This is the second one of these I have bought in 6 months that has stripped its gears and become completely unusable while using under light duty (making buttercream frosting). Normally I quite like Cuisinart products.
I wanted to replace my previous hand mixer because it only had 3 speeds and just wasn't powerful enough. The old mixer struggled to incorporate oil into a flour and shortening mixture, which shouldn't have been that hard. I had my my mixture fully incorporated in a jiffy with my new Cuisinart. This mixer is very powerful!
I like this mixer and recommend it, but the power setting for 1 is so strong that I always have splatter issues until my mixtures are more incorporated.
I have only used mixer once and it was easy to handle and easy to clean. It did a good job on oatmeal raisin cookies which are to thick to mix by hand.