Description
KitchenAid KHM512CL Ultra Power 5-Speed Hand Mixer: what it is
The KHM512CL is KitchenAid’s entry level hand mixer, and the specification is deliberately simple. KitchenAid’s description covers it: five speeds and two stainless steel Turbo Beater accessories, aimed at cookie dough, mashed potatoes and general mixing. The listing adds push button controls, dishwasher safe parts, a Crystal Blue finish, dimensions of 3.5 inches deep by 8 inches wide by 6 inches high and a weight of 2 pounds. It has been listed since December 2012 and carries 1,442 customer ratings averaging 4.6 stars.
Two pounds is the number that defines this tool. A hand mixer is held at arm’s length for the duration of the job, and weight is felt directly in the wrist. Anything heavier becomes tiring during a long whipping session, and anything much lighter usually means a weaker motor.
Hand mixer against stand mixer, honestly
These two appliances are frequently compared as though one is a cheaper version of the other. They are not.
A stand mixer such as the KitchenAid Artisan Mini holds a bowl, drives a beater in a planetary motion around it, and works unattended. It kneads bread dough, whips large volumes of cream, and lets the cook do something else while it runs. It also weighs twenty pounds or more, occupies permanent counter space, and costs several times as much.
A hand mixer is picked up, used for two minutes and put away. It works in any bowl, including the one the ingredients are already in, and in a saucepan. It stores in a drawer. It cannot knead bread dough, and it cannot be left alone.
For most home baking, cakes, cookies, buttercream, whipped cream, mashed potatoes, meringue, the hand mixer is not a compromise. Chopping and pureeing are a different tool again, which is what the food processors category covers. It is the more practical tool, because it is the one that gets picked up rather than the one that lives under a cover.
Five speeds and the Turbo Beaters
Five speeds is enough, and the reason has to do with the ends rather than the middle. The slowest speed matters most, because starting a mixer fast in a bowl of flour produces a cloud rather than a batter. The fastest speed matters for whipping air into cream and egg whites. The three in between are refinement.
The Turbo Beater design is KitchenAid’s beater without the central post found on older mixers. The absence of that post matters practically: there is nothing for dough to wrap around and nothing awkward to clean, and the beaters go straight into the dishwasher.
Why storage decides whether a mixer gets used
This sounds like a trivial point and it is the main reason hand mixers outsell stand mixers by a wide margin. A kitchen appliance that has to be lifted out from the back of a low cupboard, unwrapped and plugged in gets used for planned baking and nothing else. One that lives in a drawer next to the whisks gets used to whip a small amount of cream on a Tuesday.
At 8 inches long and 2 pounds, this belongs firmly in the second category. Its footprint is smaller than a large chef’s knife, and there is no bowl or stand to find room for. That single fact changes how often the appliance is worth its purchase price, and it is worth weighing against the greater capability of a stand mixer that will spend most of its life under a dust cover.
Highlights
- Five speeds with push button control, covering slow starts and full speed whipping.
- Two stainless steel Turbo Beaters with no center post, so nothing wraps or clogs.
- Dishwasher safe beaters.
- 2 pounds, light enough to hold through a long mixing job.
- Compact enough to store in a drawer rather than on a counter.
- Works in any bowl, including a saucepan.
- 1,442 customer ratings averaging 4.6 stars, accumulated since 2012.
Things To Consider
No wattage figure is published anywhere on this listing. On a hand mixer that is the specification most directly related to whether it will handle stiff cookie dough without bogging down, and it is a meaningful omission. This is KitchenAid’s entry model rather than its most powerful one, and anyone who regularly mixes very stiff doughs should get the figure from KitchenAid or step up the range.
Five speeds without a dedicated turbo or boost button means the top speed is the top speed. Some competing mixers add a momentary boost for the last stubborn lump.
The UPC field on this listing contains four different barcodes concatenated together, which suggests the record has been merged across color or packaging variants at some point. That does not affect the appliance but it is a sign this record should not be trusted for details.
Hand mixers are inherently limited on volume. A double batch of cookie dough, a large quantity of bread dough or anything that needs ten minutes of continuous mixing is a job for a stand mixer such as the Frigidaire Retro Stand Mixer or something from the stand mixers category.
Only two beaters are included. There are no dough hooks and no whisk attachment named on this listing, which limits the range compared with mixers that ship with a full accessory set.
Finally, the glossy painted finish common on colored hand mixers marks and shows fingerprints more than a plain white one.
Who should buy it, and who should not
This suits almost any home baker as either a first mixer or a companion to a stand mixer. Cakes, cookies, whipped cream, buttercream, meringue and mashed potatoes are all handled easily, and the combination of light weight, drawer storage and dishwasher safe beaters means it actually gets used. The strong rating base over more than a decade on sale is the other half of the argument.
Skip it if bread dough is a regular part of the baking, which needs a stand mixer with a dough hook. Skip it if large batch volume is the requirement, where a machine such as the Bosch Universal Plus is the right scale. And skip it if a full accessory set matters, since this ships with beaters only. Anyone baking bread regularly should be looking at a stand mixer or a dedicated machine such as the Zojirushi Home Bakery Virtuoso Plus instead.