8 Frozen Smoothie Mixes, Ranked Worst To Best

A smoothie a day keeps the doctor away. Okay, that's not the saying. But I think the blended beverage could easily take apple's place in the old adage. The whole point is that consuming foods with a respectable amount of nutritional value is a great way to nourish yourself, and when made correctly, smoothies certainly fit into this category. Chock-full of real fruits and vegetables, the frozen drinks provide natural fiber, vitamins, and minerals. Additionally, there's no shortage of supplemental ingredients you can toss in for an extra shot of protein, healthy fats, or simply for satiety. But the best part is that smoothies are every bit as tasty as they are versatile and nutritious. I bet you're craving one now, aren't you?

Grocery store brands know all of this, and that's why they've made smoothie drinking easier than ever with frozen blends and mixes. Names like Evive, Wyman's, and Sambazon have packaged up all that goodness into easy-to-make kits. In most cases, all you have to do is add the liquid of your choice, blend, and enjoy — sometimes you don't even have to blend. They sound like a dream for busy mornings or a wholesome afternoon pick-me-up. But I recently took a closer look at eight different options to see if they turn that dream into a reality. After blending up each brand, I judged the colorful spectrum of smoothies on their ingredients, nutritional facts, taste, and consistency. So, start your blenders, it's time to mix things up.

The Dole Crafted Smoothie Kit comes in a huge 1.75-pound package, which actually contains four individual pre-measured bags of mixed fruits. Bananas, mangos, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, and kiwis are all included — a fruit salad that is advertised to offer immune support.

It's ready to go, so all you have to do is throw the mix into a blender along with about 1½ to 2 cups of the milk or juice of your choice. But I'll tell you right now, you don't need that much liquid, especially if you like thicker smoothies. I dialed back on my serving of almond milk by over ½ a cup, and it worked out fine.

Despite its darker purple berry coloring, the main taste I got was a simple strawberry banana smoothie with a light tingle of kiwi on the tongue to follow it up. It's classic and drinkable, yet there's also nothing particularly special about it. Since it's just fruit and liquid, there are no added boosters or supplemental ingredients; I feel like I could spin up the same drink from any old bag of frozen fruit and probably for less money. On top of this, I also detected a grittiness as I sipped on this smoothie. It's the kind of texture that couldn't be solved by another splash of liquid or a longer blend time, and which cemented Dole's spot at the bottom for me.

Pitaya Foods offers more of a DIY smoothie. It sells packs of pure 100% organic red dragon fruit puree, then tells you how to turn it into a blended beverage. The back advises you to combine the puree with ½ cup of pineapple, ½ cup of mango, and then 6 to 8 ounces of juice. I went with a fresh-squeezed orange juice.

That dragon fruit hue is as vibrant as can be. It's the kind of color that made me worried about staining my blender, countertops, and even my mouth as I indulged — luckily, I managed to avoid all of the above. Immediately, I thought this smoothie had more going for it than the one from Dole. It's more unique with a smooth, thick consistency and a bright freshness. Where it comes up short is with the flavor itself. It doesn't taste bad, but it also doesn't taste like dragon fruit. By the time you add everything else in, it becomes a tropical blend, and you can hardly make out what's supposed to be the starring fruit at all. It seems like I could have ditched the Pitaya Foods packets altogether and ended up with the same result (just in a wildly different color). Perhaps another medley of smoothie add-ins would have showcased the dragon fruit better. But spun up in this recommended way, I wasn't overly impressed.

Kroger has its own store-brand smoothie kits that come in single-serving $2.29 bags (the packaging says it makes two 8-ounce smoothies, but really it's one normal glass-worth). There are several Smoothables varieties, but this purple blend focuses on dragon fruit, pineapple, mango, grapes, and banana. The bag specifically instructs to mix all the fruits with 1 cup of water and blend.

The shade ends up as more of a vibrant pink than a purple. The dragon fruit is clearly behind this coloring, but at the same time, it's the fruit you taste the least. You mostly get bananas and grapes on the palate, with some lighter tropical notes from the pineapple and mango. It's honestly refreshing, though I think combining it with milk or juice instead would have made it that much tastier. The fruit flavors get a touch washed out by the pure H20, making it more like a slushy than a smoothie.

The flavor profile here is admittedly similar to the smoothie from Pitaya Foods. It's the convenience factor of Kroger's blend and the price that make it better in my eyes, though. Seriously, we all know that a $2.29 smoothie is almost unheard of nowadays. That said, it's once again a medley of everyday frozen fruits like Dole's, and there are other frozen smoothie blends out there that are more intriguing and loaded up with more benefits.

Açaí berries are known as a superfood. Not to mention, they're still a buzzword in the smoothie world. They are bursting with antioxidants, healthy fats, vitamins, and minerals, and Sambazon is one of the few brands that fully harnesses their power.

I will warn you, this particular product does take a bit of extra work and planning. However, it's more worth it this time around than it was with Pitaya Foods' smoothie packs. Essentially, each of the four Sambazon blend packets contains an organic açaí puree that you have to combine with 1 cup of liquid and other ingredients of your choice. To keep things simple, I went with almond milk, a handful of blueberries, and mango chunks. It turned out thick, and the açaí makes the flavor. You get that edge of tartness, but it's leveled out by the fruit's chocolatey side and the natural sweetness of the other ingredients. Additionally, the consistency is almost sherbert-like, and I could tell the smoothie bowl version, using less liquid, would blend up to the perfect spoonable texture.

One downside of these smoothie packs is that they contain some added cane sugar. I also couldn't help but notice a strange aftertaste after every swig — possibly something to do with the guarana extract. Clean both of these things up, and this would have been one of my favorite smoothies.

