The Best Food Processors

Our previous favorite still excelled with power; precision; and a compact, streamlined design that takes up less space than most food processors, despite having one of the largest capacities, all at a moderate price. Its smooth, simple bowl and blade design are easy to handle, monitor during use, and clean. Its unusual feed tube placement allows for increased bowl visibility. It comes with just three blades for chopping, shredding, and slicing that can all be stored inside the bowl, with no accessories box to deal with. However, since we last tested it, the chopping blade was redesigned and leaves slightly bigger gaps between it and the bottom and side of the bowl, so it couldn’t effectively incorporate egg yolks into single-batch mayonnaise. We didn’t discover any other adverse effects from these slightly bigger gaps, which were still narrower than those of lower-ranked models. It did chop mirepoix uniformly and was one of only two models to give us perfectly green-colored yogurt in our dye test. Although it lacks a mini bowl for very small jobs, a double batch of mayonnaise worked well.

Large, powerful, and solidly constructed, this pricey, feature-laden machine operates smoothly, efficiently, and relatively quietly. If you want all the bells and whistles, they come with this fully loaded model, which nicely expands what a food processor can do. We liked its simple, intuitive controls; count-up timer; and short, powerful pulse function. It shredded, sliced, and chopped quickly and uniformly with minimal waste. The machine had clear markings on the base and workbowl that made it simpler and smoother to assemble than other food processors we’ve tested. When we tested its power and capacity with a double batch of pizza dough, it quickly and fairly neatly produced smooth, elastic dough with no motor struggles. Its extra attachments worked well. A few quibbles Its lid has nooks and crannies that require detailing as you clean. Its blades are multi-part and a bit annoying to assemble. And inside its giant box of accessories, parts are labeled with numbers, but the manual labels them with letters, which left us puzzled and struggling to compare pictures and parts. A dicing attachment is available for this model, sold separately.

This powerful food processor handled nearly every challenge we threw at it, doing an especially fine job of mincing parsley and grinding beef. Its pulse function is strong, responsive, and short. We loved the ability to set precise thicknesses from 0.3 to 8 millimeters when slicing, the reversible shredding disk that offers two sizes, and the helpful indicators on the bowl for aligning the lid. It also comes with a 2.5-cup mini bowl for small jobs. While the main bowl has a leakproof gasket, the lid still slides on and off fairly easily, unlike other models with this feature. However, its mixing and chopping fell a bit short of ideal; with slightly too-big gaps between the blade tips and bowl walls, it left small streaks in our yogurt dye test, a bit of yolk in the mayo, and a few big chunks of carrot in mirepoix. Its tall profile and its accessories box took up storage space, and the gray tint of its bowl made it a bit harder to monitor progress. We found its two-part S-blades trickier to handle and clean than other models’ single-piece S-blades, and its bowl and parts are hand-wash only.

We loved the simple lines of this powerful machine by Magimix, whose parent company, Robot-Coupe, is known for its commercial food processors. Its pulse duration is short, though slightly longer than that of the two highest-ranking models. (Its control buttons feel surprisingly flimsy, however.) It came with tons of accessories, including three sizes of bowls, a ringlike Blendermix tool to help puree without leaks, and a whisk to whip egg whites or cream, with options to buy many more, including dicing, juicing, and spiralizing kits. While it sliced, kneaded dough, and processed pie dough perfectly, it surprisingly did not perform other tasks quite as well—something we’d expect at this price. It left big streaks of color in the yogurt, several irregular pieces of ground meat in the hamburger, a handful of oversize carrot chunks in the mirepoix, and several larger pieces of cheese and carrots after shredding that we discovered in the bowl. We found it frustrating that the lid twists off in the same direction as the bowl so that they both swing loose with the lid still attached.

This compact model had a bowl and lid that were simple to snap together without twisting, and it did a terrific job on most tasks, engaging quickly with food and chopping, shredding, and blending well (though a bit loudly). We liked that it was fairly easy to clean, didn’t trap food, and offered good visibility. All parts are easily stored in the bowl, a space-saving boon, and it’s light and portable. However, its extra-narrow feed tube forced us to trim food extensively to fit, slicing was a bit messy, and we wish the whole thing was larger: maxing out at 3 cups of flour, it couldn’t accommodate double batches of dough; we had to clean it between single batches, so it took more than twice as long as bigger models. The motor also stalled, shutting down temporarily just as each batch of dough was done, which gave us concerns for its power and durability. We figured out that the bowl can hold about 5 cups of liquid, but the manual frustrated us with its lack of specifics. Finally, until we learned to remove it first, the feed tube insert fell out every time we opened the lid and popped up as we pressed down on food; there’s no way to lock it in place.

