Some links on our site may earn us a commission at no extra cost to you. Learn more.
Updated August 2026: the Breville Sous Chef 16 now carries a discontinued notice on Breville’s own product page. The Ninja model number is no longer the one the maker sells; the current listing is BN600C. The Hamilton Beach listing has moved to suffix 70730J. Breville’s 25-year motor warranty belongs to the BFP800XL, not the Sous Chef 16 (BFP820).
Buy the Cuisinart Custom 14 (DFP-14BCNY). It is the only one of these four still sold by its maker under the model number this page originally named, at $299.95 on cuisinart.com, and the only one with a motor warranty longer than a year. The Ninja Professional is now BN600C at $89.99, the Hamilton Beach 10-Cup is now listed as 70730J at $69.99, and the Breville Sous Chef 16 (BFP820) is discontinued.
That is not a small edit. Three of the four machines a shopper cross-compares under these names have moved on their makers’ own catalogue pages, and a roundup that does not check the collection page sends you to a product page that still resolves for a machine you cannot buy new.
Which Five Things Actually Decide This Purchase?
A food processor is a motor, a bowl and a warranty. Almost nothing separates these four on chopping — the independent scores sit within two points of each other — so the ledger below scores the things that do separate them, and each weight has a reason.
Still sold under this model number, 30 points. The heaviest weight, because a recommendation you cannot act on is worth nothing, and because three of four failed it. Warranty you can name from the maker’s own document, 22 points. A processor dies at the motor, and the coverage is the only forward-looking number any maker publishes. A price on the maker’s own site, 12 points. Low weight — a missing price is an annoyance, not a defect. An independent lab measured the exact model on sale, 20 points. Not how well it scored; whether the thing on the shelf is the thing anybody measured. A published maximum liquid line, 16 points. The advertised cup figure is a dry figure, and soup is what overflows.
| Axis (weight) | Cuisinart Custom 14 | Hamilton Beach 10-Cup | Ninja Professional | Breville Sous Chef 16 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sold under this number (30) | 100 | 55 | 60 | 0 |
| Warranty you can name (22) | 90 | 20 | 30 | 35 |
| Price on maker’s site (12) | 100 | 100 | 100 | 0 |
| Exact model measured (20) | 100 | 100 | 50 | not scored |
| Published liquid line (16) | 25 | 25 | 25 | 100 |
| Tally | 85.8 | 56.9 | 50.6 | 29.6 |
The Cuisinart tally is 30.0 + 19.8 + 12.0 + 20.0 + 4.0. The Breville is the one asterisk: no independent lab has measured the BFP820 itself, so that axis is left empty rather than guessed, and its 23.7 raw points are scored against the 80 points of weight that could be filled, which normalises to 29.6. Disagree with the 30-point weight on availability and the order changes — drop it to 10 and the Breville climbs, because everything it loses, it loses on being gone.
Whose Motor Gets the Twenty-Five-Year Warranty?
Not the Sous Chef 16 Peel & Dice. The warranty document Breville publishes for this family — the PDF filed under BFP800XL and BFP820BAL together — grants a general warranty of “one (1) year from the date of purchase”, then adds a separate “limited non-transferable induction motor (‘Motor’) warranty for twenty-five (25) years”. The sentence that assigns it reads: “Breville provides the additional limited induction motor warranty coverage on the BFP800XL as further described below.” BFP820 is not named in that sentence. It is not named anywhere in the document.
The 25-year figure is easy to misattribute here, and the kind of error that gets repeated across the category, because the two model numbers share one PDF.
| The claim | What the maker’s own document says | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| The Sous Chef 16 carries a 25-year motor warranty | Breville’s warranty PDF names BFP800XL for the 25-year motor term; BFP820 appears nowhere in it. The general term is one year. | Not supported |
| The Sous Chef 16 has a 1,200-watt motor | Breville’s own instruction manual says “1200W induction motor” in English and “Moteur a induction de 2000W” in its French section — same document, same model, two figures | The maker disagrees with itself |
| It is a 16-cup processor | The manual: “Do not fill the processing bowl above the 12 cup liquid level (2.8L) or 16 cup dry level (shredding).” Sixteen is the dry number. | True with a condition the product page omits |
| The Ninja Professional is model BN601 | SharkNinja’s own food processor collection page lists SS401, BN600C and BZ601. The BN601 marketing URL now serves a page headed BN600C at $89.99. | Superseded |
| The Hamilton Beach 10-Cup is model 70730 | Hamilton Beach’s own collection page lists 70730J at $69.99 and 70733 at $69.99. The bare 70730 does not appear on it, though its product page is still live. | Superseded |
Which Maker Tells You How Much Liquid the Bowl Holds?
