Best Smoothie Mixes, According to Our Taste Test

What’s the best smoothie mix? It’s the best way to actually enjoy eating a bunch of fruit and veggies in the morning. Why? Because there are two types of people: people who genuinely like kale and people that aren’t filthy liars. No matter which camp you fall into, these six smoothie mixes are for you. 

I like most vegetables, but it’s hard even for me to get enough fruits and leafy greens to offset that whole “always needing a nap in the middle of the day” thing I’ve got going on. This is, of course, until some genius decided to shove it all in a blender and drink it, and so smoothie mixes were born. Stuff probably happened in between, but I’m not a historian. What I do know is that if you’re short on time or just aren’t a fan of eating your greens, frozen smoothie mixes are great for blending taste and nutrition. Get it? Blending?

With frozen smoothie mixes, everything is pretty much ready to go. They already contain a variety of produce, and many also include bonuses like protein powder or seeds for added flavor and nutrition. The options come in a variety of flavors, save you the awkward eye contact you always make while you’re thumping on watermelons, and eliminate the need to wander around the produce section collecting your assortment that will inevitably all go bad at different times,   

I tried eleven of the most popular smoothie mixes on the market. To conduct my taste test, I followed package ratios of smoothie mix to liquid, using water as opposed to a milk or milk alternative. I wanted all of the smoothie mixes to be pure, vulnerable, unable to cower behind the creaminess or flavor of another liquid. 

I found six of the best smoothie mixes that will have you running to put a Vitamix on your wedding registry, then to Craigslist to find someone that’ll fake marry you for the gifts. Here’s the best mix for smoothies to fill your freezer.

Best Green Smoothie

I’ve always been skeptical of the green juice craze, but I have to say that if they taste like the smoothie I made with this frozen smoothie mix, I kinda get it. While this blends into a woefully unappetizing, greenish gray color, it smells divine. The pineapple comes through in both aroma and taste, and I stand by my initial note of “surprisingly tasty in spite of all of the healthy stuff.” While it does get a lot of sweetness from the fruit (pineapple, banana, and lemon), it does have a grittiness to it and an aftertaste that, while not overwhelming, isn’t exactly tasty. That being said, if you must eat kale (along with spinach, wheatgrass, hemp seeds, celery, and a touch of cayenne), this is one of the best smoothie mixes to get the job done.

Credit: Liv Averett / Blendtopia

Rating:

7/10

Sporks

Best Color

I don’t know how much Evive’s marketing and packaging team is getting paid, but they need a raise immediately. Their smoothie mixes came pre-blended, pre-portioned, and refrozen in triangles that puts Evive a step ahead of their competitors in terms of convenience. This mix of banana, apple, pineapple, cauliflower (!!), coconut cream, raisins, blue spirulina, and more (there are a lot of ingredients in here), blends up to be a beautiful blue color, and has the best, smoothest texture of the Evive products. It tastes delicious but a little mysterious, perhaps because I kept thinking I was tasting orange but yet it was so blue (there’s orange zest in the mix). Confusion aside, I’m happy that no one flavor came out swinging, especially because it includes cauliflower and I was really relieved to not feel like I was drinking cauliflower.

Credit: Liv Averett / Evive Nutrition

Rating:

8/10

Sporks

Best Superfood Smoothie

At first, this smoothie mix tastes very berry and banana forward, and has a delicious earthy nuttiness that I thought at first must be cinnamon. Upon finding that there was no cinnamon, I took a lot of sips and went down a lot of rabbit holes trying to figure out which of the ingredients (banana, blueberry, pineapple, coconut, chia seeds, flax seeds, cacao, or maca) was giving this smoothie that wonderfully complex flavor. I learned a lot about superfoods and antioxidants before concluding that it’s probably the maca, which apparently has a “nutty, butterscotch-like taste.” Now that my targeted ads are all for hot yoga and co-ops, I guess I’ll have a lot of places to share my newfound knowledge of flax, and, honestly, recommend this smoothie because, heck yeah, I’d buy it again.

Credit: Liv Averett / Blendtopia

Rating:

8.5/10

Sporks

Best Everyday Smoothie

While the flavor is not earth-shatteringly delicious or disruptively ingenious, it tastes really good—and, in my personal opinion, the best smoothie mix for everyday drinking. It’s heavy on the cherry and grape flavors, but it’s real grape. None of that grape-flavored disgrace to the fruit here. There’s a tiny bit of chalkiness (possibly from the baobab powder or the moringa powder) and there are some brown flecks presumably from the pumpkin seeds that are a tiny bit unsightly amidst the lovely lavender color, but the flavor makes up for it.

Credit: Liv Averett / Evive Nutrition

Rating:

9/10

Sporks

Best for Kids

This is the best smoothie mix for the parent who’s blending up a pitcher for the kids that are about to bust through the door after summer soccer practice. The bag is bright, inviting, family-friendly, and the taste follows suit. Without any flax or spinach or protein to add bitterness or chalkiness, and a big wallop of pineapple at the forefront, this thing tastes like drinking sunshine. A mix of mango, apple, pineapple, banana, and spinach, it’s the sweetest of all the frozen smoothie mixes. I’d happily have this as my dessert any day.

Credit: Liv Averett / Amazon

Rating:

9.5/10

Sporks

Best of the Best

It’s worth noting that I tasted three Evive packs, and all three made the top. Even though Evive built itself a nice little reputation with me during this tasting, I had a hard time believing that anything would beat the cup of Dole sweetness that brought me back to summers of my childhood. I’m happy to say that this was love at first sip. The taste is somehow like strawberry got supercharged without tasting artificial. But it’s not just strawberry, it’s strawberry with a cast of supporting fruits and vegetables like apples, dates, raspberries, beets, and whatever haskap berries are. Every sip I took—and I took a lot—was bright but deep at the same time. This is the best frozen smoothie mix of all the smoothie mixes we tried.

Credit: Liv Averett / Evive Nutrition

Rating:

7.5/10

Sporks

Other smoothie mixes we tried: Dole Protein Kick, Pitaya Foods Smoothie Dragon Fruit, Live Pure The Superfood Drago, Seal the Seasons Strawberry Banana, Seal the Seasons Super Green

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