So ive been looking at buying a stand mixer for a while now. I'm looking to spend about 500 or less and will mainly use it for dough.
I've seen the Kitchenaid KSM160 quite a lot on here for less than 500 but ive also seen people saying that the Kenwood Chef ones with 1000w+ motors are much better and in some cases cheaper too. Which of these should i be looking at (Or if theres other alternatives feel free to let me know)?
Thanks
Apparently the gist is
the Kenwood for the higher capacity motor.
Kitchenaid for wank value
If its going to sit on the counter for a while and you use it once every few weeks i'd go with the Kitchenaid. If you use it frequently then go for the Kenwood.
Kenwood K-Beater mixes much better than Kitchenaid too.
In all honesty the wattage doesn't really matter - what you are planning on using it for makes the decision in what to end up with.
If you are just doing light home baking and rarely doing dough work then a tilt head mixer (where the motor, gear etc move while the bowl is fixed) is suitable.
If planning to do lots of dough work, bread making or large batches then a bowl lift model is what you are after as they are larger, heavier and more suitable for doing this kind of work.
Asking which brand is better is akin to starting a religious war on here so I will say that both Kenwood and Kitchenaid make great mixers for the most part.
Either way a Kitchenaid is a fine choice if you like the retro look but I would recommend skipping the mini range and just going to a mid range KSM if looking at tilt head or a KPM5 if you want something a little sturdier in a bowl lift.
I would recommend skipping the mini range
Especially if you plan on making ice cream; unless they specifically released one for the Mini (I've been out of the small appliances game for a while now, so not sure what's available these days), the ice cream bowl won't fit the Mini
bs. Wattage does matter.
Try mixing dough with 10w, see what happens.
Whats the magic number? I dont know, but on the safe side I'd go for the kenwood with the bigger motor
The motor ratings on all of these are complete garbage for comparison purposes, see my below reply to ESEMCE.
Have a look at the spec sheets for large commercial mixers that have "1/2 HP" motors (372.85W) and tell me that motor wattage ratings are a reasonable way to compare these devices.
https://www.hobartcorp.com/products/food-prep/mixers/legacy-…
For your home, Kitchenaid Artisan, 100% to infinite and beyond
edit: as long as it isn't for dough
as long as it isn't for dough
where can you get them for free ?
I'm one of the vocal few against the Kitchenaid (for tougher workloads) because of the pissy motor.
After starting to smell burning from the motor of my old Sunbeam 250W mixer on my first attempt at dough, I bought a used Kenwood with 800W motor for dough mixing almost exclusively.
It powers though fine.
I haven't done the experiment, but I struggle to believe that a 300W Kitchenaid can perform much better than the 250W Sunbeam.
No matter what people say, Power is power, gear drive (KitchenAid) or belt drive (Kenwood), ultimately a more powerful motor will be able to do more things than the less powerful one, or will be able to do the same things at 50% rated output instead of 100% (or even more if KitchenAid overclock the motor on the KSM160 like they do for their bigger mixer)
The ratings on various mixers is a complete mess - my partner bought a 1000W Kendwood Chef (KVC3100 or similar) to the relationship and wanted to replace my old KPM5 with it due to it being 1000W and my crappy Kitchenaid being only 315W with about the same 4.xL capacity.
The difference when given 1kg of bread dough was absolutely night and day capability wise and really showed how terrible the ratings are for comparison - both drew about 90-110W at full speed unloaded but both showed spikes well past 700W when under heavy load but the pissy "315W" Kitchenaid made it look like a walk in the park as the Kenwood was getting hot, emitting a not so nice smell and attempting to throw itself off the bench. The model she had was one of the smaller ones but claimed to have a 4.6L capacity putting it into the same ball game by Kenwoods ratings.
I have had plenty of experience previously with the larger Kenwoods and am happy to agree that they are on par with and in some cases better than the equally priced Kitchenaid models but comparing them and simply pointing to the motor rating difference is really not comparing apples to apples.
