful not to fill the vessels all the way or they will overflow while blending.

Overall, the Ninja Detect TB401 Kitchen System performed well both as a blender and food processor, while using the same 1800-Watt motor base. With the pitcher installed, it’s 17.5” tall and still fits under my cabinets for storage. From smoothies to frozen drinks, bread doughs, and hearty soups, BlendSense makes most jobs a simple one-touch operation, though pulse and manual controls are still available for times when you want more control over the final result.

Buy it at Amazon: Ninja Detect Power Blender Plus Processor Pro Kitchen System with BlendSense [Affiliate Link]