5 Best Portable Blenders for Travel in 2023 – Top Picks & Reviews

If you want to make your smoothies while you’re on vacation or traveling for business, you’re going to need a travel blender. However, it’s not always easy to find the model that is right for you on the internet. Advertisers aren’t shy about overselling and underdelivering. The good news is that we’ve assembled this list of reviews of the best travel blenders. We want to take the mystery out of shopping for a travel blender online.

And, if you’ve never purchased a travel blender before, we’ve created a buyer’s guide that is designed to help you think through different features that come on a travel blender, as though you were an expert on the subject. If you’re looking to find the travel blender that is just right for you, you’ve come to the right place.

A Quick Glance at the Winners of 2023:

Rating	Image	Product	Details
Best Overall		Cuisinart CPB-300	Durability Slip-proof feet 5 cups and 1 jar	CHECK PRICE
		NutriBullet NBR-1201	Good power Easy to clean Blade and Cup options	CHECK PRICE
Best Value		Oster BLSTPB-WBL	Quiet Stylish bottle Push-to-blend	CHECK PRICE
		Hamilton Beach 51103	Cheap Good for shakes	CHECK PRICE
		Bbtops USB-JUICE-CUp-2	Cheap USB charging	CHECK PRICE

The 5 Best Portable Blenders:

1. Cuisinart CPB-300 Travel Blender – Best Overall

The Cuisinart CPB-300 is one of the best travel blenders on the market. It’s so good that people who just need a stationary blender also love this model. It comes with a pair of excellent stainless-steel blades that are more than capable of getting the job done. It also comes with slip-proof feet that help keep this blender stable in less-than-optimal blending situations. Amazingly, this model comes with five cups and a blending jar, which means that you blend en masse or do multiple single servings in quick succession without having to stop and clean.

However, the motor power is only 350 watts, which is a bit on the weak side, though it does still appear to do most tasks just fine, even if it takes a bit longer. However, this model is reputed for its durability, meaning that you should get many good years of use out of this blender without any kind of mechanical trouble. The features of this model and its durability are just too good to put it anywhere other than the first of this list of best portable blenders.

2. NutriBullet NBR-1201 Travel Blender

The NutriBullet NBR-1201 is an excellent portable blender. It features an impressive 600 watts of power, which might not be that much relative to a traditional blender but is great for a portable model. That’s enough power to smash through ice and seeds with ease. It’s a small unit, which makes it easy to move around, and easy to store when you’re not using it. It also comes with a ton of blade and cup options. This means that you can always make the amount that you want and use the blade that will give you the best results in terms of texture and the toughness of the food.

Since the blades are removable, the model is easy to clean. One potential downside is that these models sometimes become leaky over time. This isn’t a problem that everyone experiences, however, but it is something that keeps this otherwise-great model out of first place on our list.

3. Oster Travel Blender – Best Value

The Oster BLSTPB-WBL is the best value for the money on our list. It comes with a stylish bottle that you’ll want to use with the included travel lid, not transfer into a better vessel as you might do with other included blender cups. It’s also a push-to-blend machine, giving you the control that you need to achieve the perfect smoothies or get the perfect texture when shredding vegetables.

It’s a pretty quiet model, in part because of its one great weakness, which is that it’s not powerful. Sadly, this model comes with 250 watts of blending power, which means that it’s going to struggle in most situations. But, if you need something extra cheap, worth taking on the road, and something that you won’t worry about getting stolen, damaged, or losing, this model is an excellent choice.

4. Hamilton Beach 51103 Blender for Travel

The Hamilton Beach 51103 is a good blender for shakes or smoothies. If you’re looking to do more with your blender, you’re probably going to be out of luck. Your experience with this blender is going to be dependent on how willing you are to help it along, by going things such as cutting foods smaller in advance, stirring between blend cycles, and adding your ingredients slowly. However, if you’re willing to do those things, you can get this model for a great price.

As you may have surmised, this blender has a very weak motor. It’s not going to be suited to more difficult blends. It also comes with a cheap, ill-fitting lid that sometimes results in leaks while blending. It also comes with only 1 cup. While this is to be expected with a model this cheap, you might want to invest in a more expensive one if you want to make multiple servings at once.

5. Bbtops USB Travel Blender

The Bbtops USB-JUICE-CUp-2 has one of the best ideas and some of the poorest execution of any blender on the list. The makers of this blender decided they wanted to create a truly portable blender. And they achieved that—sort of. This model runs on battery power and charges via a USB cable, which means you could charge it in your car if the need arose.

