What Juicer Should I Buy? – A Juicer Buyers Guide!

Ok. You’re convinced. You are ready to start juicing, but you don’t have a juicer yet. Or you have a juicer, but you aren’t sure if it’s a good one. Juicers are easy to find. You can buy them online easily. You can even find them at big box stores. But there are dozens of different brands and types to choose from. In this article, I’ve created a juicer buyers guide where I show you how to choose the best juicer for you!

It’s Time To Get Juicing!

Juicers are a lot like shoes. Depending upon the type of activity that you are engaging in, you’ll select an appropriate shoe that fits for the demands of the activity. For example, if you are going to a formal dinner, you probably won’t wear your insulated hiking boots. Or conversely, if you’re going for a run, you won’t wear your sleek dress shoes.

So depending on what your goals are for juicing, you will want to select a juicer that is perfect for what goals you have in mind.

What Is Your Goal With Juicing?

This is a question that you should ask before you start your search for a juicer. There are various goals that you might have depending on what health situation brought you to juicing in the first place.

Here are some points to consider when making your juicer selection:

• Nutrient extraction
• Speed
• Noise level
• Suitability for travel
• Ability to make nut butter
• High juice yield
• Top juicer for greens and herbs
• Easy to clean
• Heal a specific disease
• Ability to make nice cream (frozen fruit ice cream)
• Pulp levels
• Longest juicer warranty
• Availability of replacement parts

I encourage you to think about which characteristics above are most important to you. What might be a great juicer for me, might not be a great juicer for you and your needs! Rank them to help you prioritize which juicer is best for you as you look at juicer reviews.

Types Of Juicers

Let’s break it down into the three main types of juicers: centrifugal & slow masticating & hydraulic press.

1) Centrifugal Juicers

Centrifugal juicers use fast-spinning blades to cut the produce that you are juicing and spin the juice through a screen to separate the juice from the fiber. These juicers typically allow you to make your juice faster than a masticating or slow, cold-press-style juicer. That can be a benefit if you are always on a busy, super-crazy schedule!

However, the advantage of speed can be offset by what happens nutritionally when you use a centrifugal juicer. Centrifugal juicers oxidize the juice through the high-speed cutting and spinning motion that they utilize to extract the juice. Why is that bad? Well, as soon as you juice your fruits or vegetables, the clock starts ticking in regard to the nutritional content of the juice. The more oxygen that is incorporated into the juice, the faster the juice will lose its nutritional value.

If you plan on consuming your juice very quickly after you consume it, you’ll still be getting a lot of the nutrients. If you plan on making your juice and storing it until you are ready to drink it, you’ll be missing out on nutrition that might be otherwise retained if you were using a juicer that didn’t oxidize the juice. If you feel like the benefit of speed of juicing outweighs the nutritional aspect, you can simply juice more frequently. Juice 4-6 liters once per day and you can usually have enough juice to last you for the day.

Due to the oxidation and nutrient loss with juices made with a centrifugal juicer, I recommend that you keep juices topped up and sealed in the refrigerator for no longer than 24 hours. Personally, I don’t enjoy the flavor as much from centrifugal-style juicers as much as I do juices made with slow, cold-press, masticating style juicers. But that is my personal experience and preference.

Centrifugal juicers tend to be better at juicing fruits and veggies OTHER than greens. They will juice greens, but not with the efficiency of a masticating style juicer. I personally feel that juicing greens is key to optimal health. If you don’t care too much about the reduced ability to juice greens then a centrifugal juicer can work just fine.

If you feel like a centrifugal juicer is for you, here is the best centrifugal juicer that I recommend:

To summarize, here are the pros and cons of the centrifugal styles of juicers:

Centrifugal Juicer Pros:

• Very fast juicing
• Less produce prep

Centrifugal Juicer Cons:

• Very loud
• Low juice yield (Especially fibrous produce like greens, celery, ginger, etc.)
• Oxidizes the juice
• Short juice storage window (Only 24 Hours)
• Won’t make nut butter, sorbets, nice cream, or nut milk
• Not optimal for travel
• Hard to clean

No matter which type of juicer you use, it is best nutritionally to consume juices as soon as possible. That said, one of the tricks I like to use to make sure that I don’t succumb to cravings when on a Solid Food Vacation or Juice Feast is to make A LOT OF JUICE! By making more juice than you need in a day, you’ll be WAY less tempted to give into cravings and eat solid food or worse yet, solid junk food! By A LOT OF JUICE, I mean enough juice to get you through 3 days. When on a Juice Feast or Solid Food Vacation, that can equate to 10 – 20 liters of juice. How can you make this much juice and be sure that you are still getting great nutrition? Enter the slow, cold-press, masticating style juicer……

2) Cold-Press / Slow / Masticating Juicers

The masticating juicer works through a slow chewing and pressing motion. The auger / chewing mechanism spins very slowly. Way more slowly than the centrifugal-style juicers. Because of the method of action, the masticating juicer is my preferred type of juicer for the following reasons:

Slow Masticating Juicer Pros:

