Magimix 18534 5200XL Food Processor Satin Finish

Unfortunately I have a small kitchen. This means I have to put my Magimix 5200 away between uses and as it is a heavy beast, this works against it.
This is my only complaint. It's brilliant otherwise- strong, quiet (compared to other food processors but not compared to say, the cat), good accessories, easy to clean, capacity (it's huge-no need for batches of soup), quality durable materials.
Perhaps this model wouldn't be ideal if you were always going to live with a small kitchen but ideal if you could keep it on the bench top. I wouldn't recommend a smaller model if you can avoid it.

Good points:

Magimix do everything in one package and quickly with no fiddly or time consuming attachments to worry about that invalidate the whole point of using a food processer in the first place. SPEED OF USE. Why anyone would take a minute of two to burrow through cupboards and assemble fiddly attachments when that time could be spent chopping a single onion on a board is beyond me (unless you are arthritic or for some other good reason). These attachments come in a box.

They also cope with cake and bread preparation every bit as well as a kitchen machine does - although I do think some hand kneading is required after bread dough is removed from the bowl to get good results because the MM tends to gather and glue the mix together rather than knead it properly to activate the glutin. Think of the calories you'll burn doing the rest by hand.

The egg white and cream whisking blades aare perfectly fine with enough air incorporated to be fit for purpose. It may take a tad longer than a kitchen machine would though.

The smallest bowl is ideal for making mayonnaise, particularly if you use the non-standard oil drip feed tub pusher instead of dripping it from a jug into the open feed tube, which can take the best part of 10-15 minutes, and this can be tiring on the arms. Fast addition of oil just makes mayo go too runny and greasy tasting. So it's a slow job greatly assisted by this little gadget.

The larger XL feed tube is ideal for dropping whole veg, like pototoes, provided that you feel it is essential to use whole sliced spuds instead of pre-halved tube fed sliced potatoes, which is more than adequate for potato dishes requiring sliced potatoes, I find. For those wondering whether the XL model is worth the additional expense over the standard feed tube equivalent, ask yourself this: does anyone really examine how potatoes are sliced underneath the neat whole spud sliced top layer if you've just presented them with Potato Dauphinoise I doubt it. They're too busy tucking in to care. For top layer whole spuds, use small potatoes that will fit in the standard tub, don't spend extra on the XL model unless you really need to.

These are fantastic machines and stable when in use without being too heavy to shift around. The power cord is long enough to move the machine if you normally store it under low hanging cupboards.

Not so good:

The large bowl can get food soiled from smallest bowl overspill. But a quick dunk under the tap sorts that out.

The bowls will go cloudy if you clean them with abrasive clothes or harsh dish washing machine detergents. Best to wipe them by hand with washing up liquid dunked soft cloth and warm water. They are too pricey to replace too often.

Magimix don't come with an ice cream maker, potato peeler attachment, pasta cutter and blender attachments, like some of the top of the range the Kitchen Machines do. But in my view, sausage making is an art and buying good quality bangers is probably better than shoving a pile of pork mince and chopped sage into sausage casings and they probably taste as bad as they sound; My italian friends swear by good quality dried pasta to fresh pasta; and do you want to eat near liquid ice cream instead of firmer textured bought in premium varieties that add essential stabilisers to keep it from crystalising? Do you want to get fat as well or take up precious freezer space icing your bowl for hours on end? Frankly, I doubt that these extra attachments add more to your quality culinary repertoire than they do to your waistline.

The smallest bowl is not that good for chopping very tiny quantities: a garlic clove, a sprig of herbs, a handful of nuts. You need a more sizeable quantity to get it to work well otherwise they just get chased around the bowl. But, hey! Do you really want to use a machine to chop up such tiny quantities? By the time you've fished out the small bowl, got out the small blade from the attachment box and assembled it all, you could have chopped a single onion or a few parsley leaves on a chopping board.

Some tops of veg and final bits of cheese can get caught up in the disks and left unprocessed once you've finished pushing it through the feed tube. But this is a minor inconvenience, and the unprocessed bits can bagged up and given to the pet rabbit or dropped into soup mixes (or bagged up for cheese on toast or re-processing later on). Not worth making a fuss about unless you're a perfectionist.

Yes it is expensive but as always you get what you pay for, I was not aware of the Magimix brand until I read about them in Jamie Olivers 30 minute meals book then went shopping for this but would definately buy other products manufactured by them, very robust, very powerful and does everything you''ll need.

Also comes with a great recipe book, I have used the pancake recipe from it which is amazing also. Highly recommended