I’m a staff writer on the kitchen team. I’ve researched, tested, and written about food processors, ice cream makers, air fryers, and more.

For this guide:

• I researched 17 stand mixers and spent about 50 hours testing the 10 most promising models.
• In the process of testing these stand mixers, I made a whopping 360 kitchen sink cookies, 18 loaves of sandwich bread, seven three-layer cakes, a few dozen bagels, and a couple of quarts of whipped cream.
• I built on the research and testing of senior staff writer Lesley Stockton, who was a professional cook for 18 years, and writer Anna Perling, an enthusiastic home baker and experienced appliance tester. They contributed to previous versions of this guide as authors.
• Like all Wirecutter journalists, I review and test products with complete editorial independence. I’m never made aware of any business implications of my editorial recommendations. Read more about our editorial standards.

A stand mixer takes the load of mixing off your shoulders and handles the job with more precision than most people can muster.

It can also give you more capacity for multitasking in the kitchen—for example, you might set the dough to knead while you start vegetable prep (or, if you’re like me, sit down and look at your phone).

A good stand mixer is an investment piece that can last a long time. Our picks—both from KitchenAid—are expensive, but if it’s in your budget, they best serve most people. KitchenAids mixers are simple, dependable, and durable. We have had positive experiences with KitchenAid customer service and appreciate that its stand mixers are relatively easy to adjust, maintain, and when necessary, take apart for repair.

Hand mixer or stand mixer?

Many home bakers benefit from having both a hand mixer and a stand mixer in their kitchen, though the two tools do many of the same tasks.

A hand mixer can pop into any size bowl and can give you more control over where and how you’re mixing, which makes it better for working with small amounts of ingredients. It takes up less space and is easy to store away and retrieve when you need it, whereas a stand mixer is often best left out on the counter. Many hand mixers come with the same mixing attachments as stand mixers, like dough hooks, balloon whisks, and beaters. Hand mixers are typically cheaper—our picks cost around $65 and $150.

Stand mixers are larger and heavier, but if you leave them out on the counter, actually require less lifting and maneuvering than a hand mixer. You can set ingredients to mix and walk away without having to hold and rotate a hand mixer around a bowl. Stand mixers have more powerful motors, so they can mix faster and with more power for longer periods of time. On many stand mixers, you can also use attachments that repurpose the powerful motor for things like grinding meat or shaving ice, making them more versatile than hand mixers.

Bowl-lift or tilt-head?

Bowl-lift stand mixers are typically heavier, taller, and more powerful than tilt-head mixers. You should consider a bowl-lift mixer if you make large recipes and frequently take on tough jobs like kneading dense bread doughs.

Tilt-head stand mixers are typically smaller and lighter than bowl-lift mixers, and they are less powerful because the motor is not stationary. The Artisan tilt-head mixer still has plenty of power for most baking tasks though, and it’s the better choice if you want a mixer with a smaller profile. It’s also a bit easier to swap out the paddle, whisk, and dough hook attachments on a tilt-head stand mixer, because you can tilt the head up, deal with the attachment, and put the head down without having to maneuver the attachment through the ingredients in the mixing bowl.

After over a decade of testing stand mixers, we know what we’re looking for:

• 5- to 6-quart capacity: This is the sweet spot for most home bakers. A 5-quart mixer should fit most standard recipes, and a 5.5- or 6-quart mixer gives you a bit more space without sacrificing too much efficacy on smaller batch tasks.

• Speed range: The ideal stand mixer should have a lowest speed that is slow enough for gentle folding and a highest speed that is fast enough for vigorous whipping, with a range of speeds between. Our picks have at least 10 speeds.

• Simple design, easy operation: In the heat of baking, the last thing you want to do is fuss with unnecessary buttons, screens, and settings. With fewer digital, complicated extras, a machine is easier to learn, maintain, and repair. Our picks have metal exteriors, with no screens, bells, or whistles, and just two levers each.

• Smooth tilt-head or bowl-lift: We prefer bowl-lift or tilt-head mechanisms that can be operated with one hand. Some stand mixers have heads that spring up and flop down wildly; we prefer smooth, sturdy head movements.

