[Dan] I know what you’re thinking-
Yeah, but how is it to clean? [slurps]
No problem. [upbeat music]
I’m Dan and I’ve been designing kitchen gadgets
for 40 something years.
Today, I’m gonna test some mixing gadgets,
and see if I can find a way to make them better.
I think I would come a little more shallow here.
Make this a bit of a ball or some sort of shape.
I would actually offset this hex.
What I would do down here, is make this piece screw on.
These are the products I am going to test.
StirMate,
universal mixer,
Swan hand mixer,
egg shaker,
manual crank mixer.
[bright music]
StirMate, it’s purpose in life is to allow you
to walk away from a hot pot of stuff.
It is charging right now.
I think we’re fully charged.
I’m going to de-plug it,
insert the stir and has a pretty good heavy duty clip.
So let’s put it on and it is stirring.
Let’s do it slow.
That’s boring.
Let’s do it fast.
That is full speed.
I’m now going to pour in some cream
and make a tomato bisque kind of thing.
Now the idea here is to walk away
and when you come back, it’ll be perfect.
[swoosh] I’m back.
It’s been about five minutes and I can see
if I lean, that there actually is a ring
of unmixed tomato soup around the edge of the ball.
So not what I would expect or desire.
Yeah, it’s not mixed on the bottom at all.
Let’s compare the StirMaster
to a non-electric wooden spoon.
[upbeat music]
That works pretty well.
Who designed this thing?
For effectiveness on a scale of one to five,
I would give this a one out of five.
So a little disappointed, especially
since it’s a rather significant size object
and it’s electric
and it should probably do a better job here.
It’s just not getting it agitated enough to
really integrate the cream into the soup.
It seems like this is a hands off kind of object
but I do have some issues about usability.
I’m going to slipperize, both of my hands.
It’s gonna simulate in a very, very crude way
someone who may have dexterity problems
or strength problems.
I am going to pull it back but there’s really,
it’s not easy to pull back.
And there’s nothing here for me to really pull on.
I guess I could pull on these sharp plastic things
but it’s not designed to be pulled.
And when it does get pulled, it kind of goes too far.
I think maybe I’m centered or at least close enough.
And this is really a two handed operation to do this.
It’s not that easily handled.
So at this point I will turn it back on.
We’re stirring.
I don’t expect it to be any more
or less effective than it was before,
even though I set it up with my left hand.
Usability I would also give it a pretty low rating.
It is not easy to adjust and I think that’s key.
And I’m gonna give one or two, one or two, one or two.
I’ll give it a two.
It’s not really thought through.
It really is a bit of a struggle to use.
Let’s talk about a redesign.
Couple of things strike me initially as needing some help.
It’s a little hard to see, but inside here
is a pretty significant mouse trap kind of spring.
I’m not sure it needs all that pressure
when it’s clamping to the pot.
So actually I think I would come a little more shallow here
with that handle and I would give it a little bit
of a shape here so that fingers
don’t flip off the back of this.
One thing I’m a little concerned about is that
if you do try to, whoa,
if you do try to get your hand around this,
and you try to push it forward,
there’s a stop here so that when this goes forward,
this is gonna hit that, it’s gonna stop right there.
However, this seems like a pretty significant finger trap.
I think a way to prevent that is to actually
give this thing some sort of shape.
So your hand has some mechanical way to
interact with this piece.
As mentioned, this is not stirring the pot.
This piece coming down, comes down like this,
and it’s only mixing the bottom.
If there was some sort of float here,
then that could be assured that it’s always on the top.
And you could put something here that would assure
that it’s stirring.
I am a little leery.
If you’re gonna get the bottom of the pot really hot,
this is a plastic piece.
I don’t know how temperature stable it is.
I would’ve at least made this metal,
at least to give the perception that it’s not gonna burn.
A buy rating for this on a scale of one to five,
I would give it a one.
I don’t think it’s ready.
I think you’ll be disappointed if you bought this.
I think a lot of the fault is in actually this piece,
which could do a much better job of stirring up the pot.
One out of five.
If you really wanna walk away when you’re cooking,
maybe you should walk down the block
and get some takeout food.
Universal mixer!
In front of me now is the universal mixer.
It’s purpose in life is to whip it and whip it good.
Let’s see how effective it is.
All right, so I have some heavy whipping cream.
Let’s put it all in what the heck?
Twist the top and start pumping.
I may have actually put too much cream in here.
I could feel it getting thicker,
could also see some cream escaping.
[whispering] My shoulder is killing me.
This is labor intensive.
Yeah, it doesn’t wanna come out
and it looks like it’s creamy.
And I think I would be good with this as it is.
All right.
I’ve got some strawberries.
Let’s take a bite.
Strawberries are great.
The whipped cream is great.
It’s a good summer snack.
And remember, it’s always summer somewhere.
Let’s see how the universal mixer compares
to using a plain old whisk.
