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Sipping a frozen drink feels like the very essence of a good time. Whether it’s a thick milkshake or a frozen margarita, few people turn down a cold, velvety beverage thick enough to support a straw upright. The appeal seems simple – toss ingredients into a blender, press a button, and enjoy.

But blending drinks in batches can keep a host stuck in the kitchen for hours; why can’t we have a perpetual corkscrew of frozen goodness like a 7-Eleven Slurpee machine? The original Ninja Slushi went viral for delivering precisely this when it arrived in 2024, but it had two key limitations: it could only spin 72oz at a time, and freeze drinks up to 16% alcohol. The new Slushi Twist promises to summon police to your summer barbecues with capacity up to 144oz, stiffer drinks up to 20% alcohol, and mixing them together in a soft-serve-inspired swirl.

As we found out when we tried it, replicating those picture-perfect marketing renderings proved nearly impossible. Skip the Twist if you want Instagram-worthy visuals, but grab it for what it does well: blending fantastic, bar-quality drinks without much fuss.

What can I make a frozen beverage out of?

As easy as the Twist is to use, you cannot simply start pouring juices and liquor into it and return to the frozen screwdriver.

In order to get the most effective use from the Slushi Twist, you’ll need to know a bit about how sugar and alcohol affect the freezing process. Both sugar and alcohol act like antifreeze by lowering water’s freezing point. Without enough, your drink freezes stiff, but with too much, it won’t freeze at all. The Twist’s dashboard can alert you when a drink has too little sugar or too much alcohol, by taking your drink’s temperature, but you’ll get the best results if you start with a recipe that meets both requirements.

Most recipes call for liquids in volumes, but the amount of sugar in those liquids is measured in grams. Each clear plastic vessel on the Ninja requires at least 16oz of liquid to work and the Twist requires at least 4.5% sugar by weight to make a liquid slushy – so that’s at least 22 grams of sugar at minimum. (Lightly sweetened iced teas, unflavored coconut water and fruit juices such as apple, pineapple or orange all have enough sugar in them to achieve slushiness.)

If you’re trying to slush an iced coffee or diet beverage, you’ll have to add your own sugar. Ninja suggests adding 4 tbsp of simple syrup to the minimum 16oz of unsweetened liquid needed to make a slushy. Because the Twist’s refrigerated core gets colder than previous models, you can make stronger drinks – alcohol lowers the freezing point of water, but allows the mix to get even colder. You can add up to 4oz of liquor to a 16-oz batch, resulting in a Mudslide that’s 20% ABV.

If this feels confusing or is far too much calculation for you, Ninja provides recipes for both alcoholic and nonalcoholic drinks. Once you get the sugar and alcohol levels right, the machine becomes remarkably close to set-it-and-forget-it. Ninja’s manual also explains how to adapt blender recipes by reducing the amount of ice. (And if you need, put this on a Post-It and stick it to the machine: The keys to remember are a minimum of 4.5% sugar, no more than 20% alcohol, and how many ounces your batch is.)

What’s it like using the Slushi Twist?

The Ninja is pretty hefty, at about 35lb and roughly 17.5in x 12in x 16in, so it takes up a fair amount of counter space. (It fits under most upper cabinets, save for the handles, but you might need to pull it forward to access the two beverage vessels.)

Once you fill one or both vessels, you have choices. To run each vessel independently, use the Slush Assist button; if you want to stagger them, or start them together, use the Dual Slush Assist button. The plastic paddles then spin around the refrigerated core, scraping the freezing mixture from its surface like an ice-cream maker. A tip: start with cold ingredients to speed up the process. A basic 16-oz batch can finish in about 20 minutes, while a warm 48-oz one can take up to an hour. And if you need to walk away from the thing while it makes your margaritas, Ninja says you can run the Twist for up to 12 consecutive hours.

A temperature probe in the refrigerated core monitors the mixture during the first 15 minutes and will alert you if it needs adjustments. If the drink is too warm, the Twist reminds you to add some sugar; if it gets too cold, it will tell you to add water to dilute it. When these indicators came on a couple of times during testing, I used a squeeze bottle of simple syrup or water to make adjustments. At any point, you can yank the dispensing lever into a small cup or spoon to taste test once the machine is on.

Most 16- to 20-oz batches took about 20 to 40 minutes to reach a slushy consistency. You can watch the texture change as the liquid freezes against the refrigerated core and the paddles scrape it away. A progress bar indicates when the Twist thinks the drink has reached the right temperature, but if you want a little more control, you can make the mix stiffer or looser with two snowflake buttons on the front. Usually I ended up warming the drink up a bit for a smoother pour. (The colder the drink is, the more likely it is to fall out of the machine in clumps.)

Use a wide straw designed for milkshakes or smoothies. A narrow straw can turn drinking a thick slushy into a workout. Also, don’t assume both vessels will finish at the same time, even if you load them with the same drink at the same temperature.

Pouring a beverage from the Slushi Twist

You probably will not recreate the dazzling, distinct layers Ninja shows in marketing the Twist. Ninja’s own how-to videos offer a more realistic picture of what you’ll get. Combining two drinks in one glass looks more like a parfait made of slushy clumps, rather than smooth, distinct layers sliding down the glass. Getting two drinks to exactly the same consistency, however, takes more fussing than most people will want to deal with. A machine that makes frozen drinks easier shouldn’t require you to spend an inordinate amount of time turning them into glassware art.

The good news is that dispensing the drinks is easy, even for kids. The handles pull down easily and a turntable for your cup spins to combine flavors. You can leave drinks in the machine to churn, but if you add in dairy, Ninja suggests finishing the cycle within 30 minutes of the Twist’s ready light turning on to reduce the risk of unseemly foam.

Step back and enjoy the party

If you like to entertain but don’t want to spend the party working a blender like a smoothie-shop employee or really enjoy frozen drinks but can never figure out the right ingredient ratios, the Twist is for you. The Ninja’s refrigeration system keeps drinks cold, so you can prepare a large batch ahead of time, like a professional bartender, then top off the Twist’s two chambers as needed to keep the drinks ready to pour throughout the party.

Once you dial in the recipe – especially the amount of sugar – and press a button, it keeps churning and maintains the drink’s consistency, so guests can serve themselves. That makes it particularly useful for gatherings where you want to offer more than one frozen drink without constantly blending, pouring, and refilling. Unlike a blender, it turns frozen drinks into more of a set-it-and-forget-it affair, letting you spend more time with your guests.