• No stalling or walking: If a stand mixer is not heavy enough or lacks a strong enough motor, the machine can stall out and stop mixing when working through very dense ingredients, or the machine can wobble and move across the counter with the force of the mixing. Our picks stay still and keep working.

• Optional accessories: A stand mixer should come with a mixing paddle, dough hook, and whisk. Some stand mixers, including our picks, fit extra accessories like meat grinders, food processors, and pasta rollers that utilize the strong motor of the stand mixer for other culinary purposes, which is an added perk.

• Reputable and repairable: Stand mixers are expensive. When you invest in one, you should feel confident that the manufacturer is available for help when you need it. Even better, if a stand mixer is made with durable materials, you can extend its life by taking it for repair and re-greasing it or doing these jobs yourself if you’re handy and tool-inclined. KitchenAid, the manufacturer of our pick, offers responsive customer service and instructional videos on basic maintenance and adjustments you can do yourself.

As part of our research, we read reviews, guide comments, and other stand mixer round-ups and have kept abreast of new offerings in stand mixers over the years. For the 2024 update of this guide, we chose 10 stand mixers to test. We assessed the interface, assembly, bowl-to-beater clearance, and build of each stand mixer.

In each stand mixer, we whipped a ½ cup of cream to see how bowls of various sizes handle small amounts of ingredients. We made a batch of three dozen kitchen sink cookies (which include raisins, coconut, walnut, and chocolate chips) to test how each mixer handled a large batch of chunky, dense—and, for the record, truly delicious—cookie dough.

We kneaded two loaves worth of sandwich bread dough to try out the dough hooks and see if each machine could bring a dough together and handle a 10-minute knead.

Next, we whipped up seven-minute frosting to be sure each bowl could withstand the heat of a bain-marie and quickly and consistently aerate a mixture. We added gel food dye to the frosting to see how evenly each machine was really whipping.

To pair with the frosting, we made simple yellow cake to evaluate how each machine worked a more delicate mixing task and to see how much scraping each machine required when incorporating dry and wet ingredients into creamed butter and sugar.

During each round of testing, we took note of how consistently each stand mixer mixed, how much scraping was required, and how easy it was to scrape all parts of the bowl. We tried out each machine’s different settings, attachments, and speeds. We noted the volume and quality of sound from each machine. And we cleaned each machine’s bowls and attachments more times than we’d like to count.

Finally, after eliminating mixers that could not handle the initial tests, we kneaded bagel dough for 15 minutes—five minutes longer than the recipe called for—to see if any mixers failed, stalled, smoked, or screeched.

As a part of testing, we also took apart four KitchenAid stand mixers (including a vintage one) to learn about what’s inside and how their builds may have changed over the years.

The KitchenAid Artisan Series 5-Quart Tilt-Head Stand Mixer has been our favorite stand mixer for over a decade because it can handle all variety of mixing tasks without difficulty, and it is usable and approachable for experts and beginners alike.

It’s simple and easy to use. It has a lever on the right to lock and unlock the head, which you can also use for leverage to lift and lower the head. The speed control lever is on the left, and it clicks easily from one speed to the next. A power hub to install attachments, like the meat grinder, is on the front of the machine.

We find this simple interface refreshing, with just a couple of switches to raise the bowl and adjust speeds; no need to fiddle with knobs, timers, and buttons to interrupt baking flow states. This machine would also be easy to learn for kids and beginner bakers.

It effortlessly powered through all of our tests. From chunky cookie dough to dense bagel dough, the Artisan Series 5-Quart mixer handled everything we made with ease and has done so for the past decade. The bowl was large enough for a big batch of chunky cookie dough but small enough that we did not have to constantly scrape down its sides.

KitchenAid states that kneading dough in its mixers can take two to 15 minutes, and we had success at both ends of that spectrum. After 15 minutes of kneading bagel dough, the dough was more than sufficiently kneaded, and the mixer was cool and quiet.

It is quiet and stable. The Artisan Series 5-Quart mixer has never wobbled or walked in our tests, meaning it’s heavy and stable enough to withstand the force it exerts. Plus, it runs relatively quietly, while other stand mixers can make shrill, loud whirring sounds.

With a little practice, you may be able to raise and lower the head with one hand. We favored stand mixers that allow you to lower and raise the head with one hand, because so often with baking, your hands are full. You can switch the head lock lever into an unlocked position and push the head up in one motion, or lower and lock it in one motion. Other stand mixers required awkward maneuvering or two hands to get the head up and down.

