If your morning coffee doesn’t slap you awake and instantly adorn your face with a grin, you’re doing it wrong. Luckily, TrueStart, the UK’s fastest-growing coffee brand, has teamed up with De’Longhi to fix that, unveiling a limited-edition, sunshine-yellow La Specialista Arte: TrueStart Edition.

Designed as the ultimate feel-good coffee machine, it’s a bean-to-cup masterpiece that mixes De’Longhi’s barista-grade precision with TrueStart’s bold, happy-go-lucky energy. It's your new go-to caffeine companion and looks cracking on your kitchen counter too.

Because this collaboration is all about feeling good from the inside out, each £449 machine comes bundled with TrueStart’s speciality-grade coffee beans. Its range covers every mood and metabolism: from the bold Super Blend to the smooth Energising Colombian, the mellow Lightly Caffeinated and the no-nonsense Decaf.

The TrueStart Edition is loaded with professional features, including eight grind settings, three temperature profiles, and a MyLatte Art steam wand for anyone who has ever wanted to pour a perfect heart (or at least try). It even comes with a full barista kit: portafilter, milk jug, tamping tools, and filters.

Helena Hills, TrueStart’s Co-Founder, calls it “a true statement piece”, and she’s not wrong. The bright yellow finish alone will no doubt make a statement. De’Longhi’s Ben Wilkinson adds that the aim was to make “the craft of barista coffee at home easy for anyone”, a sentiment anyone who’s ever messed up a flat white can get behind.

Positioned as the perfect entry point to De’Longhi’s premium range, this sits neatly between the more compact Dedica models and the all-singing, all-dancing La Specialista Maestro.

Beyond its looks, TrueStart’s coffee is also health-conscious, rigorously lab-tested for consistent caffeine and loaded with antioxidants (apparently, even more than green tea).

The De’Longhi La Specialista Arte: TrueStart Edition is available for sale now via the TrueStart website.

• SodaStream ensō review — this Naoto Fukasawa-designed kitchen gadget fizzes with brilliance

Going to Ikea is a rite of passage at this point; whether it’s your first rented room, uni, or maybe even launching your own business from that home office, we’d bet there’s a SKRUTT or a HÄSTVISKARE lurking around your pad somewhere.

The only thing more famous than its affordable furniture? Its meatballs, of course. But now, the retail giant released what might be its best invention yet - and that’s a high bar after its retro-style Bluetooth speakers. Introducing: the meatball plate. Someone crack open the Lingonberry jam...

The porcelain serving plate is a sneak peek into Ikea’s upcoming collaboration with Swedish designer Gustaf Westman, who is known for his quirky creations. Rumour has it that one of his other designs from this collection includes a hot dog tray. Clearly, he’s giving the people what they want.

The plate itself is sort of what you’d expect a meatball plate to look like - a central segment running lengthways down the centre of the plate, sort of like a little line-up slot for round things. And, it has been designed to accommodate all your spherical snacks, not just meatballs.

‘I love designing objects for a specific function,' Westman said, adding that: 'The design is simple, lining up the meatballs so each one is visible, like they’re sitting on little thrones.’ Proving once and for all that whimsical is iconic.

And speaking of whimsical, it wouldn’t be a true Ikea collab if the plate didn’t come with some useful instructions. Although you probably won’t need the step-by-step instructions, you can still have a quick flick through to see how to prepare the meatballs, how many to cook, and how best to line them all up.

The Ikea x Gustaf Westman collection will be available from 9th September, and if the meatball plate is anything to go by, we’re in for a cracker of a collab. We just need a Gifflar-dispensing bowl designed, and we will be handing over our money…

• Skylight Calendar review: This digital display has brought peace to the chaos that is my social life

Without sounding like an actor from an infomercial, I have to admit my social life was in a bit of a mess before getting the Skylight Calendar. Keeping up with work commitments, catching up with friends and family, while making time for my partner and her equally-hectic schedule was getting a bit crazy. I had paper calendars, digital work calendars, an old school diary and at least two different mobile calendars and tracking apps on my phone — that’s before factoring cross-referencing the schedules of my pals and partner.

The Skylight Calendar then is a relatively simple solution that will sell itself to you instantly if you identify with that above scenario (which I am the first to admit is a little extreme). An at-home, web connected touchscreen calendar, it collates calendars from across your household from multiple providers, and displays it all on a tablet-like display at home, alongside an accompanying app on-the-go.

With it, you can organise everything from events and dates to meal planning and chore trackers for your kids — or lazy flatmates — and even turn it into a downtime photo frame for reliving the memories all those calendar events turned into. There are almost certainly cheaper alternatives (ye olde paper wall calendars didn’t require a subscription), and there’s a couple of things to be aware of before splashing down the cash. But the Skylight Calendar has let me offload some of the mental baggage that comes with modern life, and I’d find it hard to imagine living without it now.

Skylight Calendar: In short

• A touchscreen digital calendar that can sync with your existing online calendars
• Multiple profiles make planning across entire families easy
• Can be wall mounted or used on a shelf or tabletop
• Additional subscription unlocks features like meal planning, reward trackers and photo frame functionality
• Available in two sizes: 15-inch and 27-inch
• Priced at £290 for 15-inch Skylight Calendar (reviewed here), and £525 for 27-inch Skylight Calendar Max

Set up and calendar use

Set up is pretty simple. Like a large framed tablet device, a single power cable feeds into the rear of the Skylight, with just a trio of on/off and volume buttons along the top. For a tabletop setup, a robust stand gets screwed into the back, while there are all the plugs and screws needed to wall mount the device.

Once powered up, you’ll be prompted to download the accompanying Skylight app on a mobile device, set up an account, and start using the calendar. Being a touchscreen device, you can fill out any event listings with an onscreen keyboard, but it’s arguably easier just to use the app on your phone and see them synced over to the big screen.

The Skylight’s screen is big and bright, with an auto-brightness setting helping it fit among its surroundings without egregious and excessive light from the screen bringing unwanted attention to the display. The interface is clear too – even in its smaller 15-inch guise it’s easy to read the 1920 x 1080 display from across a room, and you’ve a few different layout options to choose from, including day, week, month and schedule views. Items can be colour coded to bring attention to just the events that matter to you — handy if in use by multiple people in a household.

Syncing existing calendars can take some figuring out, but it’s not beyond anyone familiar with the calendar apps they already use on their computing and mobile devices. The app talks you through the permissions you’ll need to allow on each service — usually not more difficult than signing into them. The magic of Skylight is that it can collate all your different digital calendars in one place, and apply them to profiles on the Skylight — so a ‘Family’ profile might show events from your kids and partner alongside your stuff, while you can keep work and extended family commitments in a different profile. These can then have two-way synced events from services like Google Calendar, Outlook, Yahoo and Cozi. There’s also support for Apple iCloud Calendars, though as we’ll explore later, the functionality is limited to one-way syncing there. If you’re not using any existing calendar services, Skylight offers its own either way.

Once you’ve then shared an invitation to the calendars with any other members of the household, they can then too start adding their own calendars and events, letting you all be notified on your device of choice as to any upcoming events. With a central at-home hub, it’s easy then to stay on top of, and communicate, events across multiple schedules and itineraries, wherever you all may be.

Additional features and subscription

As well as the calendar functionality, Skylight offers synced lists and chore trackers as standard. If you’re not already using a checklist app on your phone it’s another handy addition, but likely one you’ve already got a solution for. The ‘Task Manager’ chore tracker is a bit more useful, especially if you’ve got kids — you can assign points and rewards for anything you can think of, gamifying tidying a room or brushing teeth.

There’s also a £60 per year subscription service called Skylight Plus that unlocks further features.

The best of these (and one so key it’s a shame it’s tucked behind the ongoing fee) is Photo Frame functionality. You can set up a shared repository of thousands of photos, and have them cycle through as a screensaver when the Skylight isn’t actively being used. Considering without it you’ve either only got a relatively boring calendar on view all the time, or a blank black screen when off, it feels like an essential feature, and the crisp display does good justice to your snaps.

Other features of the Plus service include meal planning — letting you set meal schedules for a week. You might ask why you can’t just include them as calendar events — you of course could, but this keeps meal planning distinct, and also lets you create a repository of recipes to refer back to in the future.

The final, perhaps most impressive Plus feature, is the AI-fuelled Magic Import. Each Skylight user gets an individual email address along with their accounts — if you forward an invitation from an email or PDF to this email address, it’ll automatically scan its contents for location and date details, and fill out an event listing for your calendar. This is similar to how Google pops Gmail invitations into your Calendar, if you have that setting switched on.

Is the Skylight Plus subscription worth it? Begrudgingly, yes — though I think you shouldn’t really have to pay for the photo frame feature at all, the Skylight would feel dull when not in use without it. So factor that cost into your purchasing considerations.

What we’d change

The Skylight Calendar has been great for corralling some of the chaos that multiple calendars across my household have wrought, but it’s not without room for improvement.

Chief among these is integration with Apple’s Calendar app. Though it’s listed as supported, that’s only partially true — the two way sync (meaning that any changes made on either the Skylight or another device with access to the Apple Calendar app, such as an iPhone or Mac) is not yet working. You can still make event listings against Apple’s calendar, but will need to manually add them and track changes yourself. Skylight has told me true syncing will be added as an update before the end of the year, but it’s worth noting if Apple’s calendars are key to your organisational habits before that time.

I also think too many features are hidden behind the subscription aspect of Skylight. While I can understand the AI-driven aspects could sit behind a paywall, it seems a shame that the photo frame feature does too, given how relatively simple a feature it is, and how much life it brings to Skylight’s otherwise utilitarian interface.

Skylight Calendar: Final verdict

If keeping track of the comings and goings of your family is adding to the jumbled knot of stress in your brain, the Skylight Calendar is a fun and relatively simple way to keep things organized. Though I’d rather not see so many of its features behind a paywall, when the full experience is unlocked the Skylight will become an invaluable part of family life. A word of warning though — you’ll never have an excuse for forgetting an important date or chore ever again. Now, forgive me, for leaving this review here but I’ve just been reminded I have an invite to a gig that I am already late for!

• Mac buying guide: Which Apple computer to buy if you're a first timer, student, creative pro, or just about anyone else

There’s no beating around the bush; we’re coffee people. Much like Sabrina, our love of coffee knows no bounds. However, the downside to that is that we are frequently disappointed as a boxy machine promising caffeination drip feeds a watery and bitter liquid that looks and tastes something closer to puddle water than a coffee.

Clearly, we’re not alone in this disappointment, as Wacaco has just launched their newest portable espresso machine. The company was founded after a deep frustration with awful hotel coffee whilst travelling for work. The portable espresso makers are pretty revolutionary as far as you can call coffee revolutionary (and after a caffeine drought, we definitely would).

They have a pretty extensive range already - a Picopresso, a Nanopresso, a Minipresso, and more. All of which have been designed for cafe-level coffee on the go. Previously, all of their models have not used any electricity or needed any sort of battery, meaning it’s all hand-powered action - a forearm workout before you get your coffee. Sort of like sing for your supper, but exercise for your espresso.

However, their newest invention marks a change for the company; the Pixapresso has a 3000mAh battery, which powers a 20-bar pump and a heating system. Its water reservoir holds 120ml, enough for 8-16 grams of coffee - which in layman’s terms is about the same dosage you’d get in a normal commercial cafe-esque espresso machine. It’s still a super compact device, though, luckily not breaking Wacaco’s tradition yet. It’s just 181mm tall and weighs 755 grams, so lightweight enough to pack in a travel bag or rucksack.

If you’re a keen camper, hiker, adventurer, surfer, or commuter, then this is an essential for you. It’s the perfect wingman to a caffeine-happy adventurer. If you like the idea of a nifty little espresso machine that doesn’t require a load of hand-churning, then the Pixapresso is probably going to become your new best friend. After all, does your current best friend provide you with coffee on the regs?

When you hear high-tech portable lightweight industrial capability espresso maker, the pound signs already start flashing in front of your eyes. And to be fair, it’s not entirely without reason as the Pixapresso is priced at £149.90. However with everything it delivers, it’s truly one of a kind, and if we're totally honest, just really cool. If the whole churning-it-by-hand angle doesn’t bother you, then it’s worth checking out the rest of their range, most of which are priced around £50.

• Smeg takes on SodaStream with its sparkling new Soda Maker

Nespresso machines provide some of the best, most mess-free coffee to start your day, and the Krups Vertuo Pop is the most affordable we’ve found from this particular line.

It takes Nespresso’s next-generation Vertuo pods, which are lined with a barcode that tells the machine how to treat each particular blend.

As part of a promo on Nespresso’s end you can also claim 50 pods when buying this machine. It’s a package worth about £50/$50 on its own. Or you can think about it as all-but getting the Krups Vertuo Pop for free.

This Nespresso maker is the more style-led version of the popular Vertuo Next, a machine we reviewed way back in 2020 and found its coffee making “clocks in at just 26 seconds.” What more can you ask for when in a rush of a morning?

Amazon’s Prime Day deal for the Krups Vertuo Pop sees you snag 41% off the asking price. This brings the original £100 cost down to just £59, which counts as a steal in our book.

The Vertuo Pop is home to smaller machines than the rest of the Nespresso Vertuo line, including the 50% off Vertuo Next. At just 25cm tall and 13.6cm wide, this is no workspace-hogger.

As this is likely to be a mainstay of your kitchen, the look matters too. Amazon currently offers four colours of the Vertuo Plus for £59. These are Mango yellow, black white and a minty green. Here are the links you need.

• Check out your second option, the Nespresso Vertuo Next at 50% off!

One of the best Nespresso machines is essential if you love fuss-free coffee. Nespresso machines use small, pre-packaged capsules and high pressure to extract concentrated coffee, which means they do a great job at creating a top-notch, strong brew.

What we love most about Nespresso machines is that there's a vast range of coffee capsules to choose from with flavours to suit every mood. Fancy an intense or syrupy Kazaar? How about a short and punchy Nespresso? Or maybe you’re more a round-and-balanced Livanto kind of coffee drinker? Whatever your preferred coffee, the Nespresso capsule range is extensive, and promises a satisfying start to the day.

But enough about the capsules. Nespresso makes a sophisticated collection of user-friendly machines you can slot them into. But with so many companies, including Krups, De’Longhi and Magimix, fighting for the top spot to provide the ultimate Nespresso coffee machine design, it’s hard to know which Nespresso machine is right for you.

Luckily, we've created this list to the top Nespresso coffee machines, each boasting their own special features. Read on to find out which one of these Best Nespresso Coffee Machines is equipped to make the perfect grande, skinny, sugar-free vanilla flat white first thing in the morning or a simple yet divine, bold hit of espresso after dinner.

• Want to check out the competition? Read our best pod coffee machine list.
• Looking for something more professional? These are the best coffee machines

Best Nespresso machine

SOMETHING MISSING FROM OUR SHORTLIST?

Tell us about it, and if enough people agree we'll add it in.

Is any drink more tied to a national identity than tea is to the UK? Whether you like a strong cup of English Breakfast, tend to start the day with an Earl Grey or have moved onto caffeine-free herbal infusions, there's a place for tea in all of our hearts. Right?

However, maybe it's time to try something new. We're looking at some of the best, and best-known, tea brands to give you a springboard to explore the wider world of tea. Vote for your favourite to give other readers a steer.

UPDATE:We have added a couple of the most-recognised names in tea to our best tea brands guide, although one you are more likely to know for its tea-infused cold drinks than for its English Breakfast teabags. However, it's proof of which how diverse a drink tea really is.

Recent years have seen our nation’s drinking habits change dramatically. According to a report by Mintel, 37% of 25-34 year-olds drink 5-6 different kinds of tea a month, suggesting variety really is the key of life. A separate study conducted by National Tea Day revealed 80% of brands noted the current ‘health and wellness’ trend as something that has changed our buying habits.

From potent fruit concoctions to punchy black-tea hybrids, these brands have it all in terms of variety, quality and ethical principles. Upvote the one that earns a place in your kitchen cupboard.

• And if you fancy another type of brew, head to our best coffee subscription list.

Best tea: bags and loose-leaf blends

SOMETHING MISSING FROM OUR SHORTLIST?

Tell us about it, and if enough people agree we'll add it in.

If you are after a Nespresso machine but are wanting something that goes beyond a double espresso, then the Nespresso Vertuo range is for you.

This range is all about the cup size. The Nespresso Vertuo series was all about offering four different cup sizes, but then the Nespresso Vertuo Next came along and upped this to a whopping five.

We have spent a month with the Nespresso Vertuo Next. As you can imagine, the majority of this time has been spent at home, so the machine has been in near constant use.

Here are five things to know about the Nespresso Vertuo Next - a machine that's almost certainly going to the top of both our best pod coffee machine and best Nespresso machine guides.

1. Plus points

The Nespresso Vertuo Next is rather like an upgraded Vertuo Plus machine. The design has been given a makeover that is much more environmentally friendly. According to Nespresso, the new machine is made from 54% recycled plastic and the packaging it comes in is 100% recycled cardboard.

This makes it the Nespresso machine with the highest rate of recycled plastic, which is a nice touch. While Nespresso's capsules can't be thrown immediately in your recycling box, Nespresso does offer a free service for this.

2. You have a choice

The Nespresso Vertuo Next comes in three forms. The standard version is available in Dark Grey, White, Light Grey and Red - this retails for £149. The Vertuo Next Premium comes in Black and Rich Brown and some nice chrome finishes - this costs £179. The Vertuo Next Deluxe uses stainless steel and a choice of light or dark chrome - this one is £199.

When it comes to all of the machines, they have the same features so you are really just paying for style.

3. Nespresso hits the big time

This is a chunky coffee machine. Its dimensions are 14cm x 38cm x32cm (WDH) - this actually makes it one of the most compact Vertuo machines but it still has a sizeable footprint which is worth thinking about when installing it in your kitchen.

We will allow its girth though, as it gives you five different cup sizes. When using it you have a choice of the following: Espresso (40ml), Double Espresso (80ml), Gran Lungo (150ml), Mug (230ml), Alto (414ml).

It's worth noting that the capsules this machine uses are, you've guessed it, Vertuo ones. You can't use the smaller capsules in this machine - this is definitely for someone who likes their coffee in larger quantities.

Given this is the case, we would have liked to have seen some sort of milk frother on the machine - it feels like a machine that would benefit from this add-on.

Alongside the big coffees is quite a loud noise when it is making the coffee. The machine spins the capsules around to make the coffee and you can certainly hear that. It's not disconcerting but it'll certainly wake you up before the coffee does.

4. It makes great coffee, quickly

When it comes to making coffee, the Nespresso Vertuo Next is a dream to use. The place for the capsules feels sturdy - all you have to do is side from locked to unlocked, place a capsule in the reservoir and close and lock the thing up.

There's just one button situated on the top of the machine. Press this and there's a five second wait, then the coffee making begins which lasts around 25 seconds. Once finished, you can open up the device and the capsule will go into a capsule bin, which holds 10 capsules.

The water tanks holds 1.1 litres which is large but as this is a machine for bigger drinks you will use the water up quite quickly.

5. There's an app for that

There is! But it's not a magic app that you can use to remotely make coffee for you. That would be a stupid thing to think and certainly not something this reviewer thought it would be. No siree. Instead, it's more of a practical app that will warn you when the water level is low, when the thing needs descaling and is the place for software updates. Yes, your coffee machine now needs software updates as that is the world we live in now.

As apps go, it works well - just don't spend an hour looking for the 'make my dam coffee while I'm not in the room' button, because it's not there.

Nespresso Vertuo Next review: final verdict

The Nespresso Vertuo Next is a fantastic coffee machine. If you have already bought into Nespresso then it's a decent upgrade for those who want their drinks bigger. For those looking for a pod coffee machine, the Vertuo Next's stylish looks, ease of use and wide selection of drinks make this a real contender.

• Head to our Best Amazon Prime Day Deals guide for more great deals.

A kettle is an essential for any modern kitchen. If you’re in the market for a new one, you want to make sure it’s up to the task, time and time again. Given our obsession for a brew, the best kettle in the UK will be used at least three times a day - add that up over the lifetime of a kettle and it's obvious that this is one gadget that has to be rather durable.

This is why we’ve spent weeks and weeks putting the best electric kettles on the market through their paces, timing how long they take to boil, negotiating special features and testing their durability, to find the best value options and the kettles that really perform.

Below you can read what we liked and disliked with all the kettles we tested but, for clarity, the best kettle for value was the fast-boiling Russell Hobbs Inspire Kettle. The best kettle overall was the expensive but excellent Dualit Classic.

There are some more great choices in our list but whatever you want from your boiler, you’ll find it here.

Finding the best kettle is nothing without a great cup of whatever you want. We've been extremely busy testing the best tea brands and best coffee brands the world over. And if you want coffee on tap, these best coffee subscription services are ideal. If you are looking for a dedicated machine, then we recently updated our best Nespresso machines guides - there are some great coffee makers to go alongside your kettle purchase.

Award winners: our best kettles revealed

When it comes to the best kettle in the UK for value, this is great budget option, this fast-boil kettle has some nice touches at the price point, including hidden cup measurements inside so you can fill to one cup only, an easily removable limescale filter and stainless steel accents. Also comes in black and white.

If you can afford to pay that bit more this stainless steel kettle is the best overall kettle in the UK we'd recommend. It comes with Whisper Boil technology making it one of the quietest kettles out there. It’s a fast boiler with a non-spill spout and a repairable and replaceable element, meaning it’ll last years.

• the shortlist
• our expert
• The test selection
• how we tested
• test results
• best overall
• best value
• the rest compared
• Feeback

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The ShortList: the kettles we considered

Upvote of downvote to have your say on our shortlist, or scroll down for the expert's view.

Author Bio

Charlotte Thomas

Charlotte Thomas is a former holiday rep and travel agent who has edited three travel magazines. She now writes about health and lifestyle and spends her spare time travelling to the Alps and across the UK looking for trails to run.

The Expert's View

25

Hours tested

34

Products considered

1

Experts Consulted

2

Shortlist best buys

How we selected the kettles to test

You might think your kettle-buying choices are pretty basic. Is the colour going to fit with your kitchen theme? How much does it cost? And how long does it take to boil? If only it were that simple. Kettles these days come packed with features, meaning there’s much more to consider than just the ability to heat water. Particularly if you’re serious about your cuppa.

Manufacturers have cottoned onto Britain’s growing obsession with swanky coffees and teas that stretch beyond builders’. As such, many kettles now offer variable temperature settings designed to help you get that Sencha green tea at the perfect degree without damaging its delicate flavour (that’s 85°C since you ask).

At the mid-to-top-end of the kettle kingdom you’ll find quiet boil features – ideal if that bubbling rocking sound is too much first thing in the morning – stay warm options that keep your water ready to go for an extra 20 minutes (hello meeting room), patented spill-free spouts and hidden one-cup measures. It’s a crazy world of electrical appliances out there.

Also worth taking into account when you’re looking for a new kettle is the material. Plastic kettles are usually cheaper than steel or glass but might not fit with your design aesthetic. Some people also say they find metal and glass kettles give a cleaner water taste, although that may be applicable to those with a more refined palate than ours.

One advantage of plastic kettles, though, is that they’re usually cooler to the touch after boiling. If you have small people in the house or pets who like to slink along the kitchen surface (we’re not judging) this may be a better option.

Whether you can get a matching toaster and other appliances could also be a consideration – collar and cuffs and all that.

If the waiting time for your water to boil is important, you’ll want to look for a kettle marked as rapid or fast boil, this means it’ll have a 3KW element for speedier heating.

You might also want to consider ease of use – kettles with 360-degree rotational bases are just as easy to lift and pour for left and right handers. Markings showing how much water you have inside can be handy if you want to avoid wasting energy by boiling more than you need. And then there’s that pesky blighter: limescale. If the water in your town is hard enough to have Chris Eubank Jr in a fight, a kettle with a removable, washable limescale filter will save you the rather stinky hassle of boiling vinegar to get rid of those hard deposits.

When choosing kettles to test we took into account all of the above as well as the boiling habits of different types of kettle users – the coffee and tea aficionados, the design connoisseurs and those who just want something that heats water and doesn’t go bang within a year.

And we aimed to provide a range of price points, from value options to the more expensive all-singing all-dancing multi-temperature über kettles. We looked at popular offerings from major manufacturers such as Breville, Russell Hobbs, Cusinart, Smeg and DeLonghi and chosen kettles from basic to whizz-bang.

