Customer Reviews

Cuisinart SM-70 7-Quart 12-Speed Stand Mixer, White

5 star:		(56)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(20)

 

 

I make bread weekly using a mixer and recently my Kitchenaid motor gave out after overheating. Though I prefer the looks of the Kitchenaid mixers (something more industrial about them), Cuisinart has addressed several of the key problems found in Kitchenaid mixers: not enough power, overly wide bowl shape, absene of timer/minimal speed control. The stronger motor is crucial if you're mixing bread doughs for minutes at a time. The taller, more narrow bowl shape prevents spilling. The timer function is tremendously useful. And the wider range of speeds (especially slow speeds) and gentle acceleration up to any speed, again, prevent spills and allow for more control.

Other features I like: the spill guard fits neatly and is ONE piece (again, unlike my old Kitchenaid); the lock feature clicks the top arm into place so you never run the risk of lifting from the top and having the bottom swing out; the smooth surfaces make for easy clean-up; the attachments all wash easily in the dishwasher.

A great product!

I have owned a few KitchenAid 5 Qt mixers, and even a Hobart Professional 5 Qt (45 lbs, 3 speed manual transmission). I was disappointed to hear (but never experienced) the problems users encountered when KitchenAid changed their gearbox from metal to plastic (yes, their gearbox, not their gears). Therefore, the assurance that currently appears on their product box that their mixers have "all metal gears" does not address the problem of the gearbox COVER material. Whether K'Aid has addressed this issue has never really been clarified by them adequately for my taste, and so my temptation to purchase the 6 qt. KitchenAid was dampened.

I purchased the Cuisinart 7 Quart because I wanted the extra capacity - simply that. I find that its power is adequate for all tasks, and no matter what the speed setting, it "knows" to ramp up to that speed slowly (so as not to produce a cloud of flour or other ingredients with the potential to scatter), something only possible with the advent of newer electronic controllers. The bowl is deep and well designed.

A word about wattage: Please don't puchase any mixer because you believe that high wattage will translate to more power. That just isn't so. Wattage is a measure of power consumed by the mixer, not put out as torque (ability to slog through heavy doughs). A poorly designed motor will use lots of watts, but will not deliver it to you in increased power. This mixer happens to have 1000 watts of power - sounds like a lot. The point is that whatever its power draw, its power output is sufficient for the tasks at hand. Way back when, I had a KitchenAid 5 qt. that used 325 watts (before wattage became sexy). It, too, had adequate power; today, with the marketing of wattage as a meaningful number, people would sneer at such an "underpowered" unit. Silly, really.

This mixer is well designed. It has a mixing timer, a pulse button, both of which are useful. Its lineage (for those of you who are interested) is as follows: A UK brand, Kenwood, marketed a quality 7 qt mixer that was popular in EU for many years, but was never very popular in the US market. It was sold to Rival, and for a short time, was available under that brand. It was then sold to DeLonghi, who modified it a bit; then it was sold to Cuisinart, who made the most significant modifications to it (deeper, better designed bowl, better controller with timer and speed ramp up feature). The mixer was always inherently a good one, even way back when it was a Kenwood.

The design of this mixer, with its large capacity, still allows the beater head to pivot up, allowing the beater to clear out of and away from the bowl, whereas the beater heads of the KitchenAid 5 and 6 qt models are fixed and require that the bowl be cranked down, but leave the beater pretty much in the way. I prefer this design as it offers more access to the bowl (no matter what they tell you, you must still scrape down the bowl periodically - the question is, which design allows you to do that more easily?)

Its tools (whip, dough hook and flat beater) are extremely well designed and are, I think, a bit better than KitchenAid's. I'm not an "accessory
person", and so I cannot speak to the quality of the pasta press, meat grinder, blender, etc. I will say that K'Aid most likely still offers a greater variety of accessories, and so for those who are interested in milling grain, straining tomatoes, opening cans, etc. by using mixer attachments, I think this is probably not the unit for you.

An extra bowl for the unit (which I find very useful) costs $55 directly from Cuisinart, although I see it here on Amazon for $99, an unbelivable markup.

I highly recommend this mixer, have made everything from heavy cookie doughs to merengues, and find it to be well designed and a pleasure to use.