One of four. Breville’s instruction manual prints a numbered maximum: 12 cups of liquid in a bowl advertised at 16 cups dry. That is 12 divided by 16, or 75.0 percent, and the same manual gives a third figure — “10 cups for diced and liquid (thick, wet ingredients e.g. soups)” — which is 62.5 percent of the advertised number. Cuisinart’s product page, SharkNinja’s BN600C page and Hamilton Beach’s 70730 page each publish a cup figure and no liquid line I could retrieve.
Say that plainly: the only maker here that tells you the number you need for soup is the one that stopped selling the machine. If you are buying for pureeing rather than chopping, that missing line is the spec to ask a retailer about, and it is the same shortfall we found on electric pressure cookers, where the advertised quarts and the usable quarts are different numbers.
What Do the Two Parts That Break Actually Cost?
Bowls crack and blades dull. Both are sold as parts, and the price of the pair against the price of the machine is a number the marketing never puts side by side. Every figure below is the maker’s own current parts listing.
| Machine | Work bowl | Chopping blade | Pair | Machine price | Pair as a share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cuisinart Custom 14 | $36.95 | $39.95 | $76.90 | $299.95 | 25.6% |
| Hamilton Beach 10-Cup | $27.99 | $9.99 | $37.98 | $69.99 | 54.3% |
| Ninja Professional | none listed | none listed | motor base only, $104.99 | $89.99 | 116.7% |
| Breville Sous Chef 16 | not computed | not computed | not computed | none published | not computed |
Three things fall out of that. On the cheapest machine here, replacing the two parts that fail costs more than half of what the machine costs — 37.98 divided by 69.99. On the Ninja, SharkNinja’s own food processor parts page lists sixteen items and not one of them is a bowl or a blade for this line; the only BN601-specific part is a motor base at $104.99, which is 116.7 percent of the $89.99 the whole machine sells for. And the Breville row is empty because Breville’s parts page for the BFP820 returned a 404 when I checked, and its product page publishes no price to divide by. An empty cell with a reason beats a filled one resting on a number I borrowed.
Prices are approximate, current as of publication, and change frequently — confirm the latest price with the retailer before buying.
Which Cuisinart Blade Did the CPSC Recall Cover?
The riveted one. On 13 December 2016, the Consumer Product Safety Commission announced recall 17-050, covering about 8 million US units plus about 300,000 in Canada, because “the food processor’s riveted blade can crack over time and small, metal pieces of the blade can break off into the processed food.” Conair had received 69 reports of consumers finding blade fragments in food, including 30 reports of mouth lacerations or tooth injuries. The remedy was a free replacement blade, not a replacement machine.
The covered list runs on model prefixes: CFP-9, CFP-11, DFP-7, DFP-11, DFP-14, DLC-5, DLC-7 and fifteen others. DFP-14 is on it. The full SKU sold today, DFP-14BCNY, is not written out anywhere in the notice, and Cuisinart told Consumer Reports that current models sharing a recalled prefix are newer and do not contain the problem blade. I am naming that gap rather than resolving it: a prefix match is not a model match, and it is also not a clean bill. If you own an older Custom 14, Conair’s recall line settles it in one call; if you are buying new, the blade in the box is a different part from the one Cuisinart now sells at $39.95.
Searching the CPSC recall database for Breville, SharkNinja and Hamilton Beach food processors returned nothing for these machines. The SharkNinja and Breville recalls on file are pressure cookers, which is a different product and a different failure.
Is the Cuisinart Custom 14 Still the Default at $299.95?
Yes, and mostly by staying still while the others moved. Cuisinart’s own food processor page lists it second of twelve, at $299.95, under exactly the SKU it has carried for years — and separately maintains a “Discontinued Custom 14 Cup Food Processor” page for the older DFP-14BCN, which tells you the company distinguishes the two deliberately. The product page states a “Full 5-year Motor Warranty” and a “Limited 3-year Warranty on Entire Unit”, the only multi-year motor term in this group that a document actually attaches to the model on sale.
TechGearLab, which last updated its food processor testing on 11 June 2025, measured it at 61.5 decibels — the quietest of the eight machines on its chart — and scored it 66 overall, behind the Breville BFP800CBXL at 83. America’s Test Kitchen, updated 4 August 2026, names this exact SKU its winner. Two independent testers, one model number, no ambiguity about which unit was on the bench. That is rarer than it should be.
Skip this if your kitchen cannot spare the counter for a 14-cup machine, or if $299.95 is three times what you will get out of it. At six uses a year, the Hamilton Beach does the same salsa.
What Does $89.99 Buy in the Ninja BN600C?
