The Best Slushie Machines for Frozen Margaritas and Slurpees at Home
News
We live in the golden age of the home slushie. It’s a new age brought upon us after last year’s viral Ninja Slushi machine ($349) brought the slushie machine into the American kitchen—and with it a new world of frozen margaritas and Bapple slushies, and cockamamie slushie recipes shared on Reddit and TikTok.
After three weeks of testing to find the best slushie machines, I am happy to report the state of the slushie is strong. Boozy slushies are maybe the one thing I miss from that first Covid pandemic summer—the days when “supporting local business” meant sucking down whiskey slush by parked cars like some John Cougar Mellencamp character. These days, I’m like the king of daiquiris. I am the sultan of slushed tamarind micheladas and the friar of frosé. These frozen drink machines can, of course, al
Because the Ninja keeps selling out, we also tested a few products from the new wave of slush machines that have flooded Amazon in Ninja’s wake—frozen drink machines whose names sometimes seem strange to native English speakers and are often written in all caps. One of these, the Chivalz ($260), already offers credible competition to the Ninja as the source of your next espresso martini slushie.
Details
Prefer ice cream? My colleague Adrienne So has had her spring and summer changed by a rainbow of soft serve and tart fro-yo from the delightful Ninja Swirl by Creami (9/10, WIRED Recommends). For other summer refreshment, see our guide to the Best Cold-Brew Coffee Makers, and the Best Pod Coffee Makers for Cold or Hot Brew.
A Slushie Machine We Don’t Recommend
Inoviva’s machines are among the best-selling slushie makers on Amazon. The chamber and dispenser look strikingly similar to the Ninja Slushi, and the company advertises itself as quieter than competitors. But according to my decibel meter, the Inoviva was the loudest machine we tested, and the compressor wasn’t nearly as consistent at bringing temperature down. The same recipe took significantly different times to freeze, and in some cases the Inoviva failed unexpectedly on a standard recipe. M
Analysis
The Inoviva did have one terrific feature: the ability to adjust thickness for each drink setting. This is somewhat mitigated by the inability to see drink temperatures in relation to each other and an awkward “lock” feature that obstructed my ability to use the device without adding any particular safety I could figure out.
I tested the Ninja Slushi and the Inoviva slushie machine. Both my colleague Kat Merck and I tested the Chivalz slushie machine. Note that the latter two brands appear in all-caps on Amazon, but we prefer to write them the quiet way that doesn’t hurt our eyes nor the feelings of our copy editors.
We made so very many slushies with each machine, from dairy to nondairy to coffee slushies to straight-up bottles of wine. Specifically, we tested every version of slush that a machine advertised. If Ninja or Chivalz says they can make frappés and milkshakes and frozen juices, we made frappés and milkshakes and frozen juices, tinkering where necessary. I froze orange juice and strawberry juice, slushed a bouquet’s worth of rosé, and made slushies from daiquiri to margarita to whiskey Coke. I slu
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