The paper reports the experimental results of a vast test campaign conducted on synchronous reluctance motors of fractional power. These motors have relatively small geometric dimensions and it is important to evaluate the negative effects of lamination punching. Two twin 550 W motor prototypes have been produced, one with annealed magnetic cores. By means of an experimental-based comparison, the usefulness of the annealing thermal process on the final motor performance is discussed. Finally, to further prove the possibility to correctly account for the punching process in numerical models, the obtained measurement results have been compared with finite element method simulations, getting a good agreement.