I researched the Kitchenaid, Viking and several other brands of mixers. There were a lot of good and bad reviews of Kitchenaid, but what I was able to discover was that Kitchenaid used to be owned by Hobart Corp. At that time they were excellent mixers, but then they were purchased by Whirlpool. The mixers now have plastic gears. Although the higher-end models have metal gears (Pro series), they are still in a plastic housing. This decline in quality disturbs me. It is likely that most home cooks do not use it for heavy-duty usage, but those cooks who do have apparently found the products from Kitchenaid do not last (see negative reviews -- especially from the engineer who took several of them apart). The Viking seemed better made but was quite expensive. I settled on the Cuisinart after learning that its gears and gear housing are metal. Hopefully it will last a long time. I noticed that the Kitchanaid had only a one year warranty, but the Cuisinart has a FIVE year motor warranty, and a three year product warranty overall. It seemed a safer bet, so I got the Cuisinart. It performs very well. The timer is built right into the side of the mixer and is very handy. The mixer leaves very little batter unmixed even if you don't bother to scrape the bowl yourself. The range of speeds is very large -- from extremely slow (1) to incredibly fast (12). It is pretty quiet in its operation. I will have to continue using it to see how long it lasts, but so far it does a great job.

I have had the 7 quart Cuisinart stand mixer for about five months now and initially had high hopes for it based on the marketing claims. However, the mixer has turned out to be a huge disappointment and a costly purchasing mistake. My main reasons for choosing to purchase this mixer were the 16 cup flour rating and the claims about the motor power. Both of these claims by the manufacturer are complete nonsense. For making doughs, the 7 quart Cuisinart mixer has a maximum capability of about 10 cups of flour, period. There are three reasons for this.

1) With any more than 10 cups of flour the dough quickly climbs up the hook and into the rotating planetary parts of the mixer. It makes a terrible mess and prevents the dough from being kneaded properly without repeatedly stopping the mixer and working the mess back down into the bowl. This happens every time no matter what I try and despite the presence of the guard on the dough hook and paddle.

2) The mixer base is too narrow and the mixer is not heavy enough to counter the mass of larger batches of dough. The mixer shakes and rocks violently and walks its way across the counter.

3) Most importantly, the motor overheats after about 3 to 4 minutes of kneading larger batches of dough and the mixer shuts off. That happens consistently even with the repeated stops necessary to get the dough back down in the bowl as described in #1 above. If the motor did not have the thermal protection shut-off, then I would have killed this mixer with my first use of it out of the box. The "powerful 1000 watt motor" is simply not up to the tasks that the manufacturer claims. I'm now sure that the reason the thermal shut-off is there in the first place is because their prototypes repeatedly went up in smoke when actually put to work.

To be fair, this mixer does have a few nice features for someone who would want to use it for light duties. The tall, narrow bowl means that small volumes still mix up nicely. Also, the head latching in the up position and the motor automatically slowly stepping up its speed when turned on are very practical features. Other than that, there is not much nice that I can say about the product. There are three accessory ports on the mixer, each geared to work at different speeds. But, I have not had much experience with the accessories. When I bought the mixer it came with a coupon for a free blender attachment. I sent that in and more than four months passed before the blender attachment arrived. Also, while it is nice that the splash guard is one piece and lifts away from the bowl with the mixer head the opening is so small and at such an angle that it is pretty much impossible to add in ingredients with the guard in place and the mixer running.

For someone who only wants to make two loaves of bread at a time or only has very light tasks to perform, then this mixer might be okay. It will mix up batters and small amounts of cookie dough just fine. However, I have found it to be completely useless for my heavier needs (that are well within what the manufacturer claims the mixer is supposed to handle). I have gone back to kneading bread dough by hand because that is far less trouble and effort than trying to deal with the Cuisinart mixer. The mixer is simply incapable of making four loaves worth of dough, and Cuisinart must have been aware of that fact before they made their false marketing claims about the mixer's power and capacity. I think that they were simply capitalizing on the fact that people were disillusioned with the pathetic performance of all other consumer-grade stand mixers that were already on the market. The only option for me and others who actually want to get some work done with a stand mixer seems to be opting for a larger and much more expensive truly commercial grade product (forget about the "commercial" claims of Kitchen Aid, Viking, Cuisinart, and all the others). I wish that I had put the $400+ that I wasted on this Cuisinart towards something that is actually suitable to its intended purpose. As it is, I got ripped off with this product.

The Cuisinart mixer is a great buy. When we purchased the product it stated that it would take a week or two to receive but we received it within five business days which was a pleasant surprise. The mixer handles the task at hand without any problem. The only negative if there is one is the fact that due to the shape of the mixing bowl even though it has the room to mix four cake mixes at one time ... the narrowness of the bowl would put the mix above the mixer head itself and therefore would not properly mix the complete batch ... but it handles three cake mixes at a time without a problem. The unit itself seems light in weight, but so far it has proved to be a great asset in the kitchen and we would suggest buying the product without hesitation.

