Breville the 3X Bluicer Review

The Bluicer is a 68-ounce juicing blender. It comes with a convenient juicing spout and cap, and the jugs and attachments are mostly dishwasher-safe. It has four presets and five juicing settings.

Performance Comparison

Smoothies

The 3x Bluicer does not produce smoothies as velvety as the single-function blenders in our test suite, or juices as well extracted as the appliances in our juicer-specific test suite. But for a juicer-blender combination appliance, the 3x Bluicer does a pretty bang-up job in the smoothie department.

During our apple juicing test, we completed three full rounds. It takes a good amount of tampering and a little additional juice or water to get things moving between blending rounds. The end result is thick yet smooth and tastes delicious. It just requires a little elbow grease to get there.

The Bluicer produces somewhat average berry and green smoothies. The smoothie setting does a decent job of breaking down all the frozen fruit; however, there are a number of noticeable seeds left behind and it's extremely thick. Using the pulse setting for a few seconds helps thin the smoothie enough to drink from a straw rather than having to use a spoon.

The Bluicer does surprisingly well with the fruit and oat smoothie. It performs significantly above average; however, there are a few chunky frozen strawberry bits left behind. It also yields a very thick texture, which is true across the board for the Bluicer smoothies, except for the oreo milkshake, which is a little runny.

Ice

The Bluicer crushes ice easily and makes a good, but not great, margarita. The manufacturer recommends using the pulse setting for ice, and it also comes with a frozen drink setting.

The Blucier can handle ice, but only in limited quantities. The maximum is about 10 ice cubes for roughly 10 ounces of liquid. This yields a crystal-like texture.

The frozen drink setting is easy to use. Simply hit the button and walk away. That said, it yields more of a slushy texture than the creamy perfection that some of the higher-performing blenders in our test suite offer.

Convenience

The Bluicer is well labeled, with light-up buttons, a digital timer, and a few presets and juicer settings. It is easy to clean, especially if you have a dishwasher, but takes up a lot of counter space to dry.

The Bluicer comes equipped with a helpful digital timer. It counts down for presets and counts up for speed and juice settings. The on/off, pause/cancel, and preset buttons all light up when activating. There are four presets: smoothie, pulse/ice crush, auto clean, and frozen cocktail. The Bluicer also has five juice settings. These settings are labeled with icons rather than words, which can be a little confusing for some.

The juicer filter is removable, making it easy to wash by hand, but the blender blades are not. Luckily, all the attachments are dishwasher-safe, making clean-up easy if you have one. If you don't have a dishwasher, the preset auto wash feature is super helpful.

Unfortunately, the way the Bluicer is designed doesn't allow for the jug to be placed on top of the base to dry, so it takes up a bit of counter space to dry. The base of the jug is clear plastic, so you can watch the blender jug and motor connect.

The lids are easy to remove, and the cord tucks away neatly through a hole in the motor base. The lid clicks into place, providing audible feedback that everything is sealed and ready to go. It's a little difficult to open at first but becomes easier over time. There is also a cap for the juicer spout, which helps mitigate drippage after juicing.

Pureeing

Unfortunately, this juicing blender does not perform very well during our pureeing test. The nut butter is pretty good, but the Bluicer's ability to make soup is subpar.

The manual doesn't provide any recommendations for nut butter, so we use a combination of pulsing and smoothie cycles. After about six minutes, the Bluicer yields a smooth and creamy texture. We were surprised at the lack of detectable grain in our nut butter. It does require a good amount of stirring, oil, and multiple blending cycles, but the result is well worth the work.

Soup, on the other hand, is a different story. The Bluicer does not heat the soup at all, so you'd have to heat it over a stove. There are no soup presets, so we defaulted to the "Carrot" button. After five carrot rounds and five and a half minutes, the Bluicer yields a fairly thick layer that does not strain through the sieve. The texture is very uneven. It's thin and watery with chunks of tomato, more like a marinara sauce than tomato soup.

Grinding

The Bluicer leaves flour and sugar a little grainy but chops up hard cheese very well.

After blending our sugar, we still felt very small crystals when running it through our fingers. Running it for two minutes may help completely powderize the sugar, but having zero control over the power level is limiting for this test.

While the Bluicer yields ground hard cheese very nicely, it shakes and moves around through the entire blending cycle. This makes it a more hands-on task, as the blender is likely to shake itself right off the counter. Cutting our parmesan into smaller blocks helps significantly, but the racket and clear signs of struggle are a bit of a deterrent here.

Should You Buy the Breville the 3X Bluicer?

The Bluicer is an amazing value, but only if you are looking for a multi-use appliance. If you are looking for the best smoothie blender and don't plan to make juices, you will likely be disappointed with your purchase. But, if you are looking for something that does everything, aside from making soup, the Bluicer is an unbeatable deal.

What Other Blenders Should You Consider?