It’s attractive and reasonably sized. KitchenAid stand mixers are known for their cute, vintage-looking colors. The Artisan Series 5-Quart mixer comes in over two dozen shades, like pistachio, lavender, and beetroot. Plus, it has a relatively low profile for a stand mixer, with a smaller footprint than our other pick, the KitchenAid 5.5 Quart Bowl-Lift Stand Mixer.

It’s compatible with KitchenAid’s range of attachments. The Artisan Series 5-Quart mixer comes with a paddle, dough hook, whisk, and pouring shield. KitchenAid offers around three dozen extra attachments, and we highly recommend a few of them. We love that our stand mixer picks can serve double duty as ice shavers, pasta rollers, meat grinders, and even food processors.

It’s repairable. KitchenAid offers a one-year warranty and some replacement parts. You can also call the factory hotline to ask repair questions or to order a shipping kit to send your mixer in for repairs.

If you’re handy, you might even be able to repair certain parts of a KitchenAid stand mixer yourself. As part of testing, we disassembled and reassembled four stand mixers, with just a few YouTube tutorials as our guide. A wealth of videos and forum discussions about KitchenAid repair is available online. I’m comfortable with power tools, but I’ve never really worked on machines, and I certainly don’t know my way around a tub of gear lube, but I found the process pretty unintimidating and straightforward. You also might have luck finding a repair person in your area who works on KitchenAid stand mixers.

How the Artisan Series 5-Quart Tilt-Head Stand Mixer has held up

We’ve been using the same Artisan Series stand mixer since 2013 in our test kitchen, and we haven’t had any issues with it. When we took it apart for this guide, we noticed the internal grease was very dark and slightly separated, but you couldn’t tell based on its performance.

Wirecutter writers on the kitchen team and beyond have also used their own Artisan stand mixers for years with no complaints.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

• The Artisan Series 5-Quart stand mixer doesn’t have a ½ speed, and the slowest speed is quite fast. It had one of the fastest first speeds of all the mixers we tested. If you set it to the first speed hoping to gently mix together dry ingredients, you’ll likely be faced with a flour cloud. But the tilt-head does make it easier to premix by hand without the whisk, hook or paddle getting in the way.
• The one-year warranty is fine, but not great. It would be nice for such an expensive machine to come with a longer one. If you have problems with your stand mixer outside of that year, we recommend looking into KitchenAid’s maintenance advice or searching for repair people near you who may be able to work on the stand mixer.

If you want to make slightly bigger batches or regularly take on tougher mixing jobs, such as kneading bread dough, we recommend the KitchenAid 5.5-Quart Bowl-Lift Stand Mixer. Bowl-lift stand mixers are more powerful than their tilt-head counterparts, so this model gives you a bit more wiggle room on batch size and a big mixing power boost.

The 5.5-Quart Bowl-Lift Stand Mixer is stable, powerful, and quiet. It churned through doughs and batters without hesitation, and it did so without wobbling or moving across the counter at all. Plus, this machine is nicely quiet—where the KitchenAid Professional 600 Series 6-Quart Bowl-Lift Stand Mixer has a loud, shrill, menacing whir, the newer 5.5-quart mixer emits a calm buzzing hum.

The bowl is large enough for hefty recipes but can still handle small tasks. Though subtle, the extra 0.5 quart between the Artisan Series 5-Quart Tilt-Head Stand Mixer and this model makes a difference. In the Artisan Series 5-Quart mixers, the mix-ins in kitchen sink cookies peeked out of the bowl just a bit—not spilling, but threatening to. In the 5.5-Quart Bowl-Lift Stand Mixer, there was enough room to add in a few more cups of chocolate chips or walnuts easily.

But the 0.5 quart also made a difference compared with the larger KitchenAid Pro 600 mixer on smaller tasks. The 5.5-quart mixer required less scraping of the sides and bottom of the bowl to get a mixture fully incorporated.

The first speed is a ½ speed that is perfect for gentle tasks. It’s useful for mixing dry ingredients or folding a mixture gently without any splashing or clouding. This mixer had one of the slowest first speeds of any stand mixer we tested.