Evive is a big name in the world of frozen smoothie mixes, and it even offers a "blender-free" smoothie. To turn its smoothie cubes into a beverage, you have the option to blend them with 7 ounces of water, milk, or juice, or you can let them melt for 20 minutes in your liquid of choice before shaking it up and drinking. I went with the traditional blending method since I already had my blender up and running, but it's nice to know this to-go option is available.

Of course, I had to try the brand's Sapphire option, which turns into a dazzling shade of light blue. According to the front of the package, its main ingredients are pineapple, lemon juice, and blue spirulina (where it gets that coloring from). However, the back reveals a host of other hidden add-ins — anything from apples to cauliflower. The flavor is understandably unique, though banana and coconut cream are most prominent. The thick smoothie also presents bright pops of orange zest, some whiffs of earthiness, and then also a light chalkiness throughout, which I didn't care for.

It's a good smoothie and a great way to add some extra fruit, veggies, and plant-based protein into your diet. I also like that it comes together more easily than some of the previous smoothies. But I'm sad to say I wasn't quite as enamored with it as I thought I'd be.

Wyman's Protein Blend smoothie packs have been around since 2024, but I'm now getting around to trying them. They come in flavors of Strawberry Banana, Wild Blueberry Crumble, and Banana Peanut Butter, which is the variety I chose.

Inside the bag, you'll find real banana slices mixed in with blocks made up of banana puree, date paste, peanut butter, peanut flour, milk protein concentrate, sugar, wheat flour, non-GMO soybean oil, and tapioca flour. It's a few more ingredients than I would typically like to see in a smoothie — a main reason it ranks below a few other brands — but it's hard to be too upset about it when it tastes this good. With a formula of 1 cup of blend to 1 cup of milk (I used almond), it's closer to a milkshake than a smoothie. It has that irresistible creaminess, and it's ultra-rich thanks to the salty peanut butter. I was also surprised that the bananas truly did taste ripe. They weren't bland or starchy, and they created a nice balance with the pronounced nuttiness.

Did I also mention that if you make it with a cup of skim milk, one smoothie offers you 22 grams of protein? That's a game changer, and the brand's other protein blend flavors offer a similar protein count at 18 grams each. I definitely have my sights set on the Wild Blueberry Crumble bag next.

I found the Blendtopia brand at Fresh Thyme Market and noticed that each of its smoothie kits serves a different purpose. The orange bag promises to help you glow, while the green bag mentions detox. And this blue pouch? It supposedly gives you an extra boost of energy. I didn't experience any kind of dramatic jolt following my first few gulps, but it did wake up my taste buds.

To make it, I whirred up the entire contents of the bag with about 12 ounces of almond milk in the blender. My first thought was that it would be entirely too much milk, but it blended up to a satisfying medium-thick consistency and to a deep lavender shade. The initial flavor profile is dominated by coconut, banana, and a hint of cinnamon. It's not a juicy, fruit-forward smoothie but rather a rich one that's also given a decadent twist thanks to the addition of cacao. Blueberries give it that purple color, and pineapple provides a fleeting glimpse of tangy sweetness.

I would drink this for fun, because it tastes good. But the best news is that it also comes with a wealth of benefits. It's a good source of fiber and vitamin C. Plus, it's made from all organic ingredients, including maca, chia seeds, and flax seeds. Only one other smoothie could beat that with similar accolades and an even better taste.

The Kroger Simple Truth Smoothie Cubes were love at first sip. It was exactly what I was hoping for in the Evive smoothie, but it never quite got there. Honestly, I think Simple Truth (shamelessly) modeled its cubes directly after the name brand. They also come with a blender-free option, and the ingredient list is shockingly similar as well. Simple Truth doesn't include quite as many add-ins, but core components like coconut cream, banana, pineapple, lemon juice, blue spirulina extract, and even cauliflower are all accounted for.

It spins into the shade of blue moon ice cream, and the taste is nearly as indulgent. Coconut cream and banana are once again at the helm of the palate, but compared to Evive, this smoothie is significantly smoother and more velvety — leaning into dessert territory, as the Wyman's Protein Blend did. At the same time, it also plays more on those other fruity notes of pineapple, lemon, and even apple.

In terms of nutrition, the cubes are made with all organic ingredients. Anyone who shops at Kroger knows that's Simple Truth's entire schtick. It's free from artificial flavors, artificial sweeteners, and synthetic colors. Plus, it's chock-full of probiotics that are meant to support gut health. With both flavor and function on its side, Simple Truth landed as my favorite frozen smoothie blend, and its green bag for immune health and mocha protein cubes are next on my list to try.

I tried all eight brands of frozen smoothie kits back to back, so my Nutribullet blender got quite the workout. One of the first things I noticed about each one was how easy it was to throw together. The main point of these products is the convenience — to do the hard work for you, so you don't have to wander all over the grocery store hunting down various fruits, add-ins, and supplements. So, I loved mixes that required nothing more than your liquid of choice before blending. Pour, blend, done. More involved blends like the ones from Sambazon or Pitaya Foods weren't as desirable.

I also took a closer look at ingredients, favoring recipes that went beyond just standard frozen fruit, additionally throwing in fixings like veggies, chia seeds, or peanut butter — ingredients that not only enhanced the flavor but also upped the nutritional value. Organic blends were also a plus.

After these details, it came down to the texture and overall flavor. For texture, I wanted something with thickness, and that went down smooth. For flavor, a great smoothie should taste like a delicious frozen dessert that happens to come with health benefits, and there are a few options stocked in grocery store freezers that manage to pull that off.