We’ve included steel, glass and plastic models to cover every taste. All come with a minimum one-year warranty and have a 360-degree rotational base so they can be used by left and right handers.

How we tested the kettles

We did away with the labs and trialed the kettles where they’re most likely be used – in a home kitchen with a bit of Jeremy Kyle on in the background. There was a lot of boiling, a lot of timing, many hot beverages consumed and a low-hanging cloud of steam blanketing the room for a few days.

In amongst the coffee breaks (and accompanying biscuits) we looked for a number of features from our kettles. We tested each appliance by boiling a litre of water from cold – enough for around four cups – to see how long it took to reach the desired temperature and whether or not it matched the manufacturer’s claims, if they’d made any.

We did the same test when the kettle was at full capacity because, when you’re about to knock up some pasta, it’s useful to know if you can fit enough water into your kettle for the pan and if you’ve got time to chop your onions before it boils.

Alongside boiling time we were also looking for ease of use. Were the kettles simple to set up straight from the box? Where there were special features, such as variable temperatures, were these intuitive? And, more importantly, were those special features actually useful?

Were they easy to fill? Some kettles have removable lids while others have buttons to press to lift the lid – and could you pour without dribbling, spilling or contorting your wrist? No one wants a sloppy saucer after all.

We were also testing for quality, robustness, durability and noise. While no kettle is going to be completely silent, you probably don’t want one that drowns out Loose Women. (Did we mention we watched a lot of telly with our tea?)

The test results which kettle is best?

Nine of our kettles were ready to plug in straight from the box, although it’s advisable to boil a full kettle of water to remove any dirt or dust from the packaging before you first use it.

The only one that required a bit of thought was theMorphy Richards Brita Filter kettle. It’s hardly flat-pack furniture territory, but the Brita filter needs to be soaked in water before being inserted into a holder in the kettle. It’s straightforward enough, but the instruction manual took some deciphering.

As the Smeg Variable Temperature Kettle is the only one without a speedy 3KW element we were expecting a close race in the great Shortlist boil off, and we weren’t disappointed. Each of these is going to boil enough water for four cups in under three minutes.

The fastest boiler was the Dualit Classic Kettle, heating our cuppas in just two minutes and 17 seconds (although the manufacturer states it should take two minutes 14 with room temperature water).

Only one second behind was the Delonghi ArgentoFlora at two minutes 18 seconds and third fastest was the Swan Nordic kettle at two minutes 23 seconds. You’re not going to have to wait too long for your caffeine hit with any of these kettles, though – the remainder of the fast-boil options all took between two minutes 26 and two minutes 36 to reach boiling point. Even the slowest in our trial, the Smeg, which isn’t advertised as fast-boil, heated the water in less than three minutes, taking two minutes 50 seconds to boil.

Two of our kettles, the Cuisinart Signature Collection Multi-Temp Kettle and the Smeg Variable Temperature Kettle, allow you to choose different temperatures for your beverage. The Cusinart is simple to use, with two buttons marked 85 and 100 degrees and a plus sign allowing you to add 5°C increments all located on the handle.

The temperature of the water is displayed at all times on an LCD screen, so if you want a lower temperature you can hit the off switch when it reaches the appropriate number – although who wants to stand and watch a kettle boil?

The Smeg offers a greater number of temperature options – seven in total from 50°C through to boiling. To choose the temperature required you nudge a small lever on the base and lights corresponding to each option will be illuminated.

The Smeg also has a stay-warm feature, keeping your water heated for an extra 20 minutes – useful if you’re a serial coffee drinker. The only issue here is that the thermometer button to turn on the stay-warm feature needs to be pressed before or during heating – this means if you’ve just boiled your kettle and the phone rings you can’t hit stay-warm and have that hot water waiting when you’ve finished.

All of our kettles were easy to fill and pour, no spillage anywhere. If you have weaker wrists then the plastic kettles – the Breville Flow, Russell Hobbs Inspire and Morphy Richards Brita Filter – are the lightest among our selection, while the Delonghi Argento Flora is the lightest stainless steel kettle. Nothing weighed in at over 2kg though, so all are lighter than your average two-litre bottle of water.

If you’re making tea for one person and want to save energy we liked the fact that the Russell Hobbs and Dualit kettles had markings for one cup. In fact, if being able to see water measurements in general is important to you then the Russell Hobbs Illuminating, Dualit Domus and Dualit Classic all have markings on the front, making them easier to see than those under the handle.

All kettles, with the exception of the Morphy Richards Brita Filter, had removable limescale filters which can be washed under the tap. However, the filter in the Swan Nordic was quite hard to remove and made from fabric, so it probably won’t last as long as some of the others.

All of them seemed durable enough to stand the test of time, with the exception of the Swan Nordic Kettle. Ours was slightly wobbly on its base, meaning it took two or three presses of the on/off switch to turn on at first. While this settled down after a few uses it may mean a couple of knocks could throw this kettle off kilter.

When it came to noise, there were no real screamers, so our ears weren’t overly offended. If you want a quiet kettle, though, the Dualit Classic is the winner – its Whisper technology means it does, actually, sound like a whisper when it boils.

We were also impressed with how quiet the Smeg Variable Temperature Kettle was, although it beeps when it’s turned on and when it’s boiled – a useful notifier if you’re busy doing other things while you wait for it to boil, not so good if you want something as quiet as possible.

Overall winner: our ultimate kettle choice

Dualit 1.7 litre Classic Kettle review, £145.99

Let’s get the obvious out of the way straight off – this is not a cheap kettle. But if you’re able to fork out the extra coin then what you get is attention to detail, quality design and finish, and a fast-boil kettle that’s built to last.

The retro stainless steel styling is, as the name suggests, a design classic. It’s going to look good for years to come. If you want to add a hint of colour, there are five different options for a coloured band around the bottom and on the handle, all in tasteful hues with names like powder, feather and shadow. There are four different varieties of toaster to match, too, including one made specially for buns and teacakes.

The stainless steel limescale filter is much sturdier than most we tested so won’t fray or bend (as cheaper options can) and is easily removed for washing. The hinges on the lid are sturdy beasts made from stainless steel so they won’t break or snap.

This was the fastest boiling kettle we tested and the covered spout makes it pretty much impossible to spill hot liquid even if you try. And it means no dribbly limescale marks either.

It’s quiet, too. So quiet, in fact, it has a Quiet Mark award from the Noise Abatement Society for its patented Whisper Boil technology. While it's not completely silent it never reaches the crescendo most kettles do as they near boiling point.

It has dual water gauges, one in litres (handy for cooks) and one in cups. These are easily able to view on each side of the body, rather than hidden under the handle as many are. And it really will last for years. Whereas cheaper kettles often end up in landfill when the element wears out, the Classic Kettle has a replaceable, repairable heating element.

On the downside, the lack of variable temperature and stay-warm functions may be an issue if you like speciality teas heated to a certain degree. That sturdiness does come with a bit of extra weight, too – this was the second heaviest kettle we tested (although it was still less than 2kg, the average weight of a two-litre bottle of water). The main con really is the price, which makes it an unlikely option for most budgets.

Our choice of the best kettle for value

Russell Hobbs 1.7 litre Inspire Kettle review, £39.99

If you’re looking for a quality kettle without splashing too much cash then the Russell Hobbs Inspire is a solid option. Robust and durable, this plastic kettle comes in three different colours – white, black and red – so it’ll fit in with most kitchen colour schemes. Stainless steel accents make it look classier than many other kettles in this price range and you can get a two- or four-slice toaster to match if you fancy.

The little touches are what makes it stand out for the price. There’s a washable limescale filter that’s really easy to remove, which is particularly handy if you’re in a hard water area. Hidden inside the kettle you’ll also find little plastic markers showing one, two and three cups. This means it’s very easy to get exactly the right amount of water without craning your neck to see the external measurements, which are hidden under the handle. Saves you wasting water and energy as well, innit.

While it doesn’t offer variable temperatures or a stay-warm feature, and we wouldn’t expect them at this price, it does the basics well. It’s fast-boil – the manufacturer claims it can boil a cup in 45 seconds, we found it to be slightly quicker – and it was among the five fastest boilers in our selection.

Easy to fill with a wide removable lid, it was one of the lighter kettles we tested so there’s less chance of breaking your wrist when lifting it if that’s a concern. And it feels as though it could take a bit of a knocking about.

The only thing we weren’t too keen on was the ridged plastic. While the ridges help to camouflage any greasy finger marks they can mean you’ll spend a little bit longer wiping it clean.

Comparing the rest on test

If our test winner and best value options don’t take your fancy, here’s everything you need to know to find your perfect kettle from the rest we tested.

The best kettle for hard water areas

If you have a real issue with limescale or find water that the in your area has a taste you’re not keen on, the Morphy Richards Brita Filter kettle filters water as it boils, ridding it of any impurities and leaving cleaner tasting water. It’s not the best looking kettle out there (it’s very plasticky), but it is fast-boil at a budget price. It’s worth bearing in mind that you will have to replace filters every four weeks, though they’re not too expensive at around £12.50 for three on Amazon, but this is an added cost.

Best for minimalist kitchens

The Swan Nordic Kettle is a great-looking option for less than £50. We really like the clean lines, slate grey rubberised coating and wood effect handle – it’s not actually wood but rubberised coating instead, so it won’t warp and bloat when it comes into contact with water. It was also one of the fastest boilers we tested. It’s basic on the function front, however – the water gauge starts at four cups, the limescale filter is hard to remove and doesn’t seem too durable and it also took a couple of gos to turn it on at first.

Best all-rounder and best quiet kettle tested

We were really impressed by the Breville Flow for the price. It was only just beaten to our best value choice by a very slim whisker. It’s basic but does what it does very well. The plastic body is solid and durable and it was the coolest of our kettles to the touch after boiling, good if you have small children around. The lid is easy to remove and there’s a large space for quick and easy filling, as well as a nice wide easy-pour spout. The limescale filter is super easy to remove and it’s fast-boil to boot. A good choice for a family kitchen.

The best glass kettle for looks

The fast-boil Russell Hobbs Illuminating Kettle stands out for its reassuring glow. Turn the kettle on and the body lights up blue as it boils and you can see the water bubbling and boiling like a lava lamp. There isn’t really any point to this but it’s mesmerising to watch. Nice one-cup marking on the body, too. The downside to glass kettles is that you can see any marks or limescale build up immediately so you might have to descale your kettle more often. Condensation is also visible after boiling, but if that’s a bother you can just ping the lid open for a couple of minutes.

Best for multiple temperatures

If you want to choose your water temperature, theCuisinart Signature Collection Multi-Temp Kettle is a good choice at a not too hefty price – £80, and often available for less. Water temperature is displayed on an LCD screen at all times so you can watch it change as it boils. You select the temperature by pressing an 85 or 100 degree button on the handle, while a plus button allows you to add on to the 85 in 5°C increments. For anything lower than 85 degrees, though, you’ll have to watch the temperature and turn it off manually.

Best for retro kitchens

The Delonghi Argento Flora is a nice retro-look steel kettle that was the second fastest to boil out of those we tested. This is a decent, durable boiler that doesn’t go in for fancy features. What it do go in for, though, are looks. It comes in a number of ice-cream shades including pink, green and blue.

Best travel kettle and one for smaller work spaces

If kitchen counter space is tight a slightly smaller kettle like the Dualit Domus is a good choice. You’re still going to get 1.5 litres – around six cups – out of it but it’s just that bit more compact. It’s also a lovely looking, quality, fast-boil kettle. We really like the dual water gauges in litres and cups, the one-cup mark and the attention to detail – the plug is round to complement the kettle’s design.

Best kettle for Instagram

Yes, it can offer you seven different temperature options and keep your water warm for 20 minutes after boiling, but the real beauty of a Smeg appliance is the design. This kettle looks like it’s been plucked from a 1950s’ Airstream trailer. Get the matching fridge, blender, toaster etc and show off to all your mates. The kettle pings when you turn it on and when it’s boiled – some people might find this irritating but we found it a useful reminder to make our tea.

What did we miss?

Tell us, and we'll feedback to our reviewers so we can include it going forwards.

Now that we are allowed to do far more traveling, finding the best travel mug to join you on your commute is essential.

Not only are travel mugs a great way to keep your hot drink of choice warm for hours, the best reusable cups are also sustainable and far better for the environment.

When you’re on the go and in a rush, it’s easy to pick up a cheap coffee and chuck the cup away when you’re done. But while it might be convenient, it’s also two other things – bad for the environment and bad for your wallet - which is why you need one of the best travel mugs around.

For a start, if you choose wisely, they look great, can be used over and over again, are good for the environment and can even save you money. Even if you don’t make your drink at home and take it with you, many coffee shops now offer a discount if you bring your own cup.

With many of us actually getting back out in the world, there's never been a better time to buy yourself a reusable cup - and we've spent a lot of time brewing brews to try out our picks below.

Here’s our pick of the best travel mugs on the market. Don't forget to upvote your favourite and if you fancy a brew, then head to our best tea brands and best coffee subscriptions guides.

Best travel mugs

SOMETHING MISSING FROM OUR SHORTLIST?

Tell us about it, and if enough people agree we'll add it in.

Like non-vegan cuisine, vegan food can be delicious - baba ganoush, dark chocolate, peanut brittle, avocados. Despite what QI says, they’re all vegan, all tasty and their recipes can be found in the best vegan cookbooks.

Whether you’re a newbie vegan who has swatted up on the latest cooking trends, or have decades of plant-based recipes under your belt, the learning never really stops.

That’s why we’ve cherry-picked ten of the best vegan cookbooks out now. Want fast food, fancy cuisine or something somewhere in-between? We have the perfect book for you.

If you aspire to be a from-scratch vegan and make your own probiotics and vegan cheese, skip to Miyoko’s Vegan Pantry. Want to bake, but have yet to nail a vegan sponge? Ms Cupcake: The Naughtiest Vegan Cakes in Town is the book for you.

Even if you are not vegan, but just want to cut back on your meat or dairy, making veggies taste good is a life skill for vegetarians, pescatarians, and omnivores alike.

Best vegan cookbooks

SOMETHING MISSING FROM OUR SHORTLIST?

Tell us about it, and if enough people agree we'll add it in.

• Treat yourself with our best vegan chocolate
• Best vegan gifts: vegan friendly and sustainable gift ideas

Who would have thought that tuning into the radio would still be a popular pastime in 2021 but. as this best DAB radio guide shows, listening to the radio is still a thriving, wonderful thing - especially now that we are spending a lot more time indoors!

UPDATE: 6Music fans were bereft when Shaun Keaveny announced he was leaving the digital radio station but his successor has been announced and it is none other than Craig Charles. The channel is a firm favourite for us when testing devices for our best DAB radio guide, so we're glad that Charles is taking over the afternoon slot.

The key to the format’s ongoing popularity, like many things, has been digitisation. Even before the rise of the podcast, DAB radio sold a modern audience on the charms of an audio-only experience.

Digital audio broadcasting offers a more robust radio listening experience than classic analogue, with the capacity for way more stations and the potential for superior sound quality.

The only thing is, you’ll need a dedicated DAB radio to take advantage of this digital listening platform. Here are 8 of the best DAB radios currently available.

Looking for an alarm clock? Then our best alarm clocks and best wake up light guides are for you.

Best DAB radio

How to buy a DAB Radio: buying advice

When buying a DAB radio there are a few things you need to consider. The first is a bit of an obvious one but you need to make sure that you can currently get a DAB signal in your household - the majority of the UK now has DAB, but it's worth using the UK Radio postcode searcher to find out.

The second thing to look for is price. While our best DAB Radio guide has radios ranging from £100 to £400, you might be tempted to go a little lower or higher. If this is the case, then always try and go for a make that you know, or one that you know to be trusted in this area.

Ruark Audio has been making radios for a number of years now and are a brand that's been awarded for their products. Likewise Pure - who was one of the first to get into the DAB radio space. These types of brands are trusted for a reason, because they have a history of making great products. Go for a lesser brand and it may be that the device you get doesn't last quite as long as you would like it to.

Don't just look for DAB when looking for a DAM radio, either. Many DAB radios will also come with internet radio. Unlike DAB, this is radio that comes from the web so the radio you buy will have to link up to your Wi-Fi signal, or connected via Ethernet. Internet radio opens up your radio to thousands more stations, beyond what you get with DAB.

Many DAB radios will also have Bluetooth, which means you will be able to play the likes of Spotify through the radio on your phone. Look out for DAB+, too. This is a better quality of DAB that can carry more stations and something that is starting to become more and more apparent in the UK.

While the overlords want us all to eat out to help out, many of us will be far more comfortable cooking in our homes at the moment. ShortList is here to make sure you can still make the most of eating in with the best kitchen gadgets.

If Jamie Oliver’s mantra to ‘keep cooking and carry on’ with whatever you find in the cupboard fails to inspire you, then perhaps one of these clever kitchen gadgets just might. We’ve compiled a round up of the best kitchen gadgets to hone in your cooking and baking skills this week and reinvent dinnertime.

That's because learning to cook is one of the most satisfying things do for yourself. There are thousands of new techniques, ingredients and recipes to try – so whether you're a master chef or a humble beginner used to making oven pizzas than haute cuisine, there's always something to learn.

And there are plenty of kitchen gadgets and gizmos to help you out, too. From the knife sharpeners that make slicing and dicing a doddle to an avocado pitter that makes brunch problem-free, we've rounded up the most useful kitchen tools and gadgets.

The list also includes the sous-vide slow cooker that will make even the most basic cuts of meat taste fancy, and a wine preservation system to keep that last bottle of Rioja fresher for longer.

We’ve also included the versatile Sage smoking gun that’s great for use on cocktails and cheese nibbles and best enjoyed over a Zoom quiz with friends.

And if our 15 best kitchen gadgets aren't enough for you, then below the list you will find the best products we've tested for the kitchen in our many in-depth tests.

• The best gifts for foodies, revealed - get them a great food-based gift.

Best Kitchen gadgets

Best kitchen gadgets: what you should be buying

We've spent a lot of time with cool kitchen gadgets and have put them through hours and hours of testing. If you are looking for a gadget in particular then you may want to check out the below products...

Our current top choice of Ice cream maker

We have spent a long time looking at the best ice cream makers and our current favourite is the Cuisinart Ice Cream and Gelato Maker. This is a great ice cream maker as you can make batch after batch and not have to worry about freezing bowls or prep that comes with other ice cream makers. the Cuisinart Ice Cream and Gelato Maker makes 1.5L of ice cream, but you can also create gelato, frozen yoghurt or sorbet with it as well, and it only takes around 40 minutes. It is one of the pricier ice cream makers on the market, at £222 but it's fun to use and much-needed on a hot, sunny day.

• Buy the Cuisinart Ice Cream and Gelato Maker from Amazon now

Our current top choice of breadmaker

Our expert spent 40 hours of testing the laster breadmakers for our best breadmaker guide. Head there if you want the in-depth reviews. Our choice, though, for the best value breadmaker is the Cookworks’s Breadmaker. Out of the 14 products we tested, this one stood out because it is cheap for what it does. It isn't perfect but for around £40 you won't find a better breadmaker at this price.

• Buy the Cookworks’s Breadmaker from Argos now

Our current top choice of food processor

We had a lot of fun testing the best food processors. In the end, our expert looked at a total of 50 different products and put in 50 plus hours of testing. The best overall food processor ended up being the Magimix 18591 5200XL. Now, this is one of the more expensive on the market (around £300) but it offers three different sized bowls and a number of different blades. You get a box full of attachments to help you with all your food processing needs and it just works like a charm.

• Buy the Magimix 18591 5200XL now from Amazon

Our current top choice of slow cooker

After considering over 50 products, with more than 65 hours' testing, our expert found that the best slow cooker you can buy is one that costs just £15 from Wilkos. It shows that you don't have to spend much for a decent kitchen gadget. The 3.5L Slow Cooker from Wilko is simple but that's what you want from a slow cooker. It offers three temperature settings – low, high and “Keep Warm” – and you get a ceramic pot, glass lid with heat proof knob, large handles and a rice paddle with it.

• Buy the Wiko Slow Cooker now from Wilkos

Our current top choice of juicer

With many of us trying to lead healthier lives, a juicer is essential. We found out that there are some big differences between the juicers available to buy. In our in-depth best juicer test we tried out 18 products, went through pretty much a whole orange tree and spent more than 25 hours juicing. It was the Philips HR1947/31 that came out on top. The juicer isn't cheap - at around £300 - but it is petit so will set well on any kitchen worktop, underneath a wall cabinet, and comes with a juice jug and extra filter - both of which can be stored inside the waste pulp bin when you’re done juicing what you are juicing.

• Buy the Philips HR1947/31 from Amazon now

Our current top choice of blender

There's quite a bit of difference between a blender, juicer and food processor as we found out in our best blender guide. After considering more than 30 blenders and putting in some 15 hours of testing, we concluded that the Ninja Blender Duo with AutoIQ blender was the best for our blending needs. At around £150, the blender beat all others in every category, offering a number of different blending patterns thanks to its AutoIQ technology.

• Buy the Ninja Blender with AutoIQ from Amazon now

Our current top choice of kitchen knives

The Wüsthof Classic Cook's Knife is currently top of our best kitchen knives list. We are big fans of its high carbon surgical steel blade which makes it super sharp. The handle is triple riveted and perfectly weighed so chopping is a breeze - and you get all of this for around the £100 mark. This really is a premium-quality, great kitchen knife.

• Buy the Wüsthof Classic Cook's Knife from Amazon now

Our current top choice of spiralizer

A spiralizer is the kitchen gadget that you don't think you need but as we found out when compiling our best spiralizer list - once you have one, you will not want to go back to just peeling your veg in the conventional way. Our current top spiralizer is the Nutribullet Veggie Bullet - at £120 it is one of the more expensive but takes all the hard work out of prepping your veg. It is great for those who need to do a lot of prep as well, thanks to its shredder and slicer attachments.

• Buy the Nutribullet Veggie Bullet from Amazon now

With a food processor keen cooks can blitz their veg in myriad ways, create crushed ice, even whisk your egg whites up for you. The best food processors have variable speeds and the sharpest slicing discs and slicing blades around. In short: they do a lot.

After considering 50 products, we've spent the the past month, chopping, slicing, kneading, baking and blending using 10 of the best-selling processors from established brands – Magimix, Kenwood, KitchenAid – and more obscure makes such as LINKChef.

But which food processor should you buy? Our in-depth testing is below, but here's an at-a-glance look at our results and which food processor is right for you.

Magimix’s 5200 XL achieved the highest score in tests, despite dropping points for its high price and bulky design, because it can handle pretty much anything you throw at it. The £33.49 Kenwood Compact is our best value choice because what it lacks in style it makes up for in substance, offering great performance at a decent price.

Food processors tested: Best buys

It isn’t the most stylish of food processors but the Kenwood Compact is a pleasant surprise. It made light work of chopping swede, blending smoothies and grating cheese while being small enough for most kitchens and incredibly easy to clean. All of this at one of the lowest prices of the group.

There is no denying Magimix’s dominance. Achieving near-on perfect marks in the majority of tests, the Cuisine 5200XL is a versatile piece of kit from a long-standing master of the food processing industry. Small touches, like a handy storage box and multiple bowls, finished it off nicely.

• Best kettles tested, for every budget

• best buys
• best buys
• the Shortlist
• Our expert
• Test selection
• How we tested
• Test Results
• Best overall
• Best value
• Best value
• Comparing the rest
• One to Avoid

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Best food processors: the Shortlist

The expert's view

50

Products considered

45

Hours of testing

1

Experts consulted

2

Best buys

We have good news. You don't have to spend hundreds of pounds to get a great food processor. There are solid options under £50 from brands like Kenwood and LinkChef.

What do you miss out on? A little style here, some accessory flexibility there. But if you simply want to get your food processing jobs done quickly and reliably, you don't have to spend big on the models used in the kitchens of TV shows.

Read on to discover what paying more offers. We put our 10 food processors through several real-life tests, including the prep of baking, soup-making and cooking flatbreads.

Author Bio

Vicky Woollaston

Victoria Woollaston is a technology and beauty freelancer with more than a decade of experience reviewing and comparing gadgets, appliances and services at MailOnline, Wired, Alphr and Expert Reviews.

