The Best Stand Mixers in 2023: What You Need To Know

The Best Stand Mix­ers in 2023: The kitchen has numer­ous work­hors­es, and while cast iron skil­lets, Dutch ovens, and cut­ting boards are all remark­able in their own right, a stand mix­er is arguably the most desired kitchen item. Stand mix­ers have been used to mix count­less batch­es of cook­ies, knead bread dough, and whip icing—and that’s before you con­sid­er the attach­ments that can spi­ral­ize veg­gies and roll noodles.

Due to the vari­ety of stand mix­ers avail­able on the mar­ket, we decid­ed to eval­u­ate five pop­u­lar and high­ly rat­ed mod­els. As we put them through their paces, we noticed that the abil­i­ty to com­bine ingre­di­ents even­ly while han­dling moist, sticky dough is a cru­cial dif­fer­en­tial, lead­ing us to pro­pose a pair of appli­ances that stood out from the competition.

Read More: Stand Mix­er Buy­ing Guide| KitchenGearPro

List of The Best Stand Mixers in 2023

#1 KitchenAid 5‑Quart Artisan Series Tilt-Head Stand Mixer

The KitchenAid Arti­san Series Tilt-Head Stand Mix­er out­per­formed the com­pe­ti­tion in each of our three recipe tests—mixing, knead­ing, and whipping—more effec­tive­ly than the oth­er mix­ers we exam­ined. This is hard­ly a sur­prise, giv­en that it is the most recent design iter­a­tion that has exist­ed for over a century.

The KitchenAid mix­er was the finest in its class at mix­ing and knead­ing dough. The pad­dle effort­less­ly whipped up but­ter and sug­ar, then fold­ed in chips and dried fruit. The bread loaf had a crisp crust with a soft cen­tre, and the dough came togeth­er fast. Even though it was­n’t the qui­etest machine we eval­u­at­ed, the noise did­n’t inter­fere with reg­u­lar speech, and the motor did­n’t seem like it was struggling.

The stain­less steel bowl was eas­i­ly insert­ed and removed, and the han­dle was sim­ple to grasp. The 10-speed gear shifter moved with a flu­id motion, and each clear­ly dis­tin­guished speed proved to be handy. It could blend soft­ly at low speeds and whip vig­or­ous­ly at high rates.

The KitchenAid comes with a com­plete set of acces­sories that will allow you to begin bak­ing or mix­ing imme­di­ate­ly. We were impressed with the ease of attach­ing and detach­ing these attach­ments dur­ing our time with the mix­er, as well as the ver­sa­til­i­ty that the mix­er’s wide range of avail­able tools provides.

The pow­der-coat­ed alu­minum dough hook and pad­dle are durable and dish­wash­er-safe, while the whip (which, like near­ly every oth­er mix­er whip attach­ment, must be washed by hand) pro­duced frost­ing that was light, fluffy, and even­ly com­bined. Dur­ing our tests, the sup­plied pour­ing shield­’s wide open­ing for adding flour while the mix­er was run­ning pre­vent­ed spat­ter in the mix­ing bowl.

A char­ac­ter­is­tic of the KitchenAid mix­er line is its adapt­abil­i­ty to a vast array of kitchen chores. There are dozens of attach­ments avail­able, rang­ing from alter­na­tive beat­ers and pad­dles that can be used in the bowl to appli­ance replace­ments that attach to the front “pow­er hub” port of the mix­er. A flex-edge beat­er (with a built-in scraper that slides along the bowl’s sides dur­ing mix­ing) is an excel­lent start­ing point, and from there, you can pur­chase gad­gets that do every­thing from shred­ding and spi­ral­iz­ing veg­eta­bles to rolling out pas­ta, grind­ing flour or meat, and pro­duc­ing ice cream.

The KitchenAid is on the heavy side at 26 pounds, but the extra effort required to move it around the kitchen is jus­ti­fied by its sta­bil­i­ty. The mix­er’s weight allows it to accom­mo­date up to 9 cups of flour with­out slid­ing across the countertop.

It is avail­able in over 20 col­ors, rang­ing from min­er­al water blue to feath­er pink, and a vari­ety of bowl mate­ri­als and pat­terns, from glass to flo­ral-pat­terned ceram­ic. The KitchenAid 5‑Quart Arti­san Series Tilt-Head Stand Mix­er allows you to have both a show­case and a work­horse in one piece of equip­ment, thanks to its array of col­or options and supe­ri­or performance.

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#2 KitchenAid Professional 600 Series 6‑Quart Stand Mixer

If you bake more than twice a week, fre­quent­ly host large fam­i­ly gath­er­ings, or need to pro­duce huge batch­es of cook­ies (more than four dozen), the KitchenAid Pro­fes­sion­al 600 Series is a wor­thy invest­ment. Impor­tant: Due to the 17-inch height of the Pro­fes­sion­al 600 Series mix­er, you may want to mea­sure the dis­tance between your coun­ter­top and high­er cab­i­nets before purchasing.

The 6‑quart bowl can knead enough dough to bake 13 dozen cook­ies or mash up to 8 pounds of pota­toes, allow­ing you to com­plete dai­ly activ­i­ties in between hol­i­day cel­e­bra­tions. The bowl’s han­dle is formed like a sol­id U. It can then be raised or low­ered using the bowl lift han­dle after secure­ly snap­ping into position.

The dough hook was slight­ly too high above the bowl’s base out of the box, but this was eas­i­ly reme­died by adjust­ing the set screw that sits behind the bowl in the mix­er’s stem with a flat­head screwdriver.

The bowl mix­er per­formed well when the bowl had numer­ous ingre­di­ents. The cook­ie dough was uni­form and not dense. Each cook­ie con­tained chips and fruit, a feat that oth­er mix­ers could not accom­plish. This machine is designed to process large quan­ti­ties of dough.