[upbeat music]
Right now I’m thinking how thankful I am to Thomas Edison.
Or was it Benjamin Franklin?
Whoever invented electricity- thank you.
In terms of effectiveness on a scale of one to five,
I think this is doing pretty well.
I would give it a five out five.
What? He gave something a five out of five?
Yes. Five out of five.
Why? In terms of whipping the cream?
I think it did pretty well.
It’s time for the left handed oil test, but not really
cause I don’t think we need to do it.
As long as you can get your hands around this,
your fingers around this, I think it’s okay.
Out of one to five for usability,
I would give it a three out of of five
only because while these are simple actions
that can be improved,
I think they would be so simple to improve that
it’s a demerit for whoever thought about designing this.
Let me think how I would redesign this.
So I have a couple of thoughts.
I would do something with this shape
for the cap in order to make this spin more easily.
I would give it something to push up against.
So when your fingers are in here
whether they’re twisting this way or that way
they have something to push up against.
And another thing I would do is I would put a gasket in here
at least seal it better, come up with a
with a way to seal this so that it doesn’t leak.
And what I would do down here, is make this piece screw on
and I would use the same detail that I did here,
to make sure that it’s easy to put on,
even with slippery hands.
I think that would be a significant improvement
especially when you are finished and wanna get all the cream
out of here and scrape it out.
In terms of a buy rating on a scale of one to five,
I am tossed between giving this a two or a three.
If you’re making a little bit of whipped cream,
I think it’s kind of okay.
It’s probably not an expensive thing
because the materials are not that expensive.
It’s rather cheaply made.
Because of that, two and a half.
Can I give a half a point?
It whipped it good, not great.
Swan hand mixer.
Its purpose in life is to mix things up
with a couple of squeezes of the beak.
[imitates swan honking]
Now I have three eggs already opened in front of me.
Let’s see how well the Swan does at mixing.
[mixer beating eggs]
Well, it’s doing it.
It’s taking a little longer than you would want.
And it is a little out of control in the bowl.
As I squeeze, it wants to move around.
Of course, eventually it’s gonna mix the eggs
but it is… not magic.
They’re looking scrambled,
so I’d say that part of it’s okay.
We’re ready to make some scrambled eggs.
I think we’re good.
I’m gonna turn this off.
It scrambled it, but at what cost?
Okay, let’s see how the mixing Swan compares
to using a regular old whisk.
[upbeat music]
All right.
It turns out that these chicken eggs
don’t taste very different from the swan eggs.
Okay they’re not swan eggs.
In terms of effectiveness on a scale of one to five,
I would give the Swan mixer a two out of five.
It mixed eggs, but almost anything can.
It’s time for the lefthanded oil test.
But actually I think I’m gonna skip it because I
didn’t feel in very good control just using my right hand.
And I think with the left hand
it’s just gonna be more of the same.
In terms of usability,
I would give the Swan at two out of five.
I just think it was a bit out of control
and unnecessarily so.
It’s not a hard motion to make.
I just feel like it could have fit the hand better
and be easier to control.
Let’s talk about a redesign of the Swan hand mixer.
One thing I noticed is that first of all with squeezing
against something that has corners here,
I would at least soften those corners.
I would also look into whether
or not this should be a bit longer
cause that could allow another finger to get into play.
It could allow your ring finger to get into the
into the mix here.
I think if this didn’t curve down so much,
if this actually had just a little more
of something to grab on, maybe I even give it
like a little bit of a tail here,
I think it would be more likely to be stable in your hand
because it’d not just be touching the pad of my thumb here,
but it would be in better contact all the way down the hand.
I would look at making a shape here
that does a lot more agitation.
Maybe some of these should be longer and some shorter.
Maybe even a contour in the upward or downward direction.
So we get some up and down movement too.
Also, you may notice that there’s a little bit
of a pin on here.
At the very least, I would make sure that we can
come down to contact the bottom of the bowl
so that this pin isn’t separating us
from the bottom of the bowl.
For buy rating, honestly, I think it could even be cuter.
I don’t know those eyelashes are striking me
as just a little creepy.
So I would not urge anyone to go out and buy the Swan mixer.
One out of five, feel free to fly away.
[drum roll] Egg shaker.
Its purpose in life is to secretly scramble an egg
while it is still in the shell.
Let’s see how effective it is.
So it’s got some little looks like silicone holders in here.
So they should accommodate at least some
variation in the size of the egg.
Let’s go.
[string rattling]
The instructions say that
it needs to be pulled 40 to 50 times.
[upbeat music]
Now that this egg is as dizzy as it could possibly be,
we’re going to boil it up.
So I’ll crack this open.
We’re ready for the big egg reveal.
Well it’s cracked itself open already.
And what I have inside is not what I thought I would get.
Let’s cut it open.
I think what I have is a relatively normal hard-boiled egg.
But that’s not what I thought would happen.
I would not call this the magic golden egg
that was promised.
