Best Blender For Acai Smoothie Bowls Reviewed And Rated

You’ve heard of smoothies in glasses. Now get ready for smoothies in bowls! Aesthetically pleasing, nutritious, and delicious, acai smoothie bowls are certainly a breakfast superfood. 

Native to the rainforests of Brazil, acai is a type of berry. They go along well with a lot of ingredients, and acai smoothie bowls are easy to make, which is why they have gained popularity as a nutritious homemade breakfast option.

An acai bowl is made using frozen acai puree, often topped with other fruits and nuts. These ingredients are then blended into a smoothie with a thick and creamy texture.. which brings us to the most important ingredient of all for a smoothie bowl- a great blender!

Smoothie Bowl Blender Reviews

If you have decided to dip your toes into the acai bowl trend, a good smoothie bowl blender is one of the first things you should buy. Let’s take a look at some of the best blenders on the market.

Best Overall Smoothie Bowl Blender: Vitamix Professional Series 750 Blender

The Vitamix Professional Series 750 is a powerful high performance blender and a great investment for your kitchen. Entertaining some guests and want to make smoothie bowls for them? No problem!

This blender is large enough to accommodate the smoothie needs of everyone in a single run. At the same time, it’s not so large that you’ll struggle to fit it in your kitchen cabinets. In fact, it’s perfectly balanced in size.

This blender boasts “aircraft grade” stainless steel blades that can blend even the toughest of ingredients. So, you can add nuts and berries and the blender will still give you a wonderfully smooth texture. The heat these blades create, via friction, is also enough to make batches of hot soups if you wish.

The Vitamix also lets you control the speed. This means you can create a variety of things in a single device, each with varying textures – smoothies, baby food, nut butters, and even ice cream. 

Finally, we come to one of its best features: the self-cleaning mode. All you need to do is add a drop of dish soap to warm water, and the blender will clean itself within 60 seconds. You don’t even need to disassemble it! Well, that’s one less job to worry about.

Best Acai Bowl Blender for Families: Blendtec Total Classic

The Blendtec Total Classic Blender is a premium blender for acai bowls. It’s large enough for you to create smoothies for your entire family in one serving.

With a peak horsepower of 3 and 1560 watts, this one is a real powerhouse, and will blend anything you feed into it! So don’t be shy about experimenting with new ingredients in your acai smoothie bowls.

This blender features a single stainless steel forged blade with wings. The blade is blunt (see our buyer’s guide below for more on this), thick, and 4 inches long. Its angle, as well as the wingtips, pulverize tough ingredients while making sure that the items are pulled towards the blade rather than spinning in a circle. 

This technology makes a tamper unnecessary.

The Blendtec blender is easy to use with 6 different pre-programmed cycles, 10 speed settings with pulse control, and also an LCD monitor which displays how much time is left until your smoothie is ready! 

Like the Vitamix, it also has a self-cleaning feature, which we love and it saves you lots of time.

Best Blender for Thick Smoothie Bowls: Cuisinart Peak Hurricane Pro Blender

With a 3.5 peak horsepower, the Hurricane Pro Blender is easily one of the most powerful blenders out there, outperforming other blenders in this class. If you’re looking for a blender that will crush your frozen fruit into slush, you’ve found it! This is the best blender for thick smoothies.

The Hurricane Pro has pre-programmed settings, and is very easy to use. It also has a memory function which lets you customize the timings on all the preset functions, so the blender will run exactly as long as you want it to.

This feature, along with its variable speed control, lets you adjust the thickness of your smoothies. There is also a self-clean function.

The blender has a 6 prong stainless steel blade which gives great blending performance as food doesn’t get stuck on the blades. As well as that, the blender is compact, and comes with a sturdy gunmetal-finish base. 

Best Range of Colors: KitchenAid Countertop Blender

The KitchenAid Countertop Blender comes in a variety of colors with poetic names for you to choose from. With a 1.5 peak horsepower motor, and 3 presets including ice crush, not only is it easy to use, it’s also pretty powerful. It will pulverize your frozen acai puree in no time. The perfect blender for making a delicious acai bowl at home.

