What brand of stand mixer do you recommend?

I love to bake cupcakes for my friends and family, and currently I bake a type of bread that doesn’t require kneading because I’m not very good at it, but I love to experiment and I’d love to get more adventurous with my baking and cooking. I have a pretty bad hand mixer and I’m kind of slow at baking in general so I’d love to get a stand mixer where I can let it do its thing while I move onto the next step, cutting down my time. I’d also like one powerful enough to knead bread.

I’ve always wanted a Kitchenaid, and have asked for a shiny red one for my 21st birthday present coming up. But as I was googling what the difference between the artisan and professional kitchenaid was, I came across some forums talking about completely different brands for stand mixers. No one in my family has owned a stand mixer and I guess kitchenaid gets more promotion on the cooking shows I watch or something because I’d honestly never considered other brands (also because it’s shiny, retro and comes in all different colours might be why it held my attention).

Now I’ve read that the Kitchenaid doesn’t have enough power to knead dough very well (the professional is 575W) and the newer ones have had problems since they stopped buying all parts from Hobart. The cuisinart and kenwood basic models are each around 800W.

Another factor is that I’m in Australia where the kitchenaid artisan costs $750 and the professional $800, and all the attachments quite expensive too (I’d love to eventually try to make my own pasta etc). The only problem is I can’t really find australian prices online for the Kenwood and Cuisinart models, so I’ll have to find a stockist to physically check.

In the meantine, I was wondering if anyone had any of these mixers or any other brands I don’t know of (bought in the last few years would be most helpful) that could tell me what they make with it and how they feel about it, and definitely if anyone’s used more than one kind if they could make a comparison for me? Thank-you!