Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

When you read customer reviews before making a large purchase, sometimes you take the negative reviews with a grain of salt. Seems like a lot of people like to inflate small problems into major issues or have unrealistic expectations about how a product should perform. When we saw a few people mention here that exposed parts of this food processor became hot during use, we assumed that the normal rule of thumb applied. After all, you can't sell a machine that gets so hot during normal use it would actually burn the operator, right? Well in this case that assumption was a mistake. Bottom line is, you can not run the Breville BFP800XL for more that a few minutes without the metal spindle which is exposed when you open the container becoming so hot that you will be seriously burned if you touch it. Furthermore, you cannot, in any practical sense, avoid touching it when actually using the appliance. Finally, if you persist in using the appliance for what might seem like a very reasonable application, such as mixing dough, the spindle will become so hot as to damage the cover and spindle. You'll find pictures of this happening to other reviewers here. We cook a lot, and we have no problem paying more for what you'd expect would be a quality piece of equipment. This machine does appear to perform admirably in every other respect, but the heating issue is a fatal flaw which renders the BFP800XL unusable in any practical sense. This is not something I would expect or tolerate in a food processor priced at close to $400. My recommendation is to avoid this machine. If you don't use it enough to run into the heat problem, you probably don't need such a high powered appliance and could get away with something far less expensive. If you have a need for a real food processor look elsewhere because you won't be able to work with this appliance without hurting yourself on a regular basis. Learn from our mistake...now we are back to figuring out what is our best choice for a new food processor.