Ninja Slushi review: One cool kitchen gadget

Ninja’s viral slushie-making appliance had over 50,000 people across Australia and New Zealand on its waiting list before it launched. That number still blows my mind, given the Ninja Slushi really only does one thing: create frozen beverages.

Delicious frozen beverages.

For the past six weeks, I’ve been making various slush-based drinks to test out Ninja’s latest appliance. And it is, honestly, an epic appliance that does its one task really well.

But as a single-purpose appliance, the Slushi is huge, making storage a very real concern.

What is the Ninja Slushi offering?

The Slushi is a viral appliance sensation. Launching in the US and UK last year, the appliance finally arrived in Australia earlier this year, and was an immediate success.

The key selling point, I think, is the simplicity. The Slushi allows you to create frozen drinks without any ice, blending, or dilution. It is literally as easy as adding your liquid of choice and hitting a button.

The Slushi doesn’t just make slushies, either. It can mix frappés, frozen cocktails, milkshakes and frozen juices as well, with a dedicated button for each drink type.

Each frozen drink will automatically set its freezing level, but you can adjust it to suit your personal tastes using the touch controls. If your beverage doesn’t have a high enough sugar percentage, or your alcohol percentage is too high to freeze, the device will indicate the issue with flashing lights so you can adjust the mixture for better freezing.

The Slushi itself is a single unit with a narrow but tall base. A drip tray at the front detaches and sits on the side for storage, while the plastic barrel clips in securely by a large arching handle, and can be removed for storage.

There’s a rotating plastic auger that spins around the evaporator unit, scraping off the frozen drink in a continual motion to create that ideal consistency of frozen drink that still acts like a liquid.

The pouring handle is large and comfortable to use, and there’s a removable plastic shroud to keep from making a big mess.

What does the Ninja Slushi do well?

The Ninja Slushi makes slushies. And it does it well, with minimal effort.

For a family gathering over Easter, I popped in a 1.25 Litre bottle of Coca-Cola, hit the Slush button and let it run for about 30–40 minutes, and everyone could easily enjoy a frozen Coke.

It was a truly effortless process. On some warmer days, I would just drop a bottle of soft drinking the Slushi for the kids, so they could enjoy the frozen drink after school or after sport on a weekend.

I also used the Slushi to make frozen sangria one Friday night. It was just as easy as making a slushie, combining orange juice and red wine, and the flavour got better the more I drank.

What was interesting about the sangria, though, was that at one point the Slushi beeped at me and indicated that the alcohol content was a bit high, after it had been spinning around for an hour or two.

The lights on the front flashed in ascending order to indicate this was the problem, and after quickly consulting the manual, I added a small amount of water to get things going again.

The Ninja Slushi can also indicate (by flashing the lights in descending order) that there’s not enough sugar in the drink, which can be fixed by adding a bit of sugar syrup to the drink.

In all the different drinks I tried to make, I only had issues once, when I tried using a recipe from the internet to make a lower-sugar frappé. Having already made a frappé in the Slushi, I can only assume that the recipe wasn’t properly balanced for the machine.

When you’re done making slush, it’s pretty easy to clean the machine. All the plastic parts pop off easily and can be placed in the dishwasher, though I found the main barrel too big for my dishwasher, so ended up washing it by hand.

The evaporator cylinder can be a bit awkward to wipe on the underside, but it’s not difficult.

What could the Ninja Slushi improve?

The Slushi is designed for a single purpose: to create frozen beverages. But I wish the design were just a little more kitchen friendly.

At 43 cm high and 41.4 cm deep, the Slushi is a tall appliance for the kitchen. Indeed, I could only set it up on one side of my stove as it sat a little too close to my kitchen cupboards, and I couldn’t easily add the mixture to the barrel.

While the barrel can be removed for easy cleaning and storage, it doesn’t actually impact the Slushi’s height. Which means you need cupboard space with at least 45 cm clearance to store the Slushi when it’s not in use.

So far, I have not found somewhere to store the Slushi. It has been sitting on my kitchen buffet, where it looks messy.

The second challenge with the Slushi’s design is that it is quite heavy at 11 kg. This is obviously necessary for the appliance to do its job, and I don’t bemoan the weight on its own. But there are few places to grip the Slushi for easy transportation.

If, for example, you wanted to store the Slushi in a bottom cupboard or shelf, it would be extremely difficult to try to pull the appliance out and lift it up to a bench top for usage.

What I would love to see is a slight design tweak that reduces the appliance’s height for storage, with integrated handles to make it easier to move around.

Verdict

Storage challenges aside, the Slushi is a great example of an easy-to-use appliance that fills a gap in the market. It is truly effortless to control, with one-touch activation for different drink styles.

Ninja has really been knocking it out of the park in this department. From the Slushi to products like the WoodFire Grill and WoodFire Outdoor Oven, or the similarly viral Ninja Creami, these appliances bring simplicity to cooking situations that may have been more complex otherwise.

But the flip side of all this single-purpose appliances is that you need somewhere to keep them. And the height of the Slushi makes it the most difficult appliance I’ve had to try to store.

Not everybody is going to need a slushie maker. But if you have kids, or you host plenty of parties and enjoy frozen cocktails with friends, the Slushi makes it incredibly easy to create and serve those drinks.

I would just recommend you spend a bit of time thinking about storage before you purchase.

Find the best price for the Ninja Slushi

Ninja Slushi

RRP $499.95

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