However, it doesn’t do much anything well. The motor is underpowered and struggles with frozen fruit, much less ice or hard seeds. There’s no way you’re going to do any real cooking with this blender, as it maxes out at soft smoothies. It also comes with one of the smallest cups on the market, limiting how much you can make at a time. Furthermore, it’s generally not built well, and you’ll always be at risk of having it break down. Overall, this model is probably not worth the money you’ll spend on it, regardless of how cheap it is.

Buyer’s Guide – How to Select the Best Portable Blender for Travel

Hopefully, our reviews have helped you gain an understanding of some of the best travel blenders on the market, and what features you should be looking for when you go to buy. If you want more information about what makes a blender good value, or just want to learn more about blenders in general, be sure to check out this buyer’s guide. It’s packed full of great information about both travel blenders and blenders in general.

Blades

One of the mistakes that people make when shopping for blenders is that they assume that blenders with more power are always better when blenders with less. However, this is not always true. Low-quality blades can offset the additional power that a blender provides, such that a weaker blender with better blades might blend better overall.

Stainless-steel blades tend to be the best blades on the market. Those that have an additional Teflon coating tend to be more scratch-resistant and hold their edge for longer periods. This typically doesn’t matter as much in a travel blender, which you aren’t going to be using for heavy blending, but it’s something to keep in mind.

You also want to make sure that you get a model that is easy to clean, and some models have poor blade configurations, poor blade mounts, or both, and the result is that you’re unable to get all of the smoothie out of the blades and into the cup and that cleanup becomes that much harder. The best models in the category feature removable blades that make it possible to easily clean and get the entirety of your drink out of the blender, reducing waste.

Containers

Many people underestimate how much the quality of a container can change their experience with their blender. Most travel blenders come with plastic containers instead of glass ones, but that’s a good thing.

Believe it or not, plastic containers are generally regarded as the superior blender container material. This is because they are more durable in the long run and are more easily shaped in ways that move food towards the blade, instead of away from it. Also, since the containers are plastic, they will hold up better while traveling than glass ones would.

Something you’ll want to pay attention to is how many containers you’re getting when you buy a travel blender. Some come with just one, which can be just right if you’re the only person who is going to be using it, and only once a day at most. If you’re looking to blend for a large family on the go, you’re going to want to buy a model that comes with a lot of containers—otherwise, you’re going to have to buy more, which for some models, isn’t possible.

Power

Power is a statistic that is often thought to be more meaningful than it is. Sure, more power is better, generally speaking. But wattage doesn’t tell the whole story. Subpar blades or wonky blade mounts can offset gains in power from one model to another. Because of this, you need to understand power in context and ask if it’s being used effectively.

With travel blenders, you’re unlikely to get something that’s going to deal with ice effectively on its own. In many situations, you’re going to have to coax the blender to do what you want it to do, starting with liquids and working your way up to harder foods. If you don’t do this, there’s a chance that the blenders won’t work.

The good news is that there are models out there that will do an excellent job, comparable to stationary blenders if you’re willing to take a few extra steps to make sure that they have optimal blending conditions. There are some powerful travel blenders out there, but they’re not as common, and you’re probably going to end up paying more for them.

Which travel blender is right for you?

Does this question depend on how mobile you want to be? Do you mainly want a blender with a container that you can easily take on the go? Or do you need the whole unit to be portable enough to travel to another country? Different models are going to be better for different scenarios.

If you have a particularly large family, you should invest in one of the models that come with a lot of blending containers so that you can make a lot of servings in sequence. Overall, you should focus on getting the model that best meets your needs, so that you get the best value for the money.

Conclusion:

The Cuisinart CPB-300 is one of the best blenders on the market, that comes with plenty of cups and of the best durability that can be found in any blender, period. The NutriBullet NBR-1201 is a great all-around portable blender that just misses out on the top spot because of problems with leaks. The Oster BLSTPB-WBL is a stylish, quiet blender that provides the best overall value. The Hamilton Beach 51103 is a good blender for shakes or smoothies but falls on this list since you can’t expect more from it. The Bbtops USB-JUICE-CUp-2 suffers from poor quality and shouldn’t be anyone’s first choice.

Even if you knew nothing about blenders before reading our reviews and buyer’s guide, we hope that you now know enough to make a well-informed decision. Armed with this knowledge, you should be able to find the best travel blender for your needs.

More blender-related articles on JuicerKings:

• We take a look at Vitamix blenders, see our verdict
• A closer look at Oster Blenders
• How good of a blender can you get for under 100 dollars?