This Ninja Slushi dupe costs $190 less and is a sure-fire way to impress your Thanksgiving guests

More often than not, Ninja dupes let me down, so my expectations were low when I unboxed the Inoviva Slushie Machine. It is, without a doubt, supposed to be a Ninja Slushi dupe. Everything from its appearance to its name screams Slushi to me.

Thankfully, Inoviva has priced its Slushie Machine competitively. It’s just $179, compared to the Ninja Slushi’s MSRP of $369. When I found this out, I almost jumped for joy. So you’re telling me the Inoviva Slushie Machine looks, acts, and churns like a Ninja… without the price tag? Is it too good to be true?

No, the Inoviva Slushie Machine isn’t perfect — there’s no “time remaining” countdown, and it has a habit of over-churning some drinks — but it’s pretty darn close, and well worth considering given it’s $190 cheaper than the Ninja Slushi. Find out the full story in this Inoviva Slushie Machine review.

Inoviva Slushie Machine review: Cheat sheet

• Who is it for? Families or Christmas party hosts who want to impress for less
• What does it do well? So affordable and very usable
• What are its weaknesses? There’s no way of knowing how long until your drinks are ready, but this is a Ninja Slushi issue, too
• Anything else to know? It’s $190 cheaper than the Ninja Slushi

Inoviva Slushie Machine review: Specs

Inoviva Slushie Machine review: Price & availability

There are two sizes of the Inoviva Slushie Machine, but they work in the same way. Inoviva makes the machine in two different sizes: 68oz (S1.1, S1.2) and 88oz (S2.1, S2.2). The model I personally tested is the S1.2, which is an upgraded model of the original S1.1. Likewise, the S2.2 is the upgraded 2025 version of the older S2.1 model. As a result, I’d only recommend getting the S1.2 or S2.2, as I haven’t used the original .1 hardware, so can’t speak for its proficiency.

The Inoviva Slushie Machine is $179 on Amazon U.S. for the 68oz version (S1.2) and $329 on Amazon U.S. for the 88oz version (S2.2). In the U.K., you’re looking at £329 for the S1.2, which is ridiculously overpriced. Inoviva’s U.K. website has the S1.2 listed for £199, though, so I’ll take that as the official MSRP.

In the U.K., the 2.6L version S2.2 is just £259, which is a much better deal than the S1.2. I’m really not sure why the pricing is so skewed on the U.K. side, but if I were you, I’d grab the S1.2 on sale, or the S2.2 at full price.

There’s no doubt in my mind: the Inoviva Slushie is a dupe of the Ninja Slushi. The Slushi has an MSRP of $369 on Amazon U.S. It’s £349 from Amazon U.K. for the 88-ounce model. Ninja also makes a Slushi Max, which is 150 ounces — and also $499 from Amazon U.S.

Inoviva Slushie Machine review: Design

The Inoviva Slushie Machine looks pretty much identical to the Ninja Slushi. Like the Slushi, it has a mixing cylinder and a spout at the front. There’s a drip tray beneath the spout, so don’t worry if your kids are prone to messes. However, the drip tray doesn’t connect properly to the machine body — it’s more like an attachment that rests underneath rather than slots or clicks into place — so be mindful of moving it accidentally.

The drip tray does kind of click into place, but it’s not as secure as I’d like. I would have liked to see this slot tray actually snap into place, like an espresso machine drip tray. Overall, though, the Inoviva Slushie Machine feels surprisingly well-made given its budget price. And it could easily go head-to-head with the Ninja Slushi in terms of appearance.

The slushie maker itself has a few moving parts: the mixing cylinder, a stirrer blade, an evaporator, and a condensation catcher. You need to clean all of these parts really well after each use, which I’ll discuss in more detail later, but I found the parts easy to maintain and use.

I also love the dispensing handle. It feels really fun and whimsical to use. It’s like I’m a little kid again, going to the movie theater or the gas station on a long road trip. Wait — I just figured out why the dispensing handle is so novel to me. I feel like I’m in the Kwik-E-Mart.

The act of dispensing the slushie is by far my favorite aspect of the Inoviva Slushie Maker. It’s really, really fun, and everyone else in the office had a wonderful time, too. Watching all my colleagues grin and clap like little kids as they poured themselves a glass of Dr. Pepper slushie was incredibly heartwarming.

