Magimix CS 5200 XL Review

It’s expensive, but the Magimix CS 5200 XL comes with plenty of accessories and excels at all tasks.

What is it?

The top-of-the-range Magimix CS 5200 XL is a professional-level food processor with high-quality blades and discs, plus a wide range of accessories. It has a price to match its ambitions, but having the CS 5200 XL in your kitchen is effectively like having your own staff of junior chef to take care of the menial tasks for you.

Related: Best hand blenders

Design and features

When you’re spending more than £300 on a food processor, you should expect a lot for your money. Fortunately, the Magimix CS 5200 XL delivers. First, the food processor is heavy, to the point some might struggle with lugging it around the kitchen. Everything about it feels built to last. The main bowl is weighty and clunks into place firmly. All the pieces fit together just as they should.

The Magimix CS 5200 XL comes with a wide selection of accessories. There are three bowls, offering 3.6-, 2.6- and 1.1-litre options, which has you covered, no matter the quantity of food you need to prepare. As well as two blades to fit the different sized bowls, there’s a dough blade, 2mm and 4mm slicing discs, a grating blade for fine or normal grate, an egg whisk, a citrus press, and a ‘blendermix’ for smoothies and fine soups.

There are plenty of optional accessories, too, including 6mm slicing disc, julienne disc, a masher and puree kit, and a dough bowl.

The overall design is minimal and fairly attractive. It’s chunky but clean-lined and the base has a light gloss finish. If you buy this mixer it’s probably going to have to live on your worktop – unless you fancy heaving it out of the cupboard every time you need it.

Performance

The Magimix CS 5200 XL has an auto-speed setting only, so you can’t control the speed yourself. It isn’t ideal, but in my experience it didn’t cause any issues. I found the food processor an absolute pleasure to use.

Whizzing up an onion in the small bowl took mere seconds to be finely chopped. I scraped everything back to the middle once, to ensure it was all caught, but even without scraping I’d have been happy with the results. Adding a little water to test the pureeing capability proved to be impressive, with a smooth mix delivered quickly.

The slicing discs gobbled up carrots in lightning-fast time, giving even-sized discs. On testing the second carrot, I learned that feeding them through the smaller feed-tube opening, so the carrot was going in completely vertically, achieved the best results. Nothing was left unsliced in the top of the machine.

I had a minor issue with the fine grating disc, but it was easily resolved. Initially, a thinner block of cheese would get stuck on the top of the disc, spinning around ungrated in the gap between disc and lid. However, if I left the machine running a bit longer it would eventually be caught and the result was a very finely grated bowl of cheddar. The larger grating disc was equally successful.

The egg whisk is better than most whisking attachments. It produced fluffy whites, although they weren’t as good as machines sporting a metal whisk attachment. Metal whisks tend to give you the result you’d achieve with a hand whisk. The Magimix CS 5200 XL was close, but not quite as good.

The juicer is a bit of a gimmick. It works well, making quick work of orange halves, but it’s a big bit of extra plastic to store. You’d be better with one of our best juicers. Speaking of storage, most of the accessories fit inside the included storage box, which is a very welcome addition.

Overall, I have few criticisms of the Magimix CS 5200 XL. Yes, it’s pricey and a more serious lump of kit than most people will require, but if you want the best then this is exactly what you get.

Why buy it?

If you use a food processor frequently then this is about as good as you’re going to find. It’s a joy to use, gives great results – and won’t look half bad in your (presumably quite big) kitchen.

Verdict

It’s expensive, but the Magimix CS 5200 XL comes with plenty of accessories and excels at all tasks.