Cordless or corded for a single-serve smoothie? A specification comparison of the Ninja Blast BC151BK and the Hamilton Beach 51132, built only from what we could actually read and cite.
Evidence reviewed ; refresh due .
Testing methodology Corrections policy
Neither blender in this article has been purchased, handled, measured, or tested by BuyingBench. Everything below comes from published product information, and the article says for each figure where that figure came from. Where nothing published covers a spec, the cell is left empty rather than filled with a guess.
If you want a single-serve smoothie, the real decision is not which brand — it is whether you want a battery or a plug. That is the whole comparison here: the Ninja Blast (BC151BK), an 18 oz cordless blender you charge over USB-C, against the Hamilton Beach Single-Serve Blender (51132), a 14 oz corded blender designed for blending beside an outlet.
Choose the Ninja Blast when the drink needs to leave the kitchen or you regularly use frozen fruit: Ninja explicitly supports fresh or frozen ingredients and ice, and the cordless 18 oz vessel doubles as the cup. Choose the Hamilton Beach 51132 when you blend at home and prefer a lower-cost corded appliance with no battery to charge or replace. Both have dishwasher-safe drinking vessels. BuyingBench has not physically tested either model, so this is a published-specification decision, not a measured performance result.
This page used to compare two own-store portable blenders — a “350ML Electric Juicer Blender Mixer USB” and a “Cicero Electric Portable Juice Machine”. Both have been removed.
Their buy links pointed at commerce routes that were never actually set up, so every “See price” button on this page was broken, and the prices and scores attached to them were not backed by anything a reader could check. Rather than caveat that, we have replaced them with two products that are really listed, really purchasable, and already covered elsewhere on BuyingBench. The old URL redirects here.
| Spec | Ninja Blast (BC151BK) | Hamilton Beach 51132 |
|---|---|---|
| Power source | Cordless, USB-C rechargeable | Corded — 24 in. cord with a cord wrap |
| Vessel capacity | 18 fl oz | 14 fl oz |
| Dimensions | 10.71 in H × 3.54 in W × 3.54 in D | 11.9 in H × 3.94 in W × 3.94 in D |
| Weight | 1.74 lb | Not published |
| Speeds | 1 | 1, one-touch |
| Blades | Stainless steel BlastBlade | Stainless steel |
| Ice and frozen fruit | Manufacturer states it blends fresh or frozen ingredients and ice | Manufacturer page does not mention ice or frozen fruit |
| Drink from the vessel | Yes — leakproof easy-open sip lid with a hinged carry handle | Yes — travel lid lets you drink from the jar |
| Cleaning | Lid and vessel are dishwasher safe; 30-second self-clean cycle | Dishwasher safe jar |
| BPA | BPA-free lid and vessel | BPA free in food zones |
| Motor power | Not published | Not published |
| Battery capacity, charge time, blends per charge | Not published | Not applicable — mains powered |
| Warranty term | 1 year | Not published |
Two things about that table deserve saying out loud, because they change how much weight each column can carry.
The two columns now have direct manufacturer sources. Hamilton Beach publishes a product page for model 51132 and a Use and Care guide for the Single-Serve Blender. Ninja’s official BC151BK page is also readable now and publishes the 18 oz capacity, 7.4V USB-C base, 1.74 lb weight, frozen-ingredient claim, one automatic program, and one-year warranty. Retail listing material remains in the evidence record only for details the manufacturer pages do not publish.
“Not published” is doing real work. Neither manufacturer page publishes a motor wattage we are willing to quote, and the Ninja product page does not publish battery capacity or charge time. Rather than pick whichever retail number flatters an argument, those cells stay empty. Ninja does publish a one-year warranty; Hamilton Beach’s model-specific page does not publish a warranty term, so that cell remains empty too.
Everything else here is a trade-off. This isn’t.
The Ninja Blast is sold on frozen ingredients. Its listing leads with blasting through frozen fruit and ice, and the blade has a name — BlastBlade — attached to that claim. Hamilton Beach’s own product page for the 51132 says nothing about ice or frozen fruit at all; it describes smoothies, shakes and one-touch blending, and stops there. Retail copy for the same model does claim it powers through ice, but the manufacturer’s page — the document we would hold them to — does not.
If your smoothie starts with a bag of frozen berries, that asymmetry is the whole decision, and it is why the Ninja takes the win below. If your smoothie starts with a banana and some yoghurt, it is close to irrelevant, and the Hamilton Beach is the far cheaper way to get there.
The other honest difference is power. Cordless means you can blend at a desk, in a car, or at a campsite. Corded means you never think about charge state, never wait for a battery, and never own a battery that degrades — but you need an outlet, and a 24-inch cord means you need one close by. Neither is better. They are different products for different mornings.
These are predictions, not measurements. They express how we expect each blender to place once someone has both on a bench, derived from the specifications above and from aggregated buyer feedback. They will be replaced with measured findings when the assigned evaluation is done, and the change history will record exactly what moved.
Ninja Blast (BC151BK)
For the smoothie most people actually make — frozen fruit, straight from the freezer, drunk from the vessel it was blended in — the Ninja Blast is the one designed for the job, and it does not need to be near an outlet to do it.
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The Ninja Blast wins on the thing the category exists for. It is the larger vessel, it is the cordless one, it is the one built around frozen ingredients, and it is the one you can use at a desk. We have scored it below a 9 on value deliberately: it costs meaningfully more than its rival, and its maker publishes strikingly little about the battery you are paying the premium for.
The Hamilton Beach 51132 is the better purchase for a specific, common person: someone who blends at home, next to an outlet, with fresh ingredients, and does not want to own another battery. It is the cheapest credible way into the category and it carries the most buyer feedback of any single-serve blender we cover. Its value score is the highest number in this article and that is not a consolation prize.
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For more on this category, see our ranked portable blender comparison, our portable blender buying guide, our cleaning routine for portable blenders, and how BuyingBench tests small home products.
From a shop we own
A cordless USB-C portable blender sold direct by FreshJuiceBlender, a storefront operated by the same company as BuyingBench.
NZ$114.99 · sold by FreshJuiceBlender (freshjuiceblender.co.nz)
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