"As seen on TV" food choppers like the Magic Bullet Express promise fast, easy results. So does the Ninja.
"Go easily from countertop to table top."
To see if these products can cut it, Consumer Reports tested the Ninja and Magic Bullet Express along with more than 40 other food choppers and processors, including ones from Cuisinart and Kitchenaid.
"Food choppers are typically for smaller jobs, so they're smaller and less expensive. They're designed for chopping foods like garlic, nuts, and herbs," Dan DiClerico said.
You can spend as little as $13 on a chopper like this or as much as $450 for this waring commercial-grade food processor. Testers use a bunch of foods to see how well each performs.
Frozen peas size up puréeing. Nuts assess chopping. Potatoes are used for shredding and mushrooms for slicing.
And cheese challenges grating capability. The bullet express processor left testers with whole peas - not puréed ones.
The Magic Bullet Express chopper puréed very well, but when it came to chopping, it left chunks of nuts and lots of almond dust.
However, the $60 Ninja chopper handled chopping and puréeing with ease, and it grated cheese as well as top-performing food processors.
But if you want a food processor for bigger jobs, testers recommend Cuisinart's 14-cup food processor for $200.
"Our testers loved the larger bowl, the wider feed tube, and there's even a drizzle hole for making things like pesto, mayo, or hummus."
Consumer Reports also recommends the 7-cup Kitchenaid food processor for $100. It's smaller than the recommended Cuisinart, but for half as much, it chops, shreds, and purées impressively.
