Best Mixers of 2018

With its powerful motor, the KitchenAid Artisan muscled through 10 minutes of kneading bread dough like it was nothing at all, and the result was a smooth, shiny and precisely blended ball of dough with virtually no leftover bits sticking to the sides of the bowl. As for whipping egg whites, this electric mixer whisked more air into egg whites than any of the other mixers we tested and did it in only three minutes. The result was a great volume of poufy, stiff-peak egg whites that could be used to create an elegant meringue. When it came to making chocolate chip cookie dough using the paddle attachment, each ingredient was well incorporated into the finished dough, with no flour residue and only tiny smears of butter on the sides of the bowl. The mixer comes with a dough hook, whisk, paddle attachment and splash guard. However, you can purchase as many as 10 other attachments that make this KitchenAid mixer extra versatile. These include a meat grinder, pasta maker, sausage stuffer and more. On a whimsical note, you can choose from more than 40 colors (some are the same hue, but matte or shiny) to add pizazz to your kitchen décor. There are a few drawbacks: This does not include a timer, you get only a one-year warranty and there is no overload shut-off protection if the machine is working too hard, which could cause the motor to burn up.

In our bread test, the Cuisinart kneaded two loaves of dough in 10 minutes with no trouble at all. It did a fine job on cookie dough, incorporating all ingredients quickly and well, and when we added chocolate chips, they blended in nicely. And it aced our whipped egg whites test. It is equipped with 12 power settings and on the highest one you get some serious energy for aerating things like egg whites or whipping cream. This stand mixer offers some excellent extras: The "low" setting is truly low, which helps avoid getting doused with flour when adding dry ingredients, and the 5.5-quart stainless steel bowl is the biggest of all the mixers we reviewed. The bowl also has a sturdy handle, which is helpful when you want to remove a bowl full of batter or dough from the base. This comes with a whisk, dough hook and paddle, and you can separately buy a frozen dessert maker, a meat grinder, a pasta roller and cutter tool, and a pasta extruder. You get a choice of six colors, which is great compared to mixers with only one, but far fewer than the KitchenAid Artisan.

This potent machine does not come cheap, however, since it clocks in at a manufacturer's price that is about 17 percent higher than our top-ranked KitchenAid Artisan. It made short work of kneading bread dough for two loaves in 10 minutes, and it did equally well mixing ingredients for chocolate chip cookies with its paddle attachment. This comes with a splash guard, so adding different ingredients is not a messy process, although the pour spot opening was smaller than the one on the KitchenAid Artisan. This mixer boasts a balloon-shaped whisk bigger than that of any mixer we tested, and it can whip egg whites into stiff peaks in slightly more than three minutes. Besides the standard attachments of dough hook, paddle and whisk, this mixer also comes with a flexible edge beater that gets to every side of the bowl. Unfortunately, Breville does not offer any other attachments for this mixer. You get a timer than counts up or down, so you can set it for counting down and do another kitchen task, and there's a bright light above the bowl that illuminates the ingredients inside.