Best: Overall

Rating: 10/10

This is a brilliant blender which won’t just churn out your favourite smoothies, but a wide range of other drinks, too (we were particularly impressed with its ability to produce delicious milkshakes).

We were admittedly daunted by the control panel at first, which looked rather complex. But our fears were soon allayed – this is a blender which is incredibly easy to use, with one-touch control options and two blending programmes which will produce your favourite drink at the touch of a button.

Prone to being a bit of a diva in the drinks department? This blender’s got you covered – the combination of a manual option and pulse, pause and blend buttons make it easy to fine-tune your tipples. The powerful 1,000W motor and precision-engineered blades result in some seriously quick blending, and made light work of items such as nuts and grains.

Best: For speedy blending

Rating: 9/10

We love a lot of things about this bullet blender, including the wallet-friendly price tag. It’s incredibly easy to clean, and its large 650ml jug meant we could whip up supersized versions of our favourite smoothies. It comes with just one accessory (the 0.6l travel cup) in addition to the blender cup, but as testers with crazily cramped kitchen cupboards this was a positive – all too many blenders come with a ridiculous number of landfill-destined accessories that we neither want or ever use. It’s also on the quiet side (86 decibels, for the audio geeks out there).

Best: For supersized smoothies

Rating: 9/10

This is a mean ice, veggie and nut-crushing machine – one which throws out 1,200W of power and has a huge selection of settings perfect for smoothie connoisseurs. It’s great for anyone who wants to supersize their smoothies – items can be blended in a 1.8l jug or a cup, three of which are provided – and five blending options should cover almost everything. And we also loved how it was incredibly easy to clean.

The touch screen-style buttons mean there are no cracks and crevices to clean (as testers who’ve spent more time cleaning kale juice from badly designed, protruding control panels then we care to remember, this is one of our pet hates), and although the individual components lock into place with a reassuring firmness, they’re surprisingly easy to remove and clean, too.

Best: For customisation potential

Rating: 9/10

We’re notoriously fussy about our smoothies as well as our smoothie-making machines – our dream machine is one which isn’t too heavy but which doesn’t take up too much space either. And we can report that the Tefal freshboost blender ticked both these boxes with aplomb.

The 800W of power was more than enough to cope with our smoothie-making requirements, and for a blender with this price tag and of this size, we were impressed to find there were five speed controls as well as an all-important pulse function. There was a great range of accessories, too: one blender cup and two travel cups, both of which had incredibly clear markings on the side (another pet hate is cups with measurements which are either too faint or too tiny to read).

Best: Value

Rating: 8/10

We’re not sure why the name of this blender includes the word active, which implies a connection with fitness, although we live in hope for a day when merely sipping a smoothie gives us the same results as a 60-minute session in the gym. But we digress.

We loved this blender – it takes up minimal space, has a gorgeous colour scheme (incidentally, it was one which perfectly complemented the blackcurrant smoothie we made) and is ridiculously easy to use. The additional 600ml bottle (the main blending cup also doubles as a bottle) was the perfect size – it’s not the largest, but slotted into our bicycle drinks holder with ease, and prompted us to wonder why more blenders don’t come with bottles, rather than cups.

At 300W, this blender takes a little longer to chomp through tougher ingredients such as nuts, but the upside of the reduced power is its compact, lightweight design.

Best: Compact design

Rating: 8/10

This is another incredibly compact blender, and one with a surprisingly low price tag, too. Kenwood has kept it simple with two speed settings and a pulse function, although we appreciated the unexpected inclusion of two bottles.

We’re big smoothie drinkers, so it’s always handy to have a spare cup to hand when the other is being washed. We also loved the extra-long 1.1m power cord – our kitchen is on the small side and an abundance of gadgets means we’ll use whichever socket is available at the time. As much as we’d love a designated smoothie-making station, in the meantime this is the next best thing.

Best: For hi-tech design

Rating: 8/10

Being natural sceptics, we’re all too aware that Ninja is a brand which is to blenders what Hoover is to vacuum cleaners, so we admittedly approached our review of this particular gadget with a certain amount of healthy scepticism.

Our conclusion? Years after the brand launched its first blender, Ninja has clearly stayed on top of its game; this particular model did a brilliant job of preparing our favourite kale and blueberry smoothies, with none of the granular texture we often encounter when preparing kale-based smoothies in other blenders.

The 1,100W motor (unusual in a blender with this price tag) and powerful blades sliced through every ingredient we threw at it – this included the frozen berries we keep in our freezer. Don’t be put off by the complicated name of this particular model, either – it simply refers to the availability of two pre-set programmes which can be used with one-touch controls.

Best: For slick design

Rating: 8/10

We’ve yet to come across a blender with a sexier name, although for the sake of impartiality, we’re keen to point out this didn’t impact our overall opinion. And let’s face it, even the most stylish of blenders will struggle to make our kale smoothie (which admittedly bears an uncanny resemblance to sludge) look sexy.

That said, it’s certainly one of the most stylish of blenders, and although it’s a jug blender, everything appears to have been designed with smoothies in mind, from the way we could whip out the lid’s removable section in order to add more fruit to our concoctions mid-grind, to the ease with which we could set tweak the settings and remove the jug to fill up our smoothie bottle, even on the occasion when we’d been slimed after an unfortunate spinach smoothie-related spillage.

Best: For families

Rating: 8/10

This name sums up this product – it’s incredibly simple, and that’s precisely why we love it. It does what it says on the tin (or jug) while being more than capable of pulverising the wide range of smoothie ingredients we lobbed into its generously-sized cup. It’s one of the cheapest jug-style blenders we’ve come across, but if you’re looking for a family-friendly option, it’s highly likely this particular model ticks all of your boxes.

The 1.5l jug is big enough to blend multiple smoothie servings, but it’s got a slimline, lightweight design which means it can easily be stashed into cramped kitchen cupboards. Russell Hobbs has kept it simple with an ergonomic dial listing two variable and pulse speed settings, which were more than enough to meet our requirements. The 400w motor isn’t the most powerful, but it’s not the least powerful either, and the blending process was quick and efficient – no lumps in sight.

Best: For rugged design

Rating: 8/10

This is one of the earlier Nutribullets, but it’s still one of the best – and more than worthy of its spot on this list. It’s certainly heavier than most models (coming in at a hefty 2.5kg), but we actually prefer a weightier blender, because it means more stability when the blades are slicing through tougher vegetables such as carrots (a process which has, with other models, left us fearing that the entire machine is about to take flight). The two cups are also well designed – particularly the one with an extra-large handle, which made smoothie-sipping on the go a breeze. The 150-page manual contained some genuinely useful recipes, too.