REVIEW – I was introduced to stand mixers over 17 years ago while creating a wedding registry at Target. The eye-watering price of the brands available back then was a shock, and many of the units on the market still cost a small fortune. However, our wedding-gift stand mixer has lasted all these years, lending credence to the saying “you get what you pay for”.
These days there are cheaper versions of everything, including stand mixers apparently.
GEFT (I hadn’t heard of them either, who can keep track of the exponentially growing list of Chinese manufacturers these days?) sent over their latest stand mixer, a 6 – quart stainless-and-plastic affair, so I took it for a spin and see if it holds up. I’ll try to keep the puns to a minimum, my apologies.
What is it?
The GEFT Stand Mixer is an affordable stand food mixer. It allows you to mix doughs and other ingredient slops for baking in a much easier format than a hand mixer.
What’s in the box?
Included in the box is the GEFT Stand Mixer itself, 3 attachments, the 6-quart stainless steel mixing bowl, a splash shield, and instruction manual.
Hardware specs
- Motor: 600 Watts with metal gears
- Noise levels: under 76 dB
- Capacity: 5.8 qt stainless steel bowl with handle
- Speed control: 6 speeds plus pulse
Design and features
The GEFT Stand Mixer is a mostly plastic construction, though importantly the gear system in the motor is all metal (or “metallurgical” according to their product page on Amazon). They don’t specify what kind of metal, and my experience with Chinese manufacturers is that it could be anything from the highest quality alloy to brittle poor-quality metal.
Speaking of metal quality, the dough hook and mixing beater are both a bit strange. The Amazon product page lists these as “cast aluminum”, and they seem to be coated in a paint that worries me a bit. This paint held up through the recipes I put through it, but feels like it will chip or wear over time. Hopefully this doesn’t result in rust or release any harmful byproducts into the mixed ingredients.
I like that they include a splash guard (which is held in place by friction above the accessory attachment point). Installing and switching accessories is easy, just press up and turn to install/remove.
The Power dial has a nice blue LED ring and has 6 speed settings, plus a pulse option. Also featured below the dial is a QR code for “vip service”.
There’s a large plastic button to tilt the stand up.
Fully tilted gives you enough room to scrape the bowl or add ingredients.
The bowl attaches to the base with a twist-lock mechanism. This requires a bit of force, but nothing too crazy.
On the bottom is 4 rubber suction cups, which did a great job of holding the stand mixer in place while I worked. It didn’t budge once during the review period.
Setup
Normally I don’t show box pictures since they’re boring, but this one took up nearly our entire counter!
I opened everything up, and perused the manual. Even though the product page lists the GEFT Stand Mixer as dishwasher safe, it turns out that this applies only to the bowl and wire whisk.
Speaking of the bowl, mine arrived dented and scratched. This didn’t affect functionality but it’s always annoying when you receive a new product and it’s been dented or scratched before getting to you. I want to be the one denting things!
I washed everything off by hand, and then started with a batch of brownies. Performance and noise was comparable to our aging stand mixer, and it did a fine job of mixing ingredients. I tested out all 3 attachments, and all worked like you’d want them to, except that they have more of a gap between the bowl that needs to be scraped mid-mixing. This was a bit annoying over time – our old mixer also needs to be scraped, but not as often and the layer that the attachments don’t get is much slimmer.
I tested the dough hook on some easy fast bread, and it did great. Just like other dough hooks I’ve used, it results in a nice even rotation of the dough rather than overmixing one part and neglecting another. Mixing double batches of cookies (a large amount of dough) did just fine, the motor didn’t seem to be straining at all even with the bowl fairly full.
The splash guard did an excellent job of keeping ingredients in the bowl rather than all over my counter. I especially appreciated this when working with powdered sugar, something I’ve blasted all over the counter in the past.
What I like
- Price
- Included accessories like the splash shield
- Seems powerful enough for most mixing needs
What I’d change
- Higher quality materials on attachments
- Closer gap between beater attachment and bowl wall
Final thoughts
The GEFT Stand Mixer is one of those products that gets the job done on a budget. I’m not sure how well it will hold up over time, but after quite a few runs it didn’t show any signs of issues in my review period. It’s easy to use, and I like that they include all the accessories you’ll need for basic baking and cooking.
Price: $189 ($139 when reviewed with $50 coupon)
Where to buy: Amazon
Source: The sample for this review was provided by GEFT
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If you search for deals, you can find a much more robust, and longer lasting new Cuisinart Precision Master stand mixer which has a 500-watt motor, die-cast metal construction, and 12 speeds for as low as $180. Or, if you know what to look for, a used KitchenAid. I recently found a used, very well cared for Hobart era KitchenAid K45SS for $50.
I broke the whisk to my GEfT mixer, how can I get replacement.
I donated my review unit to charity some time ago, sorry! It looks like the seller on Amazon has replied to other users in the comments/questions area though and has websites/contact info, I would start there, good luck!
Do you have any other attachment like: a bowl scrapers to go all the way to the sides of the bowl? I hate raising my beater to scrape every few minutes.
I donated my review unit to charity some time ago, sorry! It looks like the seller on Amazon has replied to other users in the comments/questions area though and has websites/contact info, I would start there, good luck!