This makes me think it would be great for families, too. I can imagine kids loving this product. It’s certainly healthier than traditional slushies, too. Obviously, you need to fill it with 5% sugar (which, as I’ll discuss in the ‘Performance’ section below, is a lot more than you might think), but if you’re slushi-fying fruit juice, this is all healthy sugar.

One of the most kid-friendly parts is the control panel. It’s a bright, LED touchscreen, with easy-to-use buttons. You can adjust the thickness using this screen, and it displays moving lines while churning and then a snowflake once the slushie is ready.

However, there’s no “time remaining” or “percent complete” alert on the screen, so it’s quite literally a guessing game. I’ll discuss this more in the ‘Performance’ section below, but I think this should have been included on the touchscreen.

Inoviva Slushie Machine review: Performance

The Inoviva Slushie Machine operates at 60dB, which is 20dB louder than its advertised volume, but still quiet.

I love the range of slushie modes — ‘slushie’, ‘frappe’, ‘cocktail’, ‘wine’, and ‘milkshake’ — but there’s one main thing holding the machine back. There’s no way of knowing how long until your drinks are ready, which is majorly annoying if you’re serving guests. I got really frustrated waiting for certain drinks to be ready, especially when I could see that they were slushified, and just gave up waiting for the machine to finish.

I would recommend using your common sense and just turning off the machine when you deem your drinks to be ready. Don’t wait for it to beep. You might die of thirst — or boredom.

One final note before we get into it: All your drinks must be at least 5% sugar. The lower the sugar, the lower the thickness. This isn’t a criticism because that’s simply the nature of slushie machines. There’s no ulterior motive that slushie machine companies want your teeth to fall out or anything. It’s simple food science. Sugar is a natural antifreeze, so it prevents the water particles from freezing too quickly, resulting in slush.

I had to add more sugar when I was making my mocha frappe — literal tablespoons of the stuff — and my diet pop didn’t work for obvious reasons. You need full sugar here.

Unfortunately, that means those worried about sugar consumption but hungering for icy treats are best off elsewhere. I’d recommend a traditional ice cream maker that can make sugar-free desserts, like the Ninja Creami.

Also, if you’re making cocktails, you need your drink to be less than 16% alcohol and 5% sugar. So, you need something sweet like Irish Cream (more on that later…) or pre-mixed high-sugar sangria.

Slushie

I made two types of slushie: a 100% fruit juice slushie using apple and mango juice, and a slightly naughtier Dr. Pepper slushie.

To make the fruit juice slushie, I filled the mixing cylinder to the ‘Max’ line (so, 68 ounces) and opted for maximum thickness. This took 36 minutes to complete automatically, and I had a delicious, smooth, and icy slushie. Here’s a photo.

Afterwards, I made a soda slushie with Dr. Pepper. I added 68 ounces of full-fat Dr. Pepper and selected the highest thickness. After an hour and 10 minutes, the machine still hadn’t “finished” churning. I was perplexed, and also parched.

I could see with mine own eyes that the slushie was ready, so I made the executive decision to just start drinking it. Here’s a photo so you can see what I mean when I say “ready”.

As you can see, the slushie was most certainly slushy-fied. It was really, really delicious. The ice chunks were all evenly sized, and there were no overly icy patches. You can see a little divot of liquid, but that was made by a spoon, not by uneven ice texture.

Frappe

I made two frappes on the Inoviva Slushie Machine: A mocha frappe (major fail), and a matcha latte frappe using Inoviva’s recipe (delicious).

First, the mocha frappe. I adapted one of Inoviva’s recipes for this. I added two cups of black coffee, four cups of sweetened oat milk, and eight tablespoons of high-sugar hot chocolate powder.

Unfortunately, this was still not enough sugar. The machine stopped six times, then displayed the “E3” error code, which means you need to add more sugar. I added an ungodly amount of sugar — eight tablespoons — and then turned the slushie machine back on.

Thankfully, this concoction was able to be slushified, but it did not taste good. Maybe if you have a major sweet tooth, but not for me. I only had two sips before I threw it away.

I learned from my mistakes and opted to follow Inoviva’s recipe to the T next. I made a matcha latte using the recipe in the user manual — 2 ¾ cups pre-made matcha latte mix, 2 tablespoons of heavy cream — and this was utterly perfect.

Not going to lie, I was skeptical as the recipe didn’t call for added sugar, but there must have been enough sugar or some other anti-freeze component in the matcha mix.

It took 57 minutes for the machine to officially complete the slushification, but the drink looked ready from around the 30-minute mark. As I said earlier, I would just use your common sense and start dispensing when you think it looks done — it probably is.

