What to Buy Appliances Small Appliances The 5 Best Hand Mixers, Tested and Reviewed Lightweight, yet powerful options to suit your needs. By Laura Denby Laura Denby Laura Denby is a food writer and chef with six years of professional culinary experience. Find her work in Real Simple, Food Network, Better Homes & Gardens and more. Food & Wine's Editorial Guidelines Updated on July 24, 2023 In This Article Expand Jump to a Section Our top picks Reviews Our Favorite Our Hand Mixer Tests Factors to Consider FAQ What Didn't Make the List Our Expertise We independently evaluate all recommended products and services. If you click on links we provide, we may receive compensation. Learn more. Food & Wine / Ashley Craiger If you’re a baking enthusiast, odds are you have a stand mixer for heavy-duty jobs. But when your recipe calls for lighter tasks, such as beating egg whites or mixing brownie batter, we recommend using a reliable hand mixer. In addition to desserts, hand mixers help home cooks shred chicken in a snap and nail the fluffiest mashed potatoes. When shopping for a hand mixer, it's important to find one that's powerful, versatile, and easy to use and store. It should be light enough to maneuver with one hand and come with a range of speeds to tackle various projects. In search of the best hand mixers, we performed side-by-side testing on nine of the leading models, rating each one’s design, performance, and ease of use and storage. Read on to learn more about our top pick and the others that made our list. Our Top Picks Best Overall: Breville Handy Mix Scraper at Amazon Jump to Review Best Value: Cuisinart Power Advantage Plus Hand Mixer at Amazon Jump to Review Best Cordless: KitchenAid Cordless Hand Mixer at Amazon Jump to Review Best for Beginners: KitchenAid Ultra Power Hand Mixer at Amazon Jump to Review Best Splurge: Smeg 50's Retro Style Electric Hand Mixer at Amazon Jump to Review Best Overall Breville The Handy Mix Scraper Amazon View On Amazon View On Williams-Sonoma View On Breville.com Pros Despite its powerful motor, this mixer is surprisingly lightweight, quiet, and easy to maneuver. Cons It is on the pricier end, so this product might be more suited to serious home bakers who will get regular use out of it. As our top pick, the Breville Handy Mix Scraper exceeded our expectations with nine speeds, a convenient digital display, and a built-in timer and light. The timer helps achieve precision in recipes that call for timed mixing, and the light makes it easy to see ingredients more clearly. This mixer has a strong motor that effortlessly combines ingredients, and the different speeds provide versatility and accuracy. Despite its power, we never felt like the mixer was hard to control — even at the highest speeds, it was smooth, lightweight, and quiet. This mixer whipped cream to stiff peaks, and thanks to the rubberized beaters, it incorporated butter and sugar without leaving anything behind on the sides of the bowl. We love that it includes additional accessories, like dough hooks, balloon whisks, and a snap-on case to keep things organized. Price at time of publish: $146 Power: 240 wattsWeight: 4 poundsSpeeds: 9Attachments: Balloon whisks, dough hooks, beaters, and a snap-on storage case Food & Wine / Ashley Craiger Food & Wine / Ashley Craiger Food & Wine / Ashley Craiger Best Value Cuisinart Power Advantage Plus 9-Speed Hand Mixer Amazon View On Amazon View On Nordstrom View On Sur La Table Pros It comes with everything you need to prepare various recipes, and it’s suitable for both novice and experienced bakers. Cons It was the loudest of all the models we tested. This model earned high marks from us during testing, and we love the intuitive design and functional attachments. The mixer comes with two beaters, two dough hooks, one balloon whisk, and a spatula — all housed in a convenient snap-on storage case. It has nine speeds and’s suitable for light and thick recipes and produces minimal splattering out of the bowl thanks to three low-speed modes. If you don’t think you’ll need nine speeds, other options range from three to eight. During our tests, the gadget performed really well with the whipped cream, creating soft, pillowy peaks. It was also efficient at incorporating the ingredients for the cookie dough, but we found it harder to control when mixing thicker ingredients. Though we don’t consider it a dealbreaker, this machine was the loudest of the group, especially at higher speeds. Price at time of publish: $75 Power: 220 wattsWeight: 4 poundsSpeeds: 9Attachments: Beaters, dough hooks, a whisk, and a scraper Food & Wine / Carolyn Malcoun Food & Wine / Carolyn Malcoun Food & Wine / Carolyn Malcoun Best Cordless KitchenAid 7-Speed Cordless Hand Mixer Amazon View On Amazon View On Target View On Walmart Pros Battery power makes this cordless option one of the most convenient on this list, and a solid base makes it easy to set down when not in use. Cons Aside from the two beaters, this mixer doesn't come with any additional attachments and must be charged between uses. A hand mixer should operate as a more convenient version of a stand mixer, and this cordless option from KitchenAid is by far the most