I tested the Ninja Creami and its top rivals to find the best ice cream maker for National Ice Cream Day

Samantha Mangino

Read our full review of the Ninja Creami Scoop and Swirl.

The ultimate at-home instant ice cream maker is the Ninja Creami Scoop and Swirl. It builds off Ninja's existing Creami technology to spin and churn your homemade pints of ice cream, froyo, and fruit whip. However, the Swirl also has a soft serve dispenser for serving up creamy, fluffy swirls of ice cream. It's the most impressive Creami for the hosts with the most, but it's also just straight-up fun.

Having tested both the Deluxe Creami and the Scoop and Swirl, the latter is my preferred ice cream maker from Ninja. Its ease of use is exceptional. To use, mix up your concoctions and let the pints freeze for 24 hours. Once frozen, put them in the Creami, where a blade spins through the ice cream to give it a fluffy, smooth texture.

Any model in the Creami lineup is great, but the Scoop and Swirl is the best because it nails texture. The Swirl manages to get more into the pints when spinning them for a light and spreadable treat. When making my favorite chocolate hazelnut frozen yogurt, it only needed one spin in the Swirl to get the perfect texture. Previously, when I used the Ninja Creami Deluxe, I needed to spin the ice cream several times to get the perfect whipped consistency.

My caution to those interested in a Ninja Swirl is that it's expensive and quite large, occupying a lot of counter space. However, for an ice cream aficionado, it'll be a worthwhile investment. And word of warning: it's so loud, but that will be the case for any Ninja Creami model you go for.

Read our full review of the Nutribullet Chill.

The Nutribullet Chill ice cream maker is a worthy rival of the Ninja Creami. It whips up perfectly creamy, smooth ice cream with no icy or watery texture. Be prepared for noise, as it's the loudest ice cream maker I've tested, but it's a nice option for people in smaller spaces, too.

Since instant ice cream makers are essentially blenders, it's no surprise that Nutribullet has entered the arena, and I'm so glad they did. The motor base saves precious counter square footage and is smaller than a stand mixer. It features two pint containers for mixing up all your favorite treats.

It's more basic than the Creami with just five preprogrammed settings: ice cream, sorbet, gelato, smoothie bowl, and frozen yogurt. But what it does, it does well. It turned out to be exquisitely fluffy, dairy-free ice cream with no icy texture. It nails texture on the first try, too, without requiring any re-spins to create creamy, smooth ice creams and froyos. That's for the best, too, as it doesn't have a respin setting.

Unlike the Creami, there's no option to respin, which usually is a shorter processing cycle. That means if you want to reprocess it, then you'll need to do a whole new cycle. Luckily, nothing I made in the Nutribullet needed extra time.

Another notable setting that's missing is an option for mix-ins, which even our budget pick has. For the Nutribullet Chill, any desired mix-ins need to be blended into the base or added after processing.

However, if you want a straightforward ice cream maker that's easy to use and clean (all the parts are dishwasher safe!), the Nutribullet is an exciting mid-priced option.

Read our full review of the Cuisinart FastFreeze.

Cuisinart's FastFreeze has a ton of promise. Its design makes it exceptionally easy to use and store. So, for apartment dwellers who've held off on buying an ice cream machine due to space constraints, the FastFreeze is finally a device designed for small spaces. Plus, it's just $99.95, a fraction of the price as the other ice cream makers on this list.

If the Ninja Creami and Nutribullet Chill are like classic blenders, the Cuisinart FastFreeze is an immersion blender. It requires a bit of manual labor as you have to push it down to process the ice cream, but it works significantly faster than other models, plus you can reprocess it easily.

The results of the FastFreeze are not nearly as good as the other two options in this guide. The FastFreeze makes ice cream that is not as smooth and have any ice bits to them as if it's not getting enough air into it. While ice cream made in the FastFreeze is edible, it's not as creamy or light.

But it might be a worthwhile sacrifice if you're tight on space. The FastFreeze breaks into two pieces, which makes storing it exceptionally easy. It fit tidily in my kitchen cabinets and didn't need to be kept on the counter like the Creami or Nutribullet. It's also best for those seeking out a single-serve option, as its max capacity is 8 ounces.

Word of warning, though, it's difficult to clean. The pints are dishwasher safe, but the blade is awkward to hand-wash.

The Ninja Creami, the Nutribullet Chill, and the Cuisinart FastFreeze all work the same way. You freeze your ice cream mix ahead of time, then process it in a machine where a blade spins through it, simultaneously whipping air into the mix, breaking up the ice crystals, and creating the soft texture you expect from ice cream.

This differs from a traditional ice cream maker, which simultaneously chills and churns a custard base. Churning incorporates air into the base to stop large ice crystals from forming. With instant ice cream makers, the churning occurs after the freezing process.

Above all, each machine was evaluated on the texture of the ice cream produced. We wanted, smooth and creamy ice cream that didn't seem icy or melted.

Each ice cream maker was tested with at least three different types of bases: dairy ice cream, dairy-free ice cream or sorbet, and frozen yogurt. We assessed how the ice cream makers processed each and if it was more successful with one type over others.

A user-friendly design was important as instant ice cream makers are made for everyday use. Preprogrammed settings were considered too. Plus, we assessed how easy each ice cream maker was to clean and if it had dishwasher-safe parts.

Overall value was considered too. We wanted ice cream makers at a variety of price points. For more expensive models, we expected exceptional performance and special features.