This model comes with 5 speed settings, as well as a pulse function, so you get to control the texture and thickness of your smoothies. Its Intelli-Speed Motor leaves no particle un-crushed, no matter how hard the ingredient might be. It also automatically senses the contents and maintains optimal speed. 

One of its best features is the Soft Start feature where the motor always begins at a lower speed to pull the ingredients towards the blade before switching to the selected speed. This is to avoid any splattering of food. Truly an intelligent motor that makes things easier for us!

The blade is made from stainless steel and is designed asymmetrically. The glass jar, as well as the die-cast metal base, make it a sturdy device. The lid is easy to remove and has a center hole which you can use to add ingredients mid-blend. The self-cleaning mode makes it easy to clean.

Best Affordable Blender for Smoothie Bowls: Oster Pro Blender

With the Oster Pro Blender, you can achieve the perfect texture and consistency for your homemade acai bowls. It comes with an amazing texture select technology that lets you choose the consistency you want (thin, medium, or thick).

This means no more guesswork and no more blending multiple times, hoping that this time you’ll get the thickness right.

The blender has a powerful hardened stainless steel blade 3 inches in length. The 6 point blade can slice through nuts and coffee beans, and it’ll pull ingredients towards it.

It alternates between higher and lower speeds and the blade reverses direction after sometime so that all the ingredients are always properly blended. 

The Oster Pro comes with pre-programmed functions, but you also have the option to choose the settings manually, so it’s a win-win! It also lets you add ingredients while blending without disturbing the process. 

This budget blender comes with two 24 ounce Blend-N-Go cups so you can enjoy your smoothies on the go. The best part is that you can directly use these cups to make smoothies as well. Perfect for when you just want to prepare a single serving.

Best Personal Blender for Smoothie Bowls: Ninja Foodi Smoothie Bowl Maker

If you are looking for a single-serve smoothie blender, the Ninja Foodi Smoothie Bowl Maker is the right one for you! It is very compact in design, so you won’t need to make any extra space in your kitchen especially for this. 

With a 1200- watt base, this blender is a tiny powerhouse. It will have no problem crushing your acai berries. No need to stir or shake. It has 4 presets that can be activated with a single touch, including a pulse function.

Its auto IQ technology will automatically do the work of combining the perfect blending, pulsing, and pausing patterns for you! 

The ninja blender has hybrid-edged stainless steel blades. They are super sharp and can cut through anything! The base of the blender also has grips to make sure it doesn’t slide or shake while operating it. 

The best feature of this blender is that it comes with a 14 ounce smoothie bowl maker with a tamper, and two 24 ounce cups with go-to lids. The smoothie bowl maker is great for making thicker and smoother blends- such as acai bowls. Since this is a personal blender, the go-to cups make it really easy to drink your smoothie on the go.

Best Commercial Blender for Acai Bowls: Blendtec Professional 800 Blender With Wildside Jar

With a 3.8 peak horsepower, the Blendtec Professional 800 is a beast of a machine. It is a commercial blender, and comes inside a sealed enclosure to reduce noise. No more waking up your neighbors in the morning! 

It comes with 6 pre-programmed settings and a pulse option for each. The laser-cutstainless steel blades are of premium quality, and blunt (see our buyer’s guide below to find out more on blender blade bluntness). Their shape pulls the ingredients towards themselves, so a tamper isn’t necessary.

With this blender, you can make just about anything, and it comes with a whopping 11 variable speed settings. 

This commercial blender has a self-cleaning mode, comes with an illuminated touchscreen interface, and a BPA-free Wildside blender jar, which makes it easier to blend smoothies because of its extra-wide base and narrow “fifth” wild side. The container also has a low profile, and fits easily within most kitchen cabinets.

Buyer’s Guide: How to choose a smoothie bowl blender

Blenders are often considered to be the holy grail of modern kitchens. They help us make a wide variety of things that keep us and our taste buds healthy and happy. 

When it comes to those beautiful instagrammable acai bowls, you need the right blender – one that can handle its tough ingredients. Here is a helpful buying guide for you!