How we selected the food processors to test

Finding the best food processor in the UK wasn't easy as not all food processors are created equal. Some only chop, others blend, knead, slice and dice. Some weigh more than a small child, others can be packed away in a cupboard. Some are so expensive you buy them on credit, others cost less than a magazine subscription.

To guarantee we were putting the best food processors to the test, we scoured online reviews to build a shortlist of 50 of the highest-rated, most popular food processors across Amazon, Robert Dyas, Argos and John Lewis. As there is a wide variety of machine types – from blenders to blender mixers and choppers – each offering slight variations on features, we included any product labelled as a food processor.

The rationale is this will include machines with enough features to satisfy most people’s needs, even if one type performed better at some tasks (i.e blending) than others. We also devised tasks that would cover a wide range of uses to make sure all the machines’ strengths, and weaknesses, were tested.

From this list of 50, we narrowed down the top-rated processors from individual brands; selected the highest-scoring model from each; and handpicked our top 10 based on features and price. Our feature criteria was that each machine should easily fit on a countertop and have the capacity to chop, blend and knead dough – the three jobs likely to be most popular among people looking for the best food processor.

Machines built to blend, for example, have the capacity to chop and knead dough, and even choppers can blend. We also wanted to cover a range of prices, from low-end to mid-range and premium.

The types of slicing, dicing and grating attachments varied wildly. Some machines offered multiple slice sizes, shredders, whisks and spatulas whereas others didn’t offer attachments at all. This wasn’t, therefore, used as part of our selection criteria in an attempt to create a more level playing field. We have highlighted where machines offer these extras, and tested them where appropriate.

The final top 10 list shows where the machines rank based on the scores from all tests. However, we also ranked how the top 10 looks when the scores from the attachment tests have been removed. The top and bottom two food processors remained in the same positions.

There was a little bit of movement among the middle machines but the scores didn’t jump wildly enough to make a significant difference to the order of things. Ultimately, when choosing the best food processor, it will come down to what you need it to do and we’ve detailed it all to help you make this choice.

Food processors: how we tested

Each of the food processors were scored out of 10 for price, capacity, power, the number of speeds, and their size and weight. They were also judged on how easy they were to use and clean, and their design. The cheapest model, the LINKChef Mini Chopper, achieved a price score of 10, for example. The Magimix, scored 10 for having the highest total capacity, but lost points for being the heaviest.

The food processors were then individually tested for their chopping, blending and kneading prowess. For the chopping tests, hazelnuts were placed in the largest capacity bowl and processed on the lowest power setting for a minute. As the nuts were chopped, noise readings were taken using an app.

Next up, swede was chopped using the same bowl and blade. We chose Swede because of how difficult it is to cut with a knife. We chopped onions, as these are a popular hard food item used in recipes, and parsley as a soft food item. The bowls and blades were cleaned and dried after every trial and we weighed each food item to make the tests consistent.

This process was repeated to test the attachments. We sliced and grated hard food (potatoes and carrots) followed by soft food (bananas and cheese) and placed all the chopped, sliced and grated items into bowls.

The name of each machine was written on the underside of the bowls and they were judged blindly before being scored from best to worst. We were looking for an even consistency across the tests; no lumps of food or stalks leftover, no squashed cheese or banana left in the processor and so on.

Chopped vegetables were boiled and then blended in each machine to make soup. If machines offered a separate blending pitcher, these were used. If they didn’t, the main bowl and blade was used. The same amount of liquid and veg were blended in each machine for two minutes and the soup was again transferred to bowls for blind judging.

This time we were looking for soup that wasn’t too thick or thin and had a smooth consistency. Following the soup test, the chopped banana was combined with raspberries, strawberries and orange juice in each processor to make smoothies. Like with the soup, we were looking for a smooth finish that was easy to drink and had retained the vibrant colour of the fruit.

The final tests involved using each processor to mix chocolate and pear muffin mix, and make dough for flatbreads. If a plastic dough blade was available, this was used. If it wasn’t the main metal blade was used.

We scored each machine on how well it combined the ingredients, as well as blindly judging the final baked result.

For the muffins we were looking for the pear to be evenly chopped and an even spread of chocolate chips as well as a light and fluffy texture. The muffins were all processed and baked at the same time. Similarly, the dough was processed at the same time to avoid a change in room temperature skewing the results. The total scores from all 25 food and specification tests were combined to reveal the winners and losers.

Food processor reviews: The test results

Across our tests, the Magimix Cuisine 5200XL rarely faltered; scoring either full marks or coming in the top three in almost every category. This was the case even when the slicing and grating scores were omitted. It was also one of the quietest machines.

Following a close second was the KitchenAid 2.1L. It looks similar to the Magimix, albeit it in a more compact design, and matches its rival in terms of how quiet it is. It performed particularly well for kneading, slicing, and chopping onions but its smoothie and soup were poor.

In third place was the Ninja Smart Screen food processor. It is the only machine in the top three to include a dedicated food processor and separate blending jug, and it scored just a point behind the KitchenAid. The touchscreen is a nice break from buttons and dials and it certainly looks the part, although is noisy.

Whereas its rivals are tall, fourth place Kenwood Compact has a wider, more ugly design. But what it lacks in style it makes up for in substance. It performed fantastically well at chopping and blending. In fact, it handled the swede better than any other processor and outperformed blenders that are almost 14 times the price when making soups and smoothies.

In the middle of the pack is the Tefal DoubleForce Compact. It was the best at slicing potatoes and was almost as good as the Ninja at chopping nuts. It placed top three for combining the muffin mix and dough but the rest of its mid-range scores match its mid-range price.

With its pastel colour look, the Fearne by Swan processor's design is understated. And it was one of the quietest machines on test, next to the Magimixand KitchenAid. It’s a heavy machine and performed poorly across multiple trials including chopping onions and nuts, combining the muffin mix and blending the smoothie and soup. It was the only machine to feature full lumps of banana, and potato after blending.

Approaching the bottom of the pile is the LINKChef Mini Chopper. Despite this position, credit has to be given to LINKChef. For such a small, cheap, food processor, it more than held its own against its expensive rivals. It ranked seventh overall because it doesn’t have any attachments, effectively scoring zero in these tests. However, when the scores involving attachments were removed, the LINKChef outperformed every machine bar the Magimix and KitchenAid.

In a similar boat to the LINKChef in terms of a lack of attachments was the Vitamix Ascent 2500i. But unlike the LINKChef the Vitamix didn’t perform as well in the rest of the tests. It’s a blender at heart, with tools that can be used for food processing and, despite its eye-watering £549 price tag, didn’t even score top marks for blending. It came behind the half-the-price Ninja for soups and smoothies.

One of the cheapest food processors on the list, the Tower failed to chop the swede, simply cutting into the slices before giving up. Similarly, it didn’t have the power to mix the muffins, leaving the ingredients in-tact. A small silver lining is that it is fantastic at grating and looks stylish.

This is our favourite food processor:

Magimix Cuisine 5200XL, £399.99

It’s a beast of a machine, in size, height and weight, and this makes the Magimix 5200XL a powerhouse of a food processor. It offers everything you could need a food processor to do, and performs the majority of those tasks with ease. This goes some way towards justifying its £400 price tag.

In our tests, we used the largest capacity bowl on each food processor to keep the results consistent, yet the Magimix additionally offers a small “midi”, and mini bowl with smaller blades. The mini bowl is for small quantities, such as herbs; the midi bowl is recommended for slicing and grating. The large bowl can be used for all of the above but is best used for large quantities.

This bowl choice not only gives the Magimix the highest capacity of the food processors tested, it makes it a highly versatile machine. The ability to stack the bowls and blades on top of each other in the machine also lets you carry out multiple tasks simultaneously. You can complete three separate tasks without having to clean and dry a single bowl between uses.

The downside is that the Magimix doesn’t have a separate blending jug, and while this didn’t dramatically hinder its performance when blending soup (coming in third), its smoothie-making skills left a lot to be desired. Even with its BlenderMix attachment.

Its chopping skills were only beaten by the LINKChef Mini Chopper, and it gave the most consistent slices of potatoes and grated carrots. It was also fantastic at kneading bread, coming only second to the KitchenAid, and all of its many attachments can be stored neatly and easily in a tidy storage box. We didn’t test this particular tool, but it can also be used for whisking eggs and cream.

Where the Magimix lost points was on its size and weight, as the largest, heaviest of the lot. It won’t suit smaller kitchens and we just about managed to get it to fit under our cupboards. Its chunky design certainly makes a statement but seems a bit much when other machines cram in similar motors and features into smaller frames.

The Magimix Cuisine 5200XL is also a little fiddly to use, due to its many moving parts, which adds to the time it takes to clean. If you can afford it, the 5200XL is a worthwhile investment that should last for years to come. If you can’t, it’s worth considering buying one of its older or more compact siblings. They offer the same motor, and similar features meaning they should offer similar performance while in smaller packages. Plus they can cost up to £300 cheaper.

This food processor is the best for value:

Kenwood Compact, £39.99

If style is less important than price when choosing the best food processor, you can’t go wrong with the Kenwood Compact. Any misconceptions we had about this somewhat ugly machine vanished once the tests started. Plus, at £40, the way it performed against its much more expensive rivals was even more impressive.

Its chopping skills, for instance, were second to none, handling both soft and hard food with the same consistency and speed. Despite not having a dedicated blending jug, it scored top marks for making smoothies, ahead of the Ninja and Vitamix, which are both marketed on their blending expertise. Elsewhere, the Kenwood Compact excelled at grating cheese.

As its name suggests, the Kenwood Compactweighs very little and takes up a small amount of space. Its design means it fits easily under or inside cupboards and you don’t have to pull it out to use it.

That said, it’s far from perfect and does have a number of touches that reveal its cheaper price. The safety connection between the bowl and the unit, which is used to stop all of the processors from being used if the bowls aren’t locked into place, is weak. When chopping large, hard items, the bowl had a tendency to move and unlock itself and turn off, meaning we had to hold it in place.

It does offer a decent range of attachments, but the slicing and grating discs in particular need to be swapped in and out of the plastic plate between uses. This is fiddly, time consuming, not to mention a little nerve wracking having to manhandle the sharp corners and blades.

There is also no storage box for these sharp discs, nor do they sit comfortably in the bowl when not being used. The plus side to this is that they’re easier to clean and there are fewer plates and discs to wash.

The cheaper price was also apparent in the other food tests, with the Kenwood Compact achieving average scores for mixing muffins and kneading bread dough. It’s also not the quietest of machines, but then neither is it the loudest.

There is a lot to love about the Kenwood Compact and while, yes, you can get a more consistent performance across the board with a wider range of tools in more expensive models, the performance you get versus the price is brilliant.

Comparing the rest on test

If it’s an all-rounder you’re after; one that ticks many of the Magimix boxes without the hefty size and price, we recommend the KitchenAid 2.1L. It’s our favourite when it comes to design and swaps the Magimix’s storage box for a clever system of being able to store all the attachments within the main bowl when not in use.

It was the quietest machine we tested, was the best at kneading bread, and it sliced bananas and chopped hard foods effortlessly. It fell a little when chopping softer, smaller items and lacked the blending skills of its more expensive rivals but all-in-all it’s a worthy contender against the Magimix, while costing half the price.

At the opposite end of the scale is Amazon best-seller, the LINKChef Mini Chopper. If all you want is a fast and easy way to chop ingredients for sauces and recipes, it’s a fantastic little machine. It doesn’t have any bells and whistles, but this makes it extremely easy to use, easy to clean and easy to store. All for just £19.99. It didn’t perform badly at blending either.

Results from top left: Ninja nuts, Kenwood Compact parsley, Kenwood compact swede, Haden nuts, Vitamix parsley, Tower swede

The best of the blenders award goes to the Ninja Smart Screen food processor. It uses a so-called FreshVac system that sucks oxygen out of the cups and pitcher before blending to help maintain the goodness and vibrancy of the fruit and vegetables. This may seem like a gimmick but the proof is in the pudding. The touchscreen additionally makes it easy to switch between tasks. It’s not cheap but it outperformed its closest blending rival, the Vitamix, in nearly every like-for-like category.

Ninja's nuts, from our testing

Speaking of the Vitamix, we had high hopes given its price and the swathes of positive online reviews yet found it to be lacking. It was strong at blending, but not as strong as the Ninja, plus it’s not as attractive and compact as its nearest rival.

The Vitamix is easier to clean, and the smaller sizes of its blending cups make it easy to transport smoothies and soups to work, but at this price we would struggle to justify buying it just for that. We found the digital timer a fantastic addition, but rarely used all 10 of its speed settings.

In a sea of monochrome food processors, the pastel colours, cursive font and chrome detailing makes the Fearne by Swan range, endorsed by presenter Fearne Cotton, standout. If design is key when choosing a food processor, this is the one for you. Sadly, the performance made it also stand out for the wrong reasons. Large slices of banana in smoothies and lumps of veg in soups are far from ideal. It sat at the bottom end of the pile for chopping, kneading bread and mixing muffins.

The Tefal DoubleForce was similarly mid-range in terms of performance, but at a lower price. As the tests were carried out blind, this price didn’t influence the results. But with hindsight, it’s a little easier to forgive the Tefal’s misgivings given its cost. The best way to describe the Tefal is jack of all trades, master of none, and if you want a machine to carry out most of the popular food prep tasks without paying through the nose for them, it’s a decent candidate.

While the Magimix excelled in almost every test, the Tower T18004 struggled. It looks the part from a distance, but feels cheap up close and was the second loudest machine we tested, behind the Haden. For all but two of the tests – grating cheese and carrots – it ranked in the bottom half and it failed to chop the swede or mix the muffins.

Are there any food processors to avoid?

At the very bottom of the pile was the Haden 6-in-1 Champion. Firstly, it’s loud. The loudest machine on test. It’s tall, curved, white design is ugly and cheap-looking, with attachments to match.

We cut ourselves numerous times attempting to swap the slicing and grating blades in and out of the plastic plate, and the main blade wobbled during use and gathered food underneath.

You call those processed nuts, Haden?

If that’s a little too nitpicky for you, the test scores should be enough to convince you of its poor performance. It scored zero, or just a single point for four of the tests, and scored lower than five for the majority of the rest. When blending the smoothie, for example, the liquid managed to split and was almost frothy water by the time it had finished blending.

Very little separated the Haden and the Tower – just 2.6 points to be precise – but the poor design and how difficult the Haden was to use and clean was enough to land it in last place.

There are few pleasures quite like making really the best coffee for yourself at home. It’s warming, it’s delicious, it wakes you up, and you get to start your day by throwing a metaphorical middle finger at the Starbucks and Costas of the world. What could be better?

UPDATE:Pret has revealed that it is now offering a coffee subscription service. The first month is free, then you pay £20 a month for as many drinks as you want - it's not just for coffees, either but frappes, teas and other things. Whether this is a good deal or not depends on your liking of Pret coffee and how much you can actually consume in a month. As you will see below - many of the best coffee beans come way under this price and offer more than 20 cups of coffee.

Find a bored coffee nerd out in the wild and they can talk with (or at) you for hours about brewing methods, freshness, storage, temperatures, pressures, and more, but the perfect technique will only get you so far if you don’t have the right beans to apply it all to. That’s where these picks come in.

We’ve risked life, limb, and extreme over-caffeination to test as many of the best coffee beans as we can that were roasted right here in the UK. We’ve mostly stuck to each roaster’s signature or house style to make sure everything’s easily available, but once you find a roaster you like remember to dig deep into their roaster roster and try their other offerings.

We also mostly tested these beans with espresso, so bear in mind that some beans and blends are better suited to the various filter preparation methods - experiment a bit to find what works best for you.v

• The best coffee machines revealed
• We've don the testing and these are the best coffee pod machines.
• Want beans through the door? These are the best coffee subscription services.

Best coffee beans

SOMETHING MISSING FROM OUR SHORTLIST?

Tell us about it, and if enough people agree we'll add it in.

You’ve probably heard of ‘courgetti’ as a perennial culinary favourite for the more health conscious among us but do you know which is the best spiralizer to make it?

Of course, courgettes are not the only vegetable you can put through a spiralizer – carrots, sweet potatoes, cucumbers and more can all be used to make delicious strips for salads, stir fries or more. You can even use fruit, adding apples, pears or more to breakfasts, desserts, and to decorate baking.

Want to start spiralizing but not sure where to start? Here’s our guide to some the best out there. Upvote the spiralizer you'd put in your shopping basket.

• Want something more upscale? How about one of the best food processors? We tested 10 of them.

Best spiralizer

SOMETHING MISSING FROM OUR SHORTLIST?

Tell us about it, and if enough people agree we'll add it in.

You can buy all the gadgets you want. But sometimes all you really need to excel in the kitchen are good, high quality basics - such as the best kitchen knives.

UPDATED: Once you are finished with our best kitchen knives list, then you may well be interested in our best kitchen gadgets guide. We've hand picked some fantastic new kitchen gadgets that we think will help anyone become a better cook.

Investing in a really good set of kitchen knives is something that will really set you apart from other home chefs. After all, most tasks completed with a knife still have to be done by hand – you can’t get a machine to chop your veg or slice your meat.

Decided to upgrade that blunt, five-year-old set of knives currently languishing on your kitchen worktop? Here’s our list of the best kitchen knives you can get.

Upvote the knife you'd rather have in your kitchen.

• These are the best food processors, tested by our expert
• Keep cool with the best ice cream maker

Best kitchen knives

SOMETHING MISSING FROM OUR SHORTLIST?

Tell us about it, and if enough people agree we'll add it in.

Hand, jug, stand, single-serve. There are many types of blenders at wildly varying prices. Despite them all effectively doing one thing – turning solids into liquids – finding the best blender can be a minefield of conflicting reviews and jargon.

For the past month we've put the blitzing power of 10 of the most popular blenders to the test from brands including Ninja, Nutribullet, Sage, and KitchenAid in an attempt to simplify your choice.

The clear winner, storming ahead in almost every category was the Ninja Blender Duo. Our best value choice is the Nutribullet Magic Bullet. It is cheap and cheerful but does the job as well as, and in some cases better than, its more expensive rivals.

• Want more versatility? Don't miss our best food processor test. If you are looking to use that energy from your smoothie to do some cleaning then our best cordless vacuum cleaner and best robot vacuum cleaner guides.

It may be loud and simple but it does the job better than many of its rivals for a pleasingly low price. For £40 you get a compact, single-serve blender, with a separate cup, that makes light work of smoothies and juices.

The Ninja Blender Duo not only offers great value, with its high-capacity jug and separate single-serve Nutri Ninja cups, it outperformed more expensive models in almost every test and comes with a host of speed settings to suit every occasion.

The expert's view

30

Blenders considered

15

Hours of testing

2

Best buys

1

Experts consulted

Author Bio

Vicky Woollaston

Victoria Woollaston is a technology and beauty freelancer with more than a decade of experience reviewing and comparing gadgets, appliances and services at MailOnline, Wired, Alphr and Expert Reviews.

The shortlist: best blenders

Best blenders: how we selected them

The terms blenders and food processors are used almost interchangeably online, yet they have different pros and cons. The majority of food processors can be seen as "jack of all trades, masters of none". They’re typically good all-rounders, able to handle most kitchen tasks thrown at them, including grating and slicing but aren’t built with one particular task in mind.

If it’s a processor you’re after, check out our test of the best food processors. Blenders, on the other hand, offer less versatility but are designed to excel at a specific set of liquid-based tasks. At their most simple, the best blenders are those with enough capacity to handle multiple fruit and vegetables for smoothies and juices, and that turn those ingredients into smooth liquids quickly and quietly.

In selecting our shortlist of best blenders to test, we automatically discounted hand blenders. Hand blenders have their uses, being most suited to aerating, beating and emulsifying, but they don’t offer the versatility of jug blenders. Little separates stand and jug blenders, divided only by the shape of the container, so we included both in our search, alongside single-serve (also known as smoothie-making) blenders made popular by the likes of Nutribullet.

We began by selecting the 50 highest-rated blenders within these categories from leading homeware sites AO.com, Argos, John Lewis, Currys and Amazon before reading hundreds of customer reviews to pick out the 25 most popular blenders based on real-world use. The highest-scoring models from each individual brand in our list of the top 25 was chosen before we handpicked models based on features and price.

In terms of features, we were looking for blenders with enough capacity and power to make a batch of carrot and coriander soup, a blueberry and banana smoothie, and cucumber and red cabbage juice. We wanted the ability to crush ice too.

Each blender needed to fit comfortably on our kitchen top and within the £200 budget we set. Within this budget, we wanted at least two premium models and two cheaper brands, with the other blenders providing an assortment of options in the mid-range.

This left us with blenders from Ninja, Nutribullet, Smeg, Swan, Sage, Dualit, Russell Hobbs, Tefal, KitchenAid and Wilko ranging from £30 up to £200.

Best blenders: how we tested them

We judged each blender on both quality and quantity across a total of 14 criteria. Half of these scores ranked the blenders based on their specifications and features including price, capacity, the number of speed settings, power, size, weight and colours. The other scores were taken from performance tests, each blender’s design, how loud they are when crushing ice, and how easy they are to use and clean.

The cheapest blender, the £29.99 Russell Hobbs’s Desire Matte Black Jug Blender, achieved the maximum score of 10 for price, for example. But this bargain cost means it has low power and offers few colour options, which law it drop points. The Sage Fresh and Furious excelled at making soup, scoring full marks, but lost nine of these points for being the most expensive.

We began by crushing the same amount of ice in each blender for 30 seconds before tipping the crushed ice into individual plastic cups. The name of each blender was written on the underside of the cups so we couldn’t see which ice came from which machine. We then ranked the samples based on their consistency. This test was repeated to measure the decibel levels of each blender as the ice was thrown around the jug.

For the smoothie test, we added the same amount of milk, bananas and blueberries to each blender and blitzed the ingredients for a minute. These ingredients were chosen because they offered a variety of textures and sizes. The smoothie mixture was poured into labelled cups and judged blind on colour, texture and taste. The individual scores of these three rankings were combined to get the total smoothie score.

This process was repeated for making juice, this time adding blueberries, cucumber and red cabbage to each blender. These ingredients were similarly chosen for their different textures and sizes, but also because of the vibrancy of the red cabbage.

The blended liquid was passed through a cheesecloth into labelled plastic cups and each juice was judged on taste and colour. Again, these scores were combined to get the total juice score.

Finally, a single batch of carrot and coriander soup mixture was divided into 10 and blended in each machine for two minutes. The soup was similarly blind-judged based on texture, colour and taste and the scores were combined. Each model was used on its lowest setting, and for the Ninja model we carried out testing using the jug blender but have also since repeated the tests with its single-serve container for reference.

Best blenders reviews: The test results

In previous appliance group tests, little has separated the best performing models but before we’d even scored the blenders on specifications, one model was a clear winner – the Ninja Blender Duo with AutoIQ. It scored top, or in the top three, for every performance test and in three of the seven specifications rankings.

In second place was the Dualit VortecS blender. It’s lighter than it looks and is surprisingly quiet. This is also impressive given its high power. It performed admirably in most tests but dropped points for being a little confusing to use.

Coming in third was the KitchenAid Artisan. It’s huge and heavy but this affords it a large capacity and high power motor, putting its performance up there with the Ninja and Dualit blenders.

We had expected the Nutribullet to take a podium place, given the brand’s popularity when reading customer reviews. However, its Magic Bullet is the only single-serve blender in the top five, rivalling much more expensive and powerful models for performance and specs, so it still performed well. Its marketing on the box promises a simple, quick blend and that’s exactly what you get.

The most expensive model in our list, the £199.95 Sage Fresh and Furiouscame fifth. It looks similar to the Dualit but is a little sleeker and offers a great range of settings without being too difficult to use. A built-in timer is also a great addition. Sadly, while it nailed some tests, it fell flat in others and we expected more for the price.

Sixth place went to the Wilko Power Plus blender. Despite its name, it lacks some of the power and finesse of the more expensive models but we were impressed with just how well it performed for such a cheap, compact single-serve blender.

Smeg’s retro blender aesthetic is fantastic; its retro design looked great on our worktop and its score was boosted by the range of colours available. Sadly it offers more style than substance and its performance results were wildly inconsistent, knocking it into seventh.

