10 best hand mixers for home baking, starting from £17

If your kitchen is on the smaller side (we prefer ‘bijou’), this 3-in-1 Gastroback will help you cut down on appliances. It beats, kneads, whisks, blends and chops, with our testers finding all its accessories sturdy and up to the job.

It's quite heavy, but its handle is long and grippy and its non-slip base means it can stand up without toppling over if your arms need a rest. It comes with lots of tips to help you get the best out of it for years to come.

Mango and passion fruit or classic summer berries? Whatever your go-to pavlova topping, leave the meringue base in the safe hands of this Bosch hand mixer. Our testers gave it a gold star for whisking egg whites into stiff, glossy peaks that will leave your garden party guests in raptures.

It mixed cake batter and kneaded dough well too, but don’t expect it to feel fancy at this price – the power switch is flimsy and its highest speed could be punchier.

Don’t underestimate this bargain Russell Hobbs, which impressed our testers by whipping up a near-perfect cake batter. They didn’t notice much difference between its six speeds, so it’s not one for delicate tasks, but it's pleasingly lightweight if you often find hand mixers heavy.

It does feel plasticky and looks basic, but it comes in an inoffensive white and has a handy groove at the rear for resting it on the side of your mixing bowl as you pour in all those chocolate chips.

This slick, gunmetal grey Salter excelled when making Victoria sponge, so add it to your trolly if you’re hosting an alfresco lunch. It brought egg whites to majestic peaks but struggled to pull all the ingredients together when kneading dough.

Its robust casing and attachments led our testers to declare it another great value buy, especially if you’re more into cakes than bread.

If you’re after a low price and big wattage, this Kenwood mixer delivers. Our testers loved the clear, steady increase in its five speeds and it whipped cream to a velvety finish in less than two minutes. It also made a delightfully fluffy cake mix, but its hooks failed to pull every little scrap of dough into a ball.

The affordable price is a major perk, although testers said the buttons did feel a little cheap. Still, it packs some serious power for the price.

Occasional bakers after a simple hand mixer for making fairy cakes should look to this grey Dunelm gem. It comes with both beaters and dough hooks – generous for just £16 – and proved impressively powerful during testing.

It created a dreamily airy cake batter, whipped cream easily and quickly created stiff peaks from egg whites. It only let itself down when kneading dough, struggling to form a ball and chucking our mix out of the bowl, which seemed unnecessarily dramatic.

Oh, KitchenAid, another brand we lust after for its spades of style and substance. Though also pricey at just shy of £130, this mixer is cordless, meaning you won’t be limited to baking by a plug socket. It recharges in just two hours.

Our testers rated the soft-start feature that helps reduce splattering, but thought it a bit mean that no dough hooks are included. Bakers will be chuffed, however – it made wonderfully light fairy cakes and quickly whisked egg whites for meringue.

If the above KitchenAid is out of your budget, you may be able to justify this cordless Cuisinart instead. Cased in sleek stainless steel, it can run for a solid 20 minutes before needing a two-hour fuel-up – more than enough time to prep a batch of cookies or two, or three.

It mixed an even sponge batter with just the right injection of air but its lacklustre power made it slow to whisk egg whites. The beaters kneaded dough in a blistering 30 seconds, but this made the motor unhappy and there was a lot of clogging, so hooks would have been better.