Ninja
CREAMi Deluxe 11-in-1 Ice Cream Maker
- Bottom Line
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With 10 different dessert functions and a mix-in feature, this versatile ice cream maker can whip up everything from delectably sweet milkshakes to health-conscious frozen yogurt.
- Pros
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In addition to scoopable desserts like ice cream, sorbet and Italian ice, it makes drinkable treats like milkshakes, slushies and frozen drinks. During testing, it had the shortest processing times, needing between 2 and 5 minutes to make all desserts. It produced the firmest ice cream among the models we tested, so we could scoop it right after processing. It has a simple, intuitive interface that makes operation a breeze. All its components are dishwasher-safe.
- Cons
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It requires freezing your recipe ingredients 24 hours in advance, so you can’t decide to make ice cream on the spur of the moment.
About the product
We tested the Creami Deluxe and loved its versatility
Since the original Ninja Creami first hit the market in 2021, it has been a darling of social media for its ability to whip up smooth, delicious ice cream, gelato, milkshakes and more. But the new Ninja Creami Deluxe goes even further, boasting 11 programs to make it the most versatile ice cream maker on the market.
Unlike traditional ice cream makers, which require freezing the bowl before churning, the Ninja Creami Deluxe makes ice cream and other desserts from frozen-solid ingredients. That gives the ice cream a firmer texture right after churning. Its versatility also means it can make more than just ice cream, gelato, sorbet and frozen yogurt. It can also make Italian ice and drinkable treats, such as milkshakes, frozen drinks and slushies.
To see how well the Ninja Creami Deluxe works, the BestReviews Testing Lab put it through its paces. After using it to make everything from ice cream to sorbet to frozen drinks, we think it’s well worth the investment if you plan to use it for more than just ice cream.
What is the Ninja NC501 Creami Deluxe 11-in-1 Ice Cream Maker?
Product specifications
Churning Time: 2 to 5 min, depending on program | Maximum Yield: 1 pint | Dimensions: 12.01” L x 8.42” W x 16.69” H | Weight: 14.44 lb | Ease of Cleaning: Dishwasher-safe components
The Ninja NC501 Creami Deluxe 11-in-1 Ice Cream Maker is a countertop ice cream maker that can make ice cream, light ice cream, sorbet, gelato, frozen yogurt, Italian ice, creamiccinos (frozen coffee drinks), frozen drinks, slushies and milkshakes. It can make a wider range of desserts than other home ice cream makers because it calls for freezing the mixed ingredients for each recipe before churning rather than just freezing a bowl. In addition to increasing its versatility, freezing the ingredients also cuts down on churning times — all the recipes we prepared during testing took just seven minutes or fewer to process.
The Ninja Creami Deluxe also produced the firmest ice cream and other desserts among the ice cream makers we tested. The ice cream, sorbet and Italian ice we made were all scoopable right after processing, so we didn’t have to transfer them to the freezer for additional chilling. Best of all, the Ninja Creami Deluxe is both easy to use and clean. It has a very straightforward interface that requires just pressing a few buttons to make your chosen dessert, and all the components are dishwasher-safe, so cleanup is a breeze.
To see how the Ninja N501 Creami Deluxe compares to other products in its space, check out our reviews for the best ice cream makers.
Price and where to buy
The Ninja NC501 CREAMi Deluxe regularly retails for $249.99. It’s available at Amazon, Best Buy and Wayfair.
Why we like it
Impressive versatility
With 11 programs, including a mix-in function, the Ninja Creami Deluxe is the most versatile ice cream maker we tested. It can make many frozen treats, including ice cream, light ice cream, sorbet, gelato, frozen yogurt and Italian ice, as well as drinkable desserts like milkshakes, slushies and frozen drinks.
Excellent consistency and flavor across recipes
The Ninja Creami Deluxe’s versatility is especially impressive because all its desserts have excellent texture and flavor. It produced the only scoopable ice cream right after churning among the machines we tested, and the Respin function made it easy to get a dessert that was as creamy as we wanted.
