Recently, the Ninja CREAMi has been gaining popularity on TikTok, and we were immediately intrigued. It promises to make a pint of ice cream, sorbet, or gelato in just a couple of minutes, which is much quicker than the 20 minutes it takes to make ice cream in a conventional ice cream maker.
While the CREAMi can also make milkshakes and smoothie bowls, we were most interested in its ability to make ice cream. Unlike a traditional ice cream maker, which requires you to freeze a canister and chill the base before churning, the CREAMi is more similar to a Pacojet, a multi-thousand-dollar machine used in restaurant kitchens. With both, you freeze your ice cream base in a canister and then the machine’s blade processes the frozen base into an ultrafine, creamy substance. Since the CREAMi costs a fraction of the Pacojet’s price, we had to see what all the hype was about.
What We Liked
- Easy Assembly and Use: The CREAMi was very straightforward to set up. After freezing the pint container with the base in it, we just needed to insert the container and select the setting we wanted from an easy-to-read interface.
- Speed: It took less than 3 minutes to make ice cream or sorbet, whereas our winning classic ice cream maker churns for up to 20 minutes—although it makes a quart of ice cream and the CREAMi makes just one pint. To achieve good results we sometimes had to use the CREAMi’s respin feature, which is essentially an accelerated version of the ice cream function; this added a few minutes, but it was still faster than using a conventional ice cream maker.
- Compact Canister: Because it only holds a pint of ice cream, the CREAMi’s canister takes up much less room in the freezer, a benefit for anyone who’s ever had to play freezer Tetris with the canister of a traditional ice cream maker.
- Great Fruit-Based Treats: The CREAMi worked exceptionally well with fruit-heavy recipes. It made stellar Raspberry Sorbet as well as strawberry ice cream from the manufacturer’s recipe booklet. Per the manufacturer’s suggestion, we also churned sorbet from one ingredient: frozen pineapple. It was less sweet and a bit more icy than regular sorbet, due to the lack of added sugar, but it made for a refreshing and wholesome treat.
What We Didn’t Like
- Size and Weight: The CREAMi is slightly larger than a drip coffee machine, so it takes up a lot of counter space for a piece of equipment you likely aren’t using every day. It also weighs 13 pounds, making it hard to move around.
- Ice Cream Quality: While the CREAMi excelled at making Raspberry Sorbet, we had mixed results when it came to making vanilla ice cream, both with our own recipe and the manufacturer’s. Some batches turned out loose and liquidy, probably because the CREAMi’s blades heated up the ice cream base as it churned, as Senior Science Research Editor Paul Adams explained. Others had noticeable ice crystals. Only one ice cream recipe—the manufacturer’s strawberry ice cream—turned out perfectly, with a smooth, scoopable consistency. Adams explained that this was likely due to the strawberry ice cream's higher water and pectin content, which helped create a firmer texture when frozen.
- Smaller Yield: Although we liked how the CREAMi container took up less room in the freezer, that meant that it could only make small batches of ice cream at a time—just a pint, half the yield of our favorite ice cream machine.
Should You Get the Ninja CREAMi?
If you have the money to spend, limited freezer space, and really want to try making your own sorbet at home—or are willing to tinker to find the perfect conditions for the CREAMi to make good ice cream—maybe. But we think most people would be better off with a conventional ice-cream machine and/or blender. While the multifunctionality of the CREAMi is attractive on paper, the CREAMi just doesn’t make consistently good ice cream for its high price.
At about $230, the Ninja CREAMi costs nearly three and a half times as much as our winning ice cream maker from Cuisinart, which makes great ice cream with a wide variety of recipes. We weren’t able to find a simple ice cream base recipe that consistently worked well with the CREAMi, so we couldn’t get creative with the flavor tweaks and customization that the Cuisinart allows, such as adding various fruits, extracts, or sauces such as caramel. Home cooks who were hoping for a multifunction machine that makes both ice cream and milkshakes well will also be disappointed: the CREAMi costs significantly more than our favorite personal blender, which makes great single-serve smoothies and milkshakes and doesn’t take up as much additional space. The blender and the ice cream machine cost about $145 together, over $80 less than the CREAMi.
