Our expert panel blind tastes and reviews 21 supermarket vanilla ice creams, from brands including Connoisseur, Haagen-Dazs and Peters, to see which frozen treats taste best.

• Our vanilla ice cream buying guide looks at low-calorie ice cream, what additives are in your ice cream, which ice creams are gluten free, and how to make your own ice cream.

We included ice creams labelled as vanilla ice cream, or were implied to be ice cream with ice cream imagery, that are available nationally through at least one of the major supermarket chains.

At CHOICE, we strive to test all products on the market to get a fair overview of what’s available. However, in this instance, Woolworths Vanilla Ice Cream was unavailable at the time of the test and was therefore omitted.

Tasting

Our experts tasted the ice cream samples blind (without knowing the brands) in a randomised order, and rated the ice creams on appearance, smell, taste, texture, vanilla strength and balance.

Scores

Experts independently judged all ice creams, scoring each sample for flavour and aroma, texture and presentation. The CHOICE Expert Rating (our overall score) is made up of 90% taste (40% flavour, 30% texture, 20% presentation, 10% aroma) and 10% nutrition (based on the product’s Health Star Rating, calculated from the details in the nutrition information panel and converted to a percentage). 

We recommend products with a CHOICE Expert Rating of 80% or more.