Short churning times
Because the Ninja Creami Deluxe calls for freezing your ingredients solid before churning, all the recipes we prepared took five minutes or less. Occasionally, we used the Respin feature when a dessert wasn’t as creamy as we wanted after the initial processing or the Mix-In function to add chocolate chips, nuts, crumbled cookies or other mix-ins, but that typically only added a few minutes to the processing. None of the recipes we prepared took more than eight minutes to fully process.
Easy to use
Featuring a user-friendly design, the Ninja Creami Deluxe has a straightforward interface with a simple dial to choose your desired program, plus a few buttons for special functions. Best of all, it counts down how many minutes are left in your program’s cycle, so you always know when your dessert will be ready.
Easy to clean
After making your favorite frozen treats, the Ninja Creami Deluxe is quick and easy to clean. All the components are dishwasher-safe, but even hand-washing the parts took less than 10 minutes.
What we don’t like
Price
The Ninja Creami Deluxe costs nearly $250, so it’s one of the most expensive ice cream makers we tested. If you don’t make ice cream often or aren’t interested in its other functions, the price is very steep.
Prep involved
Making ice cream in the Ninja Creami Deluxe requires even more planning than ice cream makers with a freezer bowl because the ingredients must be mixed and frozen for 24 hours before churning. That means you can’t decide to make a batch of ice cream on the spur of the moment.
Capacity
The Ninja Creami Deluxe’s containers hold 24 ounces (or 3/4 quart). It comes with two containers, so you can make up to 1 1/2 quarts at a time, but if you want to make a larger batch, you’ll need to purchase additional pint containers.
Ninja NC501 Creami Deluxe 11-in-1 Ice Cream Maker setup
The Ninja Creami Deluxe came in a branded box, and all the components were secured in place with cardboard foam. The individual pieces were also wrapped in plastic to prevent scratches or other damage. After unpacking all the pieces, we washed the containers, outer bowl, lid and the paddle.
Once the components were cleaned and dried, we installed the paddle in the lid by pressing and holding the latch at the top of the outer bowl’s lid. We released the latch to secure the paddle in place. We then installed the container in the outer bowl and placed the lid on top, rotating it clockwise until it locked in place.
Overall, setting up the Ninja Creami Deluxe took less than six minutes.
Prep time
The Ninja Creami Deluxe is unique among the home ice cream makers we tested because, instead of freezing a bowl, we had to mix the ingredients and freeze them solid for 24 hours before churning our ice cream.
For example, when we made the vanilla ice cream recipe from the Ninja Creami recipe book, we mixed cream cheese, sugar, vanilla extract, heavy cream and milk until the sugar was fully dissolved. Then, we poured the mixture into one of the containers, placed the lid on it and froze the mixture for nearly 26 hours before processing it.
Ice cream makers with a freezer bowl also require some planning because the bowl must be frozen before making ice cream. However, with the Creami Deluxe, you have to mix and freeze the ingredients the day before. With the freezer bowl ice cream makers, we could just leave the bowl in the freezer when not in use, so we were always ready to make ice cream. For the Creami Deluxe, we had to plan the ice cream or other treat we wanted to make the day before, so we had enough time for it to freeze fully.
Purchasing additional containers can help since you can mix up multiple recipes and leave them in your freezer until you’re ready to make ice cream. Of course, because you’re buying them separately, the overall cost of the Creami Deluxe, which is already pretty pricey, increases.
Programs
Most home ice cream makers have a fairly simple design, so they can only make ice cream, sorbet, gelato and sometimes frozen yogurt. But the Ninja Creami Deluxe is incredibly versatile, offering 11 programs for ice cream and other frozen treats. It has settings for ice cream, light ice cream, sorbet, gelato, frozen yogurt, Italian ice, frozen coffee drinks, frozen drinks, slushies and milkshakes. Plus, it has a mix-in cycle, so you can fold in candy, cookies, nuts, cereal and more. The Creami Deluxe’s “lite” ice cream has become especially popular on social media because it’s ideal for making high-protein, low-sugar desserts, allowing you to enjoy ice cream as part of a healthy diet.
