Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I am taking culinary classes for baking and I quickly realized that if I was going to actually learn anything, I needed to practice at home, and to do that, I needed a "planetary" mixer. In class our mixers range from industry grade KitchenAid to Volrath to Hobart -- with the last two being the machines that do the the severe high yield cookie and bread dough jobs. This was an intro class, and we did a little of everything, but I was most interested in bread. Since I am very serious about learning to bake, I began to explore and price planetary stand mixers. Since I am on a strict budget and not absolutely positive that I would continue the class, my goal was to find an "entry level" stand mixer with the planetary mixing action. To be clear, planetary refers to the action of whatever mixer utensil is at work in the bowl. For instance, if you are using the paddle tool, the paddle will be spinning in the bowl much in the same way an egg beater spins, however, there is a second motion in which a separate gear orbits the bowl as the paddle spins -- so, there is a double action with a planetary mixer. I bought this at $79, based on the reviews and I honestly felt that it would be fine for practice and that eventually if my passion for baking continued, I would just run this into the ground for the time being. I sort of took the attitude that if things didn't work out, I wasn't out a huge investment and if it broke, well, it WAS the cheapest mixer I could find... BUT. WOW! I am NOT a baker but a novice baking student and I can honestly tell you that I have been beating the heck out of this thing and I cannot kill it! At home I have made 14 dozen lean dough french rolls, 8 dozen enriched dough rolls, 7 Pear Frangipane Tarts and several cookie batches. Now I mainly want to talk about the bread since there is a lot of static on here about how this mixes bread dough and the reason I think that this little mixer needs some respect is because -- as I practiced, I DIDN'T know what I was doing. I was kneading dough with the bread hook way too long and often at a higher speed. However, bread dough can be very forgiving in the oven and all came out fine -- but the amazing thing is that I abused this mixer out of ignorance and it just kept going. The bread recipes each called for 18 oz. of flour with one (Lean French) using 100% Bread Flour the other (Enriched) with a 12/6 oz. split of bread and AP flour. Due to my inexperience and some experimenting. I sometimes kneaded the dough for up to an hour when only 10 or 15 minutes was needed. This made the mixer very warm and I could hear it labor on occasion, but even now it works as well as the day I took it out of the box. It is made of plastic with a metal bowl and suction cup feet. It isn't any louder than the mixers at school. It has a 3.5 qt. stainless steel bowl which is a little small, so although it was good for me to practice, I will eventually upgrade to a higher capacity mixer. However, at 300 watts -- which is a little low, power-wise -- it never seemed to struggle as I assumed it would. It would start to labor a bit and then recover as if it shifted gears. This mixer turned out to be a pleasant surprise and even after I upgrade, I will be keeping this little guy around as both a back-up and a secondary mixer if I get on a roll. If you are a hardcore baker with intense high yield formulas, you should probably pass.