If it was judged purely on its specifications, the Swan Retro Stand blender would have scored higher as it’s light, compact with a large capacity and a good range of colours. Its performance dragged it down to eighth, though, after failing to fully blend basic ingredients.

Tefal’s Blendforce II Glass blender was terrible at crushing ice, the worst on test, but redeemed itself with a decent soup and how easy it was to use, managing to just avoid last place.

With the cheapest blender, Russell Hobbs’s Desire Matte, you get what you pay for. Its black design is inoffensive, and it has a decent capacity but it’s performance was largely poor, sadly affording it our One To Avoid award.

The best blender reviewed:

Ninja Blender Duo with AutoIQblender , £149.99

For a small appliance you’re not likely to use every day, paying £150 for the Ninja Blender Duo may seem a little steep but it’s worth almost every penny. Second only to the KitchenAid Artisan in terms of power, it has enough oomph to be the best blender for crushing ice by quite a distance. It was the only blender to completely turn the cubes to a consistent slush and did so quickly with one of the lowest sound levels of the lot.

It made the smoothest, freshest tasting smoothie without any lumps, and its juice was delicious, albeit lacking some of the vibrancy in colour of the juices produced by the Sage and Dualit blenders. Similarly, its soup was almost perfect. The only thing that separated it from the top-scoring Sage model was a single lump of carrot found at the bottom of the Ninja soup.

This fantastic performance was undoubtedly due to the Ninja’s blender jug having the largest capacity on test, coupled with having a tall, six-blade design – a unique feature of the brand. For reference, we performed each of these tests using the accompanying Nutri Ninja blender and it more than held its own. Its performance wasn’t as good as the Ninja’s jug blender but regularly ranked in the top three places when compared to its rivals.

The trade-off for this performance, and the reason the Ninja Blender Duo is only almost perfect is that it’s not the easiest of blenders to use and it’s a chunky, heavy piece of kit. Its AutoIQ feature determines which container –the jug or the single-serve – is attached and highlights the most appropriate settings.

For example, when the juice ingredients were added to the single-serve blender, the Low, Med, High and Pulse settings lit up, as did the Puree button. The Frozen Drinks/Smoothies button did not, neither did the two dedicated Nutri Blend buttons, which provide more power to the jug blender when its attached.

Once an option has been selected, the technology will automatically run the pulse, pause and blend patterns needed for the particular drink or food you’re making. While this sounds easy, and it does produce great results, knowing which button to press in the first place isn’t always straightforward and takes some getting used to. Other blenders simply have a dial with numbers that correspond to the amount of power, and these are easier to control.

On the plus side, Ninja’s system does have a timer, and it gives you a wider range of options meaning you can be much more precise and tailor the type of blend to the recipe, rather than just blitzing the food and hoping for the best.

Elsewhere, the Ninja lacks the style of some of its rivals. Its chunky and heavy design suits its industrial-style performance. You also have to store the extra jug and cups when they’re not in use, and they’re not small either. This means the Ninja Blender Duo may not suit smaller homes or where space is at a premium. But if you have the room, we’d sacrifice a little style for the power and versatility.

The best blender for value reviewed:

Nutribullet Magic Bullet, £40

Buy a Ninja Blender Duo and you’re paying a slight premium for its versatility and power. But if you’re not interested in bells and whistles, and just want a blender that does the job without breaking the bank, we highly recommend the Nutribullet Magic Bullet. For almost a quarter of the price of the Ninja, you get an easier to use, more compact single-serve blender without sacrificing too much on power and performance.

Its small size and low weight mean it can easily be stored in a cupboard when not in use or will tuck in tidily on your worktop between a kettle and toaster. It doesn’t have a power button on the blender itself. Instead, you press and hold the jug in place for the desired length of time. Alternatively, you can achieve a pulsing motion by pressing and releasing the jug multiple times.

If you want hands-free blending, before turning the Magic Bullet on press and twist the jug to lock it in place. Turn the power and the blades will rotate automatically until you untwist the jug or turn it off at the mains. We liked this ease of use but can imagine the lack of varying speed options, and the hands-on nature of the Magic Bullet may soon feel restrictive if you’re planning to make a variety of meals or drinks.

In all the performance rankings, with the exception of the ice crush test, the Nutribullet scored in the top half of the table. It made an above average smoothie, a tasty soup and a vibrant juice. In fact, it ranked top for the taste of its smoothie, but dropped points for having a thicker, lumpier consistency than some of its rivals. It has a limited capacity – the smallest on test – and while this didn’t seem to impact its performance with softer ingredients, the Nutribullet struggled to effectively crush ice, leaving large lumps. This may also be a downside if you want a blender to batch cook for the week.

The Nutribullet’s closest rival in our group test, in terms of design and functionality, is the Wilko Power Plus blender. The two models look almost identical, spare some branding differences, and the Wilko blender is a fiver cheaper, but it’s incredibly noisy and doesn’t offer pulsing features. Both come with two spare cups. If space, or money is tight, we recommend getting the Nutribullet over its larger rivals and paying the extra compared to the Wilko model will give you better results.

Comparing the rest on test

With the second largest capacity of the group, a wide range of settings and its flat (as opposed to Ninja’s tall) six-pronged blade, the Dualit VortecS got the closest to the Ninja in terms of performance, albeit still 12 points off. It came second only to the Nutribullet for how quiet it is, which is impressive given its hefty motor, and it made a great juice. Dualit has crammed a lot of tech and power into a narrow frame, meaning the VortecS would be comfortable addition to most homes.

Undoubtedly the most striking looking blender of the group, the KitchenAid Artisan is large and heavy, and is seemingly designed to stand out rather than blend in. Excuse the pun. Its highly powerful motor made it great for crushing ice, coming second only to the Ninja, and it’s smoothie was almost up there with Ninja’s taste and consistency. This was all done with relatively little noise, too. The KitchenAid lost points for a lacklustre juice and for leaving lumps in the soup.

Proving price doesn’t always match performance, the Sage Fresh and the Furious fell short of cheaper models, sitting in the middle of the pack. It excelled at both the smoothie and soup tasks, and offers the most speed settings without being overly complicated.

Its timer is a welcomed addition too. However, its juice mixture had large pieces of cabbage and cucumber left in it, it was one of the loudest machines and came second only to KitchenAid’s Artisan in terms of its large size and weight.

It may be the loudest blender in the list, with a capacity only marginally larger than the Nutribullet, but the Wilko blender is still a decent choice. It does the job if you don’t want anything fancy and for £35 you get a compact single-serve blender with spare cups. It lost points for its lack of colour and speed options and it made an awful soup.

How the Smeg BLF01BLUK 50s-styleblender could be so wildly inconsistent confounds us. In the smoothie and ice crushing tests, the Smeg was brilliant, achieving a score of nine and eight respectively. Yet put juice ingredients in, or attempt to make a soup, and you wouldn’t know it was the same blender. Both tests lacked taste and had poor consistencies. For its price we’d also expect more power. We did like the measuring cup in the top of the lid, though.

The Swan Retro Stand blender completely failed in making juice, only managing to cut the very bottom layer of ingredients and leaving the rest intact. Its smoothie didn’t fare much better, the ice wasn’t crushed and its soup was lumpy, although the overall consistency of the vegetables that were blended was good. It gained points for being a good looking, compact, quiet machine. Similar to the Smeg model, the Swan Retro Stand blender offers more style over substance. But unlike Smeg, its price is not sky-high.

Tefal’s Blendforce II Glass scored largely down the middle in the majority of tests, which matches its mid-range price. The blender wasn’t overly loud and it has a large capacity, offering a decent range of speed settings. It fell into last place, however, for making a terrible soup and smoothie and failing to crush the ice at all, merely cutting a few shards off the cubes.

Any blenders to avoid?

Russell Hobbs’s Desire Matte Black Jug Blender is cheap, and it shows. It’s a fairly chunky machine without the power that accompanies some of its other, similarly large rivals, namely the KitchenAid Artisan, and this meant it struggled with many of the performance tests. Its juice ranked among the worst, as did its ability to crush ice.

A couple of silver linings. You do get a large capacity for the price, and its smoothie was one of the smoothest and tastiest we made, so it’s not all bad, but we can’t recommend this machine when others which aren’t that much more expensive – the Nutribullet and Wilko – and do a significantly better job.

It's the New Year, so what better time to invest in a juicer and kick off that health, er, kick? Supermarkets are filled with pre-packed juices, but we all know fresh is best. Invest in one of the best juicers and not only can you guarantee the tastiest juice around, you can get creative with your combinations. Blueberry, pineapple and kale? Done.

If you’ve never bought a juicer before, it can be tricky to know which type is right for you. There are fast and slow designs, plus ones that look great but require more cleaning than others. It's also worth bearing in mind that there are juicers and then there are food processors and smoothie makers – all do a slightly different thing with a slightly different result.

Fortunately, we’ve put 10 of the best juicers through their paces, spending weeks peeling, chopping and blitzing fruit and veg.

You can read our in-depth reviews below and how we came to our best juicer conclusion. But, after much testing, the L'Equip 215 XL juicer is our best value pick and Philips Avance Collection MicroMasticating juicer our favourite overall. Kuvings EVO820 Evolution Cold Press Juicer came a close second – the only reason we haven’t chosen it as our top pick is its £500 price.

• These are the best blenders around right now
• The best hand mixer revealed
• Want the best food processor? Then this guide is for you

In terms of delivering bang for buck, the L'Equip 215 XL Juicer is our best choice – it balances consistently efficient juicing with a price tag of just over £100. It is a great buy for juicers newbies and enthusiasts alike. Plus it’s a cinch to put together and take apart.

The best juicer tested was the Philips HR1947/31 Avance Collection MicroMasticating, chosen because of its minimal pulp waste, compact worktop footprint, effortless assembly and ability to tackle a range of fruit and vegetables. It’s still something of an investment but if you want a juicer that continually delivers, and won’t end up gathering dust, it’s worth it.

• best buys
• The shortlist
• Test selection
• How we tested
• Test results
• Best overall
• Best value
• The rest compared
• One to avoid

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The shortlist: Best juicers reviewed

The expert's view

36

Oranges juiced

29

Hours of testing

18

Products considered

2

Best buys

There are three important questions to ask when thinking about buying a juicer. Do you want a "fast" or "slow" extraction model? How much space do you have to spare? And are you willing to pay a bit more for convenience and easier cleaning?

Even low-cost juicers can do the job well, if you choose carefully. It's one of the benefits of a genre of kitchen gadget that is now fairly mature, rather than part of a trendy fad.

Author Bio

Rachel Ogden

Rachel Ogden is a freelance journalist specialising in testing small appliances, from coffee machines to slow cookers and everything in-between. Her kitchen has been a temporary home to multiple juicers over the years, meaning she has used, cleaned, assembled and disassembled more than most people, and juiced a vast amount of fruit, vegetables and nuts.

Best juicers: how we selected

Every brand under the sun used to make a juicer. That variety has narrowed with the rise of smoothie makers and pro-style blenders. The market now mostly consists of models that tend to be more than £100, but produce a high yield with less maintenance, and affordable ‘fast’ juicers with few bells and whistles.

Slow juicers (also known as cold press juicers, or masticating as they ‘chew’ the ingredients to extract more juice) have risen in popularity. Fast, or centrifugal, juicers (where ingredients are shredded, spun and strained) often have to emphasise their time-saving qualities, such as rapid juicing and reduced food prep.

For these tests, we’ve tried to select a varied mixture of fast and slow juicers, at a range of prices. Our cheapest is a budget-friendly sub-£50 VonShefcentrifugal model. There are 10 different manufacturers, ranging from specialist juicer makers that you may not be familiar with, such as Kuvings and L'Equip, to companies that mainly make small kitchen appliances, such as Dualit and Magimix. There are also companies that offer a range of other products, such as Philips and Panasonic.

Juicing at home is the best way to maximise your drink’s vitamins and nutrients but no amount of tasty fresh OJ will lure you into making it if a machine is messy or difficult to use, assemble and clean. We prioritised designs that are easy to take apart and put back together (you’ll still find older juicer models available that are like 3D jigsaw puzzles), can be cleaned in a couple of minutes or are dishwasher-safe and come with useful features, such as non-drip stoppers and different settings for different produce.

We also chose models that would minimise food prep time with wider feed chutes (so you can juice a whole apple without chopping for example) or a large pulp bin (for reduced emptying during weekend juicing sessions), and those that have more than one speed, so can adapt to soft and hard textures.

Accessories were also a plus point. We looked for brushes to help with clean-up afterwards, recipe books (to inspire you to get the most out of your juicer), lidded juice jugs (so you don’t have to juice every day and can store a few days’ worth in the fridge) and different strainers (for making thicker juice, coulis or even frozen fruity desserts).

At the more expensive end of the market, performance tends to be fairly consistent. If you have a couple of hundred pounds to spend, the chances of buying a poor-performing juicer are low. At this price, the buying decision will be mostly about features, design and aesthetic. If you keep these machines clean and well-maintained, they should last for years without any major hiccups.

However, for less than £100, quality varieties more and you’re limited to centrifugal designs, Many include more plastic parts than metal, which may be less durable over time and can stain. They’re fine for occasional juicing, or as a first juicer, but may not be suitable for everyday heavy use. Budget colour choices tends to be black, white or silver. Designs are more functional than stylish, and features reduced to a minimum.

Best juicers: how we tested

Assembling a juicer shouldn’t be a special skill so the first thing we were looking for were machines that were quick to slot together, and ideally had lock symbols or arrows on applicable parts. A quick-start guide or separate diagram showing how to assemble the juicer, which you can keep handy until you’re up to speed, was also a plus.

Another feature on our wishlist was clear, concise instructions, as too often manuals can be overwhelmingly wordy. Or, conversely, too brief to get a real sense of what the machine can do.

Each juicer we tested was given four foods to assess its capabilities. These were a hard vegetable (carrot), soft vegetable (spinach leaves), hard fruit (apples) and soft fruit (peeled orange segments). Speeds were adjusted for each where available, and food introduced whole where possible. We then looked at how much juice was produced from each food, how much waste pulp ended up in the bin (including if it contained any unjuiced lumps of the food), and how damp the waste pulp was.

After juicing each food, we also looked inside the machine to see how much waste pulp or food remained in the bin, whether any lumps or clogs were present and if filters looked congested or fairly clear (and so if they would require cleaning in-between different foods or if we could carry on using the machine without any clogs forming).

Following each juicing session, we also marked each juicer on how much mess there was around the machine, from either splashes and spurting while in operation or drips on the worktop in lieu of a resealable spout. More mess equals more clean-up time, so even if a juicer is relatively low maintenance to use, constantly cleaning up around it can be a deterrent to a regular juicing routine.

Finally, we evaluated how easy each model was to take apart and clean after use. A good juicer design shouldn’t have any nooks or crannies that can’t be reached with a cloth or brush when cleaning by hand (and so could become sticky or unhygienic over time), and any seals should be easy to unplug and re-seal.

The best models tend to come with a brush or cleaning tool in the box specifically suited to removing clogs or fibres from that machine, so we awarded extra points to those that made washing by hand as fuss-free as possible.

Entirely dishwasher-safe parts were also a plus. A few of the models we tested still had one or two parts that had to be cleaned by hand and remembering which ones these are when a juicer’s in regular use would be tricky. It’s worth noting that most machines still advise a quick scrub of filters before placing in the dishwasher and that most go on the top rack for reduced wear and tear from the water jets.

Best Juicer Reviews: The test results

The Philips AvanceCollection MicroMasticating juicer scored highly in almost all areas so we’ve chosen it as our best juicer. Ease of cleaning is the clearest positive – its parts only needed a quick rinse to flush out fibres and were all dishwasher-safe.

We also found it very easy to assemble – the parts that come into contact with food all slot together into one unit, which then locks into place on top of the machine. Another slow juicer, the Kuvings EVO820, produced a slightly better yield but, in comparison, took far longer to assemble and disassemble and clean, and took up more room on the worktop.

We tested two other slow juicers. One was the Panasonic MJ-L500, which performed well, except with spinach leaves. It was straightforward to put together but some of its parts weren’t dishwasher safe. We also liked its ability to make frozen desserts.

The other was Smeg’s slow juicer– an efficient machine with a high juice yield that was easy to assemble. It performed especially well with citrus fruit and made short work of leafy greens but as the highest priced model in our selection, this slightly better performance might not be worth the extra expense.

On the fast juicer front, we tested six models – theL’Equip 215 XL, which didn’t look much different than many from the outside but performed exceptionally well, making it our best value choice. We liked everything about it, from the good advice about how best to maintain it and clean it by hand, to the fact that it was also dishwasher safe should you not have time to scrub.

The L’Equip 215 XL faltered a little with spinach leaves and would have benefited from having a cleaning brush in the box, but for the price we felt it delivered on most key points.

Also ranking highly was the Sage Nutri Juicer Cold XL – similar in design but with more control over speeds and an incredibly useful storage jug. More of its parts are constructed from metal, too, ensuring a long lifespan but also increasing its weight – not ideal if you have to move it around the kitchen or in and out of a cupboard.

Our cheapest model in the selection had a similar design – the VonShef 800W juicer. While its build quality meant we had a small leak while testing, it nonetheless made short work of everything but the spinach, which produced a negligible amount of juice.

Our final two were the Dualit Dual Max Juicer and the Magimix Le Duo Plus XL – both relatively compact and elegant centrifugal machines, but both prone to drips from their spouts once the glass or jug had been taken away.

The Dualit model tended to gather pulp in the lid, rather transferring it to the pulp container, while neither performed as well with spinach as they did hard fruit. These were both good, hard-working machines but definitely more suitable for citrus and hard fruit than leafy veg.

Best Juicer overall:

Philips Avance Collection MicroMasticating juicer review, £199.99, Amazon (RRP £295)

Kitchens rarely have space for a one-trick small appliance, so the sheer size of this juicer won us over. It’s compact enough to store at the back of a worktop underneath a wall cabinet and its juice jug and extra filter can be stored inside the waste pulp bin when you’re done. There’s even cord storage around the base of the machine for the generous one-metre cable.

Inside, a long thin auger screw (rather than the chunky ones you’ll find on larger upright slow juicers) crushes fruit, vegetables and nuts in three stages before the juice makes its way to your glass. It then ejects the pulp into a container below. In our tests, it performed brilliantly with every food, processing spinach as easily as citrus and producing minimal, only slightly damp, pulp.

While juicing it was quiet, meaning it’s also a good choice if you’re the first person up in the morning, work unsocial hours or don’t want to disturb a child’s nap time. The juice it produced was consistently great quality, with intense flavours, a good consistency (which can also be thicker with more pulp by switching to the fibre juice filter) and barely any foam. An included recipe book had some ideas for blends to try, although not a huge amount of guidance.

It was prone to was juice surges if food was pushed through too quickly, or if chunks became stuck, and had to be nudged through with the pusher. The feed chute isn’t that wide, so more prep was required than with other machines, and if you were juicing in a hurry, this might prove frustrating. However, the lidded jug does at least mean you can juice ahead of time if this becomes an issue.

Another reason we’ve chosen it as our favourite was that it was incredibly simple to assemble and comes with a separate diagram you can keep to hand until it’s second nature. Taking it apart was mess-free – the non-drip spout clicks to stop splashes of juice on the worktop, plus its pre-clean function leaves the interior fibre-free. It took less than a minute to rinse all the parts, none of which had sharp edges, and they were all dishwasher-safe as well.

Of all the juicers we tested, we felt the Avance Collection MicroMasticating model had the best balance of convenience, easy storage, efficiency and minimal maintenance.

Best juicer for value

L'Equip 215 XL Juicer review, £169.95, Amazon

The L'Equip 215 XL might not have the most exciting name, only has one speed, and it is not the sleekest model in our round-up. But in terms of being a hard-working juicer that’s quick and easy to use, clean and assemble, it fits the bill perfectly.

Some of the reasons we chose it as our best value buy include its large pulp container and wide feed chute. You can juice for as long as you like without stopping to empty it – great for large batches — and it can take small whole apples and carrots (although larger apples can be obstructed by the fin halfway down the chute).

There are some bundled recipes to try, but no juice jug.

We liked that theL'Equip 215 XL's spout didn’t spurt as we juiced, even though its powerful motor processes fruit and veg in a matter of seconds, and that after we were finished, there were no clogs inside the machine – all the pulp made it into the container, with some sticking to the lid.

Juicing the apples produced a clear drink with a small amount of froth and moist, but not soaking, well-processed pulp. We had similar results from carrots, with each one creating about a quarter of a glass of juice with substantial, but quite dry, pulp.

Oranges gave a good yield of about a third of a glass of juice per fruit, with slight froth and damp pulp. We found that trying to ease food through the L'Equip 215 XLslowly translated to the best results, although it was hard to do this with soft citrus. Where it didn’t perform as well as hoped was with the spinach leaves. Even when rolled or juiced with apple, they only produced a small amount of juice. The spinach pulp was minimal but this machine still didn’t feel like the best choice for leafy veg.

Taking the L'Equip 215 XL apart and cleaning up was straightforward. While there’s no brush included for cleaning the mesh filter basket, fibres can be removed quite easily and all the parts are dishwasher-safe. A non-drip spout would improve this juicer, as we disliked having to wipe up splashes as we took it apart.

In terms of size, while the L'Equip 215 XL is not the smallest we reviewed, it’s still more compact than models of a similar design. It can be stored easily. Many of the internal parts are made from stainless steel too, which should result in a longer lifespan.

Overall, the L'Equip 215 XL is good value considering its mostly efficient performance, and an excellent buy if most of what you plan to juice is hard fruit or veg.

Comparing the rest

Best for serious juicing fans

Kuvings EVO820 Evolution Cold Press Juicer, £479.00, Amazon

An incredibly well-designed slow juicer that frankly, could probably squeeze juice out of anything, but there’s no getting around that this is an investment machine. However, it offers more than most: high juice yield and a minimal amount of pulp, a clever feed chute that comes with a flip-gate rather than a fin, which makes juicing whole apples easier, drip-stop spout and wrap-around cleaning brush for effortless maintenance. There’s also an optional citrus attachment, which adds another £30 to the price, but turns it into an efficient reamer.

Best for batch juicing

Sage the Nutri Juicer Cold XL, £299.00, Amazon

Slow juicers might not be the snail-like appliances the name suggests but for those who don’t want to wait around for a cold press, there’s the Sage the Nutri Juicer Cold XL. It's a weighty no-nonsense machine that aims to combine the speed of a centrifugal juicer with the quality of a slow one. In some respects it delivers, producing minimal dry pulp for hard fruit and veg. We would have liked to see more from the softer stuff, considering it has a dedicated speed for it but loved the design otherwise. A large pulp bin and lidded jug with a seal means you can make days’ worth of juice in one go, plus a flexible nozzle gives the option of juicing into a glass.

Best for retro style

Smeg Slow Juicer, £359.99, Amazon

However useful an appliance is, if it lives out on your worktop, why not have something attractive to look at too? That’s the reasoning behind Smeg’s slow juicer, which combines style with a durable juicing machine. Two filters mean you can have drinks with more pulp should you wish to, while a drip-stop spout prevents all that lovely juice dribbling over your surfaces. Plus, unlike many juicers that only come in monochrome, there’s a choice of pastel blue, red or cream instead of the standard black.

Best for versatility

Magimix Le Duo Plus XL Juice Extractor, £179.99, Amazon

Considering its motor comes with a 30-year guarantee, you can be sure the Le Duo Plus XL was just itching to be put through its paces. We especially liked it for its two-cone citrus press, which worked as well for oranges as it did limes (a fruit that can be stubborn to produce juice), the SmoothieMix attachment that makes everything from coulis to baby food and the spatula. It lets you scoop out pulp easily when you are finished juicing. A simple design, quiet motor (though it’s still noisy when juicing) and entirely dishwasher-safe parts also made us score it highly. However, while it produced a good yield from apples and carrots, getting sufficient juice from leafy veg proved tricky.

Best as a first juicer

Dualit Dual-Max Juicer, £59.99, Amazon

Proving a solidly built machine doesn’t need to blow the budget, the Dual-Max is probably one of the best models for someone starting a juicing habit but who isn’t ready to lay out hundreds just to dip a toe in the water. It has two speeds for getting the most from soft and hard fruit and was very fast – so much so, that our juice was always foamy. Fortunately, its juice jug’s separator served to skim most of it off when we poured it out. It was messy to clean up after disassembling it, as pulp gathered in the lid, and you’ll need to buy a separate brush to clear clogs from the metal filter before chucking in the dishwasher. But other than that, there’s a lot to like.

