It’s Fall Baking Season—These Are the Best Stand Mixers for Your Favorite Cozy Recipes

My Top Pick

KitchenAid 5-Quart Tilt-Head Stand Mixer

$450 at Amazon $450 $330 at Target $330 at Williams Sonoma

The tried-and-true classic KitchenAid Artisan stand mixer still reigns supreme. The 5.5-quart mixer is great for every type of baker and at almost 23 pounds, it’s not difficult to store in a cabinet between baking sessions. The 325-watt motor gives you 10 speeds to choose from, with the highest ones powerful enough to create the fluffiest whipped cream and smoothest buttercream. This also comes with a splash guard to prevent messes and make it easier to add ingredients while mixing. 

“This is definitely a welcome upgrade from a basic KitchenAid stand mixer for home cooks that want more power, durability, and quality,” Allstar Ramona Cruz-Peters says. “It seems like it can handle most anything the home cook (or budding chef) needs to make.” Ramona found the KitchenAid Artisan stand mixer intuitive to use, noting that she didn’t even need to look at the instructions. She enjoyed smooth transitions between speeds, and it didn’t overmix the batter for sponge cake or lemon crinkle cookies. Importantly, its weight creates enough stability that this doesn’t wobble and everything stays in place during use. 

Cleanup’s easy though Ramona found that the bowl’s shiny stainless steel can collect smudges and fingerprints. KitchenAid does sell various bowl designs if that’s a concern. This comes with a whisk, dough hook, and flat beater, though Ramona wished it came with the flex-edge beater. She had to manually scrape down the bowl a few times to fully incorporate ingredients, an issue the flex-edge beater eliminates. KitchenAid offers many different attachments that you can add on; I like having the ice-cream maker attachment. 

If you’re looking for a bit more power for dense doughs, KitchenAid recently began offering a 5-quart bowl-lift stand mixer with a 500-watt motor. Keep in mind that this version is heavier than the tilt-head, enough that it’ll probably need a permanent spot on your counter.

The Details: 325 watts; 5.5-quart capacity; 10 speeds; includes a dough hook, a flat beater, and a 6-wire whip attachment 

Best Under $300

Cuisinart 5.5-Quart Stand Mixer

$250 at Amazon $250 at Target $24 at Walmart

The Cuisinart Precision Master Stand Mixer is a high-quality mixer with a great value. It’s a tilt-head style mixer that comes with a 5.5-quart stainless-steel bowl, a 500-watt powered motor, and 12 speed settings. It does provide recommended speeds for different recipes so you don’t mess up your recipes.

At 17 pounds, it’s lighter than many stand mixers, but it maintains stability when kneading bread dough, as Allstar Sophie Sadler can attest to. She remarked that every recipe was thoroughly mixed, and even made an airy whipped cream (the included splash guard successfully kept cream from splattering everywhere). The tilt-head sits very close to the top of the bowl, making it hard to see what’s going on when mixing, so I appreciate the included splash guard. 

This comes with three mixing attachments, and you can buy additional attachments such as a meat grinder and a spiralizer. Sophie realized, though, that the front attachment outlet isn’t compatible with non-Cuisinart models, like ones made by KitchenAid. She also wasn’t a fan of how loud the motor was during use.

Regardless of its downsides, the Cuisinart is a great stand mixer. “If you haven't already invested in a mixer, this Cuisinart mixer could be a great way to get started baking,” Sophie says. “It can grow with you and can handle anything from lighter batters to thicker bread doughs.”

The Details: 500 watts; 5.5-quart capacity; 12 speeds; includes a chef’s whisk, a dough hook, and a flat mixing paddle

Best Budget

Beautiful by Drew Barrymore Stand Mixer

$18 at Walmart

We were already big fans of Drew Barrymore’s Beautiful line of kitchen appliances, particularly the air fryer, slow cooker, and hand mixer. Then we tested the stand mixer and discovered it is one of the best on the market, even with its inexpensive price tag. I’ll let Sophie sum it up: “The price is amazing and it has some unique features that make it a great option for someone who does not want to invest in a heavy, expensive mixer.”

The matte finish and gold touches make the Beautiful stand mixer stylish enough to sit on your counter permanently, but lightweight enough to be stored away in a cabinet. That lighter weight is due to a mostly plastic casing, instead of metal like more expensive mixers. Less weight can lead to less stability, but luckily the designers included suction cups on the bottom of the mixer to help keep it in place during your baking session.