I've had my mixer for a couple of months now, and I really love it. I have found that it can handle a great deal more than my 5 qt KitchenAid, and leaves less unmixed dry stuff at the bottom of the bowl. It overheated when I attempted to knead four loaves of 100% whole wheat bread (15-16 cups of flour), though, but I solved the problem by splitting at the batter stage, then adding flour and kneading in two separate batches. Pretty easy to do, really. We are able to triple cake recipes. I found it to be a lifesaver at Thanksgiving since I have a large family to feed. It isn't as heavily made as the KitchenAid, but we think the body is made of cast Aluminum. The timer feature is really good for me since I tend to walk off and leave things mixing when distracted by my kids. It just stops when the time is up!

Please do not buy this product. I was lured in by its 1000 watt motor. My wife and I make our own bread, and so we bought this mixer in the hopes of having a long-lasting machine for years to come. Within a month of making bread, however, the machine just stopped working. It started working again the next day. Now, six months later, it has stopped working altogether. To top it all off, the customer service for Cuisinart is absolutely horrible. If your machine breaks down, you have to ship it to New Jersey and pay for the shipping! To make things worse, Cuisinart expects you to include money in your return so that they have the funds to ship it back! I was floored by how unfriendly their "customer service" protocol was, and they were unwilling to even budge on making my experience better. Finally, you have to be willing to be without your mixer for anywhere from two weeks to two months before getting it back. We use our mixer everyday! How can we do that? Please call me if you have any questions. I'd be more than happy to talk you into buying a Bosch.:)

I couldn't wait to get this mixer. I had a kitchenaid mixer before this and the motor burned out in about 2 years. So I thought this would be much better, with a more powerful motor. When I got it, it worked okay, but the second time the motor shut off on me when I was kneading dough, then it started sounding funny. After just under 3 months it broke. I called cuisinart and they told me I had to pay to ship it back to them and they charge a 10 dollar fee on top of that plus the cost to have it shipped back to you. Amazon gave me the money to ship it to them.But they will not return it. If you are still going to buy this, buy it at a regular store so when it breaks on you and it will, you can return it because most stores return policy is 90 days. Amazons is only 30 days, which is pretty bad, what item usually breaks in 30 days.

I really wanted to love this, but now I spent 400.00 for a piece of junk, from a terrible company who clearly doesn't care about their customers.

I have a huge family so I make all our bread. If you are buying a mixer to make bread save your money. Buy the cookbook "How to cook everything" by Mark Bittman, all his breads are made with a food processor. They are AWESOME breads and come out better than breads made with a mixer. I wish I had this cookbook before I wasted my money on this mixer. Just get a little hand mixer for cakes and cookies. I bake everything homemade. If I am going to spend money on an appliance I like to have the best so it will last a long time. Unfortunately I didn't believe other peoples bad reviews, which turned out to be true. This is a terrible mixer so if you like to waste money buy this.

I grew up using my mom's Bosch for bread, but I have been using a basic Kitchen Aid for 7 years for all uses which yields 3 loaves of bread for me. I have been eyeing 7 qt mixers for 4 years now, but have not been able to justify the expense. Luckily we found this Cuisinart closer to $300 much more affordable. I initially wanted the Delonghi because the design was so striking. Unfortunately they aren't available anymore as Cuisinart has purchased and modified the model.

Experience: Made a batch of cookies. Used the paddle. Turned out beautifully. Could easily triple my recipe yield 5-6 dozen cookies. Tried making a 4 loaf yield bread recipe. Used the dough hook. I was able to mix up to 13 cups flour, but it didn't incorporate well. I ended up dumping dough out and incorporating remaining 2-3 cups of flour in by hand. By making a large recipe I noticed that the mixing attachments top off at 3/4 of the bowl depth, well below the top rim of mixing bowl, thus limiting capacity. I noticed on Kitchen Aids web site there 600 models boast 8 loaf yields.

Key Bonus Features: 1) I love that it fits underneath my overhead cupboards and lights. I can't fit my Kitchen Aid on the counter under the overhead cupboards since I installed counter lights. 2) I love the gradual speed control and the fold feature. I don't like how quickly both the Kitchen Aid and Bosh pick up and that they lack any slow speeds. 3) I like the timer to prevent over mixing, though I don't use it very often. 4) The attachment idea is appealing though I don't use any. Bosch has had the same concept for years with their Universal mixer/blender combo.

