BlendJet’s Tiny Battery-Powered Blender Can Make a Smoothie Wherever You Are

Have you ever wanted to blend a smoothie in your car, or bypass the crazy-expensive bar at your gym and roll your own protein shake? To be perfectly honest, I haven’t. But I can see the appeal, so when BlendJet offered me a review unit of its tiny battery-powered blender, I said yes.

So, here’s the thing about the BlendJet One: It’s a little blender, and it’s battery-powered. That’s about all. It does what it’s designed to, and does it well, and the components are solid. It’s tight enough to travel with, easy to clean, and comes in enough colors to complement whatever bag you want to travel with.

At forty bucks, it’s a fair bit more expensive than many similar products, but I’m willing to bet that it’s also much better made, too. And with eight ounces of whatever liquid you want in there, cheaping out on a portable blender might ruin your nice gym bag or backpack.

The only major gripe I have with the BlendJet is that it’s small: the capacity of the center unit is just eight ounces (237 ml), the standard liquid serving size. But if you want a gadget that will blend more or less whatever you could want, miles away from a kitchen power outlet, the BlendJet One will do it one cup at a time.

BZZ BZZ

The BlendJet has three main components: the base, the cylinder, and the cap. The base houses the battery, which recharges via a MicroUSB port. (I’d have preferred to see a USB-C port, but this design is a few years old—maybe on version two?) A single power button activates and deactivates six super-fast blender blades. There are no controls or speed settings: Just press the button and this thing will spin like the Tasmanian Devil on bath salts for about a minute.

The transparent main cylinder comes off of the base if you need to manually clean it. You usually won’t, though: BlendJet says you can clean out the blender by filling it with water and a drop of dish soap and then running it for a cycle. And I’ve generally found that to be the case.

But here’s a really cool touch: The blender won’t run at all unless the cylinder is in place and twisted down. So, it’s impossible to, just as a complete hypothetical, press the blend button with the removed and turn the BlendJet into an extremely short buzz saw for your Judge Doom cosplay. (Also it’s a smart move for anything that’s portable, i.e., easily lost and found by kids.)

The top is a simple cap with a silicone seal inside. It can also accommodate a plastic strainer, and it comes with a loop for a carabiner or similar. The base and caps are offered in a staggering amount of colors. We asked them to send the “mint” color so it would match our website.

Blends for Days

I tried the BlendJet One with BlendJet’s house brand smoothie mix, as well as various kinds of fruit and milk drinks, plus ice. I wouldn’t trust this thing to blend, say, a smartphone, but for as many ice cubes as I could fit in the cylinder (three or four max) it did great. Drinking right from the blender is an option thanks to the sturdy base, and cleaning was easy.

Running the battery from full to empty, the BlendJet handled 23 blending cycles before it petered out. Assuming one use per day, that’s about three weeks of use before it needs a recharge. And if you happen to go too long between charges, five minutes on a 5-volt charger was enough to squeeze one more cycle out of the blender. The only downside: It won’t run while it’s charging. That means if you’re running dry, it’ll be a good 10-20 minutes before you can use it again.

Oh, and check this out: If your drink is transparent enough, you can see the blender making not just a tornado, but a vertical column of juicy goodness. Neat, huh?

Skip the Mixes

BlendJet is pretty clearly pushing its ready-to-blend smoothie mixes, which I found less than compelling at $4 for an eight-ounce serving. But given that the blender works on almost any conventional food short of sticking a rack of ribs in there, I’m more than willing to recommend it. Just let me know when the BlendJet XL comes out, please.