All Stirred Up: Our Favorite Hand Mixers

While bright and colorful stand mixers often get all the attention in the kitchen, we know that a good hand mixer is indispensable to home cooks looking to whip up treats in a flash.

- By Sarah Farmer

With a smaller footprint than its standing counterpart, a hand mixer is the perfect device for stirring recipes quickly using your go-to mixing bowl. This gadget should make quick work of simple tasks, like making velvety smooth brownie batter.

To find the tools that are up to these tasks (and much more), our pros put the 10 most popular hand mixers through their paces right in our Test Kitchen. Each mixer was tested and timed while creating airy meringue, stirring cake mix, creaming butter and sugar, as well as while whipping up fluffy, scratch-made buttercream. From low speed to whirring away, we had to see if these appliances could keep up with the demands of our kitchen.

While performance is key in any test, we didn't just stop there. Our team also wanted to find hand mixer options that were comfortable to use and that included attachments and features home bakers desire. Sure, basic metal beaters can accomplish most tasks, but a hand mixer that includes a few extras—think dough hooks or even silicone-tipped beaters that scrape the bowl can make a world of difference to those of us who are reaching for this gadget day after day.

In this test we found that these features can go far beyond next-level beaters. Helpful extras, including built-in timers, food processor attachments and cordless functionality, can take a mixer from good to Test Kitchen-Preferred.