I bought this mixer to replace an ancient one my mum had given me. I chose this particular model as it was on special offer at Argos and had good reviews there.

If anyone's not familiar with James Martin, he's a TV chef, who like other TV chefs has brought out a range of kitchen equipment.

The mixer is silver in colour, and is quite heavy to hold, which can be a problem if you're mixing for any length of time. Saying that, it's easy to hold as it has a rubberised handle, and it's easy to move the speed switch with your thumb whilst holding the mixer.

It comes with two lots of attachments: beaters and dough hooks. Being a keen cake-baker it's the beaters that I use, and haven't tested the dough hooks yet. The beaters are around 17cm long, of which 7cm is the wide beater part. They fit easily into the two holes underneath the mixer, by simply clicking into place. To release them you need to press the speed switch downwards, which is a bit stiff to do.
There are five speeds on this 300W mixer, and you just flip the black switch at the front on top to switch between speeds. There's not much between each speed and I always find that I go straight onto speed two, as it's quite sensitive. If you step up to each speed you won't notice a huge difference between each, unless you go from speed 1 right up to speed 5. There's a turbo button just behind the speed switch, which makes the beaters go even faster, although I've not had the need to use it yet, as the fastest speed has been more than enough for my needs.

When first starting to mix, it's best to start on the lowest speed, especially if mixing flour or icing sugar, which can end in a "snowstorm" if you mix too fast to start with! The beaters are deep enough to mix large amounts efficiently, and strong enough to cope with things like buttercream which can be a bit stiff to start with.

The only gripe I have with the mixer is that's it's difficult to clean because of the air vents. You can easily wipe the outside surface down, but icing sugar and flour tend to fly into the air vents, and you obviously can't submerge an electrical item in water to clean it, so you need to try and poke a damp cloth inside just enough to clean the vents. The beaters and dough hooks are dishwasher safe so can be cleaned easily. The cable is long enough to stretch if your work surface isn't directly near a power socket.

The hand mixer is actually manufactured by Wahl, and retails at Argos at £24.99, but is very often on special offer. A James Martin DVD is included, but I haven't had chance to watch it yet, so can't comment on that.