A 9-cup bowl and an 850-watt motor, per SharkNinja’s own listing, for less than a third of the Cuisinart. On chopping and slicing the gap is smaller than the price gap: TechGearLab scored its Ninja entry 64 against the Cuisinart’s 66, and measured it at 80 decibels against 61.5. Louder, nearly as capable, a third of the money.
Two things hold it down here. TechGearLab’s entry is labelled “BN600/BN601”, which does not identify which of those two units was measured, and BN601 is the number that is gone. And the parts position is the worst in the group — no bowl, no blade, a motor base that costs more than the machine. Buy it as a consumable, not as an appliance.
Skip this if you batch-cook for four or more. Nine cups turns one job into three, and the bowl is the part you cannot replace when it cracks.
Where Does the Hamilton Beach 10-Cup Earn $69.99?
In the cabinet. This is the August-salsa, November-breadcrumbs machine, and at $69.99 for the 70730J it is priced honestly for that life. Hamilton Beach publishes a 450-watt motor and a 10-cup bowl, and unlike the Ninja it will sell you a bowl for $27.99 and a chopping blade for $9.99.
The honest drawback is on TechGearLab’s chart in one number: 96 decibels, the loudest of the eight machines tested and 34.5 decibels above the Cuisinart. Its warranty is one year, and Hamilton Beach’s warranty page puts the freight on you in both directions — “you are responsible for all costs associated with returning the product to us and our returning a product or component under this warranty to you.” On a $69.99 machine, that is most of the point of a warranty gone.
Skip this if you will run it weekly, or if the machine lives anywhere near a sleeping house. Ninety-six decibels is not a background appliance.
Why Is the Breville Sous Chef 16 Last Here?
Because you cannot buy it. Breville’s own product page for the BFP820 opens with “This model has been discontinued. Need support or something new? We’ve got you.” and prints no price. Its manual is the best-documented of the four — the 12-cup liquid line, the 5.5-inch feed chute, a spec list that answers questions the others do not — and the machine is genuinely the strongest performer any of these testers put on a bench. TechGearLab’s 83 is the top score on its chart. That score belongs to BFP800CBXL, a different SKU from this one.
This is the named loser of the four, and it loses on availability rather than on merit, which is a distinction worth keeping straight. If you want a Breville today, the live model in this family is the BFP810 at $499.95, with a stated 1450-watt motor and the same 16-cup bowl — a different machine, a different price, and outside the scope of the four this page compares. Cross-checking a maker’s collection page before its product page takes one minute and would have caught this a year ago, the same way it caught the repair-parts gaps on four-slice toasters.
Skip this if you want a warranty claim to be possible. A discontinued machine bought used from a marketplace carries no consumer warranty from Breville at all.
Which One Would I Spend My Own Money On?
The Cuisinart, and the ledger is not close enough to need a tie-breaker — 85.8 against 56.9. But the interesting decision is the one below it. Hamilton Beach beats Ninja 56.9 to 50.6 on a $20 price difference, and it beats it for an unglamorous reason: you can buy the parts. A $69.99 machine you can rebuild for $37.98 outlives an $89.99 machine you cannot rebuild at all.
I have run enough cheap processors into the ground to have an opinion about which way that trade goes. The bowl always goes first, and it always goes on a Sunday.
Whichever way you go, open the maker’s own collection page and match the model number against the one in your cart before you pay. Three of the four numbers on this page failed that check.
Which Questions Come Up Most on These Four?
Does a 16-cup food processor hold 16 cups of soup?
No. Breville’s own manual for the Sous Chef 16 says not to fill the bowl above the 12-cup liquid level, and gives 10 cups for thick wet mixtures. That is 75.0 percent and 62.5 percent of the advertised figure. The advertised cup number on a food processor is a dry-shredding number, and the other three makers here publish no liquid line at all.
Is my Cuisinart Custom 14 part of the blade recall?
CPSC recall 17-050, announced 13 December 2016, lists the DFP-14 prefix among 22 model families and covers the riveted blade rather than the machine. The current DFP-14BCNY is not written out in the notice, and Cuisinart has told Consumer Reports that current same-prefix models do not use the recalled blade. A prefix match is not proof either way, so check the blade against Conair’s recall line before using an older unit.
Why does the same Breville manual say 1200W and 2000W?
Because the English and French sections of the BFP820 instruction manual print different figures for the same motor: “1200W induction motor” in one and 2000W in the other. Breville’s product page carries the 1200W number. I cannot resolve which is right from the maker’s own documents, so the ledger scores what is published rather than choosing between them.
More comparisons like this one in Kitchen & Cooking, including why a stand mixer’s wattage is not a number you can compare across brands.