Best for a budget

Vonshef 800W Stainless Steel Juicer, £49.99, Amazon

As the lowest priced juicer in our round-up, we weren’t sure what to expect from this pocket-friendly number. But it was a pleasant surprise. It works almost as well as juicers that cost twice as much, and although there was a tiny leak from the side of the lid (despite it being firmly clamped in place), and a bit more mess during disassembly, these felt like niggles given the price. The build quality is less robust than others we tested but considering you can spend the saving on lots of fruit and veg for juicing, it’s hard to find much fault with it.

Best for frozen desserts

Panasonic MJ-L500 Slow Juicer, £399,00, Amazon

With a fair few parts, it’s a little bit of a puzzle to put this juicer together but persist with the MJ-L500 and your reward can be everything from juice to icy desserts. It will even crunch its way through frozen fruit, turning berries and chunks of fruit into ‘oh I just whipped this up’ sorbet – great for dieters craving a sweet fix as well as healthy puddings for kids. It performed especially well with apples, turning them into slightly foamy yet crisp juice with compacted pulp that was almost dry to the touch, but leafy greens didn’t produce much yield. However, for under £200, there’s a lot of functionality.

Best for families

Braun IdentityCollection Spin Juicer J500, £129.00, Amazon

A good basic juicer that’s noisy but fast, its notable features include an anti-splash spout that doesn't spurt or drip, quick powering up and down, and two speeds for hard and soft fruit. We were able to fit apples into its wide feed chute too, only deferring to the pusher to ease the last few pieces of fruit through. There was quite a lot of foam on top of the juice but a separator in the jug helped to sieve this out. The remaining pulp was fairly dry. Oranges produced a good amount of juice, but wetter pulp. Smaller pieces of food were trickier to juice, and had a habit of spinning away from the filter.

One to avoid?

All juicers have their failings. There isn’t yet a design that does away with food prep altogether, produces a large yield and needs little maintenance. So rather than pinpoint a model to avoid, we’d suggest making sure you buy the juicer that’s right for how you plan to juice and your everyday lifestyle to avoid falling out of love with it.

If you like speedy OJ and apple juice, choose a centrifugal model, or if veggies, soft fruit and nuts is more your thing, go for a slow juicer. And if you think it’ll end up getting relegated to a cupboard, never to see the light of day again, buy one that’s compact enough to have out on the worktop so you’re more likely to use it.

While none of the juicers we tested were especially difficult to clean, some were definitely more straightforward than others, so if you find yourself often short on time, pick one that’s dishwasher-safe or has as few parts as possible.

If you think that the best slow cookers are just for stews and soups, then think again.

From baking cakes to roasting chickens and cooking an entire Full English (or a stack of pancakes!) ready for the next morning, the best slow cookers are more versatile than you can imagine.

For the past month we’ve put this versatility to the test, preparing meals and desserts using 10 of the best-selling slow cookers. They come from established brands like Morphy Richards, Crock-Pot and Russell Hobbs, as well as models from relatively unsung manufacturers including Drew & Cole, Swan and Wilko.

There was a surprise result. The bargain Wilko slow cooker came out victorious. It makes the most moist chicken we’ve ever tasted, while also performing admirably at baking cakes and stews.

Drew & Cole’s Clever Chef is our best value choice because the design, performance and range of options it provides far outweigh its price.

• These are the best food processors around.

Slow cooker best buys

It looks unlike any slow cooker we’ve used but that’s not a criticism. The CleverChef is a slow cooker, frying pan, steamer, and rice cooker in one. We only tested its slow cooking capabilities – for which it came third overall – but if you’re in the market for a slow cooker anyway, spending slightly more will get you this all-singing, all-dancing multicooker, representing fantastic value for money.

In our blind taste tests, the Wilko 3.5L slow cooker made the most delicious roast chicken, plus its chocolate cake and beef stew were so tasty they made the top three. This, coupled with its absolute bargain price, its choice of settings and its size made it a deserving winner.

• best buys
• The shortlist
• Our expert
• Test selection
• How we tested
• test results
• Best overall
• Most versatile
• The rest compared
• One to avoid

PreviousNext

The Shortlist: Best slow cooker

The expert's view

50

Products considered

65

Hours of testing

2

Experts consulted

2

Best buys

Our testing proves you can buy an excellent slow cooker for less than the cost of a Pizza Express bottle of wine. However, there's more to consider. Some of the slow cookers we tested can do more kinds of cooking. And others look much better than our Wilko winners, which matters a lot to some.

Read on to find out how our 10 best slow cookers handle cooking a chicken, baking a chocolate cake and making a classic slow-cooked stew.

Author Bio

Vicky Woollaston

Victoria Woollaston is a technology and beauty freelancer with more than a decade of experience reviewing and comparing gadgets, appliances and services at MailOnline, Wired, Alphr and Expert Reviews.

Best slow cookers: how we selected

Despite the myriad recipes that can be made in a slow cooker, the machines themselves are simple pieces of kit. On paper, little separates the majority of slow cookers in terms of size, temperature settings and design. In reality, however, there can be a vast difference in how one performs compared to a rival.

To create a shortlist of the best slow cookers, we studied customer ratings for 50 models across leading homeware sites Lakeland, Andrew James, AO.com, Argos, Wilko and Amazon.

Any product labelled as a slow cooker was included, which (depending on the site) also pulled in multi-cookers. From this list of 50, we read hundreds of reviews to find the 25 most popular, well-regarded slow cookers based on customer experiences. To narrow the list down to the top 10, we first selected the highest-scoring models from each brand and then handpicked the final models based on features and price.

In terms of features, we looked for slow cookers with at least two temperature settings – high and low – because these are the most common settings used in the majority of slow cooker recipes.

Each slow cooker had to have a minimum capacity of 3.5L because this size can typically create meals to feed a family of four, and is large enough to roast a whole chicken. All of the slow cookers needed to fit comfortably on countertops, too. In terms of price, we wanted at least two budget and two high-end, premium models with the others providing an assortment of options in the mid-range.

This left us with models from Crock-Pot, Swan, Russell Hobbs, Drew & Cole, Tower, Andrew James, Lakeland, Wilko and two Morphy Richards slow cookers – one in the budget category and a mid-range model. The Crock-Pot and Drew & Cole models are classed as multi-cookers so, to level the playing field, we only tested their slow cooking capabilities and comment on their other features purely for reference purposes.

Best slow cookers: how we tested

Across our tests, the slow cookers were ranked out of 10 based on features and performance.

When scoring the best slow cookers for features we assigned points based on price, capacity, the number of temperature settings, their size, weight and colour options. They were also judged on how hot to the touch they got during cooking, how easy they were to use and clean, and their design.

The cheapest model, the Wilko 3.5L slow cooker, achieved a price score of 10, for example but lost points for not offering a range of colour options. The Crock-Pot scored 10 for having the highest capacity but lost points for being the most expensive and largest of the lot.

The slow cookers were then individually tested on their ability to roast a chicken, make a beef stew and bake a chocolate lava cake.

For the roasting challenge, a whole chicken was placed on onions, carrots, garlic and chicken stock and cooked on low for five hours. The stock was removed and the chickens were cooked on high for the final 60 minutes.

Meat from each chicken breast was put into bowls, on the underside of which the name of each slow cooker had been written, and they were blind tasted before being ranked from best to worst. We were looking for a moist texture and strong flavour.

To make the beef stew, we fried the ingredients in the slow cookers to test how well they could brown onions and beef before adding stock and vegetables and cooking on low for eight hours.

The blind tasting process was repeated but this time each bowl was ranked three times – once for sauce, once for meat and veg, and once for overall flavour. When ranking the sauce, we were looking for a vibrant colour and thick consistency.

When ranking the meat and veg, we wanted pieces of tender beef that had been cooked evenly, and soft vegetables that held their shape and hadn’t been overcooked to point of mash. The scores from each were combined to get a total.

When making the chocolate lava cake, we put a chocolate sponge mix in each slow cooker before pouring over a fudge mixture and cooking on high for an hour.

Spoonfuls of the cake were transferred to the labelled bowls and were judged on how well the sponge was cooked, the consistency and amount of fudge sauce, and overall taste.

Feeling hungry?

As a rule, a high temperature on a slow cooker averages around 150-degrees Celcius mark, while a low temperature is in the region of 90-degrees Celcius.

This can, of course, differ by model but it’s fair to assume temperatures are similar because slow cooking recipes tend not to list different cooking times for different models.

If a recipe says it will cook in eight hours on low, for example, the results of whichever slow cooker you use should be similar, or certainly not different enough to warrant a substantial change in timings. In our test, Drew & Cole’s CleverChef was the only slow cooker to show the exact temperature of its high, medium and low settings, and in this instance we left this temperature at whatever its default was.

To test how hot each one was to the touch, we used a thermometer placed on the outside of each slow cooker. The total scores from all 12 food and specification tests were combined to reveal the winners and losers.

Best slow cooker reviews: The results

Topping our list of best slow cookers, beating competition from appliances that cost almost nine times its price, is the Wilko 3.5L slow cooker. It consistently impressed us, cooking food evenly and with ease, and it looks the part.

In second place, we go from the cheapest to the most expensive model in our list – the Crock-Pot 5.6L Family multi-cooker and slow cooker. It’s a beast of a machine, in terms of capacity, size as well as what it’s capable of. Plus it’s incredibly easy to use, despite its vast array of options.

The second of the multi-cookers in our list, Drew & Cole’s CleverChef, took third place for its precision heat settings as well as its unique design and safety features. Its cooking skills didn’t quite match this versatility but it was a well-rounded appliance and it offers far beyond any of the others in this list without an extortionate price tag.

Only one point separated each of the slow cookers in our top four, and Morphy Richards’s Evoke Sear and Stew scored highly for how lightweight and compact it is. It didn’t perform quite as well as our podium places at cooking the food evenly, but wasn’t far off.

Sitting in fifth place, Lakeland’s 3.5L slow cooker fell slightly flat for producing average scores across tests while not offering much in the way of standout features. It’s a mid-range slow cooker for a mid-range price and does the job, just not as well as some of its other rivals on test.

The Tower 3.5L was the most striking of the slow cookers in this list (we reviewed the red model) from a distance. Close up, however, it looks cheaper than it should for its high price. Its overall performance was also lacking, although it did redeem itself by baking the best cake.

The Tower's chocolate lava cake

Approaching the bottom of the pile is the Andrew James Sizzle and Simmer. On paper, having a digital display and delay timer in such a relatively cheap model should have pushed it closer to the top in terms of use, yet these features are unnecessarily confusing.

It was the only slow cooker to burn us when moving it and was average at cooking cake. It did make a cracking stew though; the best of the bunch.

Towards the back of the pack is the Russell Hobbs Chalk Board 3.5L slow cooker. It made a decent stew, a below average chicken and a terrible cake but scored well for its tall design and compact dimensions. This makes it perfect for smaller kitchens. It was also one of the safest on test, not getting too hot to the touch.

Swan’s Retro 3.5L slow cooker is in a similar boat to the Lakeland model. It didn’t do anything particularly well, sitting near the bottom of the pile for how evenly, or not, it cooked the three food items. As much as its ivory pot looks great – and it really does – it is a pain to clean and it quickly looked discoloured.

Finally, we were surprised the Morphy Richards 6.5L Oval slow cooker scored so low considering the much stronger performance of its sister model. This was down to the fact it came last in the stew and chicken taste tests and its design is a little basic. We do have to give it credit, however, for offering the largest capacity on test for such a low price.

The best slow cooker reviewed: Wilko 3.5L slow cooker, £15

The first thing that struck us with the Wilko 3.5Lslow cooker was its ceramic bowl. Typically, ceramic bowls are the reserve of more expensive models because they cost more to manufacture.

They retain and spread the heat more evenly than metal pots. Plus, ceramic pots offer the same, or similar, non-stick properties as coatings found on metal pots without the chemicals.

To find a ceramic pot in a slow cooker that costs just £15 is impressive, and we’re not sure how Wilko makes a profit on these. This addition may go some way into explaining why the slow cooker punches so well above its weight, beating rivals that cost much more.

It is super simple to set up and use and a single dial on the front switches from Off to Low, High or Keep Warm. When the slow cooker is on, a red light above this switch is illuminated. This is far from unique to the Wilko slow cooker – and if you’ve ever used a traditional slow cooker you’ll know this is standard – but it’s worth highlighting when other models in this list aren’t as straightforward, namely the Andrew James model.

Out of the three cooking tests, the Wilko slow cooker achieved top, or close to top marks. Its roast chicken was succulent and full of flavour, scoring maximum points. It came away from the bone easily and was still moist while other models overcooked the chicken until it was dry, such as the CleverChef, or failed to cook it all the way through, as was the case with the Morphy Richards Oval slow cooker. The Wilko model also produced the best tasting cake sponge but dropped a single point because its fudge sauce was thicker, and therefore less molten, than its rivals, particularly the Tower.

The Wilko model’s stew similarly impressed. As with the chicken, it cooked the beef evenly until tender. It pulled apart easily but still held its shape, whereas the beef on the CleverChef was chewy and the Swan Retro’s meat almost melted away and disintegrated into the sauce. The Wilko sauce was decent. It was flavoursome and vibrant, but lacked a little consistency when compared to the winning Andrew James stew. The Wilko stew’s overall taste was also great, again just losing out to Andrew James’.

Onto the negatives. You can’t put the Wilko slow cooker pot in the dishwasher, or at least you’re not advised to. The manufacturer says it is wipe clean only and we can only assume that using it in the dishwasher may cause the pot to crack or for its non-stick properties to deteriorate over time. This makes it a little harder to clean than dishwasher-friendly models.

The design of the Wilko slow cooker isn’t much to look at either. Its metal exterior does get hot during cooking but not as hot as the majority of other similar designs in our test. Its dial and lid knob are made of plastic and look a little cheap, but that’s because they are and there had to be a trade-off somewhere considering this slow cooker’s fantastic performance.

The best slow cooker for versatility reviewed: Drew & Cole’s CleverChef, £59.99

Let’s face it, slow cookers aren’t the most attractive of kitchen appliances. Even those such as Swan’s Retro model which attempt to elevate this aesthetic still fall a little short of being attractive. So it’s refreshing to see Drew & Cole offering a break from the norm with its CleverChef multi-cooker.

Its compact, plastic design could not be further from the metal designs of its rivals. It has a large digital display and hides a large 5L capacity pot inside a streamlined exterior. There’s even room for a handy steaming tray.

This design does give it a slightly space-age feel; poles apart from Swan’s Retro design, and if you prefer the latter the CleverChef may not be for you. If you like your gadgets though, it’s great, plus by housing the pot inside its plastic casing, it got only slightly warm to the touch making it the safest of the machines we tested.

The CleverChef offers a staggering 14 settings – slow cook, stew, steam, roast, poach, rice, soup, pasta, fish, sauté, brown, bread rise, bake, yoghurt – which technically increases to 17 when you consider you can set the slow cook function to cook on low, medium or high. We only tested how well the slow cooking features worked for our test, but having since experimented with its other settings we can confidently say it’s a highly versatile machine.

The downside to this is that it can be tricky to use. The CleverChef, along with the Andrew James model, were the only slow cookers we had to read the manual for before using. The digital display is activated by touch, and you have to press relatively hard to register a press.

Pressing the Menu button repeatedly to scroll through the cooking settings is tedious, especially if the one you want is at the end of the list. The Crock-Pot with its physical buttons and mutiple settings is far more intuitive and user-friendly.

The pay-off is that once we’d got our head around how to use the CleverChef, we were cooking a wide variety of meals with ease. Getting back the time cooking that we’d lost learning how to use it.

The performance of the CleverChef wasn’t bad either. It couldn’t match the cooking skills of the Wilko or Crock-Pot but scored a respectable 8/10 for the chicken, and middle-of-the-road scores for its cake and stew.

Its main flaw, when compared to others in our list, is that its design made it a little too efficient. It cooked all three food items faster than its rivals and without a glass lid this wasn’t easy to spot. This isn’t necessarily a positive because it meant the food dried out quickly. The CleverChef lost points for its chicken because the breast meat was dry. The cake was overcooked and the stew didn’t taste as well-rounded as others because it hadn’t had the time to infuse with flavour.

We have since experimented with different settings to achieve the optimum conditions for each recipe and it has performed better. Plus it comes with a book, and website, full of recipes designed with the CleverChef in mind. If you were already willing to spend around £50 for a slow cooker, it’s definitely worth paying the extra to get such a versatile, futuristic machine.

Comparing the rest on test

Crock-Pot has been a leading name in the slow cooker industry for decades. Its so synonymous with one-pot cooking, slow cookers are often called crock-pots so it’s no wonder the model we tested performed so well. Its digital display is easy to use, as are its delay and countdown timers.

The Crock-Pot 5.6L Family Multi and Slow Cooker cooked succulent chicken and rich stew, scoring 9/10 for both. It dropped points because its cake was a little dry and its price will likely put it out of reach of many. We only tested its slow cooking capabilities but as a multi-cooker it has a huge range of other skills, too.

At the opposite end of the scale price-wise is the Morphy Richards Evoke Sear and Stew. We tested the black and rose gold model and it looks great.

Its metal pot, which helps make the slow cooker so light, feels cheap, as does the large plastic dial. And it performed terribly at roasting a chicken (2/10). That said, it produced the best tasting stew and its cake had a good mix of sponge and sauce.

The Lakeland’s 3.5L model is decidedly mid-range. It has a mid-range price, offers mid-range features and gave a mid-range performance scoring 6/10 for each of the three food tests. At least it’s consistent.

It would have placed higher if the Andrew James model hadn’t made such a great stew, and if it hadn’t been one of the heaviest slow cookers we tested.

Tower’s chocolate lava cake was heavenly; it tasted superb with a great ratio of sponge to sauce. The slow cooker roasted a chicken well, too. But that’s where the successes ended.

With an average score for its watery stew and plastic-looking, cheap design, not to mention being one of the hottest to touch during cooking, the Tower’s performance doesn’t justify its £70 price tag. Especially when the Wilko model, at almost a fifth of the price, beat it in almost every category.

The chalkboard design of the Russell Hobbs Chalk Board 3.5L Slow Cooker slow cooker may have a place in some homes, but we felt it was gimmicky. It’s not easy to write on, especially when the slow cooker is hot, and we just don’t see the point.

The tall design is great, but may also not appeal to everyone. True, it’s great if space is at a premium, but it’s not the easiest to use for roasting a chicken, and with a smaller flat surface area, you can’t cook many muffins in cases, for example.

What Swan’s Retro range offers in style, it lacks in substance. The grey exterior, ivory pot and silver retro dial really do look the part yet, it scored just 2/10 for the stew and cake.

The meat was tough and the sauce weak, and the cake was undercooked. The ivory pot also got dirty and discoloured easily and had to be treated with specialist stain removers. Its affordable price did help us forgive some of these shortcomings but it wasn’t enough for it to rank higher.

Bringing up the rear is the Morphy Richards 6.5L Oval slow cooker, an iconic model from a well-known brand that is consistently a best-seller on Amazon.

Like the Lakeland slow cooker, it doesn’t offer anything in the way of bells and whistles. But where Lakeland’s made decent work of the cooking, this Morphy Richards model came last for the stew and the chicken, and performed only marginally better with the cake.

It was almost as hot to the touch as the Andrew James model and its RRP makes it the most expensive of the traditional slow cookers in this list, without the minerals to back it up.

Any slow cookers to avoid?

We had high hopes for the Andrew James model. A slow cooker with digital features and timers for less than £35?

Consider our interest piqued. Sadly, it let us down. It gets blisteringly hot to the touch and comes with small handles that make moving it without touching the pot difficult.

We burnt ourselves on a couple of occasions. It’s also one of the heaviest on test, adding to these woes.

The digital display is overly complicated – you have to press and hold the dial to turn it on, which is far from obvious – and you only have a limited amount of time to make your temperature and time settings. If you make a mistake or want to change it, you have to turn the slow cooker off and back on again.

When it came to the cooking tests, it performed admirably, achieving a perfect score for the stew and mid-range scores for the chicken and cake. This is why it ranked higher than others yet is still our slow cooker to avoid.

Life is hectic. Family, work and everything in-between, who has time to bake bread? It's a labour of love, after all, and a really good loaf takes time - even in the best breadmaker.

That's why most of us make do with shop-bought loaves. Sub-par sarnies and smashed avocado on floppy, spongy slivers that turn into listless mush after not very long. Stop settling. You can get a meaty, thick slab of crunchy goodness you've sliced yourself to load up or fill to perfection - just get a breadmaker.

Starting at less than £45 for the Cookworks Breadmaker from Argos, buying one of the best breadmakers saves time, energy, and if you make enough loaves, money too. It needn’t cost the earth (although some can), and you’ll never have to deal with mediocre toast ever again.

Not all breadmakers were created equal though. The Panasonic SD-ZX2522 will set you back £239.99 and is our ultimate do-it-all machine. It has the biggest pan and promises the most gluten-free features for celiacs, and includes the most modes of all our machines and is also the quietest too.

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• Our expert
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If all you want is a decent homemade loaf of bread every day or two, you can get it from Cookworks’s Breadmaker. It isn’t perfect. The evenness of the bake makes for a slightly dryer, thicker crust, though if you refine your recipe and opt for a lighter crust setting, it makes a fantastic tasting, fantastic value loaf.

Kenwood’s BM450 breadmaker balances premium design with chrome trimmings, a sizeable loaf tin and plenty of modes and features. While we wouldn’t recommend it for anyone looking to make cake in their breadmaker, for a sensational loaf and the best-looking breadmaker on-test, the BM450 is our choice.

Our expert

40+

Hours of testing

14

Products considered

3

Experts consulted

2

Best buys

If you’ve never used a breadmaker and are wondering how they work, all five of the ones we’ve tested have a core method in common.

You load up the pan with ingredients, usually starting with the liquids - oil and water, followed by the flour and salt, and finally, yeast. Next, put the pan in the breadmaker, let it do its thing, and let your nose guide you back to it when your home smells like a bakery.

Author Bio

Basil Kronfli

Basil Kronfli is a journalist of ten years’ standing, working across sites like TechRadar, Gizmodo and T3, as well as print titles including Metro, Shortlist and Total Film. He specialises in computing, smartphones and cameras, dabbling in kitchen tech, too.

The shortlist: best breadmaker

Best breadmakers: how we selected

The main thing we wanted to do when choosing breadmakers was to test out a spread across a range of prices. That’s why we opted for the affordable Cookworks breadmaker, which costs £39.99, through to the priciest breadmaker of the bunch, Panasonic’s SD-ZX2522, which costs £239.99.

All the breadmakers make different-sized loaves, so we also want to break down the options for singletons tight on time through to families in need of a three or four-person loaf. Their designs are also totally different, and given none of these breadmakers are small, these large appliances will have serious design implications on your kitchen - something we’ve tried to take into account.

Need a gluten-free option? The Panasoni SD-ZX2522 breadmaker has you covered. Want to set the breadmaker to have your loaf ready in 15 hours? Kenwood is the only option that gives you more than can do so.

Best breadmakers: how we tested

Every breadmaker comes with a recipe book and, unsurprisingly, each includes a white loaf recipe. That was the first test - five white loaves using the machine’s suggested recipes.

Some recipes recommend you use skimmed milk powder. This is to prevent fresh milk going sour when the breadmaker’s on a timer of in excess of 12 hours. These generally result in slightly heavier loaves, with the Cookworks and Russell Hobbs default recipes generally being denser than the others.

Once we made the recipes included with the machines, we tested out each breadmaker with our own tried and tested bread recipe which always makes a light, crusty but bouncy loaf, which was a much more even round. The more affordable options fared much better here.

Once we got a feel for each breadmaker’s baking style, we were able to tweak the recipe to better match.

If lightness is the name of the game, then the wetter the dough, the better. Given there’s no hand-kneading required when using one, breadmakers can knead a wetter mixture and make for the most pillowy loaf possible. This rang true of all our machines, including the cost-effective Cookworks, our budget choice.