It is compatible with KitchenAid’s range of attachments. Like the Artisan Series 5-Quart mixer, it fits KitchenAid’s available stand mixer attachments, allowing you to use the powerful motor of this stand mixer for other kitchen tasks.

But this stand mixer is heavy and tall. The 5.5-Quart Bowl-Lift Stand Mixer is a few inches taller and wider than the Artisan Series mixer and around 6 pounds heavier, weighing about 32 pounds. It would be best to get this machine only if you can leave it on the counter or have a designated space for it, as it is hard to store, and the task of lifting it out of a cabinet could make you dread using it.

And it comes in a limited range of colors. Unlike the Artisan Series mixer, the 5.5 Quart Bowl-Lift Stand Mixer only comes in three colors: silver, matte black, and red.

For years, we’ve heard complaints that KitchenAid stand mixers are not what they used to be, with critics saying the machines have decreased in quality since they started being made by Whirlpool instead of Hobart in 1986. To test this theory, we bought a vintage Hobart-era KitchenAid bowl-lift stand mixer from eBay. We took the vintage mixer apart, as well as a contemporary Artisan Series 5-Quart Tilt-Head Stand Mixer, a 5.5-Quart Bowl-Lift Stand Mixer, and a KitchenAid Professional 600 Series 6-Quart Bowl-Lift Stand Mixer.

Our first takeaway from this process was that these machines are pretty easy to take apart for tasks such as re-greasing. The internal gears of stand mixers come packed with enough lubricating grease to “last a lifetime,” according to KitchenAid. But if you’re working with a vintage or well-loved mixer or you notice liquid oil dripping from the mixer, you or a mechanic may need to open the mixer up, remove the old grease, and add fresh grease to ensure the parts stay lubricated and operation remains smooth.

Of course, you should study up and be careful, and take it to an expert if you have doubts, but it is reassuring to get hands-on with a machine that was built with longevity and human interaction in mind.

When we compared the internal build of these four KitchenAid stand mixers, we found that, between the Artisan Series mixer and the vintage Hobart-era mixer, not much has changed. They looked almost identical internally, with the only real difference being an extra-long wedge on one gear in the contemporary Artisan Series mixer that seems to be there to help scrape and spread around grease.

One of the main claims of critics of contemporary KitchenAid mixers is that the new mixers are made with plastic internal parts rather than all metal parts. But we only found one nonmetal part: a single nylon gear, called the worm gear, which was present in both the vintage and contemporary KitchenAid mixers.

That said, while the contemporary Artisan and vintage Hobart mixer looked almost identical to us, we can’t say for sure that the materials used to make every part are the same. For example, the worm gear in the vintage mixer was a slightly different color from the one in the contemporary Artisan mixer.

And the contemporary bowl-lift models we disassembled were organized quite differently than the vintage mixer, with gears and circuit boards in different places. We’re not sure if or how that affects their performance. We reached out to KitchenAid to ask about this and if any materials have changed, but we have not yet received a response.

Still, we know enough to say that the makeup of these stand mixers does not seem to have changed drastically since Whirlpool’s takeover. As far as we can tell, the same sort of materials were present in all KitchenAid stand mixers, new and old.

If you’re a bread expert and want a kneading workhorse but will use something else to make cookies and cakes: The Ankarsrum Assistent Original has a spacious metal bowl, powerful bottom motor, and large, sturdy dough hooks and a dough roller that make it great at kneading bread dough. However, it falls short on other baking tasks. For cake batter, cookie dough and the like, you have to use wire whisks or wire loops and a smaller, flimsy plastic bowl that unnervingly bends and flexes as it mixes, with a center column that gets in a way.

Also, if you’re making something like frosting that requires premixing in a bain-marie, you must use a separate metal bowl and then transfer the ingredients into the plastic bowl. (In most stand mixers, you can pop metal stand mixer bowls right on the bain-marie.)

If you’re used to top-motor stand mixers like ones from KitchenAid, this machine will take some studying and adjusting. If you’re a beginner or want to bake with kids, we don’t recommend this stand mixer—without practice, it is easy to accidentally squish your hand between the attachment and bowl or the bowl and the attachment arm.