convenient we tested. It has a sleek design with simple functionality, and you can easily toggle between the seven speeds with one hand. We love that the base is solid, so you can set the mixer down between uses without tipping it over. It's easy to hold and comfortable to use, and the motor is smooth and quiet even when dealing with tough ingredients. This mixer comes with two dishwasher-safe beaters for easy cleanup and storage. This is a solid choice for home bakers who want to streamline their kitchen with a more efficient gadget. Though this mixer has a strong motor, it isn't as powerful as some of the others we tested. In our whipped cream test, we found that the cream was still liquid after whipping at the highest speed for a minute and a half, while others produced stiff peaks in the same amount of time. The benefits of cordless use outweigh those drawbacks, though, and we still consider it a great pick. Price at time of publish: $100 Power: 100 wattsWeight: 2 poundsSpeeds: 7Attachments: Beaters and a charger Food & Wine / Abigail Moore Food & Wine / Abigail Moore Food & Wine / Abigail Moore RELATED: The Best Mixing Bowls, Recommended by a Pro Baker Best for Beginners KitchenAid 5-Speed Ultra Power Hand Mixer Amazon View On Amazon View On Target View On Wayfair Pros This brightly-colored model is lightweight, easy to use, and performed well during our tests. Cons Although the beaters worked well, it doesn’t come with balloon whisks or dough hooks. If you’re looking for a fuss-free model that gets the job done, the KitchenAid 5-Speed Hand Mixer is an excellent choice. It’s easy to operate, comfortable, powerful, and reasonable for those who don’t want to spend upwards of $100. During our tests, we were impressed by how well it combined the cookie ingredients into a consistent dough despite having just beaters instead of dough hooks. The mixer also produced a beautiful whipped cream with minimal splatter. Other useful features are its lockable swivel cord to keep your area mess-free and its beater ejector button to easily release the whisks for a quick cleanup. You can choose between several colors, including sky blue, light pink, red, and black. Overall, it’s a solid choice for beginners and those who want a straightforward mixer. Price at time of publish: $60 Power: 60 wattsWeight: 2 poundsSpeeds: 5Attachments: Beaters Food & Wine / Sarah Martens Best Splurge Smeg 50's Retro Style Electric Hand Mixer Amazon View On Amazon View On Williams-Sonoma View On Wayfair Pros This mixer has a sleek and functional design that is surprisingly powerful yet quiet and comfortable in our hands. Cons This is the most expensive mixer on our list. It's obvious that Smeg's hand mixer is attractive, but what surprised us is how thoroughly functional and powerful this gadget is, too. The handle is designed with a textured, rubberized grip that makes it slip-free even when working with wet or greasy ingredients. The speeds are easy to use, and the handle has a built-in timer for added accuracy. The mixer is strong and powerful, but it never felt heavy or out of control, even when mixing through tough ingredients. Overall, this is a fantastic choice for any serious home baker looking to invest in a high-quality mixer. It's pricey (it's the most expensive on our list), but it easily passed all of our tests. The extra attachments — two wire whisks, two beaters, and two dough hooks — provide versatility, which makes this a go-to gadget for a variety of different tasks in the kitchen. Price at time of publish: $180 Power: 220 wattsWeight: 4.4 poundsSpeeds: 9Attachments: Wire whisks, beaters, dough hooks, and storage bag Food & Wine / Emily Johnson Food & Wine / Emily Johnson Food & Wine / Emily Johnson RELATED: The 11 Best Baking Tools of 2023, According to the Pros Our Favorite Overall, the Breville Handy Mix Scraper is a solid piece of equipment that combines form and function, making for a powerful mixer that's comfortable to hold and easy to maneuver. Extra features like an LED light, built-in timer, and silicone-tipped beaters provide added convenience. Our Hand Mixer Tests In order to test functionality, versatility, and durability, we put each mixer to the test by whipping cream and making standard cookie dough. Whipping a liquid like cream helped us get an idea of how each mixer felt in our hands, how easy it was to switch between speeds, and how much splatter was created when mixing at higher speeds. We timed each test and assessed how powerful each mixer was by how the cream reacted. Some mixers could turn the liquid into whipped cream with stiff peaks in about a minute, while others needed multiple minutes to reach stiff peaks. Mixing thick, sticky ingredients like sugar, butter, and flour helped us assess how easy each mixer was to maneuver. Some mixers felt light and easy to use when mixing liquid but were shaky and unsteady when mixing thicker ingredients. Mixing cookie dough also helped us assess how efficiently each mixer incorporated ingredients. We timed how long each product took to combine the sugar, butter, and flour thoroughly and assessed whether or not we could achieve a consistent, smooth dough. Throughout our testing, we