Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is a great mixer, and I'm not sure why someone said that the high speed wasn't enough to make meringues. It is. I have made several with it, and I've only had this mixer for about six weeks. It also does a great job with mashed potatoes, and has mixed cookie dough as well. I really like the various speeds on it, and many thanks to the reviewer who put it to the tachometer test -- that was the review that made me go ahead and order this Kitchenaid. The mixer is much quieter than other hand mixers I have had in the past, and I do think that that could make someone think the mixer didn't have enough power, if going by the sound. It's hard to tell your brain to ignore that, but you should, because this mixer has plenty of quiet power. I should also say that I am not a novice cook by any means, having raised eight kids in the past 35 years, and fed not only them, but crowds of their friends (and I do mean crowds). I wasn't sure that I would like the beaters, and they were actually one of my biggest hesitations in ordering this. I have always had the square, heavy duty ones, and these looked flimsy in the picture. After using this mixer a number of times, though, I have changed my mind on the blades. The wire blades seem to do a great job, and the dough, potatoes, cake batter, etc. doesn't cling to them as it does to the large square ones. Saves me a minute or two on scraping all the extra stuff off the blades and into the bowl at the end, and these beaters wash up much faster, without any residue clinging to the insides of the blades to gross out the next person who uses them. Hmmm . . . what else? Oh, the color. I bought the yellow, and I really like it. It is NOT exactly as pictured. The picture is honestly a cuter shade, and that was a small disappointment, but only a small one. I don't primarily buy a mixer for the color anyway (although I could if I weren't such a frugal person, because the colors are really cute). And the actual yellow color of the mixer that arrived reminded me of the yellow hand mixer my mother used when I was a little girl, so I can't complain. :)