The Best Stand Mixers, Reviewed by Our Experts

Sure, you can mix up your bread dough and whip your cream by hand or with a hand mixer. But if you frequently find yourself kneading loaves of bread, making big batches of whipped cream, or whisking egg whites into swirly meringue, a stand mixer will make your life infinitely easier.

The term stand mixer is practically synonymous with the brand name KitchenAid at this point, but we’ve got news for you: KitchenAid’s candy-colored appliances aren’t the only quality stand mixers anymore.

• Best overall: Breville Bakery Chef
• Another great stand mixer: KitchenAid Artisan Series 5-qt. Tilt-Head Stand Mixer
• Best budget option: Beautiful by Drew Barrymore Tilt-Head Stand Mixer

After putting 13 models through their paces by making countless batches of cake batter, challah dough, and whipped cream, we’ve found the three best stand mixers for every kind of baker. Whether you’re looking for a budget-friendly option to get you started on your stand mixer journey or you’re a serious baker who delights in advanced features like a built-in timer, there’s a model here for you.

Best overall: Breville Bakery Chef Stand Mixer

Breville Bakery Chef

$400

Breville

When our team of product testers tested over a dozen stand mixers ranging from $40–$1,000, the Breville Bakery Chef came out on top. If you’re a home cook looking to use your stand mixer primarily for baking projects, there’s no better mixer on the market than this one right here.

What we love: The Bakery Chef stands out for a few reasons: It has an extremely powerful, 550-watt motor that makes light work of kneading tough bread dough, creaming butter and sugar, and whipping cream to fluffy peaks in record time. It rings in at a lower price point than the 5-qt. model of the beloved KitchenAid (our previous top pick). And it comes with several highly useful accessories, like two different mixing bowls: a 4-qt. stainless-steel bowl with two small helper handles, and a 5-qt. clear glass bowl with one handle, a pour spout, measurement markings, and a plastic lid.

Additionally, it comes with both a standard beater blade and a scraper beater blade, which allows the Breville Bakery Chef to cream a stick of butter and a cup of sugar in 2.5 minutes flat—faster and more effectively than any other mixer, including the KitchenAid Professional series. And unlike KitchenAid’s paddle scraper (which must be purchased separately from the Artisan mixer), the Breville paddle attachment has the silicone scraper on both sides.

What really sets this stand mixer apart, though, are some of its design features. It has a built-in timer that can be used to log how long it takes for your mixture to reach the perfect consistency, and it also allows you to set the mixer to automatically shut off after a given duration. It also has load-sensing technology that detects when you’re mixing heavy doughs and batters, then auto-adjusts and maintains its power. One more fun feature? An automatic light that illuminates the bowl when the appliance is in use, so you can more easily monitor whatever it is you’re mixing up.

What we'd leave: Testers loved this machine and had few complaints about it. The only real drawback compared to our other top pick, the KitchenAid line, is that the Breville doesn’t have a port for attachments, so you can’t use it as an ice cream maker, spiralizer, meat grinder, or pasta maker. But if you’re mostly using it for baking, that isn’t much of a consideration.

Users may also need to get used to the control knob, which adjusts speeds so smoothly that it’s easy to under- or overshoot your desired setting. Because of the mixer’s more powerful motor, you may also need to adjust the recommended speed settings for a given recipe. We had better results kneading bread dough at a lower setting than the “medium” often suggested by recipes and took extra care to use the included pouring shield when first mixing dry ingredients.

KitchenAid Artisan Series 5-Quart Tilt-Head Stand Mixer

$500 $350 (30% off)

Amazon

$500

KitchenAid

$500 $350 (30% off)

Walmart

“Like an Eames chair or a Noguchi paper lamp, the KitchenAid stand mixer is an instantly recognizable icon in its category,” says senior test kitchen editor Shilpa Uskokovic. After years of testing, we can confirm: These mixers are classics for a reason. And while there are several different mixer models in the brand’s lineup, we believe the best option for most home cooks is the 5-qt. Artisan Series.

What we love: The 5-qt. capacity of this particular Artisan Series model hits the size sweet spot in that it’s large enough to accommodate all the cookie dough a home baker could possibly want to make in one batch (nine dozen or so), but not so large that it’s inconvenient for smaller tasks.

With a 325-watt motor and 10 different speeds, the KitchenAid Artisan isn’t as powerful as the Breville, but it still has enough oomph to whip, knead, and whisk to the right consistency. In our testing, we were pleased that the mixer didn’t move across the countertop when set to high speeds (a common occurrence in cheaper stand mixers). The head of the mixer does bob up and down when kneading dense bread doughs, though, which is one of the reasons why we’d recommend the Breville over this model if you’re keen on baking a lot of bread.

The streamlined shape and tilt-head design of the KitchenAid make it very easy to clean, and we liked that the mixer has a relatively compact footprint that can conceivably fit in your cabinet (though if you’re splurging on a KitchenAid and choosing from their nearly 30 color options, wouldn’t you want to display it proudly on your counter?)