Milkshake

To make a milkshake, I added 4 cups of premade chocolate milk into the mixing cylinder and topped it off with one cup of 2%. After 22 minutes, the machine beeped to alert me that it was ready.

This drink was delicious. The ice was evenly distributed, smooth, and there was a pleasant layer of microfoam (what is this, a cafe?). My colleagues and I devoured this.

Milkshakes would definitely be a big hit with kids at a slumber party, or even adults at a Christmas party… with booze. I’ll discuss cocktails now.

Cocktails

I made an Irish Cream cocktail in the Inoviva Slushie Machine — it took a massive one hour and 55 minutes to churn. I added about half a cup of milk and a quarter cup of heavy cream, which helped the drink slushify. The liquor itself was 15% alcohol, so almost at the machine’s max.

I tried to churn neat Irish Cream too, but it never reached a slushie texture. You need to combine the drink with something else for it to work. Again, this isn’t a con; it’s just simple food science. Alcohol acts as an antifreeze.

As you can see, the drink isn’t as thick as others. This is because of the alcohol content. Alcohol doesn’t freeze, so it’s unfair of me to ask a slushie machine to make completely icy alcoholic beverages.

Even so, the texture was great, and this was the scene-stealer of my testing. If you’re hosting Christmas parties, I am 100% positive that the Inoviva Slushie Machine will wow your guests. If you need some more tips, we’ve got loads of Ninja Slushi advice to help you out.

Inoviva Slushie Machine review: Storage & maintenance

Considering that it’s got so many moving parts, I was surprised to find the Inoviva Slushie Machine relatively easy to clean. There’s a ‘Clean’ mode, which basically pulls water through the machine to remove any slushie residue.

I would recommend using this mode to clean between uses, as the mixing cylinder is quite hard to clean by hand. Thankfully, though, the mixing cylinder is dishwasher safe, so you can run a couple of cleaning cycles through the machine and then throw it in the dishwasher. Just to be safe, though, the machine also comes with two cleaning brushes that get into all those little crevices.

If you’re storing the machine between uses, you must clean it properly. It has several hidden spots — like under the evaporator — that are easy to forget about.

If you’re not storing the machine between uses, though, be prepared for it to take up a reasonable amount of space in your kitchen. It’s a pretty massive 21 inches long and tall, so you’ll need a big countertop or unit. I wouldn’t recommend this for small kitchens, nor would I recommend the Ninja Slushi. They’re just too cumbersome and one-note to earn their place.

Inoviva offers a 1-year warranty as standard, which is the same as Ninja.

Inoviva Slushie Machine review: How does it compare?

There’s only one product I can really compare to: the Ninja Slushi. As I mentioned above, the Inoviva wins in the price department — it’s just $179 compared to the Slushi’s $369 price tag.

In our review of the Ninja Slushi, we mentioned that it took half an hour to slushify soda. While the Inoviva didn’t alert me that the slushie was officially “ready”, I could see that it was finished after about forty minutes, even if the machine didn’t think so.

This is my only major downside of the Inoviva Slushie Machine. You need to keep an eye on it and use your common sense rather than rely on its automatic completion alert. More often than not, my drinks were finished after about forty minutes, even if the machine itself didn’t think so.

Users on Reddit claim that spiked (alcoholic) slush can take about an hour in the Ninja Slushi, which is much quicker than the Irish Cream cocktail I made in the Inoviva. Even so, this was a 15% drink (almost Inoviva’s limit). if you’re prepared to wait, I think saving your $$$ for the Inoviva over the Ninja makes the most logical sense.

My only other downside of the machine is the lack of a “time remaining” countdown or “percent complete” display. This is the case with the Ninja Slushi too, so the Inoviva is a better value product in my opinion.

Inoviva Slushie Machine review: Verdict

The Inoviva Slushie Machine is a quirky, feel-good product that quickly became a favorite in the Tom’s Guide testing lab. It’s great for making slushies out of pretty much anything (as long as it’s full of that sweet, sweet sugar), and is so easy, even your kids could use it.

Obviously, though, it’s not perfect. On top of having no “time remaining” display, it’s a one-note machine capable of doing one single task. There’s no way around that: Inoviva has made a slushie machine, not a slushie-slash-ice-cream-slash-sorbet machine.

But… Is there anything wrong with that? It’s much cheaper than Ninja’s version, and does the exact same thing. I’m a huge fan of the Inoviva Slushie Machine.