There are also device-specific highlights. The two priciest breadmakers have compartments to drop ingredients in mid-knead or rise. The Morphy Richards breadmaker also makes an incredibly speedy loaf that actually tastes great - just 90 minutes if you use the Fast Bake mode.

When it comes to cakes, what’s interesting is that the only breadmaker that doesn’t suggest you mix the batter in the mixer makes the best cakes - that’s the Panasonic SD-ZX2522.

Instead, Panasonic suggests you combine the ingredients in a traditional mixer and just use the breadmaker for baking. We would generally avoid making cake with breadmakers if you have an oven. You can’t pre-heat them and they just aren’t as well suited to the nuances needed for a good sponge - but Panasonic’s SD-ZX2522 beat the rest on this front.

We also tested out the dough settings, making pasta from scratch and gave a few speciality breads a go - a fruity quickbread, a gluten-free option and a rye and linseed loaf, for example.

Best breadmakers review: The test results

The easiest tell-tale clue as to which breadmaker made which loaf was the size of the loaf produced. The Kenwood BM450 and Panasonic SD-ZX2522, the most expensive on test, produce the biggest loaves, while the Cookworks Breadmaker produces the smallest loaf. Russell Hobbs's 23620 Compact Fast Breadmaker and theMorphy Richards Homebake fall somewhere between on the size spectrum.

Families of four or five who eat a fair bit of bread would be better off with a bigger machine. If size is your primary concern, the Kenwood BM450 will give you the biggest loaf for your dough.

All the bread machines are big from a kitchen or cupboard space point of view. Unsurprisingly, the Cookworks machine is the smallest, though. While the Panasonic SD-ZX2522 would look most at home in an industrial kitchen, the Kenwood BM450 is our favourite for fitting in a family home from a design and shape point of view.

Onto the loaf tests, and first thing’s first - crust.

Each of our five machines has three crust settings - light, medium and dark, but which matched the colour to the setting the best?

The Kenwood BM450 came first, followed very closely by Panasonic’s SD-ZX2522. The Cookworks Breadmaker darkened the crust too much, and even on medium setting it was thicker on the bottom, making sawing through it a bit of a chore at times.

We were impressed on this front by the Morphy Richards Homebake too, which was about on par with the Kenwood BM450.

As for the meat of the bread, or the crumb (the white part), Panasonic took the lead. It baked a light, bouncy core that complemented the golden, caramel loaf perfectly. Once again, the top spots are dominated by the priciest breadmakers, with Kenwood coming in second. But, in a turn for the books, the Cookworks breadmaker came in third. Once we got through the considerable crust, the meat was a beautiful texture and flavourful.

Side note: when bread cools, heat escapes out and cool air actually passes into the loaf. This air picks up the caramel notes of the crust, and flavours the white inside the loaf. That could be why the darker Cookworks breadmaker actually created such a flavourful loaf, and it’s also why you should wait until your bread cools to slice it - so the maximum crust flavour can be carried into the crumb.

Back to our tests, and it’s time for toast. For this round, we sliced our loaves, toasted them, then loaded them up with peanut butter on one quarter, jam on another, marmite on the third and left the final quarter naked.

Our bigger breadmakers make loaves that are too big for most toasters - so they would be ideal for griddle toasters or grills. Alternatively, you can make a slightly smaller loaf in them, which is what we ended up doing. Or you can slice them horizontally once the loaf is cooled.

As for the results, Kenwood claimed victory here once again. Its loaf produced an evenly toasted slice, and because its crust was so good, it darkened proportionately to the crumb when it crisped up.

If sandwiches are the goal, the bigger breadmakers are definitely the ones for you. Their size means you can get more slices. It’s that simple. Smaller breadmakers' loaves cut into about six to eight slices, larger breadmakers up to 14 slices.

The best breadmaker overall reviewed:

Kenwood BM450, £199 RRP, available from £139

If we could pick any breadmaker to use ourselves and money was no object, we’d go for the Panasonic SD-ZX2522. It has more advanced features and we love geeking-out in the kitchen. That said, if we had to recommend one that balanced price with design, results with ease of use, and loaf size with versatility, the Kenwood BM450 would be it.

For starters, it looks gorgeous. The wraparound stainless steel body, glass top and its unique viewing window light which means you can see what’s going on with your loaf are all excellent highlights.

Then there’s the loaf size. It’s big, perfect for a family of bread eaters or anyone with a freezer that can take a few slices for toasting when needed, so you get home baked bread even when you haven’t been baking.

The Panasonic SD-ZX2522 is much quieter when kneading, and it also features a separate yeast dispenser. If neither of those are vital for you, however, then you can confidently pick up the Kenwood BM450.

The best breadmaker for value reviewed:

Cookworks Breadmaker, £39.99

If you want the most affordable breadmaker on-test, then the Cookworks is it. While your first few bakes from it might not be your finest, once you get comfortable with its nuances, you can get very tasty, light and crusty loaf at a bargain basement price.

Our top tip would be to go beyond the recipe book included with the breadmaker and find some of the excellent suggestions available online - that’s how we were able to get the best from the Cookworks breadmaker.

It’s also the most compact machine in our list, which will make it ideally suited to smaller kitchens. There are dough and jam settings, which do their jobs very well. We’d steer clear of making cake in it, but it's a steal for a quick, cheap and cheerful loaf.

Comparing the rest on test

Unlike most tests, there were no duds when it came to the breadmakers we reviewed. Each machine warranted its price - not least of all because of the stepped size increase that went hand-in-hand with a price increase.

The Russell Hobbs Compact Breadmaker produces a better crust than the Cookworks Breadmaker and, in turn, toast quality is superior. It also features two fast bake settings - 60 minutes and 80 minutes. While the Cookworks breadmaker makes a faster loaf, the 80 minute setting on the Russell Hobbs machine made a better-tasting loaf.

Additionally, the Russell Hobbs machine is the most affordable option with a gluten-free setting, and we were also impressed by how many celiac-friendly recipes were included for the program in the instructions. There are five in total: white bread, rosemary and garlic bread, dill and onion bread, cheese and chive bread and multi seeded bread.

Spend a bit more on the Morphy Richards Home Bake and you get more size and evenness. There aren’t as many gluten-free suggestions in the recipe book, but there is a yoghurt setting, which is absent from more affordable options.

We saw a couple of mixed reviews of the Home Bake online, but couldn’t recreate the bad bakes other users experienced. We’d be happy with its bread every day of the week - perhaps Morphy Richards tweaked the hardware for 2019?

The most expensive breadmaker on-test, the Panasonic SD-ZX2522, features the most accessories, including sourdough-specific tools (2x sourdough cups and a sourdough starter spoon), as well as two kneading blades - a traditional blade and a rye blade for coarser mixes.

It’s also the only bread machine to include a yeast dispenser as well as a nut, fruit or seed dispenser. Why would you need one? If yeast combines with salt or an acid, it can lose its rising power, so keeping them as separated as possible until the mixing and kneading starts is the best way to guarantee a good loaf.

The Panasonic SD-ZX2522 also includes the most comprehensive instructions of the lot - it’s the breadmaker to really sink your teeth into if you’re a baking fiend. Its recipe book is extensive, with delights including a linseed and quinoa loaf, oregano and olive Italian bread and a lemon and poppy seed spelt speciality bread to name a few.

Combined with its quiet operation, there’s no better breadmaker for a refined (or indeed celiac) baker, even if you pay a premium for it.

Things to look out for

First thing’s first - size. If you want a big loaf you have to pay bigger bucks, up to a point. The Kenwood BM450 and Panasonic SD-ZX2522 make similar loaf sizes, and they’re your only options if you’re feeding a family of four or more.

Next up, gluten-free choices. The Cookworks Breadmaker doesn’t have any options for celiacs. Fundamentally, with no gluten, bread will need a different baking preset, so this feature is a must if you think you’ll want to dabble with gluten-free baking. In turn, the Russell Hobbs, Morphy Richards, Kenwood and Panasonic options are the only choices here.

Design - are you going to stick your breadmaker in a cupboard and only pull it out when in need of a loaf? Or, will it take pride of place in your kitchen and be used daily?

The Kenwood BM450 was only breadmaker with a design we loved. That said, the Panasonic SD-ZX2522 has a premium industrial feel, so would look great in a utility room. Meanwhile, the more affordable three look just that - more affordable, and aren’t kitchen showpieces by any stretch of the imagination. But they are more compact so could be kinder to cupboard space.

How long do you need your bread mix to stand before your loaf is baked? Most breadmakers offer a 13-hour delay timer, but the Kenwood BM450 holds things up for as long as 15 hours, so a 7am loaf can be set at 4pm the day before.

Other choices

Here are some other popular options to consider from the world of breadmakers.

Best breadmaker

Kit out your kitchen with the best appliances for cooking, dining and everything in-between, and it's easy to add a touch of Michelin-star style to your home with the best pod coffee machine. Pod, or capsule, coffee machines are particularly clever at creating professional-quality drinks that look like they could have been made by a top barista.

Investing in one of the latest pod coffee machines will not only save you time and money that may have been spent at the local Costa, it opens up a world of flavour and control, right on your doorstep. Serve Nespresso’s limited-edition ‘Long Black Over Ice’ coffee with a biscotti post-dinner at a party, for example, and we guarantee guests will be left suitably impressed.

Unlike filter or bean-to-cup coffee machines, pod coffee machines limit you to a certain brand of coffee. But on the plus side the coffee pod machine is the less messy option. There’ll be no bean grinds to clear out or ground coffee spills over your worktop, but just a simple pod that can be disposed of easily and/or recycled.

To make deciding which model to buy simple, we’ve done the testing and researched the best coffee pod machines. Over the last month, we’ve put the latest designs through their paces and drank a shed load of punchy espressos come rain and iced lattes come shine. We’ve managed to whittle down a list of the best coffee pod machines that create pretty decent coffees, and the least amount of hassle in the process.

The design that came out as our best overall choice was Nespresso Creatista Plus by Sage. We love its professional stylish, digital control panel and temperature precision, which helps create the ideal milk for latte art.

The machine we’ve crown best value for money is the Nescafé Dolce Gusto by De'Longhi Eclipse Touch, which costs £169.99. We think its impressive range of hot and cold drinks and its eye-catching design and functionality are definitely worth highlighting.

• The best coffee machines revealed
• The best Nespresso machines - find the right one for you

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At £143.99 we’ve marked the Nescafé Dolce Gusto by De'Longhi Eclipse Touch as our best value buy. It ticks a number of boxes providing a powerful 15-bar pump pressure for fast and effective results and offering an impressive range of drinks such as Starbucks-branded cappuccino to Nesquik hot chocolate

Compact and stylish on the kitchen worktop, the 19-bar pressure pump Nespresso Creatista Plus by Sage is simple to use and keep clean. As well as instant touch buttons on its digital display for coffee favourites such as flat white and espresso, its eight milk texture froth settings and 11 milk temperature settings create milk that is ideal for latte art. It’s not the cheapest design on the market, but if you’re serious about joining the Nespresso ‘club’, it’s not a bad place to start.

The expert's view

15

Products considered

20

Hours of testing

1

Experts consulted

2

Best buys

Author Bio

Emily Peck

Emily Peck is a consumer journalist with over 20 years’ experience reviewing everything from bee hives to biscuits. She has written for a range of publications including Wired UK and Ideal Home.

• 15 PRODUCTS CONSIDERED
• 20 HOURS OF TESTING
• 1 EXPERT CONSULTED
• 2 BEST BUYS

Best coffee pod machine

Best pod coffee machines: how we selected

With so many pod coffee machines to choose from, it’s hard to know which coffee ‘club’ to join. Google ‘coffee pod machines’ and there’s an ample number to sift through.

Perhaps - like us - when you think of coffee pod machines Nespresso and its cute and compact capsules spring to mind. And for good reason - the company are like the Apple of the coffee industry, presenting their coffee pods like sweets in user-friendly candy colours that easily indicate the coffee flavour and strength.

Nespresso dominates the coffee pod market. You’ll find a number of well-known appliance brands online - such as Delonghi, Krups and Magimix - that do their best to create a stylish and ergonomic machines to get the best from Nespresso pods.

Each of these designs has its own USP. Some have ergonomically designed milk frothers, others concentrate on providing the perfect eye-opening espresso.

Dig a little deeper, however, and you will find healthy competition online with companies such as Nescafe Dolce Gusto, Lavazza and Tassimo. These sell a good range of ergonomic and versatile coffee pod machines too.

Some of the designs are rather adventurous – the circular Nescafé Dolce Gusto by De'Longhi Eclipse Touch looks like a piece of modern sculpture, for example, while the curvaceous body of Lavazza A Modo Mia Desea stands out from standard boxy coffee machine designs.

When choosing a pod machine to buy it’s worth remembering you’ll be tied into a certain pod brand. So, it’s a good idea to go online and look through the ‘libraries’ of coffee capsules available and think about what you expect from your coffee.

We discovered each brand has its unique range of flavours in tall and short drinks. Some companies have teamed up with well-known coffee houses such as Starbucks and Costa to provide coffee-shop inspired drinks.

Perhaps for you, however, nothing beats the signature scent of illy coffee, or maybe you prefer Lavazza-style? Whatever your preference, however, having some idea of which brand of coffee you enjoy and what type – be it macchiato, flat white, espresso or latte - is a good place to start when you make your choice.

Consider the price of the pods too. Once you buy into a certain brand, there’ll be ongoing costs for the capsules – a pack of 50 original Nespresso Coffee capsules currently costs £23.85 on Amazon, for example.

To ensure a fair test, we’ve picked out 10 of the most popular coffee pod machines online, and paid particular attention to the most popular models on Amazon.co.uk. We chose them for their promise of a delicious drink, quick and easy operation and cleaning-friendly parts. We’ve chosen a range of Nespresso machines as well as those from the leading competitors too.

We were looking to represent a number of prices, designs, functions and variety in the models we have chosen and we were pleasantly surprised by the great mix available. Read on to discover what attributes make for a decent brew.

Best pod coffee machines: how we tested

Buying a coffee machine that makes amazing tasting coffee may be the ultimate aim, but choosing a model that looks good, works with ease and doesn’t take up too much room on your worktop is a bonus.

To sort the wheat from the chaff, we made each coffee machine in our test work hard to impress us over the course of a month, scoring each design on a range of criteria we’ve outlined below.

First up, we assessed each model on its coffee settings and looked to see how many types of drinks the machine could make – from those that simply offered short espressos and tall Americanos, to those with a number of settings for more adventurous drinks such as a flat white.

We wanted to know how vast each range was, or how limiting. We also wanted to know how many types of coffee and flavours we could access in the machine’s capsule range. Dolce Gusto has its own Starbucks flavours for example, while Tassimo champions Costa coffee. We also considered the ongoing cost of the coffee pods and how many came with the machine on purchase.

Next up, we tasted espresso, a lot of it. We wanted to know how well each design faired at making a rich, full-bodied espresso, with that oh-so-desirable thick and dense crema on top. Taste may be subjective, but it’s easy to tell the difference between a good and bad hit of caffeine.

We also thought about the ergonomics and design of each model. We looked at how easy on the eye each machine was, considered how stylish the material and how well it is made and feels to touch.

We asked ourselves how it looked on the worktop – would we want to show it off? Is it clunky and awkward looking, or slim and sleek? Then we explored how well each model was to set up, insert a pod and navigate the controls.

We scored each model on how clever the design, how sharp the navigation and whether it featured any fiddly, and quite frankly annoying, parts that would test our patience - who has time for lengthy instruction manuals anyway? We also took note of the water tank capacity and, where relevant, how big the milk compartments are on each model as this indicates how many coffees you can create in a single fill.

We also monitored speed and overall performance, to find out how fast they perform from the moment a coffee pod is inserted to the moment we were poised to take a sip of espresso. We noted how quickly the water heated up to ensure the coffee was ready to make.

We also thought about how noisy the machine was its size – whether it could be easily housed on a compact worktop or simply stored. We looked for added extras such as jugs, milk frothing wands and options to recycle the pods too. And finally, we thought about how easy each design was to clean.

Best pod coffee machines: test results

Over the last month we whipped up frothy cappuccinos at dawn and concocted smooth espresso martinis at dusk, all in the name of research, and we were pleasantly surprised with the results. What’s reassuring is that if you’re looking to buy a coffee pod machine, you can look outside the Nespresso bubble, as there are quite a few serious contenders for the tastiest coffee drink.

The most versatile machines in our test were those that came with a range of pre-set coffee buttons and included a milk frothing option. Lavazza’s A Modo Mio Desea for example, comes with a One Touch interface that has options for four coffee doses and five milk recipes.

Slip the glass milk mug under the spout and you can prepare coffee and froth milk in one. Very clever.

The Nespresso Lattissima Touch by Delonghi is also a flexible design with six beverage buttons for ristrettos, cappuccinos and more. Its milk-frothing compartment is neatly housed within the design, just to the right of the coffee spout so you don’t have to remove your mug to get the milk ready.

The majority of machines in our test were fast to heat up and had produced a coffee within the one-minute mark, but the Nespresso Creatista Plus Coffee Machine by Sage has a particularly impressive three-second heat up time. The Nespresso VertuoPlus by Magimix had one of the largest water tanks in our test, measuring 1.7 litres, which means less water refills and it can also take up to 10 large capsules before needing to be emptied.

In terms of creamy, dense espressos, we particularly enjoy the smooth flavours of the Lavazza and Illy coffee pods, which both produced delicious, creamy espressos. Lavazza sells a good range of coffees online with varying strengths and you can pick up a box of 16 capsules for a reasonable £4.40.

In contrast, Illy’s IperEspresso capsules will set you back £47.94 for a can of 21 capsules, and Nespresso averages around £19.50 for a pack of assorted original pods. The Nespresso VertuoPlus by Magimix on the other hand has its own unique Vertuo line of pods, which created the thickest and most generous espresso cremas in our test - 50 Vertuo capsules will cost you around £27 online.

Meanwhile, the Dualit Cafe Cin benefits from being able to take Nespresso and Dualit-branded capsules, and even has its own line of tea capsules including Earl grey and green tea. You can pick up a box of 60 dark roast Dualit capsules online for around £13.80.

While the models mentioned above are ideal for espresso coffees, we think the machines that take Dolce Gusto and Tassimo pods are best suited to longer drinks such as tall Americanos and milky lattes.

Considerably cheaper than the Illy and Nespresso pods, a Dolce Gusto Starbucks Americano house blend pack of 12 pods costs £3.99, while Tassimo’s Costa Americano pods cost £4.99 for a pack of 16.

Not that we’re superficial or anything, but looks do matter and the design we’d most like like to show off on the worktop was the Nespresso Creatista Plus coffee machine.

This design benefits from Sage’s signature sturdy, steel styling and its built-in digital display and dial made navigation very easy too.

We also admire the curvaceous ergonomic design of the Lavazza A Modo Mio Desea - its slim build measured a compact H28 high x W145.5 x D28cm and its touch interface with ‘acoustic feedback’ that alerts you when your coffees ready was a bonus. In terms of aesthetics these two designs were closely followed by Illy’s iconic red Francis Francis X7.1 IperEspresso and the unique form of the Nescafé Dolce Gustoby De'Longhi Eclipse Touch.

Best pod coffee machine: overall

Nespresso Creatista Plus coffee machine by Sage, £309, johnlewis.com

Nespresso has an impressive range of coffee makers compatible with its pods, but it’s one of the latest models – the Nespresso Creatista Plus Coffee Machine by Sage – that impressed us the most.

This is the machine you’d expect to see George Clooney standing alongside (although sadly he wasn’t) and from the moment you turn it on, the machine oozes authority. Within minutes it had prompted us to dip a water hardness testing strip into the tap water to set it at the ideal range, for example.

The Creatista comes with a free set of Nespresso pods to get you started, but there’s a vast range of flavours that you can experiment with depending on your taste. Choose from the ‘round and balanced’ Livanto espresso for example, or the ‘intense and spicy’ India coffee. Or, choose from an ample selection of decaffeinated options such as the sweet and light Volluto and the ‘powerful and contrasting’ Ristretto.

What’s great about the Creatista is its unique digital display and rotating dial that is easy to follow and guides you through the options – from a 25ml ristretto, to a 40ml espresso and 110ml lungo coffee. The design is tall enough to house a number of cup sizes, and like most Nespresso designs comes with a pop-out cup support and removable drip tray.

What this machine prides itself on however is its ability to froth milk to eight different textures and with 11 milk temperature settings you can tailor the milk to just how you like it – whether you prefer a silky smooth latte or a creamy cappuccino. Being able to froth milk in this way means it’s a good choice if you’re keen to try your hand at latte art. The Nespresso website currently has a tutorial on how to create the perfect ‘Rosetta’ latte design, for example.

The Nespresso Creatista has a 19-bar pressure system, which makes it fast and powerful. Its dial lets you flick through the eight drink options easily providing an instant option for a flat white, café latte, cappuccino, latte macchiatao, ristretto, espresso, lungo or milk frothing. It also comes with a stylish stainless steel barista-style milk jug to enhance its attractive frame.

It’s worth noting Nespresso pods can be recycled in their own recycling bag and handed into your local store that supports CollectPlus – check online for details.

Best pod coffee machine for value:

Nescafé Dolce Gusto by De'Longhi Eclipse Touch, £169.99, amazon.co.uk

The Nescafé Dolce Gusto by De'Longhi Eclipse Touch doesn’t look like your average coffee machine, so we had our reservations about how well a model with such a novelty design would work.

We were pleasantly surprised by how much we enjoyed using the De'Longhi Eclipse Touch however, and by how easy it was to create such a varied range of drinks with one machine. While it’s not a machine you’ll want to buy if you’re after that dense crema an Illy or Nespresso model could provide, it does offers a decent variety of drinks which makes it a versatile option.

It took us a while to work out how to open the enclosed circle design, find out where to place the mug and pod and how to fill the water reservoir, but once we’d mastered the process we couldn’t stop experimenting with different flavours from the Nescafe portfolio of pods.

Starbucks's caramel macchiato was a particular favourite and the 15-bar pump pressure manages to pack quite a punch and provide a decent amount of froth to the drink. The Eclipse Touch comes with a pack of six pods in the box. You’re not limited to coffee either.

Go online and browse the Dolce Gusto range and you’ll find options for hot chocolate, Marrakesh style tea and Citrus Honey black tea.

The touch technology control pad is situated at the top of the machine and lights up when the machine is turned on. Unlike the Nescafe Dolce Gusto Oblo by Krups we tried in our test, there is no manual switch to flick and the Eclipse Touch will stop when the drink has been made.

The pods are easy to extract when you’ve finished your drink, although the spout can drip a little during clean up. On the plus side, the pods can be recycled at a local store – you’ll find details on line, which involves printing a label and dropping them off at a local store that is involved in the scheme.

Pod coffee machines: the rest compared

We’ve pinpointed our favourite overall and best value models in this test of the best coffee pod machine for 2019, but the other eight machines we’ve mentioned in our shortlist are also well worth a try.

The most ergonomic machine that wasted the least amount of milk in operation was the Lavazza A Modo Mio Desea. While most machines that froth milk tend to have the steam wand positioned to the side of the design, the Desea includes a built-in whisk that froths milk in the slide-in glass jug.

In order to create a milky coffee you simply pour in your milk, slide the glass jar into position and hit the appropriate button. Slow and smooth on extraction, it was also one of the quietest models in our test.One of the most compact designs in our test was the Francis Francis E&C BT Bluetooth Illy Y5. Measuring just 14.5 x 24 x 28cm, its sleek build features two settings for either espresso or filter-style long coffees.

Its smart Bluetooth function allows you to connect to your device via an app and register for Amazon Dash Replenishment to automatically reorder capsules when running low.

In comparison, the Illy Francis Francis X7.1 is the most iconic design in our test. Inspired by Italian design of 1960s, we think its powerful design - which lights up and gets quite loud when gearing up - is best suited to large open-plan kitchens.

If one shot of espresso just doesn’t cut it first thing, try the Nespresso VertuoPlus by Magimix. Its ‘centrifusion and barcode technology’ adjusts the brewing parameters to each coffee blend and capsule size.

It makes four different sized espressos for 414m full-brew Alto, a 230ml coffee, a 150ml Gran Lungo and a 40ml espresso. Remember that this machine doesn’t take original Nespresso pods and you’ll need to invest in the unique Vertuo line of capsules that comes in a variety of coffee aromas and strengths.