The Creami Deluxe’s versatility allowed us to prepare both scoopable and drinkable frozen desserts during testing. We made ice cream, light ice cream, sorbet and Italian ice, as well as slushies and frozen drinks. Both processes were nearly identical, as we had to freeze the ingredients for up to 24 hours before processing for scoopable and drinkable recipes. However, the max fill line (before freezing) on the pint containers differs for the scoopable and drinkable desserts, so we filled each to the corresponding mark. We also had to add more liquid to the slushies and frozen drinks before processing, so they had a sippable texture afterward.
All the recipes we made had the texture we expected based on their scoopable or drinkable designation. The ice cream, light ice cream, sorbet and Italian ice were easy to scoop, while we easily sipped the slushies and frozen drinks through a straw.
Churning time
While having to freeze the ingredients for 24 hours before processing means planning ahead with the Creami Deluxe, it also has a pretty big upside — it significantly reduces the processing or churning time.
When we made vanilla ice cream and light cookie butter ice cream, both recipes took just five minutes to process. In standard ice cream makers, such as the Cuisinart Pure Indulgence, or when using the KitchenAid Ice Cream Maker Attachment with a KitchenAid stand mixer, churning our ice cream usually took 20 to 25 minutes. The Italian ice setting on the Creami Deluxe took three minutes, while the sorbet setting needed just two minutes. Similarly, the frozen drink and slushie programs only took two minutes to process.
Overall, the Ninja Creami Deluxe had the fastest processing times of all the ice cream makers we tested, making it the most efficient.
Flavor and texture
During testing, we made vanilla ice cream, cookie butter light ice cream, lemon Italian ice, pineapple sorbet, a blue raspberry slushie and a pina colada with the Ninja Creami Deluxe. We were very impressed with the texture and flavor of all the desserts we made and found it produced the best consistency among all the ice cream makers we tested.
The vanilla ice cream was firm enough that we could easily scoop it into a bowl. It was still creamy, though, and tasted like our favorite store-bought vanilla ice cream. Our light cookie butter ice cream was a bit crumbly after its initial processing, so we respun it. Afterward, it was creamy but still firm enough to scoop. Even though it had less sugar than traditional ice cream, we thought it had an excellent taste profile, with just enough sweetness to match the spice of the cookie butter flavor.
We also made pineapple sorbet with a can of chopped pineapple in syrup and were surprised by how delicious this simple recipe turned out. It had a light, icy texture that was firm enough for us to scoop and was sweet enough even though we didn’t add any sugar. Next, we made lemon Italian ice with store-bought lemonade, which had a soft, slightly crumbly texture similar to the Italian ice we’ve gotten from local pizzerias. Its flavor was perfectly balanced between sweet and tart, making it a very refreshing treat.
The drinks we made in the Ninja Creami Deluxe were also big successes. We made a blue raspberry slushie with water and a blue raspberry-flavored Kool-Aid mix, which had an icy but still fluffy texture that was easy to sip through a straw. For our pina colada, we froze water and a bottled pina colada mix and then added light rum and pineapple juice to the container just before processing. The finished product was similar to the slushie, with a smooth, slightly icy consistency that we could sip through a straw.
Overall, we enjoyed all the recipes we made in the Creami Deluxe and were impressed with the consistency of its results for all the desserts and drinks we made.
Respin function
The Ninja Creami Deluxe makes getting the perfect texture for your ice cream and other treats easy with the Respin function. It allows you to process a recipe for additional time after your chosen preset program finishes to get a smooth, creamy texture.
We only needed to use the Respin setting once — when we made our light cookie butter ice cream. It was slightly crumbly after it finished the Lite ice cream cycle, so we respun it once. Afterward, it was as creamy as the vanilla ice cream we made previously, so it was easy to scoop.