Power/ Wattage

Acai is usually sold as frozen fruit puree. This means that your good ol’ low wattage blender will likely falter if you intend to make these beautiful bowls on a regular basis. Instead, you’ll need a powerful blender that can turn the frozen blocks of fruit into the thick and creamy deliciousness that you crave.

Apart from frozen fruit puree, your blender will also be working with additional ingredients to add flavor to the smoothie bowl- such as berries, vegetables, or nuts. So you need to look for a blender with a higher wattage, ideally in the range of 700 – 1000.

Speed Control

The next thing you need to look for is whether your blender offers variable speed control. The higher the speed, the more silky smooth the output. 

By controlling the speed, you can also control the consistency and texture of your acai smoothie bowls. Want your smoothie thicker than average? No problem! Just adjust the speed and blend away.

We’ll also let you in on a little secret. High speed blenders turn everything creamy and smooth. This means you can pack more fiber and nutrition into a single glass or bowl! 

Capacity

The capacity of a blender is very important. Before you purchase one, think about how many glasses or bowls of smoothies you plan to make in one go.

If you need to make a separate acai smoothie bowl for your entire family, then go for the large capacity blenders such as the Vitamix or Blendtec Original. These come with pitchers as large as 64 ounces, so you won’t need to make separate batches.

If you need to make a smoothie bowl just for yourself, then buying a large blender makes little sense. Go for a smaller, more personal blender such as the Ninja Foodi Smoothie Bowl Maker. 

Blades

Blades are, arguably, one of the most important things you need to look for in a blender. After all, they are the ones going to be doing the heavy lifting of turning your frozen acai into slush. They are the hearts of this device.

Stainless steel blades are the best choice because they are durable and hygienic. When it comes to making acai smoothies, the blades need to chop the fruit before turning it into liquid. Diamond-cut blades make this easier. 

Some models, like those from BlendTec, make a big deal about blunt blades. This is only ever a good idea if your blender has enough oomph to pulverize the ingredients you wish to blend. Lower powered machines must have sharp blades. Blunt blades do make cleaning easier, though, as you won’t accidentally cut yourself on them when washing or drying your jug.

A bonus point is to look for blades that are designed to pull the ingredients towards themselves. This prevents food from being thrown towards the lid.

Tamper

A tamper pushes your ingredients towards the blades of the blender, thereby removing air pockets and making sure that everything gets blended perfectly on the first try. This saves you a great deal of time, because you can finish the job and achieve your desired consistency in one go!

However, some blenders have uniquely designed blades that pull the ingredients towards themselves rather than let them spin upwards and bounce around. This makes a tamper unnecessary, since the blade itself will take care of the job. 

Ease of Use

As with any daily-use device, ease of use is an important feature. I mean, nobody wants to wake up and have to operate a difficult machine, right? 

Look for blenders that have pre-programmed options, such as ice crush, juice, soup, and ice cream. All you will have to do is select the required option, and the blender will take care of the rest for you! 

Also choose a blender that has a “pulse” option. This is crucial to achieve the right consistency for your acai bowls.

Cleanup

With the right ingredients and the right blender to mix them, acai smoothie bowls are very easy to make. All you need to do is put the ingredients in the blender, then add toppings once the smoothie is complete. 

For such a simple task that won’t take long, the cleanup process should not take longer. This is why we recommend looking for blenders that are easy to clean.

Many of them come with a self-cleaning feature. Just add a drop of dish soap and some water, run the blender for a minute, and voila! It is as good as new! 

With blenders that don’t have this option, look for dishwasher-safe ones that can be easily detached and cleaned. 

Build Quality

Your blender is something that’s going to be used A LOT, so it’s important to make sure it is sturdy and durable. The base of blenders are usually made out of plastic or stainless steel. As long as high-quality materials are used, it should be good to go.

The jars are either made of plastic or glass. Glass jars are obviously better from a vegan point-of-view, because plastics take hundreds of years to decompose and cause harm to wildlife. They are also sturdier, more durable, and look better, but the downside is that they can be quite heavy and are prone to breaking. 

Plastic containers, on the other hand, won’t shatter if you drop them, but they might retain odor or scratches. If you are going for a plastic jar, make sure it is a BPA-free high quality plastic. 

