| Our verdict at a glance Magimix 5200XL vs Kenwood Multipro Express Choose the Magimix 5200XL if you want the food processor you buy once and keep for twenty years – the induction motor, the commercial-grade build and the three-bowl system make it the most capable and most durable processor here, and the 30-year motor guarantee means it will almost certainly outlast the kitchen it sits in. Choose the Kenwood Multipro Express if you want most of the real-world capability for roughly half the money, with a built-in scale and a genuinely useful direct-serve dicing function – it is the smarter buy for anyone who cooks a lot but does not need heirloom engineering. Best overall for most people: the Kenwood Multipro Express, because it does everything a typical UK home cook actually asks of a food processor, costs far less, and gives up surprisingly little to the Magimix in day-to-day use. Best if budget is no object: the Magimix 5200XL – nothing here matches it for build quality, blade performance or longevity. |
The food processor is the appliance people buy last and use most. It is not romantic like a stand mixer or a coffee machine, but once you own a good one you stop chopping onions by hand, stop grating cheese into your knuckles, and start making pastry, hummus and coleslaw in the time it used to take to find the chopping board. The question is rarely whether to buy one – it is which one, and for a huge number of UK buyers that decision comes down to two names: Magimix and Kenwood.
They are not the same kind of purchase. The Magimix 5200XL is a piece of French engineering that treats a food processor as a permanent kitchen fixture, priced accordingly, and built to be handed down. The Kenwood Multipro Express is a modern, feature-led machine that assumes you want to get dinner done rather than admire the casing, and it costs a lot less. Both are genuinely good, which is exactly why the choice is harder than the price gap suggests – and if neither turns out to be right for you, the [best food processors for batch cooking 2026] pillar covers the rest of the field.
I have used both for months, side by side, on the jobs people actually do rather than the ones that photograph well. This piece is about where the money goes, where each machine is genuinely better rather than merely different, and which one deserves the space on your worktop.
How the two machines compare at a glance
The headline differences are motor type, bowl capacity, the number of accessories in the box and, of course, price – but those numbers hide as much as they reveal. A bigger bowl is only an advantage if you fill it; a longer accessory list is only useful if you use the attachments. What actually separates these two machines is how they feel to use for the twenty minutes a week most people spend with a food processor, and how they hold up over the years that follow.
The table below lines up the points that decide the purchase rather than the ones that pad out a spec sheet. Read it and the shape of the decision starts to appear: you are choosing between the best-engineered processor in its class and the most sensibly equipped one for the money.
Everyday chopping, slicing and grating: closer than the price gap suggests
For the jobs most people do most often – chopping an onion, slicing a courgette, grating a block of cheese – both machines are fast, competent and vastly better than doing it by hand. If this is the entirety of what you need, the honest truth is that the Kenwood does it just as quickly as the Magimix, and the price difference starts to look very hard to justify.
Where the Magimix pulls ahead is consistency and finish. Its blades are heavier and sharper out of the box, and the induction motor holds its speed without bogging down, so a bowl of onions comes out evenly chopped rather than half-pureed on the bottom and chunky on top. The slicing and grating discs feel more precisely made, and the results look it. It is the difference between good and genuinely professional, and whether that is worth paying for depends entirely on how much you cook.
The Kenwood counters with cleverness rather than refinement. Its Express dicing accessory does something the Magimix simply cannot do at this level: it dices vegetables directly into a serving bowl below, no second step required, which turns making a salsa or a soffritto into a genuinely one-touch job. For a lot of real cooking, that convenience matters more than the last five percent of blade finish.
Pastry, dough and heavy work: the Magimix earns its price
This is where the two machines separate properly, and where the Magimix starts to look like the reasonable choice rather than the extravagant one. Making shortcrust pastry in a food processor is all about speed and keeping the butter cold, and the Magimix’s power and pulse control let you bring a dough together in seconds without the motor labouring and warming everything up. The result is reliably short, tender pastry, batch after batch.