This tall, lightweight machine had some very nice design elements that made it particularly easy to use, including a workbowl that simply slid onto the base and feed-tube inserts that were a breeze to clean. It sliced potatoes and tomatoes perfectly and we found it easy to adjust slice thickness, though we had to trim the potato extensively before it fit in the tube. Shredding cheese and carrots went fairly quickly, but food sometimes got trapped around the base of the feed tube and carrot juice sprayed around the bowl, indicating a slightly duller shredder than ideal. The machine made fluffy mayonnaise and we appreciated the hole in its feed-tube insert for drizzling in oil gradually. Its large capacity meant it produced a smooth, elastic double batch of pizza dough. However, its lightweight base let the machine jump around the counter as it kneaded. The pulse function ran long, so blades continued to process for more than three full seconds after we wanted them to stop, which over-chopped food. Cleanup took extra time since its multi-part blade shifted enough in mixing to allow dough to ooze between parts and glue the blade in place. And the workbowl has a rim near the top with a ridge that traps bits of vegetables and flour. Its hinged lid seemed handy at first but often turned out to be in the way when we were trying to remove food from the bowl. We loved how the blades were cleverly designed to store in a plastic caddy inside the workbowl but always struggled to get the parts to fit.

This 12-cup machine was very easy to assemble. It featured an array of seven control buttons, almost as many as on a typical blender, which felt excessive. (By contrast, our top-rated food processor has two simple buttons Off and On/Pulse.) Instead of a traditional S-blade for chopping, this model had a fearsome-looking double blade that was scary to handle but reasonably effective. Mincing parsley took twice as many pulses as other models, but the results were uniform and dry. The pulse button ran for a long time after we released it, so food continued to process past the desired point. The adjustable slicer disk sliced potatoes well, but it sometimes struggled with softer plum tomatoes, which barely fit into the feed tube. We were able to get neat, thin slices of tomato, but on thicker settings slices were ragged and oozed juice. The food processor could not emulsify mayonnaise its blades were positioned too high, so they couldn’t make contact with the egg yolk on the bottom of the workbowl. Dough took longer to mix than the recipe indicated but ultimately came out well, though cleanup was difficult because of the overly complicated design of the workbowl lid, which trapped flour.

Very lightweight with grippy suction-cup feet that forced us to wrench it off the counter every time we needed to scoot it around, this inexpensive model performed surprisingly well, especially compared with models costing 10 times as much. Its motor was extremely loud and raucous, like a jackhammer, and it blew air at us as it worked. Still, it chopped mirepoix and ground beef quickly and effectively, though parsley took a long time to process and still emerged a bit uneven. Shredding carrots and cheese left moderate amounts of waste, but the shreds were acceptable even if they were less fluffy and uniform than other models; slices of potatoes and tomatoes emerged uneven and wedge-shaped, with a fair amount of juice in the bowl, indicating bruising. Yogurt flew all over the bowl without blending into a smooth green color. The blades just barely managed to reach the egg yolks when making mayonnaise, which came out heavy but acceptable. Both pie and pizza doughs were processed well, though it took a bit longer than in other models and we found dough stuck in all kinds of crannies. The pusher assembly traps water and takes a while to dry. All in all: not too bad, especially considering its price.

We truly appreciated this model’s clever stacking design that allowed us to put the bowl and lid straight on with no twisting. We also liked its big pull-over metal bar that locked down the bowl and doubled as a handle for toting the comparatively lightweight machine. It performed well when shredding and slicing (with 14 thickness settings) but fell short when chopping and mixing, leaving large, irregular chunks when grinding beef or chopping mirepoix—the vegetables bounced around for over a minute before the blade started cutting. Mayonnaise would not emulsify, no matter what we did (there’s no mini bowl), and big streaks of blue and yellow remained in the processed yogurt, denoting poor mixing ability. A complicated, nook-filled lid interior and vertical ribs on the bowl made removing contents with a spatula difficult, and they trapped both water and food, slowing cleanup. It also had multiple buttons, with different ones for every function, but that meant we had to stop and read them each time. Its dicing attachment worked but left a good deal of waste and seven parts to clean; we’d only break it out for very large batches.

We frequently mistook this model for the Breville Sous Chef, which it very closely resembles. But its performance, while acceptable, fell short of the Breville and its own Cuisinart sibling. Its motor is loud, and its parts felt a bit cheap and lightweight, but it shredded carrots and cheese nicely and blended mayonnaise and pizza dough effectively. That said, its pulse duration ran long, and with a slightly larger blade gap than was optimal, it left streaks in yogurt and irregular pieces in the mirepoix, ground beef, and pie pastry. It sliced well, though its wavy, heavily serrated blades left grooves on food. Its raised, rubbery buttons trapped crumbs and were uncomfortable to push. Luckily its parts are dishwasher-safe, because food often flew up to the lid when we started the motor. Water collected in its handle and pusher that didn’t evaporate after 16 hours of air drying. We could process 8 cups of liquid due to a gasket that prevented leaks, but its grippiness constantly made the lid difficult to align, open, and close. We did like the easy handling of its single-piece S-blade and the automatic blade-lock that keeps it in place when pouring, and while its motor felt a bit underpowered, its lightweight base was easy to move around. Accessory kits for dicing and spiralizing are sold separately.