If you’re keen on smooth frothy coffees the Nespresso Lattissima Touch by Delonghi is ideal. It features six buttons for ristretto, cappuccino, latte, espresso, long and hot milk and has a fast heat up time of 25 seconds.

What’s more, its programming mode remembers how much coffee or milk you like in your drink ready for the next time you use it.

For those looking to pay sub £150, the Bosch Tassimo My Way TAS6002GB is a convenient option. It costs 139.99 (or a red hot £69.99 at the time of writing) and gives you access to a host of well-known brands using Tassimo T Discs.

Choose from Kenco Americana Grande, Costa Caramel Latte, Baileys Latte Macchiato and more. While it took a little longer to heat up that some of the Nespresso machines in our test, and and wasn’t as quiet in the process, the smooth and flavoursome drinks it produced were worth the wait. It also comes with a coupon inside the box for £20 off Tassimo coffee on your next purchase.

If you have kids you might want to try the Nescafe Dolce Gusto Oblo by Krups, which costs a reasonable £34.99. While you can use it for caffeinated drinks from the Dolce Gusto offering, kids will love making hot or cold Nesquik chocolate drinks.

In our test, we enlisted the help of 5-year-old Bethany who enjoyed navigating its user-friendly design and enjoyed it so much she even asked for seconds. A grown up will need to assist closely, however, as you’ll need to manually stop the drink dispensing.

If you like you like your drink piping hot, consider the Dualit Café Cin, which features a "temperature boost". The machine will take Nespresso capsules as well as its own-branded, compostable, Dualit capsules, which includes tea options too. It also includes a milk frother that slides in neatly to the right of the main spout.

One to avoid?

Francis Francis E&C BT Bluetooth Illy Y5, £175, amazon.co.uk

The Francis Francis E&C BT Bluetooth Illy Y5 is one of the most intuitive designs we have featured in our test - it pairs with the My Illy Espresso app so you can monitor the machine via your smartphone and automatically order replacement pods when stocks are running low, for example.

What lets it down however, is how noisy it is when producing coffee, so if you’re keen on buying a design that should be seen and not heard, this model is probably not for you.

During the extraction process, the volume definitely got a little shrill. On the plus side, however - and it is a big plus - it arguably produced the best tasting espresso we tried in our test.

Us Brits love a cup of tea. After all, we drink 165 million cups of the stuff a day, which makes having a decent kettle pretty essential.

We are all probably guilty of taking for granted how quick and easy making a cuppa is. Long gone are the days where you actually had to stand and watch it boil on the stove (the horror).

The game changed back in 1955 when Russell Hobbs' launched the world’s first automatic shut-off kettle, the K1.

And 65 years later, the original K-series is now a highly sought after collectable and the brand is keen to celebrate the monumental feat with the launch of its aptly-called K65 anniversary kettle.

The shiny new kettle is modelled on the original K-series but with all the essential mod-con features added in for good measure.

It has the same retro shape, brushed stainless-steel finish and overarching black handle but it also boils one cup in under 40 seconds and has a newly designed spout to make it easier to pour without spilling.

Russell Hobbs’ Marketing Manager, Dominic Lewis described the K65 as celebrating “65 years of innovation”.

“We’re really excited to honour the incredible innovation that put Russell Hobbs on the map and changed the way people drink tea and coffee around the world.

“The automatic shut-off kettle is an invention most of us couldn’t live without and we see this as a fitting tribute 65 years on,” he added.

“We hope that it will bring both a touch of nostalgia and vintage style - coupled with superb functionality - into kitchens across the UK.”

Available now in two colours; the classic stainless-steel and a brushed copper finish, the K65 will cost you £59.99 (or £64.99 for the copper).

• Looking for a new kettle? Find out which ones passed the test in our best kettle review
• And if you're in the market for a new brew, these are the best tea and best coffee around

When it comes to savouring whisky, finding the right bottle is only half the battle. After all, what’s a delicately flavoured dram without the best whisky tumbler to enjoy it in?

The thing is, with so many shapes, sizes and cuts to choose from, the search for the perfect whisky tumbler can be an arduous one - which is why Shortlist has stepped in to do the legwork for you.

We’ve attempted to span all manner of budgets, from delightfully cheap tumblers to pewter and cut crystal offerings. Whatever you’re after, we’ve got an offering to suit.

So without further ado, discover the best whisky tumblers around - and remember to up and down vote your favourites.

Want some whiskey to go with that? Discover our pick of the best whiskey 2020.

best whisky tumblers

Being a great baker is a year-long commitment. In the spring, there’s simnel cake to be made, summertime’s ripe for some pineapple upside down cake and autumn’s all about pumpkin pie and banana bread. What about winter? Bring on the boozy fruit cake.

You also have to factor in year-round staples: freshly baked bread, Victoria sponge cake, shortbread and sweet treats that come from further afield, like baklava and Turkish delight.

But if being a great baker’s a lot of work, harder still is being a great baker’s colleague, friend or family member. The arduous task of constantly tasting all the glorious creations you’re given? Gruelling work, but you soldier on, encourage and eat.

If your charity doesn’t end there, there’s more you can do than taste test to level up your loved one’s baking. You could get them a non-stick gift for no more ‘biscuits stuck to baking tray’ nightmares. If they love baking bread, a cloche is a hunk of earthenware that emulates a bread oven, or you could opt for the fanciest measurement converter around.

We’ve picked nine of the best gifts for cooks and foodies around.

If you can afford a serious present, read our best food processors test and our ultimate best blender guide.

Best gifts for bakers

SOMETHING MISSING FROM OUR SHORTLIST?

Tell us about it, and if enough people agree we'll add it in.

Black Friday has now passed, but it's not too late to get top deals thanks to Cyber Monday.

John Lewis is one of the best places to pick up a bargain. Below you'll find a round-up of some of our favourites available right now.

UPDATE - MONDAY 2 DECEMBER: Whether you call it a Cyber Monday deal or just a case of timing, John Lewis is getting rid of its last stocks of boozy advent calendars at half price. Yep, the advent season may have started already, but who's going to say no to 24 mini bottles of wine? The wine advent calendar is currently £37.50, down from £75. It includes 24 187ml mini bottles.

You can also get John Lewis's gin & tonic advent calendar at £47.50, down from £95. It includes 70cl of pink gin and 24 mini bottles of tonic water. Prefer some bubbly? The Fizz advent calendar is £62.50 down from £125 and includes 200ml bottles of cava, sparkling wine and a mini champagne to top it off.

Some are John Lewis exclusives. Others are price-matched buys. And you might want to consider buying from here because of the extended warranty you get with some products, and the all-round service John Lewis is known for. This is especially important for TVs, which come with a five-year warranty.

We will update this page with more Black Friday John Lewis deals as they land.

Want more deals? Head over to our main best Black Friday deals hub and best Currys Black Friday deals page

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the best time of the year to buy a coffee machine. We frequently see them on sale at 50% off, which can represent a saving of hundreds of pounds if you want a higher-end bean-to-cup model.

UPDATE: Cyber Monday is here and we've found some cracking coffee deals. If you fall into the section of the population that require a permanent caffeine fix (yup, that's us), then there are some serious offers to be had below. We've gone and added an impressive De'Longhi offering into the mix, and for those looking to upgrade to a model that would sit happily in any high-end espresso bar, the Sage SES875BKS The Barista Express Machine might just be the pick for you. With a massive 38% currently off its regular price, this needs to be snapped up fast.

Below you’ll find some of the best Black Friday deals on coffee machines at the moment with picks from our extensive test - as well as the best Black Friday coffee machine deals we have found. Check out our best Nespresso machine and best pod coffee machine articles after this one.

• Need some help choosing a new machine? These are the best coffee machines around right now

Best Cyber Monday coffee machine deals... so far

How to find the best Cyber Monday coffee machine deal

There are three main kinds of coffee machine to consider: pod, manual espresso and bean-to-cup.

The first two are the contenders if you don’t want to spend too much. Pod machines keep things simple, with mess-free capsules that still offer far better quality than a cup of instant. However, if you don’t mind dealing with coffee grounds a manual espresso maker will save you money in the long run. Grounds are much cheaper per-cup than pods.

Bean-to-cup coffee machines bring the ease of use of a pod machine but you can use whole coffee beans, and usually grounds too. Next, onto the coffee machines to look out for on Black Friday...

The best Black Friday deals we have found so far...

Magimix Nespresso Citiz

Pre-sale price: £119.00

View now at Amazon

The Magimix Nespresso Citiz won the best value award in our coffee machine test. It’s a Nespresso, the Apple of coffee machines: easy to use and reliable. And unlike an iPhone you don’t have to pay through the nose for a CitiZ.

You can buy the Magimix Nespresso Citiz with or without the Aeroccino frother, which lets you make milky drinks with the delicious milk foam that usually sets apart a cafe coffee from one made in your kitchen. No longer.

We’re also fans of the design. The Magimix Nespresso Citiz is an upright coffee machine and takes up much less space on your kitchen top than just about any traditional espresso maker.

The cost of Nespresso pods is the one thing to bear in mind. You use one of these per drink, and the added waste piles up if you love your coffee. However, Nespresso does run a pod recycling scheme that takes some of the weight of your conscience.

Make sure to check out Nespresso pod deals during Black Friday too. These often fly under the radar but could save you a lot of money if you buy a big stash to keep you going for a while.

Sage the Oracle Touch

Pre-sale price: £1599.00

View now at Amazon

Sage makes some of the best-looking home coffee makers in existence. The Sage The Oracle is decked out in brushed metal, and has the robust lines of a machine that means business. It doesn’t look exactly like a professional coffee maker, but has the air of one.

This is a fully automatic coffee machine, able to make everything from an espresso to a milky macchiato with a swipe and tap at the touchscreen on its front.

You may also want to consider the version of the Oracle without the colour screen. This one is semi-automatic but its simpler front-lit display may age a little better as the tech in your home gets upgraded. Not everything needs to connect to Alexa, right?

The taste of the coffee is what really drew us to the Sage the Oracle, though. Crema quality, that it brings out the complexity of your beans and the temperature customisation add up to a coffee machine you can’t really beat. Well, without surrendering your entire kitchen to the kind of setup they have at the local Costa.

Nescafé Dolce Gusto by De'Longhi Eclipse Touch

Pre-sale price: £99.99

View now at Amazon

The Nescafé Dolce Gusto by De'Longhi Eclipse Touch won the best value award in our coffee pod machine test. It is also one of the most unusual models around.

It’s like a futuristic doughnut when not in use, and the spout arm pulls out of the front when it is time to serve a coffee. The De'Longhi Eclipse Touch is part of the Dulce Gusto range, a coffee pod rival to Nespresso.

This is one for Starbucks fans in particular, as there’s a whole range of Starbucks drinks in the Dulce Gusto family. You can also make hot chocolate with this coffee machine, handy if you have kids who will want to get involved but are far too young to start relying on a caffeine hit each morning.

Nespresso Creatista Plus by Sage

Pre-sale price: £289.00

View now at Amazon

This Nespresso coffee machine ran away with the top award in our coffee pod machine test.

Why? It’s one of the most stylish pod models available, dressed up in the same classy metal finish as Sage’s ultra-high end fully automated machines. This one, of course, takes up much less space so is suitable for any kitchen rather than just a large open plan one.

Some of you may be put off by the price, which seems slightly high for a pod-based coffee maker. However, that is what Black Friday’s for — cutting down that cost. And the

Nespresso Creatista Plus by Sage does far more than your average pod machine.

It has a display up top that lets you select the exactly style of milk foam to match the drink you make. You get the ease of a pod machine with the style and customisation of a high-end automatic.

Nespresso Vertuo Plus

Pre-sale price: £99.00

View now at Amazon

The Nespresso Vertuo Plus looks like a normal pod machine. There’s a lot of black plastic going on, and the water reservoir is made for ultra-quick refilling, which we appreciate.

There’s more going on under the surface, though. The Nespresso Vertuo Plus has a feature called Centrifusion. This spins the pod up to 7000 times a minute, to ensure a proper brew and that all the coffee goodness ends up in your cup, not the bin.

The De'Longhi Dedica EC685.M also automatically scans the pod, to recognise the coffee type and work out just what treatment it needs for the best results.

De'Longhi Dedica EC685.M

Pre-sale price: £180.00

View now at Amazon

This is one of our favourite manual espresso machines. It lets you get close to the feel and results of a professionally-made up of coffee, but doesn’t cost too much and is compact enough to fit into any kitchen with room for a coffee maker.

You put grounds into the arm, push them down with the included tamper and lock the arm into the De'Longhi Dedica EC685.M. This part is all-metal, where a lot of pod machines are mostly plastic.

There’s a satisfying manual clunk to this operation that takes you further away from the experience of just spooning some instant into a cup.

Don’t want the mess? Use grounds and you will have to clean out the arm each time you brew. However, you can also use ESE pods. These are a little like teabags for coffee grounds, and avoid the grounds spillage of the traditional approach.

Black Friday is not only a great time to buy gaming and computer tech, there are plenty of deals on home appliances, too.

One that caught our eye is this Ninja Nutri Blender on Amazon - a great purchase if you’re struggling to get in your five-a-day at the moment.

Usually £99.99, this powerful 1000-watt blender is now only £59.99 (a saving of 40%).

Ninja currently holds both top spots (best value and best overall) on our best blender review because they consistently made some of the smoothest smoothies for an excellent price.

Now with this discounted Nutri Blender you can choose pulse or blend settings, and it’s Auto-iQ tech will create a blending pattern to ensure that your smoothie or soup is blitzed to the ideal consistency.

It also comes with a “spout lid” so you can enjoy your drink on the go and the jug is dishwasher-safe to make cleaning up easier, too.

• Looking for some more deals? Head over to our main best best Black Friday deals hub for all the best savings
• And if you love some good kitchen tech, check out our best coffee machine deals

Fresh, handmade pasta is all the rage in restaurants up and down the UK right now. It has left plenty of burgeoning home chefs wondering if they can clear their cupboards of half-empty bags of penne and make the good stuff themselves.

There’s a huge variety in the types of machines available, though, from traditional hand-cranked mechanical rollers all the way up to fully automated devices that do just about everything except cook the stuff.

The best mechanical roller we tested is the Marcato Atlas 150, an Italian-made machine that costs a little more than most but justifies it with ease of use, build quality, and a huge range of extra pasta cutter options.

Our favourite automatic machine is the Philips HR2332/11 Viva Collection, which does absolutely everything for you and takes less than 15 minutes to turn flour, eggs, and water into fresh pasta.

• best buys
• Our expert
• The shortlist
• test selection
• How we tested
• Test results
• Best manual
• best automatic
• The rest compared
• One to avoid

PreviousNext

With ten thickness settings, a sturdy clamp, and comfortable handle, the Marcato is the best way to make pasta by hand we’ve tested. It loses points for shipping with just two cutters - taglioni and fettuccine - but more are available to buy if you fancy.

If you want to be able to come home from work, turn on your pasta machine and get fresh pasta within 15 minutes - after only adding the ingredients and hitting a single button - the Philips Viva is the machine for you. The final pasta isn’t as good as the manual options, and it doesn’t reward experimentation, but for pure convenience this can’t be beaten.

The expert's view

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Pasta batches cooked

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Hours of testing

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Best buys

5

Products tested

How does a pasta maker work? It varies, and there are plenty of different types out there.The most common - and traditional - are mechanical rollers. These require you to first make your dough by hand before passing it through the hand-cranked rollers, which squeeze it flatter and thinner.

The resulting sheets of pasta can then be cut by hand for lasagne, filled for ravioli, or separate bladed rollers can be used to quickly slice the sheets down into strands for tagliatelle, linguine, or other shapes.

Extruders are slightly different. While rollers limit you to the pasta shapes you can make by cutting up sheets, extruders squeeze the pasta dough through shaped holes - think Play-Doh toys and you’re not far off - letting you create more complicated shapes like penne, fusilli, or spaghetti.

Then there’s automation to think about. While traditional machines require you to make the dough itself by hand, some automatic machines can mix the dough for you, while others will save you the effort of passing it through the rollers or extruders by hand.

Author Bio

Dominic Preston

Dominic Preston is a technology and food freelancer with years of experience reviewing and comparing gadgets, appliances and food & drink. He’s currently the Lifestyle & Entertainment Editor at Tech Advisor and Macworld.

Best pasta maker

How we chose the pasta makers to test

With so many different types of pasta machines on the market, drawing up a shortlist to test proved a bit of a challenge. There are all sorts of pricings and functionalities to factor in.

We wanted to focus primarily on manual pasta rollers. They are affordable and save you slaving away with a rolling pin for hours while remaining manual enough to avoid feeling like too much of a shortcut for those who want to enjoy making an afternoon of it.

They still require you to make the dough yourself, which takes twenty minutes or so, plus some time to let it rest before rolling - usually another half an hour should do.

We limited the selection to 150mm rollers. This is the friendliest size for a kitchen counter-top or dining table, wide enough to quickly roll enough pasta for a family, but narrow enough to still comfortably fit in even cramped quarters.

The Marcato Atlas 150 was an obvious choice - an acclaimed Italian brand with a huge range of optional cutter attachments for the real pasta purists, and a higher price to match.

To balance the Marcato out, we looked at cheaper models. Lakeland’s own-brand machine jumped out for the inclusion of a third cutter attachment despite its low price, while the Nuvantee machine had some of the best user reviews on Amazon and a design that apes the Marcato at around half the price.

If you’re wondering why you’d even buy a machine if it’s manual anyway, you can do it all properly by hand - all you need is a rolling pin and a knife. We’re also fans of the Pasta Evangelist kits, which throw in a few accessories like a gnocchi shaping board and ravioli cutters, which would complement any of these machines just as well too.

Then there are the automatic options. We wanted to test at least one that automates the entire process - from flour to fresh pasta - and the Philips Viva Collection pasta machine is the only one that delivers on that promise and actually has positive user reviews across multiple online retailers.

Finally, we decided to include the KitchenAid pasta attachment since it would be the first consideration for anyone who already owns a KitchenAid, and it strikes a nice balance. It automates the tiring parts of the process while requiring enough user input that you still feel you’re doing some of the cooking.

How we tested the pasta makers

With such a variety in the types of pasta makers in our test, it was impossible to come up with a single set of objective scores that would fairly cover all five machines.

However, there are some common factors - price, size, design, variety of settings, ease of use, cleaning, and final pasta quality - and so each machine was tested and scored with these in mind.

For the manual machines, we also considered how stable the included clamps were, how smoothly the rollers ran, and how uniformly they applied pressure to the pasta sheets.

With the automatic machines, speed became a factor, along with noise levels and how well the machines handled variation in dough recipes.

Each machine - manual and automatic - was tested with both one regular egg pasta dough and one variant - either harissa or lemon & cumin. The roller machines were tested for both ravioli - which requires especially thin sheets - and tagliatelle. The Philips was used to make both spaghetti and penne, using the included extruder discs.

The resulting pasta was compared for uniformity of thickness, texture, shape, and the least objective measure of all: deliciousness.

One final pasta nerd note: many of these pasta machines claim to have a cutter for spaghetti.

Technically this is a bit of a fib, as spaghetti’s round strands require an extruder, so of this rest only thePhilips can make true spaghetti. However the thin-cut strands that the rollers achieve is close enough to count, so for ease I’ll follow the manufacturers and let them get away with calling their roller-cut versions spaghetti.

The best pasta maker: test results

The most expensive of our manual makers, the Marcato Atlas 150, proved that sometimes you do get what you pay for. It achieved the highest scores of any machine we tested. Top scores for size and design, and consistently high results across the usability & quality factors helped make up for the higher price.

However, the Nuvantee machine came an unexpectedly close second. It missed out on the top spot by falling just short of the Marcato across a few factors, and not offering the same range of colours and cutters.

The automatic Philips Viva came third. This won by far on speed and how easy it is to both use and clean, but a high price, questionable design, and some inconsistency in the final pasta quality held it back somewhat compared to the manual machines

The KitchenAid nabbed fourth place, with ease of use and quality making up for the fact that it’s absolutely massive, and very expensive. The attachment alone is almost the price of the Philips machine, and that’s not counting the stand mixer itself.

Finally, the Lakeland version lagged behind everything else. The third cutter wasn’t enough to make up for an unstable clamp, uneven roller pressure, and a handle that just kept falling out.

Best manual pasta maker:

Marcato Atlas 150, £59.99

It shouldn’t be a surprise the most expensive manual machine we tested turned out to be the best - but on the other hand, with each of them so similar on paper the Marcato Atlas 150had to work hard to justify the extra cost.

It’s worth remembering that at £50-60 (the online price fluctuates) this is still much cheaper than any automatic option.

Straight out of the box it helps that it’s one of the few manual pasta makers that gives you a choice of colour beyond chrome. Numerous bright colour choices turn the machine into something you’ll want to keep on display, rather than tuck away into a cupboard (yes, our review model is still chrome).

It’s compact enough to keep out too, though not in our cramped tes kitchen, and to be honest all the manual machines are about the same size and style anyway.

You’ll need a stable table or work surface to clamp the machine too, but once attached it’s surprisingly stable and sturdy, so it didn’t rock about during use. The handle for the rollers and cutters is also pretty stable once it’s attached, and turns smoothly.

When it comes to actually rolling your pasta, the Atlas 150 includes an almost excessive ten thickness settings. That’s important, though, as to reach the thinnest levels you have to pass the dough through each stage in turn - the more settings there are, the more gradually you can thin the dough, which helps keep it smooth and silky, and reduce tears or bulging.

In our testing the Marcato rolled our dough smoothly and simply, without any of the tearing or inconsistent pressure that the cheaper machines occasionally introduced. That not only helped with quality, but also saved time - there was no need to repeat stages or laminate the pasta by folding it up and rolling it out from the start again.

The included pair of cutters detach from the body, meaning you can keep them out of the way until you need them. The included cutters are for fettuccine and tagliolini (which is ever so slightly thicker than spaghetti), but Marcato makes a whole range of additional attachments, from shapes you’ve heard of (ravioli, linguine) to slightly more niche fare (mafaldine, trenette).

If you get tired of turning, there’s even an additional motor attachment, though we haven’t tested it - and at an additional £110 it isn’t cheap.

Cleaning is a little fiddly, but that’s true of all the manual machines. You can’t use water at all or they’ll rust, so you will be stuck brushing flour out of the rollers for a little while - though once again the option to detach the cutters proved helpful here.

There’s no single feature of the Marcato Atlas 150 that justifies the jump in price from the Nuvatee, and many people will be happy enough with that cheaper model. But it’s just that little bit better across the board, and together with the extra cutter options that makes this the better investment if you hope to make fresh pasta for years to come.

Best automatic pasta maker:

Philips HR2332/11 Viva Collection, £179

If you’ve got more money and less time you might be more tempted by the Philips HR2332/11 Viva Collection pasta machine.

The Viva is about as automatic as they come, producing fresh pasta from beginning to end with just one button press - and it does it all in about fifteen minutes, making it by far the quickest and easiest pasta machine we tested.

It couldn’t be much simpler to use. Attach your extruder end of choice (penne, spaghetti, fettuccine, or lasagne), add the flour and liquid, then turn it on. It will first mix the dough, and then once it’s ready will automatically start to extrude it - there’ll be a warning beep, but you won’t want to stray far from the machine so that you’re ready to catch and cut the pasta it pushes out.

The benefit of this is that you don’t really have to do anything at all. The downside is that you don’t really have to do anything at all. If you want a machine that gives you fresh pasta with none of the work, this is great. But if you actually want to get stuck into making it yourself, this is so automated that it cuts you out of the process entirely.

The final pasta quality is mixed too. Following the included recipe & instructions yielded pasta that was a little soft, and didn’t quite have the silkiness of the manual machines. Straying from Philips’s suggested proportions yielded a dough that the machine simply couldn’t extrude, no matter how hard it tried, and since the whole thing stops if you open the lid it’s hard to make adjustments on the fly.

So you do have to follow the included recipe formula closely - though helpfully Philips suggests various recipes, including for different flours, pastas with spinach or tomato, or even a few Asian noodle varieties. With a bit luck, that should help you resist the urge to experiment that could otherwise lead you astray.

