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I make a green smoothie every morning, and as Good Housekeeping’s senior food editor, I’ve tested plenty of personal blenders over the years. I love that their smaller size is faster to set up, easier to clean, and lets me blend directly into a cup I can take with me. But I’ve also been frustrated by some annoyingly lackluster results: fibrous greens that refuse to break down, ginger flecks that clog my straw, stubborn residue in the cup, and machines that take forever to blend.
I’m also a longtime fan of my full-size Vitamix for pureeing soups and making nut milk at home, both of which come out unbelievably silky smooth. The company is best known for its full-size blenders, so I was curious to try the Vitamix Nano, its first personal blender.
When I tested the model, which launched in late August, I wanted to know whether that same power could translate to a smaller package—and deliver those full-size Vitamix results.
Pros
- Exceptionally smooth blends, even with kale and ginger
- Powerful motor handles ice and frozen drinks with ease
- Comes with two 20-ounce blending cups and to-go lids
- Cups, lids, and blade are dishwasher-safe
Cons
- Cup can be tricky to attach to the motor base
- No pulse function
- More expensive than many personal blenders
How we tested the Vitamix Nano
To evaluate the Nano, we tested it using the Good Housekeeping Institute Kitchen & Cooking Lab’s standard methodology, making coffee grounds, smoothies, milkshakes, and frozen drinks while assessing performance and ease of use.
I also used it personally to make a green smoothie every morning for a month, which let me see how it held up as part of my daily routine.
How the Vitamix Nano performed
Simple controls: The Vitamix Nano’s single dial lets you choose the automatic SmoothiePilot option or manually adjust the speed. SmoothiePilot senses what’s happening inside the cup and automatically adjusts the blending time and speed for smoothies, frappés, and frozen drinks—so you can add your ingredients, press start, and let the blender do the work. The dial also offers a wide range of manual settings, including a very powerful maximum speed.
Excellent results for milkshakes and frozen drinks: In testing, the blender earned top marks across several drink tests. It made a creamy, nicely foamy milkshake with no visible ice chunks.
It also handled a frozen drink made with 1 1/2 cups of ice with ease, blending everything without leaving behind gritty bits or chunks. The result was thick, smooth, and almost frosty-like. It produced 11.6 ounces, with every bit of the drink passing through the sieve with no solids left behind.
A green smoothie standout: The Vitamix Nano aced our smoothie test. I made the green smoothie recipe from the included booklet—kale, frozen strawberries, orange juice, and yogurt—and blended it on high for 1 minute. The result was exceptionally smooth, with no visible kale flecks or chunks.
Less impressive for grinding: We use coffee beans as a standardized Lab test to see how well a blender can handle hard ingredients. A top score of 5 means at least 95% of the beans are ground finely enough to pass through a sieve on the first try, without needing to scrape out any beans that get stuck.
The Vitamix Nano earned a score of 3: About 90% of the grounds passed through the sieve on the first try, and we had to scrape the cup to dislodge some trapped beans. It’s clearly designed more for smoothies and frozen drinks than for grinding coffee.
The Nano also lacks a pulse setting, which limits its versatility for certain tasks.
The 20-ounce cups are easy to take on the go: The two 20-ounce blender carafes also convert into travel cups when you screw on the to-go lids, each with a spout you can sip through directly or with a straw. The cups are lightweight, easy to hold, and convenient for taking a smoothie with you or for minimizing spills at your desk. They’re also dishwasher-safe, along with the lids and blade assembly.
The motor base is larger than those of other personal blenders I’ve tried, which slightly detracts from its compact design. But that may also be why the Vitamix Nano is so powerful—a trade-off I’m happy to make. It comes in black or white. I have been using the white version for a month, and so far it hasn’t shown any dirt or discoloration.
Note: Even if you have a white base, the accompanying cups have black travel lids.
A few things to know before buying
A finicky fit: The biggest drawback is that it can be tricky to attach the cup to the motor base. You need a strong hand to align the motor blade and get everything to lock into place, and the blade lid has to be screwed on correctly before the cup will position properly in the blender base.
A minor leak: I had a leak on my second use, but that was user error: I hadn’t affixed the O-ring properly. Once I corrected that, I had no further problems.
Not the loudest blender I’ve tried: The blender is loudest when operating at its highest setting, although the noise wasn’t a deal breaker for me. I’ve used other personal blenders that were louder.
Easy cleanup: Cleaning this blender was very easy. Because it produced such a smooth mixture, it didn’t leave residue stuck to the cup during the dishwasher cycle—a problem I’ve had with other personal blenders. The cups, lids, and blade assembly are also simple to hand-wash.
The bottom line: Is the Vitamix Nano worth it?
At $200, the Vitamix Nano is more expensive than many personal blenders. But if you make smoothies every day and want consistently smooth results, I think it’s worth the investment.
It was the most powerful of the four personal blenders I’ve used over the years, and it handled fibrous greens, fresh ginger, ice, and frozen ingredients with ease. The cup can be a little difficult to attach, and the motor gets loud at the highest speed, but those are small complaints compared with how easy the blender is to use and how well it performs.
Why trust Good Housekeeping?
Susan Choung is Good Housekeeping’s senior food editor and leads drinks content for the Good Housekeeping Institute Kitchen & Cooking Lab. She has extensive experience developing, testing, and evaluating drink recipes, including smoothies, milkshakes, and frozen cocktails, since 2011. Susan has used blenders from a range of brands to test the equipment and develop recipes, giving her a deep understanding of how different models perform across ingredients, textures, and blending tasks.
Justine Lee is a contributing analyst in the Good Housekeeping Kitchen & Cooking Lab. She regularly tests kitchen countertop appliances, including several blenders and food processors, and she used to develop smoothie recipes for meal kit companies. She uses a Vitamix blender to make a peanut butter banana protein shake every morning after her favorite HIIT workout class.
Nicole (she/her) is the senior director of the Good Housekeeping Institute Kitchen & Cooking Lab. She oversees all content and testing related to kitchen products, food, and recipes. She has worked at GH since 2019, and is a trained cook, published recipe developer, and seasoned product tester with nearly 15 years of experience. She has worked in test kitchens for national magazines and kitchen appliances brands, where she also helped develop products for the home cook. She earned a degree in journalism from SUNY New Paltz, graduated with a Grand Diplome in Classic Culinary Arts from the French Culinary Institute, and studied culinary nutrition at the Natural Gourmet Institute (both now part of the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City.)
Justine Lee (she/her) is a contributing analyst and writer in the Good Housekeeping Institute Kitchen & Cooking Lab. She specializes in kitchen and food product testing, cooking and baking, and recipe development, drawing on her degree in Nutrition and Food Studies from New York University and experience in food product development and professional baking. She tests kitchen appliances and gear for the Good Housekeeping Institute. Before joining GH, Justine served as a food and drink editor at Parade and as a recipe production coordinator at The Kitchn. Her work has appeared in King Arthur Baking, Bon Appétit, Business Insider, Food Network, and other publications.