Perhaps the number one reason why you might choose a KitchenAid over another brand is that its stand mixers can famously accommodate the whole menagerie of KitchenAid attachments. That means the same appliance that mixes your pizza dough can serve as a pasta maker, a meat grinder, an ice cream maker, a spiralizer, and even a food processor.

What we'd leave: As mentioned, this mixer is more suited to the cookie, cake, and pie bakers of the world—bread bakers, we think you’d be better off going with the Breville. We didn’t love how the head of the mixer bobbed up and down when kneading dense doughs, or that it doesn’t come with a scraper beater attachment or an extra bowl. This mixer is also $50 more expensive than our other top pick at the time of writing, and at $450, it’s definitely an investment piece.

Beautiful by Drew Barrymore Tilt-Head Stand Mixer

$99

Walmart

Celebrity kitchen gear lines don’t exactly have a reputation for being great, which is why we were shocked (in a good way!) by the performance of this mixer from Drew Barrymore’s Beautiful line.

What we love: This is a straightforward, easy-to-use mixer that can accomplish just about anything the KitchenAid can (save for all of those extra attachment-enabled functions). Its 12 speeds are controlled by a dial located on the base of the machine, where you’ll also find a button that activates the tilt-head function.

In testing, we found that we typically had to use a higher speed setting for a longer amount of time when compared with the KitchenAid to accomplish a given task, but that the Beautiful had no trouble getting the job done (eventually). It was even able to tackle hefty challah dough, though the small suction cups on the bottom of the machine weren’t strong enough to keep it from bouncing around the counter as it stirred. At its highest setting, the Beautiful even whipped cream a hair faster than the KitchenAid did.

The body of the Beautiful is made of plastic, but we quite like its design, and that each of the detachable parts is dishwasher-safe. Overall, we think this would be an excellent starter mixer for folks on a budget or in need of a more lightweight option that’s easy to stash away when not in use.

What we'd leave: The Beautiful’s affordable price tag comes with the requisite budget-quality trade-offs: namely, the plastic construction and tendency to jump around when mixing denser doughs.

To test stand mixers, we first put them to work on a half batch of this cake recipe to see if they could handle small amounts of ingredients. We paid close attention to how well each mixer performed at creaming the butter and sugar, incorporating the eggs, and gently stirring in the dry ingredients.

Next, we tasked each mixer by making enough challah dough for two loaves of bread (a half batch of this recipe). Challah dough is quite dense and sticky, so we were looking to see how well the mixers were able to stir and knead a large volume of it.

Last, we tested each mixer’s ability to whip cream to billowy peaks. We made sure to chill the bowls and whisk attachments before doing so and used the highest speed setting in each test.

Our top picks outshone the mixers below in terms of value and size for more home cooks. But if you’re an avid baker—or are emotionally attached to the idea of having a Smeg on your counter—these options could work for you.

GE Profile Carbon Black 7-Quart Smart Mixer with Auto Sense

$799 $599 (25% off)

Crate & Barrel

This mixer from GE has a hefty $800 price tag—but it’s got the advanced features to match. In addition to a built-in timer (one of our fave features on the Breville), it has a scale that allows you to add ingredients directly into the mixer bowl and see the weight as you go. Its namesake Auto Sense technology uses motor torque feedback to monitor changes in the texture and viscosity of whatever you’re mixing and triggers an automatic shut-off when the proper consistency has been reached. To access this feature, you’ll need to install a companion app, which also gives you access to step-by-step guided recipes.

This was the heaviest mixer we tested (at a whopping 44 lb.), but while that weight made it difficult to maneuver when we unboxed it, it also made it extra stable. It’s ultra powerful, so we found we needed to exercise caution when selecting speeds.

Overall, we thought this mixer was innovative and performed incredibly well—it’s just a lot of mixer for the average home cook. But if you’re a frequent bread or large batch baker and like the idea of a voice-controlled, Wi-Fi-enabled mixer with all the techy features a person could dream of, you might think it’s worth the splurge.

KitchenAid 7 Quart Bowl-Lift Stand Mixer

$650 $549 (16% off)

Amazon

$700

KitchenAid (with Premium Touchpoints)

This KitchenAid mixer uses a bowl-lift function instead of the Artisan’s tilt-head mechanism to better handle its larger capacity. It’s a large, powerful, high-performing mixer that did just as well in our testing as the model we recommend above. Ultimately, it lost out on the top spot because we don’t think most home cooks need a mixer this large—it’s pricier, bulkier, and heavier than our top pick, and we found it difficult to mix small amounts of ingredients in such a large bowl.

This mixer from Wolf Gourmet was the largest we tested, which was ultimately its downfall: It just couldn’t handle smaller batches. We also felt that it wasn't quite as powerful as we’d expected (its motor has a lower wattage than the Breville’s) and wished it came with a few more handy features. That said, there were many things we liked about this mixer. For one, the bowl-lift mechanism is activated by simply twisting the bowl into place. We also appreciated that the machine will ramp its way up to your selected speed, rather than immediately kicking into high gear and sending ingredients flying every which way.