Mix-in function
The Ninja Creami Deluxe has a Mix-in function that allows you to fold candy, cookies, nuts, frozen fruit and more into your frozen treat. We used the Mix-in setting to add cookie pieces to our cookie butter ice cream.
Unfortunately, it didn’t work quite as well as we hoped. While the cookie pieces were distributed pretty well throughout the ice cream, the Creami Deluxe nearly pulverized them, making them more like crumbs rather than cookie pieces. We had crumbled the cookies before we added them to the ice cream for mixing, but it probably would have worked better if we’d only broken the cookies in two and then added them to the ice cream.
How does it compare to other ice cream makers we’ve tested?
The Ninja Creami Deluxe is by far the most versatile ice cream maker we tested. While the Cuisinart Pure Indulgence, Breville Smart Scoop and KitchenAid Ice Cream Maker Attachment can all make ice cream, sorbet, gelato and frozen yogurt, they don’t offer options like light ice cream, Italian ice or slushies. Its capacity is somewhat limited compared to other machines, though — it comes with two 24-ounce containers, so it can make up to 1.5 quarts at a time. The Cuisinart Pure Indulgence and KitchenAid Ice Cream Maker Attachment can both produce 2 quarts of ice cream per batch.
The prep involved for the Cuisinart Pure Indulgence, Cuisinart ICE021 Ice Cream, Frozen Yogurt & Sorbet Maker and KitchenAid Ice Cream Maker Attachment includes freezing their bowls for at least 16 hours, while the Creami Deluxe calls for freezing the actual ingredients for up to 24 hours. Though this requires a bit more planning ahead, using ingredients that are frozen solid means the Creami Deluxe’s processing times are much shorter than the other ice cream makers. It took just five minutes to make vanilla ice cream in the Ninja, but 24 minutes with the KitchenAid Ice Cream Maker Attachment, 26 minutes in the Cuisinart ICE021 Ice Cream, Frozen Yogurt & Sorbet Maker and 48 minutes in the Breville Smart Scoop.
However, at over $200, the Ninja Creami Deluxe is one of the most expensive ice cream makers we tested. The Cuisinart Pure Indulgence, Cuisinart ICE021 Ice Cream, Frozen Yogurt & Sorbet Maker and KitchenAid Ice Cream Maker Attachment all cost under $100, so only the Breville Smart Scoop, which retails for $500, costs more.
Testing the Ninja NC501 Creami Deluxe 11-in-1 Ice Cream Maker
We started testing the Ninja NC501 Creami Deluxe by unboxing it and setting it up, recording how long the process took. We then put the machine to work by preparing six recipes — vanilla ice cream, cookie butter light ice cream, lemon Italian ice, pineapple sorbet, a blue raspberry slushie and a pina colada. As we made each recipe, we noted its processing time and the texture of each straight from the machine. We also transferred them to the freezer for additional chilling and observed any changes to the texture and consistency.
To see how well the Creami Deluxe would fit in most kitchens, we assessed its footprint on our testing area’s countertop and how easy it was to store in a cabinet or on a shelf. We also tested the machine’s noise levels using a handheld decibel meter while processing the various recipes. Finally, we washed all the components by hand and in the dishwasher. We noted how long it took to clean them manually and checked the parts for any signs of damage after they’d been in the dishwasher.
Should you get the Ninja NC501 Creami Deluxe 11-in-1 Ice Cream Maker?
The Ninja Creami Deluxe is the most versatile ice cream maker we tested, and we loved the texture and flavor of all the desserts we made. But it does cost over $200, so we don’t see it as a must-have for every kitchen. If you only make ice cream occasionally or aren’t interested in making other frozen treats, it’s probably not worth the investment.
However, if you’ll use most of its 11 functions, then it is an excellent addition to your kitchen. It’s also a dream come true for fans of high-protein or low-calorie ice cream because you can customize your own flavors with protein shakes and sugar-free pudding mixes, as seen on TikTok and other social media platforms. And if you don’t have a high-quality blender for making frozen drinks, you’ll also love the Creami Deluxe for making smooth, easy-to-sip pina coladas and margaritas.