The Kenwood makes perfectly good pastry too, but it works harder to do it, and under a stiff bread dough you can hear and feel the geared motor straining in a way the Magimix’s induction motor never does. Neither will break doing occasional heavy work, but if you make pastry weekly or knead dough regularly, the Magimix is the machine that will still feel effortless in ten years – and its 30-year motor guarantee is not marketing bluster, it is a statement about how the thing is built.
The three-bowl system is the quiet advantage here. Being able to chop in the small bowl, then swap to the large bowl for pastry without washing up in between, is exactly the kind of thing you do not appreciate until you have lived with it. The Kenwood’s single-bowl-plus-serving-bowl setup is more limited, and you will wash the main bowl more often as a result.
Living with them: noise, cleaning and worktop reality
A food processor is only as good as your willingness to get it out, and this is where the everyday character of each machine matters. The Magimix is the quieter of the two by a clear margin – the induction motor produces a lower, less aggressive noise that is genuinely easier to live with in an open-plan kitchen – and its wide feed tube swallows whole vegetables so you spend less time pre-chopping. It is also reassuringly solid, with a build quality that makes the Kenwood feel a little plasticky by comparison.
The Kenwood’s trump card for daily use is its built-in scale. Weighing ingredients directly in the bowl, with no separate scale to find and wash, sounds trivial until you have made a cake or a dough with it – then it becomes the feature you miss most on any other machine. It is a genuinely thoughtful piece of design and, for bakers especially, a real reason to choose it over the Magimix.
On cleaning, both are dishwasher-friendly for the removable parts, but the Kenwood has more accessories to store and keep track of, while the Magimix’s smaller parts count is easier to manage day to day. Weight and footprint are close enough not to be a deciding factor, though neither is a machine you will want to lift down from a high shelf every day – both deserve a permanent spot on the worktop if you have it.
So which food processor should you buy?
For most people, the Kenwood Multipro Express. It does everything a typical home cook actually asks of a food processor – chopping, slicing, grating, dicing, pastry, dough – competently and quickly, adds a built-in scale and direct-serve dicing that the Magimix cannot match, and costs roughly half as much. Unless you are a serious, frequent cook, the extra money for the Magimix buys refinement and longevity you may never fully use.
Buy the Magimix 5200XL if you cook and bake often, make pastry or dough regularly, and want the machine you buy once and never replace. Its build, its blades, its quietness and its three-bowl flexibility are a real, daily pleasure, and the 30-year motor guarantee makes the high price look more sensible over a decade than it does at the till. It is the enthusiast’s choice, and it earns the label.
Whichever you choose, buy a food processor that lives on the worktop rather than in a cupboard, because the best machine is the one you actually reach for. Both of these will change how you cook – the only real question is how much you want to spend to get there, and how long you want it to last.
FAQ
Is Magimix better than Kenwood?
For pure build quality, blade performance and longevity, yes – the Magimix 5200XL is the better-engineered machine and comes with a 30-year motor guarantee. But ‘better’ is not the same as ‘better value’. The Kenwood Multipro Express does almost everything the Magimix does for roughly half the price, and adds a built-in scale and direct-serve dicing the Magimix lacks. For most home cooks, the Kenwood is the smarter buy; for serious, frequent cooks, the Magimix is worth the premium.
Which is better for making pastry?
The Magimix. Its powerful, quiet induction motor and precise pulse control bring a dough together fast without warming the butter, which is the whole secret to good shortcrust. The Kenwood makes good pastry too, but works harder to do it. If you make pastry weekly, the Magimix is the one to have.
Does the Kenwood Multipro Express really have a built-in scale?
Yes, and it is one of its best features. You can weigh ingredients directly in the bowl with no separate scale to find or wash, which is genuinely useful for baking and dough work. The Magimix has no equivalent, so if in-bowl weighing appeals to you, that alone may settle the decision.
Are these food processors dishwasher safe?
The removable bowls, lids, blades and discs on both machines are dishwasher-safe; the motor base is not and should only be wiped down. The Kenwood comes with more accessories to store and clean, while the Magimix’s smaller parts count is a little easier to manage day to day.
