Instant Pot Ace blender can cook and pulverize

The Ace is a $99 blender from the Canadian company most known for its line of electric pressure cookers.

There's a heating element in the base of the blending pitcher that can cook food as you blend it.

The stainless steel blades are built into the bottom of the pitcher, so you can't remove them. 

The Ace's base will look familiar to anyone who already owns an Instant Pot pressure cooker. There are buttons for cold blending programs (smoothie, crushed ice, ice cream and nut/oat milk) and hot blending programs (purée, soy milk, rice milk and soup). 

You can manually choose to blend your food on low, medium or high, and there's a pulse/clean button to activate short bursts of blending over 48 seconds. 

To cook in the Ace, you put all of your ingredients into the pitcher and select from one of the four hot blending programs. The blender will then begin to heat, and a display of the temperature appears on the base of the Ace. The blender's blades pulse intermittently throughout the cooking cycle, which varies in length of time based on what program you use. 

The Ace plowed through the majority of these tests during which I used the blender's pulse/clean button.

The pitcher of the Ace is easy to clean thanks to the pulse/clean button. You fill the pitcher with water, add a couple of drops of dish soap and press the button. Then, you can rinse the soapy water away. The glass pitcher isn't dishwasher safe because of the heating element at the bottom.