During testing, Sophie appreciated the mixer’s smooth transition as she changed speeds, and loved that the mixer can’t be turned on unless the tilt-head is locked into place. Sophie did express concern that the Beautiful mixer might not be powerful enough for dense dough, so this is better suited for batters and cookies.

The Details: 300 watts; 5.3-quart capacity; 12 speeds; includes a wire balloon whisk, a dough hook, and a flat beater

Best for Big Batches

KitchenAid 7 Quart Bowl-Lift Stand Mixer

$600 $500 at Amazon $500 at Sur La Table $650 $420 at Kitchenaid.com

I’ve had a KitchenAid 7-quart bowl-lift stand mixer for over 20 years and if the time ever comes to replace it, I’ll be getting another one. The 3-point locking system and the extra weight of bowl-lift mixers combine to make them significantly sturdier than tilt-head models. I leave mine on the counter at all times, but I never worry about it shaking or hopping because the motor head stays in place, even when kneading the densest dough.

If you have a large family and find yourself constantly doubling recipes, then this is the mixer for you. The 7-quart bowl-lift stand mixer is a heavy-duty machine that can handle about eight pounds of bread and seven pounds of potatoes.  It can handle everything I can possibly ever need to mix. But honestly, even if you don’t double recipes, it’s nice to have a slightly larger bowl when mixing cakes and cookies. The larger bowl size also ensures that flour doesn’t fly everywhere and gives plenty of room for whipping meringues and fluffy batches of buttercream.

Ramona loves the KitchenAid 7-quart stand mixer as much as I do. “I love the size, quality, performance, durability, and look of this stand mixer and am very happy to have it as part of my cooking arsenal both personally and professionally,” she says. She used it to mash large batches of potatoes and to shred meat, and it performed just as well as expected with her tests. And while you might think the larger motor translates into more noise, Ramona didn’t find it any louder than other stand mixers.

She and I both warn that this is a tall mixer (it’s 16.5 inches in height). I’m lucky to have a counter that doesn’t have cabinets above it, but you should definitely have a counter spot in mind. 

The Details: 500 watts; 7-quart capacity; 11 speed settings; includes a double flex-edge beater, a stainless-steel flat beater, a dough hook, and a 11-wire whip attachment

Best for Beginners

Hamilton Beach 7-Speed Electric Stand Mixer

$115 $80 at Amazon $101 at Target $12 at Walmart

Anyone just learning how to cook or bake shouldn’t feel the need to shell out the big bucks for a top-of-the-line stand mixer, especially when you can get this 4-quart mixer from Hamilton Beach. This lightweight and inexpensive mixer is intuitive to use and features a built-in easy-to-read guide to the speed settings.

During her testing, Ramona felt the Hamilton Beach stand mixer was perfect for most everyday recipes since it has enough power to mix batters and cookie dough, along with the bowl capacity needed. Like the Beautiful stand mixer, this features suction cups on the bottom to help keep it secure on your countertop when mixing. Ramona, though, did have an issue when mixing denser meat for sausage balls. She had to hold the bowl in place to stop it from detaching. This showed that this mixer isn’t well-suited for thicker or denser recipes.

The Details: 300 watts; 4 quarts; 7 speeds;  includes a wire whisk, a dough hook, and a flat beater

Best Small

KitchenAid Artisan Mini Stand Mixer

$380 $280 at Amazon $19 at Walmart $380 $300 at Sur La Table

The KitchenAid Artisan Mini is the small fry in the KitchenAid stand mixer family, but it has the same quality and functionality as the larger KitchenAids. The tilt-head mixer comes with three mixer attachments and a 3.5-quart stainless steel bowl. Frontal power attachments will work with this machine, which I appreciate, but there isn’t the full range of attachments available to the larger models. 

While smaller, the Mini is still useful. When we tested this, we found it can whip cream to soft peaks in about a minute, and canmake enough dough for a batch of cookies, pizza dough, or a loaf of bread. When you're done using it, it can still fit comfortably on a counter or in a cupboard. It has the Soft Start function that starts the motor at a slower speed and then moves to the speed you set it at. This is particularly helpful so the flour doesn’t end up all over the counter. 

For a mini option, the price is only slightly less expensive than the 5.5-quart version, which would lead me to think long and hard about why I need a mini instead of the standard size.

The Details: 250 watts; 3.5-quart capacity; 10 speed settings; includes a dough hook, a flat beater, and a 6-wire whip