The KitchenAid Artisan 4.8L is, for us, the best all-round stand mixer you can buy: a dense cast-metal machine, a smooth planetary action and an attachment hub that grows with your baking. Here is what it does brilliantly, and where its limits lie.
The KitchenAid Artisan is the mixer most serious home bakers end up owning, and once you have used one it is easy to see why. It does not feel like a kitchen gadget; it feels like a proper piece of engineering that happens to live on your worktop. That blend of heft, refinement and versatility is exactly what makes it our best overall pick in this comparison, and the machine we measure the others against.
| Model | Price | Bowl capacity | Motor | Attachments | Rating | Link | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ★ Top pick KitchenAid Artisan 4.8L Stand Mixer (5KSM175PS) | £455.00 | 4.8 L | 300 W direct drive | Flat beater, dough hook, whisk | ★ 4.8 | View → |
£455.00 £649.00
4.8 L · 300 W direct drive · Flat beater, dough hook, whisk
The verdict from Eleanor Pike, kitchen appliance tester
Our best overall pick. The KitchenAid Artisan is the machine most serious home bakers end up owning, and the reasons are clear the moment you use it: a dense cast-metal body that barely moves on the worktop, a planetary action that reaches every part of the bowl, and an attachment hub that turns it into a pasta roller, mincer or spiraliser. With a 4.8 L bowl it handles a standard family bake comfortably. You pay a clear premium, but you buy it once.
Mixes with a low, even hum and stays planted on the counter even on stiff bread dough.
The Artisan is the right machine if you bake regularly, want results that are consistent year after year, and would rather buy once than replace a cheaper mixer twice. With a 4.8 L stainless steel bowl it comfortably handles a standard family cake, a batch of biscuits or a single loaf, and the tilt-head design makes loading and cleaning genuinely easy. It suits the baker who treats the mixer as a long-term tool rather than an occasional helper, and who values build quality and an expandable feature set over the lowest possible price.
It is less suited to anyone who bakes only a couple of times a year, where the cost and the weight are hard to justify, or to bakers who routinely make very large batches and would be better served by KitchenAid's bigger bowl-lift models or a deep bowl-style machine. For everyday family baking, though, the Artisan has power and capacity to spare, and the smaller, lighter options here cannot match its longevity.
The Artisan's planetary action, where the beater spins one way while travelling around the bowl the other, reaches every part of the mix, so you rarely have to stop and scrape down. It creams butter and sugar to a pale, light fluff, folds delicately at low speed, and whips cream and egg whites to a stable volume. On bread dough it is confident: the 300 W direct-drive motor is geared for torque rather than raw watts, and the machine's weight keeps it planted while the dough hook does its work. It is not a high-volume bread machine, but within its bowl capacity it kneads well.
This is where the brand premium shows most clearly. The body is dense cast metal, not plastic, so it stays still even on a stiff dough where lighter mixers walk across the counter. The finish is excellent, the controls are simple and tactile, and these machines are known to last for many years and often a decade or more. It is heavy to lift in and out of a cupboard, which is the flip side of that solidity, so many owners simply leave it out, helped by the range of colours.
The universal power hub on the front is the Artisan's quiet superpower. It accepts more than fifty optional attachments, turning the mixer into a pasta roller, meat mincer, spiraliser, grain mill or vegetable slicer. No other brand here matches that range. If you are likely to take baking and food prep seriously over the years, that expandability is a real, lasting advantage, and a big reason these machines hold their resale value. We cover the practical jobs in our guide to what you can make with a stand mixer.
The Artisan's only real drawbacks are that it is the most expensive machine here and that it is heavy to move. Neither is a fault: you are paying for cast-metal construction, a refined action and the attachment ecosystem, and the weight is what keeps it stable. If you bake only occasionally, a die-cast mid-range machine such as the Kenwood kMix will do the same everyday jobs for far less, and the budget Aldi Ambiano covers light baking for a fraction of the price. If you want a mixer for life and the option to expand it, the premium is money well spent.
If you bake regularly and want a machine that lasts decades, yes. The cast-metal body, smooth planetary action and huge attachment hub justify the premium for keen bakers. If you only bake occasionally, a cheaper die-cast mixer such as the Kenwood kMix will do the same everyday jobs for far less.
The universal power hub on the front takes more than fifty optional attachments, turning the mixer into a pasta roller, meat mincer, spiraliser, grain mill and more. That ecosystem is a big part of why the Artisan holds its value and earns its place on the worktop for years.
The Artisan 5KSM175PS has a 4.8 L stainless steel bowl, which comfortably handles a standard family cake or a single loaf. If you routinely bake very large batches, KitchenAid's bigger bowl-lift models go up to 6.9 L, but for most homes 4.8 L is the right size.
The Artisan is our best overall pick because it strikes the best balance of mixing ability, build, refinement and longevity, and because the power hub lets it grow with your baking rather than holding you back. It does not reinvent the stand mixer, but it does everything that matters right and is built to keep doing it for years. For a regular home baker who wants one machine to rely on, it is the soundest buy here. If you would rather spend less for similar everyday performance, look at the Kenwood kMix for value or the Aldi Ambiano on a budget, and read our buying guide before you decide.