As I write this review this item has about 25% one star reviews, very high for a product. After reading other reviews on other sites that rated it more highly, I ordered this not sure if I too would receive a machine that didn't turn on right out of the box. Mine was ordered and delivered at the end of January 2019 and I just wanted to say it didn't have any issues. If that changes, I'll update this review. Obviously Cuisinart's manufacturer has some quality control issues to address, and perhaps they have by now. Aside from that, right out of the box this seems more capable than the previous Cuisinart Mini food processor I owned. That one worked for nearly 15 years and I was happy with it. This one seems somewhat more powerful. It's also got a larger work bowl and slightly larger base, but it's still what I wanted, a small machine for chopping nuts for desserts without having to use my large food processor (then fill up the dishwasher with its pieces), or for making a quick salad dressing. Again, if it turns out I have issues, I'll update this review. Otherwise, my good review holds and I've been happy with the product. UPDATE: I usually use the small size Cusinart food processors pretty much only for chopping nuts for dessert recipes and making vinaigrette or sometimes mayonnaise. Today I made Cuisinart's own recipe for "Hummus for Mini Chopper" that you can find online at their site. Note the FOR MINI CHOPPER in that title. The first step is to chop parsley leaves. This machine does this extremely poorly, less well than Cuisinart's smaller, less expensive versions (Mini Prep Plus, for instance). By the time I scraped the bowl a few times I may as well have just chopped it myself (I never had to scrape the bowl with the smaller versions, and with this one I never did get an acceptable chop on the parsley leaves). It's pretty troubling to see how the Cuisinart name (and reliability) is being destroyed by the corporate greed of its parent company, and how sloppy even their own recipes are now. The recipe for "Hummus for Mini Chopper" says, "...With machine running, drop garlic through feed tube." There's just one problem with that. There is no feed tube on the mini food processors. The recipe continues on with "With the machine running, add the olive oil in a steady stream and process until the mixture is smooth and creamy." Again, you can't do that with this machine. There's no place to pour through the lid while the machine is running. (It worked just fine to add the olive oil to the mix in the bowl and then chop to combine, and for the record, real hummus recipes don't have olive oil in the mix, just drizzled over the top after it's made.) The machine DOES chop garlic cloves very nicely, easily, and quickly. For this recipe which was obviously just downsized in ingredients and not actually written for this type of machine as the title suggests, putting everything together inside the bowl made an acceptable and tasty hummus, but it's nowhere near as smooth and creamy as I can make in my Vitamix or my full-sized Cuisinart food processor. Further, this machine simply didn't have the power to do it smoothly. It made me wonder how long it would last running it for two minutes at a time as the recipe calls for on a regular basis before I burned out the machine (or developed cracks in the blade as others have reported here). Instead of running smoothly it was somewhat jerky for the entire two minutes called for in the recipe. I'm going to stick to chopping nuts for dessert recipes, vinaigrettes, and mayonnaise only with this machine, which is what I bought it for, but knowing what I know now, I would have bought the Cuisinart Mini Prep instead. Having now owned both, I think the Mini Prep is the better machine for these small tasks when I don't want to have to fill up the dishwasher with the full-sized Cusinart food processor's parts. I also tried to make almond flour in this machine and that wasn't very successful either. I had to stop before I made almond butter instead, but it was just for a Bundt cake so it worked either way. I wouldn't buy this for that purpose or try that again, though. The Vitamix can do it without any problem.
