GE Appliances' $1000 stand mixer might actually be worth it

I’ve written before about the benefits of a good, cheap kitchen scale, especially for baking. But there’s still something especially tedious about weighing out all your ingredients one-by-one in separate bowls and containers.

GE Appliances' new stand mixer solves that issue in a clever, if expensive, way. The new $999 Profile Smart Mixer, which the company is showing off at CES, has all the features of a typical stand mixer, but has a digital scale and voice controls built in to help streamline your bakes,

The scale is integrated into the base of the mixer. A button on top controls the tare function, so you can just dump your ingredients straight into the bowl without measuring out each item separately in its own container. Or, you could remove the 7-quart bowl and weigh the ingredients in a different vessel.

The mixer gets even smarter if you use the companion SmartHQ app, which can guide you through specific recipes, step-by-step. It also allows you to take advantage of something GE Appliances calls “Auto Sense,” which it claims can detect subtle changes in texture in order to prevent over or under-mixing for recipes in its app. While the app has a relatively small selection of recipes for now, it could be useful for more novice bakers or anyone intimidated by a more complicated recipe. The company notes that it expects to regularly refresh the app with new content.

Even if you prefer to use your own recipes, there are other handy features. The mixer has voice controls, compatible with Google and Amazon’s smart speakers, so you can start and stop mixing, or change up the speed with just your voice. GE Appliances also notes that the mixer speed goes up to 11, which it says is closer to the speed of a blender than a typical stand mixer, which may offer more flexibility with certain recipes.

With a starting “suggested” price of $999, it’s spendier than even most high-end stand mixers, but the added convenience could be worth the splurge.