The mix­er was cleaned with a moist tow­el after a brief wipe. The wire whip must be hand-washed, and although the oth­er attach­ments (dough hook and pad­dle) could be cleaned in the dish­wash­er, it was just as sim­ple to rinse them in the sink as the dough did not adhere to the pow­der coating.

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#3 Cuisinart SM-50 Precision Master 5.5‑Quart Stand Mixer

The Cuisi­nart SM-50 blend­ed far bet­ter than any of the ultra-afford­able mix­ers we eval­u­at­ed. Although it did not per­form as well as the top per­form­ers, it can cer­tain­ly ful­fill all of your needs if you are on a bud­get. The more we oper­at­ed it, the more we appre­ci­at­ed it.

The 12-speed 500-watt motor deliv­ered a sur­pris­ing amount of pow­er with­out mak­ing a lot of noise, effort­less­ly slic­ing through cook­ie dough and bread dough. But the whisk did not mea­sure up to the oth­er equip­ment. The size was slight­ly too large for the 5.5‑quart bowl; adding pow­dered sug­ar was messy, and we had to stop whip­ping mul­ti­ple times to scrape the bowl. Once the but­ter was includ­ed, Cuisi­nart made a frost­ing with a beau­ti­ful tex­ture that was light and fluffy.

At a weight of slight­ly more than 18 pounds, it was light enough to be moved on and off the counter with­out being too flim­sy to keep in posi­tion while mix­ing a bowl full of ingredients.

The Cuisi­nart SM-50 has a three-year lim­it­ed war­ran­ty, is avail­able in eleven col­ors, has an attrac­tive design (the chrome bub­ble on the head remind­ed us of a char­ac­ter from the Among Us viral video game), and comes with five addi­tion­al attach­ments if you wish to expand its util­i­ty. At under $300, it is not inex­pen­sive, but noth­ing cheap­er felt as plea­sur­able to use. If you want to start bak­ing but don’t want to overex­tend your mon­ey, the SM-50 makes sense.

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Other stand mixers we tested

#4 SMEG 50’s Retro SMF02 Stand Mixer

The Smeg stand mix­er resem­bles a high-per­for­mance race car with its sleek design and chrome accents. It was portable and sim­ple to run out of the box, but although it was priced sim­i­lar­ly to our best mix­ers, it did not work quite as well.

The “Smooth Start” func­tion of Smeg ensures that the 600-watt motor gen­tly accel­er­ates to the speed you select (up to 10). Despite the fact that it first felt chop­py and the com­po­nents did not com­bine as quick­ly, the mix­er was effec­tive once it reached full speed.

The bread hook and whisk attach­ments had suf­fi­cient weight to knead bread dough and whip icing, respec­tive­ly. The pad­dle left a bit too much cook­ie dough in the bot­tom of the bowl and did not spread the chips and dried fruit as even­ly as our top choices.

The shiny exte­ri­or, while appeal­ing (and the Smeg is avail­able in a vari­ety of attrac­tive fin­ish­es), tends to reveal fin­ger­prints upon clean­ing. Smeg offers a vari­ety of acces­sories (includ­ing pas­ta mak­ers, a grinder, a slicer, and a grater); how­ev­er, the selec­tion is not quite as broad as that of KitchenAid, Bosch, or Ankarsrum.

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#5 BOSCH MUM6N10UC Universal Plus Stand Mixer

The Bosch Uni­ver­sal Plus con­sis­tent­ly ranked near the top of the mod­els we test­ed in terms of per­for­mance, but the plas­tic bowl, the require­ment to hand-wash attach­ments, and the absence of cook­ie pad­dles and a heavy-duty mount for them at a price point com­pa­ra­ble to the KitchenAid Arti­san pre­vent­ed it from top­ping the charts.

The Uni­ver­sal Plus (which Bosch has man­u­fac­tured since 1952) has a rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent design from KitchenAid-style mix­ers, with the engine in the base and the bowl attached from the top; the attach­ments attach to a cen­tral col­umn in the bowl’s cen­ter. This results in a machine that is deep­er than it is tall, in con­trast to

A strong 800-watt motor with four sep­a­rate speeds and a pulse option is housed with­in the com­pact frame. The broad, 6.5‑quart plas­tic bowl pro­vides ample space for adding ingre­di­ents around the attach­ments that clamp onto the cen­tral col­umn. The attach­ments, how­ev­er, are all hand-wash only, mak­ing this mod­el a touch more labor-inten­sive than the oth­ers we evaluated.

The Bosch is an excel­lent per­former; it excelled at shap­ing bread dough with speed and elas­tic­i­ty. The Bosch gen­er­at­ed a light and fluffy frost­ing, but a small amount of pow­dered sug­ar adhered to the mid­dle col­umn, just beyond the reach of the dou­ble whisks. It worked won­der­ful­ly with cook­ie dough and even­ly dis­trib­uted the chips and fruit. The 17-pound mix­er remained in place (it had suc­tion cup feet for added trac­tion) yet could be moved with­out exces­sive effort.

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How to care for a stand mixer

Your mix­er’s base and head can be cleaned with a damp dish­cloth. Con­sid­er that a tilt-head mix­er may have more places where dry ingre­di­ents can become trapped.

Whisks must be hand-washed (soak them in warm water and dish soap to break down icing or whipped cream), but attach­ments and the mix­ing bowl are typ­i­cal­ly dishwasher-safe.

If you’re seek­ing peace of mind on what might be a sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment, all of the mix­ers we eval­u­at­ed came with at least a one-year replace­ment war­ran­ty, with the Ankarsrum Orig­i­nal boast­ing a sev­en-year motor warranty.