Design

Depending on your overall aesthetic, you can buy a neutral-colored blender, or add a splash of color to your kitchen by buying a colorful one. For example, the KitchenAid Countertop Blender offers a wide variety of colors for you to choose from. 

Another thing to consider is how compact the blender is. Look for the dimensions, and make sure it fits in your kitchen cabinet. 

If you are someone who likes to have your blender on display all the time, you can buy a larger one and just leave it on your countertop.

Warranty

Excellent blenders rarely come cheap. So we need to make sure that they will last for a very, very long time. After all, we can’t keep shelling out hundreds of dollars every few months, right?

We always recommend going for blenders that have a long warranty – the longer, the better. It should be proportional to the amount you are paying. For example, if you are buying a blender worth $500, make sure it has at least 5 years of warranty. 

Smoothie Bowl Blender FAQs

Do you need a special blender for smoothie bowls?

Smoothie bowls can be made with any blender. But in order to achieve the thicker and smoother blend that we all love in acai smoothie bowls, you need a blender with adjustable speed and a pulse option.

Keeping in mind that you need to crush your frozen acai fruit first, your blender needs to be powerful (more than 700 watts). You can, however, make normal milkshakes and smoothies with your smoothie bowl blender.

Are blender bowls healthy?

Smoothie bowls – especially acai bowls – are the perfect ingredient you need to lead a healthy lifestyle. An average acai bowl is packed with nutrients and fibers, and is rich in antioxidants. So take out the blender, and treat yourself to your handmade bowl of delicious goodness!

Is there a difference between acai bowls and smoothie bowls?

Long story short, the answer is yes. Smoothie bowls originate from Mediterranean and Eastern cultures, while acai bowls have their roots in Brazil, home of the acai berry. 

Smoothie bowls are more of a liquid served in a bowl with toppings, while acai bowls are smooth, thick, creamy, and very cold. They are meant to be scooped with a spoon and eaten. 

How do you get the perfect acai bowl texture?

Not all acai is created equally, so get the frozen acai purees rather than the powder for an authentic taste.

Acai smoothie bowls require a lesser amount of liquid than your usual smoothies. In order to get the “velvety” texture, add frozen fruits that are “creamy,” like bananas or mangoes. 

Add all the acai bowl ingredients to your blender, and start at a lower speed. Use the variable speed control as well as the pulse options to achieve the consistency you need. Remember, there is no “right” texture. 

How do you thicken a smoothie bowl?

The first step is to use frozen fruit, which your acai frozen purees will already take care of. The next step is to add a minimal amount of liquid.

You can also add some ice cubes to thicken your smoothie. Adding other “creamy” fruits also does the trick.

If you plan on including any vegetables, blend them first and then add your frozen fruit. Adding oats and chia seeds also helps give you the desired results. Now enjoy your creamy goodness!

So, which smoothie bowl blender is the best?

Out of all the blenders we reviewed, the Vitamix Professional Series 750 Blender came out on top. With its powerful motor, high-quality blades, and pre-programmed features, the blender is strong enough to cut through anything.

Its self-cleaning feature is a godsend, and you can store it easily in your kitchen cabinet. While it is a little on the expensive side, if you plan on using your blender regularly, the Vitamix blender is a great investment and is one of the best blenders out there.

The Oster Pro Blender is a worthy runner-up. It’s as powerful as any premium quality blender , and you get many of the same features without breaking the bank. Its unique texture select technology also lets you achieve the perfect acai smoothie consistency.

Another runner-up is the Blendtec Total Classic Original Blender. This powerhorse has a 75 ounce jar- big enough to feed your entire family, and then some. If you have a home full of smoothie lovers, this is your best option!

We hope you enjoyed the spin we took you on! Now, what are you waiting for? Get the blender best suited for your needs and start making your own delicious acai bowls. A life of health and deliciousness awaits! 

Oh, and don’t forget to share this article with others who might be looking for a great acai bowl blender. 

1. Laura Parker | The World’s Plastic Pollution Crisis Explained | https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/plastic-pollution
2. Rachel Link | Are Acai Bowls Healthy? Calories and Nutrition | https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/acai-bowl-calories-and-nutrition#nutrition