For comparison even the 20 quart massive commercial benchtop mixers from Hobart have motors listed at 1/2 HP or 372.85W but their electrical load is listed at 5A @ 240V 3 phase or about 2KW.
Interesting to have some hands on feedback.
All I can say is that it must've either been burned out already, or a faulty unit, or you're mixing something far drier/tougher than I am.
I do 1.77Kg dough mixes in my bog standard, secondhand, KM300 (1Kg 12% protein flour, 650g water, 100g starter and 20g salt) and it has no issues at any speed.
Even after the gluten has formed (roughly an hour after combination) and it's tearing through the gluten strands balling up the dough and then tearing it down again it runs happily at minimal revs when torque is truly shining.
The current equivalent KM336 can be had for ~$300, versus a ~$500 absolute best case price on the equivalent segment KitchenAid. You're 2/3rds of the way to a replacement Kenwood at that price disparity!
Having said that it wouldn't surprise me to find that Kenwood might also be "overclocking" their motors, but assuming you example wasn't already burned out, they're potentially doing so even more than KitchenAid to achieve higher on-paper figures?
The Overclocking I refer to is from the AvE KitchenAid Teardown on Youtube. The motor (in a larger model than the KSM160, one with a bowl lifter) is nominally rated at something like 150W, but they claim something like 500W (on a 30s duty cycle).
Commercial mixers probably can't get away with overclocked ratings cause their duty cycle is going to be far heavier than a Consumer model.
Isn't the motor on the KitchenAid on the actual attachment head vs. the Kenwood in the body itself? According to reviews, it makes a massive difference and not always a case of more Watts = more powerful. It's how the power is used.
KitchenAid use a Gear transmission like a car, Kenwood use a belt transmission more akin to a motorbike.
Both a well and truly capable and time tested transmission methods.
For dough mixing in particular, I think the belt drive is superior as when the dough balls up it creates jarring through the transmission when the ball catches the hook and then releases until the next rotation. The belt absorbs a lot of that shock.
Sure I may need to replace the belt when it snaps, but far easier and cheaper to do that than replace a stripped sintered metal gear.
As for the mysterious "second law of thermodynamics breaking" KitchenAid power transmission, how is it physically different at the output shaft?
This alleged advantage always comes up in threads on this topic, but there is never any substance, just a whole lot of hand waving and conjecture with no actual explanation.
Also no acknowledgement that the price difference is so enormous. Even assuming similar performance, if the Kenwood lasts half as long as the KitchenAid, you're still ahead financially!
So back to your point.
Where does the power appear from such that a motor reportedly outputting less than half the power can mysteriously be more powerful on the output shaft?
Have KitchenAid invented a new field of Physics, cause that's the only explanation that I can think of.
When you're mixing dough, whats more important - torque or peak power?
Now tell me, which transmission is more efficient at transferring torque? Gear or belt?
@bargain88: Torque is most important of course, specifically torque at the output shaft, but that's dependent on the gear ratios going back to the motor cause;
Power = Torque x Revs
The only way the KitchenAid could compete in torque would be for it to spin at half (or less) speed than the Kenwood.
Listening to the sound of a KitchenAid on YouTube and comparing to my Kenwood I can tell that's not happening.
The pitch at max speed is very similar (in fact possibly higher pitched and therefore higher revs on the KitchenAid)
So at any point in the rev range, knowing that electric motors have flat torque curves from pretty much 0.1 rpm and given the massive Power disparity, the Kenwood MUST also have torque superiority.
No matter. The end result from personal experience listed above is that a bottom end Kenwood happily mixes 1.7Kg dough and is ~$200 cheaper than the equivalent KitchenAid.
No matter the magic of the KitchenAid's alleged Physics defying powertrain, the Kenwood can do the job at a significantly cheaper price.
The old sunbeam that my mum got when i was born.
60yrs old and still going, as are all the attatchments.
Gets used at least on.
Had it rewired 20 yrs ago, thats it.
Our sunbeam from 20+ years ago is also still going strong
Kitchenaid for the attachments. The pasta cutters and meat grinder get a lot of use at my house and it saves me getting standalone appliances for the task.