Instant Stand Mixer Pro

$296

Amazon

There's a lot to like about the Instant Stand Mixer Pro. It’s a tilt-head style machine with a generous 7.4-qt. capacity, it feels stable but lightweight, and it has digital controls (and that coveted built-in timer!) as well as an accessory port that’s compatible with the brand’s pasta roller, meat grinder, and slicer/shredder, should you want to purchase them. In the end, though, we found the bowl too large for smaller bakes and didn’t care for the cheap-feeling beater attachment.

Bosch Universal Plus Stand Mixer, 6.5 Quarts

$599 $549 (8% off)

Amazon

This appliance from Bosch isn’t your typical stand mixer. It’s “universal” because it’s essentially a motorized base to which you can attach a variety of kitchen appliances that are available to purchase separately (think blender, juicer, meat grinder, and the like). The only one of those modules that comes with it is a 6.5-qt. plastic mixing bowl with a motor shaft that runs up the center, onto which you’ll attach whisk or dough-mixer arms.

It’s a confusing concept and a confusing machine to use, but once we got the hang of it, the Bosch performed well in our tests. It only has four speeds (and a pulse function) and is quite large, but could work for someone looking to condense their appliance collection.

Smeg Stand Mixer

$500 $400 (20% off)

Amazon

$600

Williams Sonoma

We’re usually skeptical of Smeg products because, despite their aesthetically pleasing design, they don’t tend to work all that well. Not the case with their stand mixer! It’s well-constructed, has a powerful 600-watt motor that can handle any task you throw at it, and is quite the looker. That said, the Smeg is expensive and jumped around the counter more than the Breville and KitchenAid did when faced with dense bread dough, and it doesn’t have as wide a range of attachment options as KitchenAid offers.

Ankarsrum Assistent

$800

Sur la Table

$800

King Arthur Baking Company

The Swedish-made Ankarsrum Assistant Original Mixer also operates quite differently from a typical stand mixer. Like the Bosch, it has a motorized base—but unlike the Bosch (and most other mixers), the bowl itself spins while a vertical dough roller mixes, and a separate dough knife works to scrape ingredients from the side of the bowl.

In our testing, we didn’t find this model the most user-friendly, but if you’re big into breadmaking like Bon Appétit contributor Jesse Raub and are okay with a learning curve, you may love this machine. It’s helped Jesse kiss hand-kneading goodbye altogether when he makes sourdough (which he does often—every four days kind of often) and churned out beautiful sheets of fresh pasta for him too. If you’re a frequent bread baker who has upward of $700 to spend on an appliance, check out Jesse’s full review here.

Ooni Halo Pro Spiral Mixer

$799

Ooni

$800

Williams Sonoma

Ooni is known for its stellar pizza ovens, so we were intrigued by the brand's first foray into other kitchen appliances. The idea behind this mixer is that it's optimized for dough-making but is still usable for other home baking tasks. It's similar to the Ankarsrum in that it features a rotating bowl, but different in that the attachments look somewhat like what you'd find in a traditional mixer: you've got your dough hook (and quite a hefty one at that), your whisk attachment, and your beater.

In testing, we found that while we can see how this would be a great mixer for making large batches of bread dough, it isn't a practical option for home cooks looking for an all-purpose baking appliance. Due to the large capacity of its (only) bowl, which comes in at over 7 quarts, the Ooni struggled to fully incorporate some pockets of flour in our batch of challah without manual intervention. It struggled even more with tasks like creaming butter or whipping cream, unable to effectively beat air into the stick of butter and cup of sugar or the cup of cream we used in testing. That said, we still think this could be a good option for anyone who's seriously into baking bread or making pizza dough, and we will continue to test it in the coming months.

Bakers have strong opinions on the topic of tilt-head versus bowl-lift stand mixers. And that’s okay—we all have different needs. Instead of thinking about which type is The Best, think about which type is best for you. The main difference between the two styles is how the bowls are attached and accessed. With tilt-head mixers, the top hinges back and the bowl twists onto the mixer’s base. Some users find this design more convenient and easier to use, since all you have to do is tilt the head back to add ingredients. These mixers are usually more compact, which makes them the better option for smaller spaces and storing in a cabinet. They also typically have less powerful motors, which means they tend to be more affordable.

On the other hand, bowl-lift mixers have a stationary head and use a lever to raise and lower the bowl for mixing or adding ingredients. They usually have a larger capacity, a wider base, and higher speeds. Basically, these are the heavy-duty options. They almost always have more powerful motors, and they’re built to provide extra stability for mixing large and heavy recipes. If you’ll be using your stand mixer for kneading bread, this is the type for you. Bowl-lift stand mixers tend to be more expensive, but the splurge can be worth the money.

There are also a select couple models—like the Bosch and Ankarsrum mixers—that don’t really fit into either category. In general, we found these less intuitive to use and less suited to the average home cook, but they do have their advantages (which you can read about above).

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