Raise your hand if you crave salty, crunchy stuff from time to time? Yeah, me too. Luckily for us, there are some solid options for protein chips on the market now! What a time to be alive 😉 Of course, I decided I should try as many as I could to help you pick which ones to spend your dolla dolla bills on. If you haven’t been here to check out one of my Quest for the Best product review series before, here’s how it works:
Scoring and Ranking the Chips
For me, taste and texture are the most important deciding factors for whether or not I’ll recommend a protein chip, so they’re weighed more heavily in scoring. I also scored the chips for their macros and value.
- Taste – Scored out of 10 possible points.
- Texture – Scored out of 10 possible points.
- Macros – Scored out of 5 possible points. Chips that have at least 40% of calories from protein scored highest and ones that have less than 25% of calories from protein scored lowest.
- Value – Scored out of 5 possible points. Chips that were less than $1 per serving scored highest, and cereals that cost over $2.25 per serving got no points in this category.
While I tried to be as objective as possible when scoring these chips, at the end of the day, we probably care about different things when it comes to our salty and crunchy snacks. Feel free to consider all the details for yourself and come to your own conclusion!
Quick rundown of different colors you’ll see below:
- Yellow (on the macro ratio) indicates carb content.
- Blue (on the macro ratio) indicates protein content.
- Green (on the macro ratio) indicates fat content.
see all the reviews:
Protein Chips Comparison Chart
Want to see all my reviews in one spot? Check out the full spreadsheet, including reviews of all the flavors I tried for each brand!
Highly Recommended Protein Chips
Quest Tortilla Style Protein Chips
Pizza
Be sure to check the chart for my reviews of 6 other flavors! The latest recipe revamp of these Quest tortilla style chips is really tasty and flavorful, as long as you find the flavor you personally love. Even though they’re protein chips, I don’t feel like I’m missing anything.
- Taste: 10/10. These taste so much like pizza flavored Combos, it triggered a lot of nostalgia for me!
- Texture: 9/10. These have a great crunch and are not far off from a regular tortilla chip. I took a point off because they do get a little dry towards the end of chewing each one though.
Quest Original Style Protein Chips
Cheddar & sour cream
These chips have been around for many years and have gone through several recipe revamps – if you tried them a while ago and didn’t like them, they may be worth revisiting.
- Taste: 9/10. The cheddar and sour cream flavors definitely come through.
- Texture: 8/10. Light and crispy chips that are satisfying to crunch into. They are a little dry at the end, but not in a way that would stop me from buying them.
Simply Protein Tortilla Chips
sea Salt
If you want the brand that’s closest to a real tortilla chip, I think these are it.
- Taste: 8/10. Not a perfect dupe for tortilla chips, but these are pretty tasty and would be good paired with guac.
- Texture: 10/10. These are closer to real tortilla chip texture than the Quest ones.
Recommended Protein Chips
These are chips I would definitely buy again, but you have to find the right flavor for your tastes and understand what you’re buying, because these certainly aren’t regular old chips!
Wilde Protein Chips
buffalo
Unlike other brands, Wilde makes their chips with chicken as the #1 ingredient and I was surprised by how much I liked them. Unfortunately, the protein content by percentage isn’t very high because they also have 10g fat per serving.
- Taste: 8.5/10. These are ultra savory with lots of buffalo flavor and honestly taste a lot like a chicken wing.
- Texture: 8.5/10. Very crispy and thin, but definitely not a traditional chip. They’re crispier than Quest.
PopCorners Popped Rice and Pea Protein Snacks
zesty cheddar
If you’ve had regular PopCorners before, these aren’t a bad dupe with a little extra protein. I wouldn’t really call them a chip though (and they’re not pretending to be).
- Taste: 7/10. Decent cheddar flavor with some heat on the back end. There’s a tiny bit of pea protein flavor, but it’s not bad.
- Texture: 7/10. The texture is pretty on par with regular PopCorners which are obviously not chips and lack some crunch.
Recommended with Reservations
These chips may still be worth trying, but I probably wouldn’t buy them again because of taste, texture, or macro ratio.
Doritos Protein Chips
Nacho cheese
These are pretty new – you can find the big bags of these in the chip aisle at some stores, or you can buy packs of snack size bags online.
- Taste: 5/10. These look like they’ll be nice and cheesy, but after the first bite, there really wasn’t much flavor to speak of. The flavor does kind of build as you eat more.
- Texture: 8/10. These are crunchier than a regular Dorito but similar to other protein chips, they can get a little dry towards the end of each bite.
Legendary Foods Popped Protein Chips
ranch
If you’re looking for high volume and high protein, a serving of these “chips” looks a lot bigger than others, even though by weight, a serving is only a few grams bigger.
- Taste: 6/10. Lots of yummy ranch flavor up front, but it fades to nothing as you chew.
- Texture: 7/10. These aren’t as crunchy as regular chips and the popped texture is a bit too airy.
Pure Protein Popped Crisps
sweet chili
These are a chip-adjacent option that will probably help satisfy a salty/crunchy craving. Just don’t expect them to be chips.
- Taste: 7/10. Pretty tasty but barely any spice and not quite enough flavor.
- Texture: 5/10. These are somewhere between a Pringle and a popcorn chip. They’re decently crunchy, but they leave something to be desired if you want a chip.
Not Recommended
Khloud Protein Chips
sweet heat
I threw these straight in the trash after trying 2 chips from each big bag.
- Taste: 3/10. There’s a little bit of sweet and a little bit of heat, but it’s overpowered by pea protein flavor.
- Texture: 4/10. There’s a big crunch as you bite into them, but then they quickly go soft and dull as you chew.
see all the reviews:
Protein Chip Comparison Chart
Want to see all my reviews in one spot? Check out the full spreadsheet, including reviews of all the flavors I tried for each brand!
Note: I was not provided any compensation or samples to endorse these products. The views expressed here are my own. The Amazon links contained in this post are affiliate links, meaning that if you buy anything from Amazon after clicking through these links, I’ll earn a small commission (usually just a few pennies) from your purchase. Your purchase price will be the same whether you use my affiliate links or navigate to Amazon independently.
