[This review was collected as part of a promotion.] I have had a Vitamix blender for the past 12 years that I have used almost daily. This helps set the standard for what I'm comparing this blender too. Our family makes smoothies almost every single day and uses our blender for other things like soups, dips, protein drinks, etc. we are a family of six and so we tend to make things in large batches, however, I was curious about the single serve blender because there are times where I take something to work and thought this might be a good tool for pulling that off. The blender did a good job when I thought through what was actually going to happen. Let me explain. With my typical blender I just throw everything in turn it on and we're good to go. But with this single serve ninja I had to be very conscious about how I was going to actually blend because of the important fact that you tip the tumbler upside down for things to blend. As an example, I made a protein shake where I dumped the protein powder in the bottom of the tumbler and then poured milk on top. Top. Mistake, because when I put on the blending top and then tipped it over the blades are now on the bottom but all of the stuff I wanted to blend was at the top. The milk came down however a lot of the protein powder got stuck at the top and there was no way for it to get down without taking off the tumbler shaking it around a little bit then trying again. I ran into the same problem yet slightly different when making a smoothie. We tend to use frozen fruit with our smoothie and what I did was I poured in kefir, then added all of my frozen fruits and coconut oil. But again, because this blender has you tip it upside down to blend a lot of the stuff got stuck and there was no way to get it down to the blades. I would have to take the tumbler off shake things down a little bit use a fork to get things unstuck and then blend again. Order of operations with this blender and thinking through what's going to happen is important. You can't just throw everything in and expect it to do well, unless you're blending only liquids that flow easily. We want to be able to just throw everything in turn it on and it blends everything and this is just not that blender.
All that being said, when the blender works it works. Switching to the drinking top. It stayed liquid tight and I never had any leaks. Everything was really easy to clean and it's nice that you could just throw it in the dishwasher. One last thing that is both a pro and a con are the suction cups on the bottom. It's great during blending but it just makes it hard to move the base around if you want to pull it out from underneath your cabinet blend and then push it back under the cabinet for storage. The suction cups had a lot of sticking power and I just worry over time they are going to break.
Overall, it's actually a really good blender, it's just not the blender for how our family uses blenders.