Salter NutriPro 1000 review: A top choice for smoothies

The Salter NutriPro 1000 is a powerful blender. You can tell this from its name, which invokes the blending motor’s 1,000W output, and the fact there’s a ‘1,000 Watts’ label embossed in silver on the bottom of the unit. The instruction manual also has a “Super Charged 25,000 RPM 1000W Power” label.

This is not a blender that messes about, then, but it’s also surprisingly inexpensive. The NutriPro 1000 seems to have undergone a massive price cut, down from £150 to around £80, so has the potential to be a bargain.

It’s a very big blender, with a base around the size of a (large) table lamp, so it won’t be for you if space is tight in your kitchen cupboards. It’s heavy, too, but I was disappointed that the base is made of plastic rather than the metal of the Best Buy-winning Sage The Boss to Go smoothie maker. The manual isn’t up there with Sage’s desktop publishing masterpiece, but it’s still chock-full of recipes.

The NutriPro 1000 comes with three cups: a tall, fat 1l model and two shorter, but just as fat, 800ml cups. They’re all made of thick plastic and feel tough, but aren’t made for small hands. I’m not keen on the lugs sticking out the sides, either, which are needed to lock the cup into the blender base: it’s unpleasant to catch your finger on them when screwing on the supplied sipping lids or storage caps.

Once you’ve filled one of the goblets with your ingredients, you just need to screw on the blending blades, invert your cup and fit it to the base with a bayonet action. This will immediately start the blending process, at which point you are made immediately aware of the motor’s power. This smoothie maker is loud.

It was also effective. My first smoothie recipe consisted of half a cup of kale, half a cup (about 120g) of mixed berries and a banana. I also topped the mixture up with water to the maximum fill line. At first, I tried this with the 800ml cups, but I had trouble fitting the ingredients in. This is surprising considering I had no problem with other smoothie makers’ 600ml cups, but it could be to do with the cups’ squat shape.

I had no problem fitting everything into the 1l bottle. It took around a minute of blending to really deal with the kale leaves properly, but once I’d shaken the motor’s roar from my head I had a very nice smoothie. There were some kale bits remaining, but nothing too big.

The second recipe, of apple, orange, banana, ice cubes and orange juice, produced a lovely drink. The NutriPro dealt very well with the apple skin, to produce a smoothie with just the right texture.

Verdict

The Salter NutriPro 1000 loses out to the other big, powerful smoothie maker I’ve tested – Sage’s The Boss to Go – in terms of design and the ultimate quality of smoothies it can produce. However, at its current low price, I’m prepared to overlook many of its niggles. It’s still not quite worth three times the price of the Breville Blend Active Personal and Sage’s smoothie maker remains my favourite overall, but it’s still an impressive machine at its current price and wins a Recommended award.