Well, there was actually quite a bit of work of pulling
and shaking and spinning to get what looks like zero result.
It doesn’t even look like it was scrambled a little bit.
Let’s see how that yo-yo inspired
spinning egg contraption compares
with shaking egg 50 times with my own hands.
[upbeat music]
Guess what we got?
Surprise, surprise our hard- boiled egg.
Probability of success in either case…
I think is rather low either way.
In terms of effectiveness on a scale of one to five,
I’m giving this a zero because…
it did nothing.
This is so sad.
I’m not even going to think
about the lefthanded oil test.
For usability, I would give it a one.
It was a little fun to use.
You have to get the rhythm going with that string pull.
I can’t give it anything better
than one since it did nothing.
Now I know what you would say.
If it did nothing, it should get a zero
but I’m in a generous mood.
Let’s give it a one out of five.
So let’s talk about a redesign
and I’m not sure the entire principle of shaking
up an egg to get it scrambled makes any sense at all.
But let’s just talk about
the possibility that that could work.
I do think there could be some sort
of texture to this or something, something to this shape,
so it’s not just a smooth round thing
so that you can you can get it open.
Maybe what I would suggest, give it a bit of a ripple.
So you have something to grab against.
I would for one do the same sort of detail here on here
cause this has to be screwed on and off as well.
I also think you notice when I put the top on
there’s a pin here that helps it spin,
helps keep the friction down,
but it’s a little hard to get on there.
So I would actually make this entry
to that pin a little more generous,
maybe a little more funnel like so you really can’t miss.
Once you put this top on, I wonder if this should be
somehow off-center so that
instead of just spinning like that,
the egg actually does some sort of
whipping action like that.
But what you really wanna do is scramble an egg,
and I would look at what it would take mechanically
to scramble an egg that is still safe at home
inside its shell.
In terms of a buy rating, I gotta give it a one.
I don’t think it works so I haven’t seen it work.
And if it does work, it’s probably a rare event.
No golden egg for this baby.
[drum roll] Manual crank mixer.
I have in front of me, a manual crank mixer.
Its purpose in life is to mix up any sort of
batter or eggs or anything that you may feel
needs some mixing in your kitchen.
Today, I’m gonna be whipping some egg whites for a
delicious meringue pie.
Let’s test its effectiveness.
I’ve got egg whites.
[mixer whipping]
Okay let’s see if we’re starting to meringue.
And I think we are.
I’m gonna stop there and see what I have.
I would say that’s pretty successful.
So since the meringue-ing went so well,
I was able to make myself a nice looking key lime pie.
[takes bite, chewing]
All good.
To be fair,
let’s just try the meringue.
All good. Pie rating five out of five.
Let’s see how that compares to an electric hand mixer.
[upbeat music]
Okay. Let’s see how key lime pie tastes
with electric meringue.
[takes bite, chewing]
Yeah, no difference.
In terms of effectiveness on a scale of one to five,
I would give the manual crank mixer a five.
I think it did what it’s supposed to do
and it made some pretty good meringue,
took some work but it got us there.
It’s time for the left-handed oil test.
I’m gonna slipperize my hands.
I will slipperize both hands, pour in the egg whites,
connect the top and stabilize it with my right hand
and start spinning with my left.
And because this thing is out of control,
my right hand is doing a whole lot of work as well
just to stabilize it.
You can see this dancing around
as the resistance gets higher and higher.
Okay. I’m gonna stop there.
Partly cause it’s getting out of control,
partly cause my meringue is okay,
but also because I think I found out what I want to know.
So let’s try this left-handed pie.
[takes bite, chewing]
I can’t tell the difference.
In terms of usability I would give this a three out of five.
It works.
You can do it, but I think it has some usability
issues that would have been easy to address.
So let’s talk about a redesign for the manual mixer.
Let’s just start from the top for the handles.
Make this a bit of a ball or some sort
of shape that would actually fill the hand better.
I think the length of the crank is probably okay.
It could be a little bit longer to give you
a little more leverage, but the problem
with the leverage is once the meringue gets thick,
this thing really starts shaking all over the place.
I think I would look at the possibility of
adding a wider base that would of course be another part
but I think it would stabilize it
and make it a lot easier to use.
But very especially I think I would put some sort
of hump in here, at least in two places around here,
maybe three places around here,
maybe four places around here.
But I would raise a shape here
that would allow my hand to sit
on top of that and be a lot more stable.
I would definitely do something to exaggerate or make this
this key system a lot more effective.
I would make sure it locked in both directions,
if this is going to help.
Now I also think in doing that,
this has to be exaggerated.
These little bumps and indents are really subtle.
In terms of a buy rating, I would give it, guess what?
A one out of five.
I think especially if you have an electric mixer at home
that’s going to do a lot better
than this will with a lot less effort.
I think each one of these could have been done much better.
It’s kind of unfortunate.
I have mixed emotions.
Most of them negative.
