Philips Pasta and Noodle Maker Review

We purchased the Philips Pasta and Noodle Maker so our reviewer could put it to the test in her kitchen. Keep reading for our full product review.

When it comes to taste and texture, there’s a big difference between fresh homemade pasta and dried, boxed pasta products. While you can find fresh pasta in some grocery stores, it’s generally more expensive than using boxed pasta or making your own. However, many home chefs are deterred from making fresh pasta because it can be labor intensive—unless you have a product like the Philips Pasta and Noodle Maker. 

Electric pasta makers can greatly cut down on the time it takes to make fresh pasta—a process that involves measuring and mixing ingredients, kneading the dough, letting the dough rest, and then rolling, shaping, and cutting the dough into your desired shapes. The Philips Pasta and Noodle Maker takes care of all these steps for you, extruding both small and large batches of pasta dough. Plus, the appliance gets rave customer reviews for simplifying the pasta making process. 

To see if this pasta maker lives up to the hype, we used it to prepare spaghetti, fettuccine, and penne, and we evaluated whether its automated process and ease of cleaning are worth the high price tag. Here’s our full review.

Design: Bulky but intelligent

The moment we picked up the box that the Philips Pasta and Noodle Maker arrived in, we knew we were working with a heavy-duty appliance. This pasta maker is bulky, weighing in at just over 15 pounds. In our average-sized kitchen, it fit on the counter without issue, but it did take up a lot of valuable space. Because of its size, we don’t see ourselves storing it on the counter, but it’s definitely too large to fit in our cabinets or drawers. For this reason, those with small kitchens may have a hard time finding space for this pasta maker.

Although the pasta maker comes with four pasta-shaping discs—spaghetti, fettuccine, penne, and lasagna—we were excited to learn that additional dies are available, as well. We wish we’d been able to choose which pasta shapes were included with the pasta maker, as this would have allowed us to pick ones we’d use the most. For instance, we don’t see ourselves using the lasagna die too often.

One of our favorite aspects of the design is that you can store the pasta dies and measuring cups within the unit. The dies and cleaning tools tuck away into a hidden drawer in the bottom of the machine, and the measuring cups fit into the main unit.

As for the control panel, we found it easy to read and highly intuitive to operate. There’s an on/off button and a start/pause button. We liked having the ability to pause the process to switch out dies, as this allowed us to make several shapes of pasta from one batch of dough. There’s also a serving size button that lets you choose between a single vs. double pasta batch, as well as a program button that lets you tell the machine to mix, knead, and extrude dough or just extrude pre-made dough you’ve prepared.

Philips didn’t skimp on safety, either. The pasta maker will automatically turn off if it starts to overheat, and it won’t operate if the lid or die isn't securely attached.

Performance: Takes the mess out of pasta-making

A visual guide printed on the inside flaps of the packaging made it easy to get the Philips Pasta and Noodle Maker set up and ready to work for the first time. Setting up and taking apart the pasta machine was fast and easy once we read the directions, taking maybe a minute or two.

Then, we got down to business. We made several batches of fresh pasta, using the egg pasta dough recipe included in the machine’s recipe book. We used King Arthur all-purpose flour and Bob’s Red Mill whole wheat flour to create both white and whole wheat spaghetti, fettuccine, and penne noodles. We actually ran out of white flour during one batch of pasta, so we improvised and used half white flour and half whole wheat flour, and we still ended up with delicious, perfectly shaped spaghetti.

Measuring the flour and liquid was foolproof, thanks to the included measuring cups, which are designed to work with the machine's recipes. We especially appreciated the markings on the liquid measuring cup—one side is marked for both single and double batches of water-only pasta dough, and the other is marked with how many eggs and liquid to use for both single and double batches of egg pasta dough. 

We’d have to say the hardest part about using this machine is pouring the liquid mixture into the small openings on the lid. After making a bit of a mess with the first batch, we learned to lightly beat our eggs first, pour in the egg and water mixture slowly, and then use our fingers or a small spatula to help thicker bits pass through the openings. Once the liquid was added to the flour, all we had to do was sit back and enjoy watching the machine mix and knead the dough. Then came the really fun part: watching the machine extrude noodles and cutting them to our desired length.

No matter which pasta die we selected, the first inch or so of dough extruded from the machine looked a little roughly formed, and at first, we worried we’d have crumbly noodles. However, the noodle shape quickly improved from there, forming beautiful pasta shapes, and the noodles easily cut away from the die using the included tool.

Our favorite dies to use were the spaghetti and fettuccine shapes. It’s a bit more work to use the penne and lasagna dies, but it’s still very doable. Penne requires more frequent cutting than longer noodles, and the lasagna noodles must be uncurled and flattened after cutting.

While this pasta maker does make noise, we were too busy having fun watching and cutting the noodles to be bothered by it! (For reference, it’s much less noisy than, say, a blender.) It works quickly, too—a small batch of whole wheat spaghetti took about 10 minutes, and a large batch of fettuccine took around 15 minutes. 

We were surprised to learn fresh pasta cooks faster than boxed. Our spaghetti cooked in about 5 minutes, while thicker fettuccine and penne took about 6 or 7 minutes. As for the taste, we may never return to boxed pasta again! We enjoyed the light, fresh taste and texture of our homemade pasta. 

Overall, we loved using this pasta maker. It eliminated any intimidation we felt about making fresh pasta, and we see ourselves using this appliance often now that we know how quickly it puts homemade pasta on the table.

Cleaning: Not too bad with a few tricks

There are quite a few parts that need to be cleaned each time this pasta maker is used, including the mixing arm, the dough tub and lid, the cover, and the pasta dies. Luckily, they’re all easy to wash by hand and also listed as dishwasher safe. We chose to hand wash everything, since it gave us greater control in making sure leftover dough was removed from each nook and cranny.

If you let the parts sit for a few minutes after use, any remaining dough will dry out and be much easier to remove and clean. Soaking the parts in warm, soapy water can also help loosen bits of dough that have dried out too much. 

The spaghetti and fettuccine dies each have their own plastic covers that are designed to remove leftover pieces of dough from the small extrusion holes. Using these made cleaning the dies even easier, as the bits of excess dough popped right out.

Price: An investment 

The Philips Pasta and Noodle Maker that we tested retails for around $300. (Philips also has a newer model available that features automatic weighing technology for measuring ingredients.) Regardless of which model you choose, this is one of the more expensive electric pasta makers available, and it easily costs 2 to 4 times more than high-end manual pasta makers. 

However, we think the ease of use of this electric pasta maker makes it worth the price tag. You can’t beat the convenience of a pasta maker that does all the work for you, saving time and energy so you can get your recipes on the table faster. The machine also comes with a 1-year warranty, but for the price, we think it should be covered by the manufacturer for longer.

Philips Pasta and Noodle Maker vs. Marcato Atlas Pasta Machine 

The Marcato Atlas Pasta Machine is another top-rated pasta maker, but this one has a manual design. This high-end manual model will cost you about $70—significantly less than the Philips—but even a top-of-the-line manual pasta maker requires you to mix and knead pasta dough by hand. 

The Marcato is easy to clean and is made of high-quality chrome steel. It can roll dough into 10 different thicknesses and comes with cutters for fettuccine and tagliolini with other attachments sold separately. The choice between electric and manual pasta makers comes down to your budget and how much time you have to dedicate to making fresh pasta. If money is no issue but time at a premium, the Philips is the clear winner, just for the added convenience.