used both glass and metal bowls to assess how loud the mixer and beaters were against different surfaces. Laura Denby Factors to Consider Power A good hand mixer should have a powerful motor that can incorporate ingredients, from thin liquids to thick and sticky batters. We recommend looking for hand mixers with 200 to 300 watts of power; however, models with lower wattage might still work just as well. Throughout our tests, we wanted to make sure that each mixer was able to thoroughly combine ingredients without sputtering or splattering. We tested each mixer on high and low speeds and assessed how easy it was to maneuver between power levels. We also noted if high speeds actually equated to more power, and if using more power meant the mixer was more or less difficult to control. We made sure that each mixer performed just as well when whipping cream as it did when mixing together stiff cookie dough. Comfort As the name suggests, hand mixers are designed to make mixing tasks easier to do by hand. If you're going to add one to your toolkit, it should be lightweight, easy to hold, and comfortable to use. A convenient hand mixer should be able to rest on its base without tipping over, so you can easily switch between tasks or set it down momentarily when needed. It should also be designed in a way that makes switching between speeds easy to do with one hand. Lastly, the product should feel smooth and manageable no matter what speed you use, from low to high. During our tests, we assessed how easy the mixers were to maneuver with one hand, how heavy they felt, and if weight puts a burden on your wrist. Attachments Some hand mixers come with a variety of attachments, while others simply have beaters. When choosing the right one for your needs, you’ll want to consider what recipes you’ll need it for. If you bake homemade bread, look for one that includes dough hooks. For light to medium tasks, such as whipped cream and cake batters, beaters or whisks, get the job done. Storage When buying any kitchen gadget, it’s essential to take storage into consideration, especially if you are short on cabinet space. Hand mixers take up a lot less space than stand mixers; however, you’ll want to look for one that comes with a storage case to help keep the accessories organized. Frequently Asked Questions What is a hand mixer used for? Hand mixers can be used for a number of different cooking and baking tasks, from making smooth, creamy mashed potatoes to whipping egg whites into sweet meringue. A hand mixer is used to incorporate ingredients that are too stiff or thick to be mixed by hand. Unlike a stand mixer which can be bulky and take up a lot of space on the countertop, a hand mixer is perfect for quicker mixing projects that require more mobility or portability than a stand mixer. How do I choose a hand mixer? Before selecting a mixer, it's important to determine what types of projects you'll use it for as well as how much you want to spend. Mixers come with a variety of different attachments and speeds at a range of prices, so you'll want to select one that's right for your budget and your skill level. If you plan on using it occasionally for basic baking tasks, then a simple, affordable mixer will do the trick. If you plan to knead stiff bread dough and mix sticky cookie dough, it's worth investing in a more expensive mixer with a powerful motor and comfortable handle. What Didn't Make the List Braun MultiMix Hand Mixer ($90 at Amazon) This mixer missed the mark because it was more difficult to control than some of the others we tested. It felt comfortable when mixing liquid ingredients but was shaky and unsteady when beating through tougher ingredients in our cookie dough test. Plus, we had to use two hands to increase speeds and noticed the motor got louder and louder as we increased speeds. Black and Decker Helix Performance Premium ($60 at Amazon) This model had a comfortable handle and intuitive design, but during our tests, the motor was loud, and it took longer to whip the cream than some of the others. Though this machine is designed to rest easily on its base, ours toppled over when not in use. Hamilton Beach 5-Speed Hand Mixer ($40 at Amazon) This mixer doesn't have as much power or accuracy as some of the others we tested, but its basic functions can handle simple baking tasks. It performed fairly well in our tests but was a little louder and a bit more cumbersome compared to our winners. Hamilton Beach 6-Speed Hand Mixer ($23 at Amazon) This is a simple mixer that easily incorporated the ingredients in our tests using six speeds. However, it was very shaky and unsteady when mixing thick ingredients, and it felt heavy in our hands and created tension in our wrists. Our Expertise Laura Denby is a former professional chef and an Institute of Culinary Education graduate. She uses her culinary background to guide her expert product recommendations. She performed thorough hands-on testing for this piece to determine the best hand mixers. Laura's work can also be found on AllRecipes, Food Network, Delish, Real Simple, Better Homes & Gardens, and Southern Living. Was this page helpful? Thanks for your feedback! Tell us why! Other Submit