The only other downside from an actual cooking perspective is capacity. You can make between 200 and 400g of pasta at a time, which is enough for a family of four or five, but you’ll have to run it twice for larger groups. It also means you can’t make a single portion, which detracts slightly from a design that otherwise puts convenience front and centre.

Other than speed, the other area where the Philips comes out top is cleaning. Every component that could get dirty is dishwasher-safe, so after getting rid of any big clumps of dough you’re basically safe to just dump it all in the dishwasher if you have one, though handwashing is also easy enough. The only exception is the extruder disc itself - this is still dishwasher-safe, but we found the small holes got too gunked up for our washer to handle.

The Viva is also surprisingly compact for what it does, with a slim, tall design that should be easy enough to stash away and includes an internal compartment to store the accessories. It’s not as attractive as the manual makers, but wouldn’t look too out of place in a suitably modern kitchen.

The rest compared

The Nuvantee manual pasta machine came in a close second to the Marcato, and is easy to recommend to anyone with a tight budget or who only expects to make fresh pasta occasionally.

The core design is essentially the same as the Marcato, with a pair of detachable cutters, and build quality is roughly comparable.

There are only seven thickness settings however, which makes it harder to gradually move down thickness steps, and you may find that you need to pre-roll the dough a little more by hand before you can even use the first level.

You don’t get the choice of colours or additional cutter attachment options, but the main machine is just as compact and simple to use, with comparable quality in the final pasta.

Our other automatic option, the KitchenAid, sits in a funny position. If you don’t already own a KitchenAid mixer, and have no desire to buy one otherwise, then there’s really no reason to opt for this option, as between the two you’d spend almost £500.

If you already have the stand mixer it could be a lot more tempting, though, striking a bit of a sweet spot in terms of automation. The main mixer will make the dough for you - and in only a couple of minutes - but since it’s an open mixing bowl it gives you a bit more freedom to play with recipes than the Philips Viva.

And while the roller and two cutters are powered by the mixer motor, you still need to manually pass the pasta dough through and adjust the thickness, so it still feels like you’re involved in the process.

End-to-end it’s not quite as quick as the Philips (especially if you take the time to rest the dough before rolling, an option the Philips doesn’t give you), but it’s almost as easy and gives you more control over the process.

The big downsides are size - the stand mixer itself is messy, even if the attachments are compact - and price. Even if you already own a KitchenAid mixer, at £155 this attachment set is still three times the price of the manual Marcato and almost as much as the simpler Philips Viva.

One to avoid

Lakeland pasta machine

The worst performing model on our list was the Lakeland pasta machine. Yes, it’s cheap, but at the same price the Nuvantee model is better on almost every count.

The addition of a third roller (tagliatelle, linguine, and spaghetti) helps, but isn’t enough to overcome the numerous flaws.

The weak clamp leaves the machine bouncing around during use, the handle falls off half the time when you’re not holding it, and having the cutters built into the body makes the whole thing bulkier and harder to clean.

Air fryers have a reputation as the go-to kitchen appliance for people looking to lose weight or cut fat from their diets, yet they’re much more versatile.

Their somewhat misleading name suggests they can only be used for recipes that require “frying” when. But anything you bake or roast in an oven – including cakes – can be cooked in an air fryer, often more quickly and easily than in a conventional oven.

The best air fryer we’ve tested is the Wilko 4L, which offers great, healthy cooking abilities and incredible value.

We also highly recommend the Tefal Actifry Genius XL for making tasty chips and chicken wings, and a large capacity.

• best buys
• Our expert
• The shortlist
• test selection
• How we tested
• Test results
• best overall
• Highly recommended
• The rest compared
• One to avoid

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Thanks to its rotating paddle and wide range of easy-to-use settings, Tefal’s Actifry Genius XL produced great tasting food, quickly and skilfully. It didn’t quite match up to Wilko’s fantastic model in other areas, but fell short by just a single point.

From its large capacity to its incredibly simple-to-use design, not to mention the fact it consistently produced delicious food, we can barely fault the Wilko air fryer. Which is even more impressive when you consider it’s the cheapest of the lot at the recommended price.

The expert's view

50

Products considered

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Chicken wings cooked

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Experts consulted

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Best buys

How does an air fryer work? The food goes in a removable "basket", which usually makes up the lower half of the unit.

When operating, hot air is circulated through this cooking compartment. In this sense it has more in common with an oven than a deep fat fryer. But the goal is to make healthier, less oil-soaked food.

Air fryers are often quicker to cook and more energy efficient than your oven too, as the space inside is used more efficiently. Fad or an esssntial buy? It depends on how you cook, but this is one of the benefits of our test winner. Far cheaper than most, it's a good buy even if you use it as an extension of your normal oven.

Author Bio

Vicky Woollaston

Victoria Woollaston is a technology and beauty freelancer with more than a decade of experience reviewing and comparing gadgets, appliances and services at MailOnline, Wired, Alphr and Expert Reviews.

The shortlist: best air fryer

How we chose the products to test

Despite the versatility offered by air fryers, they largely perform in the same way. All offer a very similar set of functions, albeit at wildly varying prices.

To narrow down our selection for this group test, we began by studying customer ratings for 50 of the most popular models across leading homeware sites Lakeland, Andrew James, AO.com, Argos, Wilko and Amazon.

Any product labelled as an air fryer, or hot air fryer, was included, which (depending on the site) also pulled in multi-cookers. From this list of 50, we read hundreds of reviews to find the 25 most popular, well-regarded air fryers based on customer experiences.

To narrow the list down to the top 10, we first selected the highest-scoring models from each brand and then handpicked the final models based on features and price.

When looking at features, we wanted air fryers with a minimum capacity of 2.5L because this size can typically be used to create part of a meal to feed a family of four. Each air fryer on the shortlist also needed to offer at least two temperature settings/modes – one for making chips and another for cooking meat because these are the most common settings used in the majority of air fryer recipes.

Design-wise, all of the air fryers needed to fit comfortably on countertops and in terms of price, we wanted at least two budget and two premium models with the remaining six offering a range of options in the mid-range.

The resulting shortlist contained air fryers from Swan, NuWave, Princess, Andrew James, Ninja, Tefal, Philips, Lakeland, Tower and Wilko. Prices ranged from £40 up to £300 and capacities ran from 2.6L on the Lakeland model up to Ninja's and NuWave’s 6L models.

The Ninja Foodi was the only shortlisted model that is technically classified as a multi-cooker but we only used it to test its air frying capabilities for this group test.

How we tested the air fryers

To test our list of best air fryers in the most objective and fair way, each model was ranked out of 10 based on features and performance. When ranking them for features, each air fryer was assigned points based on their respective price, capacity, the maximum time they’ll run for, the number of settings as well as the maximum temperature offered by these settings.

For example, the most expensive model – the £300 Philips Avance Airfryer XXL – scored one point, while the Wilko air fryer, which costs just £40, scored maximum points for price. The Ninja Foodi and NuWave Bio had the largest capacities on test, so they both scored 10 points.

Each air fryer was also judged on how easy they were to use, how loud their fans were, how hot they got to the touch during cooking, and their design.

The air fryers were then individually tested on their ability to make chips, and cook chicken wings. For the chips challenge, we cut Maris Piper potatoes into chips, seasoned and placed them in each fryer on their respective chip settings.

Our chips before cooking

Air fryers that didn’t have a dedicated chip button instead advised which temperature and time to manually set to cook chips, either as instructions on the fryer itself or in an included recipe book. Across all air fryers, this was typically at 200° Celcius for 25 minutes.

Are you hungry yet?

For the chicken wing challenge, four wings were butchered and marinated in a Chinese five spice mix. As with the chip test, the chicken wings were either cooked using the automatic meat setting or manually programmed based on the manufacturers’ instructions.

Following both tests, the cooked results were placed on paper plates with the names of the air fryers listed underneath, out of view. Along with two family members, we ranked the 10 plates of chips, and 10 plates of chicken wings according to how crispy they were and their texture/how they tasted.

For the chips, we wanted light and fluffy potato inside a well-cooked, crisp skin. For the chicken wings, we scored them based on how moist and tender the chicken meat was, versus how crispy the skin had been cooked.

To test how noisy each air fryer was, we used a decibel meter reader placed a metre-away from each model during the chip test. To test how hot each one got during cooking, we placed a thermometer on the outside of each model. The total scores from all 11 food and specification tests were combined to reveal the winners and losers.

The best air fryer: test results

Proving, once again, that you don’t need to spend a fortune to get the best household and kitchen appliances, Wilko’s 4L model pipped its rivals to the top spot in our list of best air fryers despite being the cheapest of the lot (by "recommended" price).

It didn’t make the best-tasting food. That award goes to second place Actifry Genius XL, but the Wilko 4L came close while scoring consistently high in almost every other category.

Scoring full marks in both the chip and chicken wing challenges, producing crispy, delicious food, Tefal only missed out on first place by a single point. Its Actifry Genius XL offers a wide range of settings while still being easy-to-use and it never got too hot. Its price, bulky size and noisy fan brought down its average, but only just.

There was quite a gap – of 13 points – between Tefal’s Actifry and the three models that tied for third place. These were the Swan Manual 5L air fryer, the Princess Digital Family air fryer, and Ninja’s Foodi multi-cooker. The Swan model’s strengths lay in its ease-of-use; Princess’s model offers a decent range of settings and made tasty chips, while the Ninja Foodi made great chicken wings, is quiet and has the largest capacity.

In 4th place, although technically 6th, was the Andrew James air fryer. It’s attractive design boosted its average but it fell flat in both cooking challenges without offering much in the way of capacity or settings.

NuWave’s Bio 6L took seventh place. Like Wilko, it offers a disproportionate amount of settings and capacity for its mid-range price and performed admirably in the cooking tests yet was the loudest, hottest and second most-difficult air fryer of the group to use.

Two points behind the NuWave Bio, and 18 behind the leader Wilko, was the most expensive model in the list, the Philips Avance air fryer. For £300 we expected much, much more. It has relatively few settings and is tricky to get to grips with while making disappointing-tasting food,

In ninth, with mid-range scores to match its mid-range price, is Lakeland’s Touchscreenair fryer. Its chips were below par, its chicken average and it was noticeably loud and hot.

Finally, Tower’s air fryer took last place because, despite being cooked at the same temperature and for the same amount of time as many other fryers, one of the chicken wings came out raw in the middle. Hardly ideal, not to mention dangerous.

Best overall choice review:

Wilko 4, £40

Despite being the cheapest model on test – a staggering seven-and-a-half times cheaper than the most expensive, Philips Avance – Wilko’s victory in our hunt for the best air fryer didn’t come as a surprise.

We’ve recently witnessed just how good Wilko products can be after the brand topped our list of best slow cookers, and its performance in this latest group test was impressive. Its chips were crispy on the outside, fluffy in the centre and tasty. Its chicken wings fell a little short of this high standard but still offered a nice crisp bite to the skin without overly drying out the meat.

Design-wise, the Wilko air fryer’s black casing is subtle and its relatively compact size means it will fit comfortably in most kitchens. It could even be stored in a cupboard when not in use, if need be.

Its fan is relatively quiet, and it is also one of two air fryers in our list to come with manual controls, the other being the Swan. In fact, its design is very similar to that of the Swan model, albeit in different colours.

These manual controls mean it has two rotating dials with which you set the time, and the temperature. A guide to cooking times and temperatures is printed on the top of the fryer. Once the time is set, it subtly ticks like an egg timer before ringing when the cooking cycle has finished.

While these manual dials may seem a little antiquated compared to their digital and touchscreen rivals, they’re actually a welcome, far easier-to-use alternative.

The maximum temperature on the Wilko air fryer is 200° Celcius – the same as almost every air fryer in this list bar the Ninja, which reaches 210° C, and Tefal’s top 220° temperature. However, Wilko’s maximum time peaks at 30 minutes.

This is half the time of its rivals and, consequently, comes with its limitations. Granted, many recipes won’t require more than this, including chips, individual portions of meat, cakes and other baked food. Yet, if you wanted to roast a small chicken, for example, you’d have to remember to reset the timer after the first half an hour and this inconvenience undermines its ease-of-use ever so slightly.

The Wilko 4L air fryer also lost points for being one of the hottest on test. It didn’t burn us, but it was far from comfortable to move and you could feel the heat emanating from it without actually making contact. At this price, especially given its great performance, there do need to be sacrifices but it’s worth keeping it out of reach of children.

Highly recommended choice

Tefal Actifry Genius XL

If budget is less of a concern in the hunt for the best air fryer, and you want the one that makes the best-tasting food, the Tefal Actifry Genius XL wins hands down. It scored top marks in both cooking tests.

We were so impressed with the quality of the chips we could have been convinced they were from a chip shop. Similarly, the chicken wings were moist on the inside, crispy on the outside, and packed full of flavour.

This is undoubtedly due to its cooking mechanism. Instead of having an aerated basket and fans that blast the food with hot air from all angles, the Tefal Actifry Genius XL’s base doesn’t have any holes and instead rotates and pushes the food through blasts of hot air using a curved paddle.

The upside is this cooks the food evenly and prevents any chips coming out as soggy or chicken coming out raw. The increased flavour and crispiness comes from the fact the oil, including any fats and juices from the meat, remain in the base and coat the ingredients as they cook.

The downside is that, while this is infinitely healthier than deep-fat frying, the food isn’t quite as healthy or fat-free as that cooked in its rivals.

This circular design and rotating mechanism also makes the Tefal Actifry a loud, chunky and flat air fryer in a sea of tall, thin models. As a result, it’s unlikely to suit smaller kitchens and takes up a significant amount of countertop.

It’s not cheap, either, but you’re paying for the performance, as well as the fact it offers a full one-hour cooking time alongside a wider range of temperature settings than any of its rivals. It is surprisingly simple to use, despite this large number of settings, and was the easiest of the digital models on our list to get your head around.

Only a single point separated the Tefal and Wilko models and if you can afford it (and have the room) we highly recommend paying the extra for the Tefal Actifry Genius XL. What’s more, the same technology is also available in the cheaper, more compact original Actifry Genius model if space is at a premium or you don’t have a family to feed.

The rest compared

Three air fryers took third place, scoring exactly the same points but offering different pros and cons. The quietest and easiest to use is the Swan Manual 5L air fryer.

It has a similar design and the same manual controls as Wilko’s winning model although it’s larger, bulkier and the model we tested is bright red. Like the Wilko, it also only offers a 30-minute timer. Sadly its cooking performance fell well short of it similar rival. Its chips were soggy and some were still a little hard, while its chicken was marginally better yet was still a way off the competition.

Coming in at £20 more expensive than Swan’s £69.99 model is the Princess Digital Familyair fryer, available in 3.2L and 5.2L models (we tested the latter). It lost points compared to Swan’s model for this higher price, and was one of the loudest air fryers we tested, but gained ground by offering a wider range of digital settings and performed significantly better at the cooking tasks.

It made above average chips that were crispy but not as fluffy as others in this test. Similarly, its chicken was crispy on the outside but a little dry on the inside. The increase in controls does make it a tad more difficult to get to grips with but it offers an hour’s timer.

Ninja’s Foodi was the third model in this trio and the multi-cooker is a beast of a machine; the largest of the lot and one that comes with a basket, bowl, grill rack and two different lids.

This appliance is not for homes with small kitchens or limited worktop space. The positive side to this design is that it offers the largest capacity on test, and its larger size and various accessories make it the most versatile.

We only tested the air fryer function for this group test but have since used the baking and roasting tool, as well as the slow cooker function. and having them "all in one" does make it highly convenient. Sadly, during the air frying tests, the Ninja’s chips were disappointing, overcooked and bland. Its chicken, on the other hand, was tasty and well-cooked, coming in third behind Tefal’s and NuWave’s wings.

Next up in the ranking was the Andrew James air fryer. It’s a good-looking machine and offers a wide range of settings without being overly complicated as a result. All for a reasonable price. Both its chips and chicken wings fell to the bottom of the pack though, in terms of taste and crispiness. Only Swan’s soggy chips and Tower’s raw chicken wings scored lower. The rest of its scores, including how hot it got during cooking and how noisy it is, were middle of the road.

NuWave’s delicious chicken and tasty chips elevated its NuWave Bio air fryer average higher than some of its other performance scores would suggest. This is because to power this performance, it’s a noisy, hot and difficult-to-use machine.

For a mid-range price, you do get a wide range of settings if you can work out how to use them properly, and its large basket can be fitted with a separator, letting you cook two food items separately. But overall the NuWave offers a mixed bag of results.

The most expensive model in our list, the Philips Avance, fell short of our expectations, scoring 18 points behind a model that is more than seven times cheaper. Design-wise, it’s a chunky machine and is best suited to larger kitchens as a result.

That said, it performed well in the cooking tests. Both its chips and chicken were above the average. The chips in particular were fluffy on the inside although not as crispy as its cheaper rivals, and its chicken was somewhere in the middle of not too crispy, and not too dry.

One to avoid

Tower air fryer

The worst performing model on our list was the Tower air fryer and we can’t recommend an air fryer that left us almost eating raw chicken. It has few other redeeming features too.

Its capacity is one of the lowest on test, its fan is one of the loudest, it’s fiddly to use and overpriced for its performance at the original £69.99 asking price. It doesn’t look too bad and it does offer an hour’s cooking time but beyond that, this is a disappointing machine.

There are several reasons to seek out the best budget cookbooks. Maybe you’ve spent more than you’d like on food lately. It was never your plan, but it’s difficult to get the right ingredients and find time to cook and not be left with unused extras you can’t work with.

So you invariably start the week with the best of intentions, maybe even doing a week’s worth of meal prep once in a while, but then you slip and order a takeaway. Then two. Then three.

Or maybe, there just isn't the cashflow to make the meals you want to - times are ridiculously tough right now but no matter your budget, you should (and deserve) to have the option to cook up some fantastically tasty meals.

Our list of budget cookbooks should help you with that. Each of these gives you plenty of recipes to work with, all of which can be put together without breaking the bank.

Pick a couple of these up, learn the simple recipes, and soon enough you’ll have go-to meals, a full stomach and maybe even a bit of extra cash in your back pocket.

• You may need the help of the best food processors and best blenders for the following.

Best budget cookbooks

SOMETHING MISSING FROM OUR SHORTLIST?

Tell us about it, and if enough people agree we'll add it in.

You’ve moved into a new place, love to cook and bake, but can’t quite justify stumping up the cash or cupboard space for a huge gadget like a KitchenAid Artisan stand mixer or a Kenwood food processor. Don’t worry, there’s a solution - the best hand mixers are great and don't cost the earth.

For small batch bakes, soups, purees, mashing potatoes and more, this kitchen dream team will cover your culinary bases and work as the perfect stop-gap until you’re ready to take the plunge and buy bigger, pricier gadgets down the line.

If you’re wondering why we would always recommend a hand mixer and blender, it’s because there’s a bit of overlap when it comes to aerating, but they also do totally different, complementary things, handing-off across recipes perfectly.

Take an apple and walnut cake; the hand blender can chop up the walnuts and puree apples, while the mixer creams the sugar and butter, then beats the cake mixture. What about something savoury? Hummus - chickpeas, tahini, garlic, oil, seasoning, lemon juice - all whizzed up with a hand blender, but if you want something a bit lighter, make it whipped hummus, add a bit of water and give it a few minutes with a hand mixer for a fluffier take on the Middle Eastern classic.

This shortlist is also about finding our favourite mixer, our favourite blender and putting you in the best position possible to mix and match your needs to pick your favourite kitchen cupboard combo.

• Best blender 2019: top jug blenders for smoothies, soups and juice
• Or, try one of our best food processors, all tried and tested

Author Bio

Basil Kronfli

Basil Kronfli is a journalist of ten years’ standing, working across sites like TechRadar, Gizmodo and T3, as well as print titles including Metro, Shortlist and Total Film. He specialises in computing, smartphones and cameras, dabbling in kitchen tech, too.

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Hand Blenders Considered

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Hours of Testing

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Experts Consulted

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Best Buys

• The Shortlist
• Test Results
• Best hand blender
• Best hand mixer

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Best hand mixer: The Shortlist

Best hand mixer: test results

It’s great when almost every product on-test excels in its own way. The Swan hand mixer is a solid, affordable bit of kit with masses of power behind it, and while it sounds like a lawnmower, it does a decent job of mixing and whipping for the price.

Spend a little extra and the Chefette, our favourite mixer of the bunch adds stand mixer functionality with a bowl, splash guard and spatula to the mix. Get it fired up, walk away, come back, scrape the sides down, there’s no need to hang around when you could be getting on with something else with this in your kitchen.

The Dualit hand mixer is a beauty and masterfully combines design with power, but it’s a bit light on finesse, which is where KitchenAid’s 9-speed mixer wins out, even if it is a bit low on power by comparison.

As for the blenders, starting at the top of the price ladder, Smeg wins the aesthetics round, but its hand blender feels a touch plasticky given its £130 price. Meanwhile, the KitchenAid 5-speed blender looks and feels like a classic, and its carry case is an incredibly handy addition to keep all its bits in one place.

The Kenwood 800W blender is the most powerful product on-test and will make short work of, well, pretty much anything you put in front of it, but the Dualit hand mixer balanced looks with affordability, while also having our favourite set of accessories - specifically, that adorable little chopper.

Best hand blender overall

The Dualit hand blender looks industrial in all the right ways, and also feels much more premium than the fantastic looking, but plastic feeling Smeg hand blender. Its additional accessories are also incredibly handy, specifically the chopper bowl, which includes a spout in which you can feed ingredients while it’s whizzing away. The blades also cover more height, so we didn’t have to scrape down the sides as much. When fired up, Dualit’s blender is all about power and lacks finesse, but its design, price and utility come together to secure its victory nonetheless.

Best hand mixer overall

The Kenwood Chefette’s two-in-one styling makes it the perfect hand and stand mixer stop-gap solution for anyone who knows they’ll be upgrading in a year or two to a full-blown stand mixer. Its innovative design, brushed metal bowl and splash guard all add a level of utility that’s missing from all the other hand mixers on-test. Meanwhile, the Chefette still manages to be relatively compact. In turn, while we wish this excellent kitchen helper shipped with a whisk attachment, if you’re picking it up with a hand blender, you’ll be covered on that front, and it more than compensates with its hybrid appeal.

Getting takeout coffee every day might seem like a good idea, but the costs soon start to add up – to the environment as well as your wallet. So investing in a coffee machine might be your answer – and this Nespresso Creatista could be a good option. It claims it can heat up in just three seconds – so no faffing around when you’re desperate for that morning caffeine hit.

The Nespresso Creatista Plus by Sage usually costs £309, but there's £50 off right now thanks to Amazon Prime Day 2019.

This gadget's MO is providing professional level coffee at home. Its steam pipe gives you eight texture levels and eleven milk temperature settings – and you can even create latte art if you’re that way inclined. Presets include flat white, espresso, cappuccino and ristretto.

If you’re a coffee novice, don’t worry – the machine also comes with a range of recipes and instructions, so you don’t have to be a professional barista to know what you’re doing.

As with all Nespresso machines, the Creatista also comes with a number of Nespresso capsules, so you can test out what you like.

Normally £309, the Creatista is £249 on Amazon.

• More Prime Day deals for coffee lovers

Thirsty for coffee? Check out our pick of the best coffee machines.

We’re all trying to be that little bit more sustainable at the moment. That’s lead to many investing in reusable coffee cups rather than the regular disposable ones we’re used to using then chucking away.

One company has gone one further. KaffeeForm, a brand based in Germany, doesn’t just make cups out of sustainable material – it makes cups from coffee grounds. Back in 2018, it won the Red Dot product design award for its innovation, and it has only grown since then.

A combination of coffee grounds, wood and “natural resins” is used to make the cups – around two or three cups of grounds per mug. The company works with local shops to get its grounds, so it is sustainable from the bottom up.

“As global coffee consumption is steadily growing, the coffee grounds that are basically waste, will be available en masse‘, said founder Julian Lechner in an interview last year.

“Kaffeeform uses these wasted resources to create a sustainable and eco-friendly alternative to products based on mineral oils.”

You can check out KaffeeForm’s products here.

Fancy creating your own coffee grounds? Alright, you’re probably not going to turn them into cups. But here’s our pick of the best coffee machines anyway.

And if you fancy something with a little less hassle, these are our best pod coffee machines