If you want a sub-$200 stand mixer for a beginner or low-volume baker: The Instant 6.3-Quart Stand Mixer contains some seemingly cheap materials, like plastic at the top of some of its attachments and a plastic exterior. But it succeeded in most of our tests and did so quietly and without stalling or moving around. It’s lightweight and suctions to the counter, which makes it a good option for younger bakers or those looking to avoid heavy lifting.

However, in our stress test of kneading bagel dough for 15 minutes in each machine (something we do not recommend you do in any stand mixer), the Instant Pot mixer failed in the last few minutes, as the force of the knead knocked the dough hook out of alignment, causing the drive shaft and hook to scrape against each other, damaging the hook. The Instant mixer had no problem kneading bread dough for 10 minutes, and even endured the first 10 or so minutes of bagel kneading, but we would not recommend this machine for regular bread making.

If you want a cheap mixer and don’t want to hold and maneuver a hand mixer, the Instant mixer can surely tackle semi-frequent cookie and cake batters, box mixes, frostings, and more. But unlike a KitchenAid mixer, it won’t last you anywhere close to a lifetime.

This is not a comprehensive list of everything we tested in previous iterations of this guide, just what’s still available.

The KitchenAid Professional 600 Series 6-Quart Bowl-Lift Stand Mixer used to be our pick for those wanting a bigger bowl and a bit more mixing power. We now prefer the new 5.5-Quart Bowl-Lift model, which runs quieter. Also, the 0.5-quart bowl size difference, while subtle, makes the 5.5-Quart Bowl-Lift mixer better at small tasks like whipping a ½ cup of cream, while still allowing plenty of room for big recipes.

The Hauswirt 5.3-Quart Stand Mixer has an exceptionally slow first speed, great for gentle mixing. It runs quietly, and it did well in our mixing tests. However, it has an overly complicated touchscreen menu in addition to a dial, a combo that takes too much thought mid-baking. At almost $300, you’re better off purchasing a refurbished KitchenAid stand mixer or waiting for a sale.

Breville’s The Bakery Chef has a too-heavy glass bowl, a too-small stainless steel bowl, and a fiddly speed dial. It didn’t move across the counter while mixing, but the head jerks around a bit. Plus, the scraper beater doesn’t quite seem to fit in either of the bowls, making a concerning noise while mixing.

The Aucma 6.5-Quart Stand Mixer is very similar to the Instant 6.3-Quart Stand Mixer, and is likely made by the same manufacturer. But the Instant stand mixer has a vent for the motor that the Aucma mixer lacks, causing the Aucma mixer to get a bit warm during mixing. Also, handles on either side of the bowl can get stuck under the tilt-head, preventing the head from locking in place.

The column in the center of the Bosch Universal Plus Stand Mixer’s bowl makes it difficult to add or premix ingredients and clean the bowl, and ingredients can get stuck between the attachment and the column. Like the similarly designed Ankarsrum Assistent Original, the Universal Plus mixer does not come with a mixing paddle. You have to use dough hooks to mix any recipe that involves butter or other dense ingredients, and these are worse at mixing than conventional stand mixer paddles.

The Kenmore Elite Heavy Duty 6-Quart Bowl-Lift Stand Mixer is loud and expensive, and the bowl-to-beater clearance did not allow the attachments to come close enough to the bowl, leading to barely mixed ingredients. We could not find instructions in the manual or online about how to adjust the clearance.

The Cuisinart Precision Master Stand Mixer rocked and strained while mixing chunky cookie dough and kneading pizza dough, and it struggled to whip small amounts of ingredients. Its highest speed is slower than the middle speed of a KitchenAid mixer, and it is awkward to lock and unlock the head of the mixer.

The bowl of the KitchenAid Artisan Mini 3.5-Quart Tilt-Head Stand Mixer was too small to handle standard recipes, and the overall footprint of the mixer is only a few square inches smaller than our pick, the KitchenAid Artisan Series 5-Quart Tilt-Head Stand Mixer. If you don’t have room for it, consider a powerful hand mixer.

The Hamilton Beach Eclectrics All-Metal Stand Mixer could not mix without stalling and moving across the counter. If you want a cheaper stand mixer, consider the Instant 6.3-Quart Stand Mixer.

This article was edited by Kathleen Squires and Marguerite Preston.