Key detractors: 1) The Cuisinart design takes away from the cosmetic sleekness of the Delonghi. Bummer. That's one of the reasons I wanted it initially. It looked so different and much cooler than Kitchen Aid. It appears as though Cuisinart is catering to Kitchen Aid users because the SM-70 looks like a mutated Kitchen Aid stand mixer, including the metal ring around the top and the horseshoe bowl harness. 2) You cannot mix 7 qts as the top of mixing attachments end about 1/4 below top rim of bowl. I poured in liquid and your actual mixing volume is about 5 qts before immersing the rotating stirring mechanism. This is however much more than I could do with my Kitchen Aid. Larger Kitchen Aids may hold more. Check the top level of the mixing parts to see how much you can actually fill the bowl. Maybe it is standard for stand mixer bowls to be larger than actual mixing capacity to reduce spillage, but a better design would reduce the percentage as much as possible. I can mix just over 5 qts in the Bosh and the beating mechanism is above the bowl rim. I also like the splash gaurd on the Bosch as you can make it a one or two piece cover. 3) The dough hook didn't seem to incorporate the flour very well. I ended up pouring dough onto counter and kneading by hand. Not a problem in the Bosch. 4) I don't seem to notice a real power different between the Kitchen Aid and this. They both seem adequate, but not overly muscular. Bosch seemed to handle the bulk of bread dough a little better. 5) The tall narrow bowl has some benefits and seems to mix well even at the bottom of the bowl with plenty of room to spare at the top for double batches, but to me I felt a little claustrophobic, trying to add ingredients while mixing and not getting them all over the place. With or without the splash guard, I felt there was limited space to try and get something into the bowl without actually tilting the head up. Maybe it just takes some getting used to after using wider bowls in both the Kitchen Aid and Bosch mixers.

Recommendations: 1) I would like to see them design a deeper mixing attachment so you can truly mix larger capacities up to top rim of bowl. Splash guard seems superfluous as you must keep mixture well below top rim of bowl so you don't immerse mechanism. 2) It would be nice to see the pour spout on the splash guard have a little wider and taller opening to accommodate larger measuring cups. 3) I would like to see them move the controls to the back of the machine as my counter space makes it easier for me to use the machine sideways and from the left side. The controls on the right side force me to use it the other direction. If the controls were on the rear then I could place it sideways on the right or left side of my counter without trouble and still easily see the controls. The splash guard can already switch from right to left so pour spout can be on either side. It's nice to at least have that flexibility.

It may well be the best option for larger capacity home use mixers, but if I had to purchase again, I would probably go with Bosch for larger bulkier jobs (larger capacity, great flour incorporation) and just use a hand mixer for cake batters and smaller jobs. If you decide to purchase it, save all of your packing materials and then try your largest recipes first to see if you can truly accommodate the larger capacity you envision and justify the expense. Then try to double or triple any recipes to see how far you can go. If you can't, return it. If you don't intend to make big batches of anything, don't bother with it at all and just stick with your old Kitchen Aid.

After researching large stand mixers for several months, I opted for the Cuisinart 7 quart. I have had a small Kitchenaid for years and it still runs like the day I got it. It's just not big enough to accommodate my baking needs. I didn't go with the big KA because of the bowl lift. I prefer the tilt feature.
The Cuisinart is a great looking machine. I love the look of the Viking and seriously considered purchasing one. I had concerns about reports of motor problems and poor customer service. I even contacted Viking and asked about these reports. The only response I got was a testimonial from a customer.
This machine looks similar to the Viking but has some nicer features. It is much lighter than my small Kitchenaid which I appreciate. I had no trouble lifting and moving it. It doesn't need rear wheels. Contrary to some reviews, it does not feel flimsy at all. Bakers, you will love the fold setting and the smooth dial to increase the speeds. The timer is also great. I immediately whipped up a bread recipe using 8 cups of flour and it didn't even phase it. It is a real powerhouse. The dough does not climb up the hook. I was also pleasantly surprised at how quiet it is.
The 3 year warranty is great. (But I am saving the packing material in case there is ever a problem) I am anxious to try some of the accessories. It may replace several of my old appliances.
The only thing I would change is the shield. I really like the one piece design but it is a little difficult to snap in place. But it is still easier than the 2 piece KA shield. It comes up and out of the way when you tilt the head which is nice.
If you are considering an upgrade and like to double and triple recipes, this is your machine. Well worth the money. Here ia a good video http://video.cuisinart.com/video/video.php?s=standmixer&f=standmixer