• Do not heat or oxidize the juice
• Higher nutrition, enzymes, and phytonutrient extraction
• Juice greens well
• High juice yield
• Some models can make nut butter, fruit sorbets, nice cream, and/or nut milk
• Typically quieter

As with every style of juicer, there are also reasons why you might not like the masticating style:

Slow Masticating Juicer Cons:

• Slower juicing
• Longer produce prep time (due to typically smaller feed chutes)
• Sometimes have more parts to clean

Within the masticating juicer category, there are three types. They are pretty self-explanatory…the single auger, the twin gear, and the vertical juicer.

a) Horizontal Single Auger Style

The horizontal single auger juicer has one corkscrew-shaped auger that pulls the produce down and into the pressing chamber. As the produce is pushed forward into the pressing chamber, the juice is squeezed by force of the auger pressing the juice on the downstream end of the pressing chamber. These juicers don’t have the benefit of the “teeth grinding” effect that the twin gear juicers possess, but they still press the juice without oxidation. They typically don’t have quite as high of nutritional yield, or juice yield as the twin gear style. Compared to centrifugal-style juicers, however, they are definitely better in juice and nutritional yield.

My two top picks for the horizontal single auger-style juicers are:

Next, let’s move on to the twin gears…

b) Twin Gear Style

The twin gear horizontal juicers, in my opinion, are the best option based on the quality of juice, nutrient extraction, juice yield, and durability in their price range.

The twin gear juicers are very similar to the single auger juicers. The main difference is that instead of one auger serving as the press, there are two gears that actually masticate (or chew up ) the produce being juiced before pressing it with the front end of the auger.

With the twin gear mastication, the cell walls of the produce are opened to a larger degree than with the single auger juicer. This allows greater extraction of the vital nutrition that we are seeking to bring into the juice through juicing. Vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and beneficial phytonutrients all get extracted at a larger rate with the twin gear juicers.

My favorite twin-gear juicers that I recommend are:

c) Vertical Style

The vertical juicers take the slow RPMs of the single auger horizontal juicers and put it into a more compact, vertical, space-saving package!

Vertical juicers utilize the same concept of a single auger pressing mechanism. The difference is that the juicing auger spins vertically with a cutting edge on the top of the auger. As the produce is fed in through the top of the feed chute, the leading edge of the auger cuts the produce and pulls it vertically down into the juicing bowl. The juice is collected in the juicing bowl while the pulp is ejected out a side pulp chute.

These juicers tend to require less pushing of the produce down into the feed chute. They tend to be a bit more moveable and portable than their horizontal counterparts based on their size.

Most of these vertical juicers will juice at the same speed as a horizontal juicer. There is one juicer that is an exception to this, however, and that’s the Nama J2.

My favorite verticle juicer that I recommend is:

The Nama J2 is the fastest, most convenient vertical juicer that I’ve ever used and trialed. Its batching hopper allows you to add whole or minimally chopped ingredients, close the lid, and walk away. It chops, feeds, and juices your ingredients on its own!

Juicer Test Kitchen Insider Tip: Check out my full review of the Nama J2 and see why it’s one of the top juicers that I recommend.

Another great feature of vertical juicers is that they can be quite compact. If you travel for work or leisure and you don’t want to miss your juicing habit while you are traveling, a compact vertical juicer can keep you on track!

My favorite travel juicer is:

Not only is the Shine my go-to travel juicer, but it’s also a great juicer for its price.

Let’s move on to the 2-stage hydraulic press juicers!

3) Hydraulic Press Juicers

If nutrient extraction is your ultimate, number one goal coupled with high juice yield, then the hydraulic press model is a type of juicer that you should consider. For the home juicer, this is the creme de la creme of juicer styles!

The juicers are essentially a three-stage process:

1. Produce is milled into a pulp through a hammer mill.
2. The pulp is placed in a single-use or re-usable pressing cloth and positioned on a pressing platform.
3. A hydraulic press squeezes the pulp firmly with an incredible amount of pressure to press out the juice.

These juicers are tremendously amazing at pressing the highest amount of juice in terms of yield while also extracting very high nutrition levels. These juicers are one of the best choices if you have a severe health condition and need to be guaranteed the highest level of concentrated, medicinal level of nutrition.

A downside to these juicers is that they are larger and require a designated area. They are more involved to clean. They are also the most expensive option for a home juicer.

The best hydraulic press juicer that I recommend is:

4) Citrus Juicers

If you’re like me, you’ll love to consume A LOT of fresh citrus juice. Especially in the wintertime, I drink a ton of fresh orange juice and grapefruit juice. If you have one of the juicers described above, you can certainly make citrus juice with it. The downside is that you have to remove the peel of the citrus prior to juicing it. Not a big deal, but that takes some time. One way to speed up the process if you plan on juicing lots of citrus is to get a juicer specific for oranges, grapefruits, lemons, and limes. Let’s take a look at a few citrus juicer options.

There are two electric citrus juicers that I recommend:

I personally have both of these models and have run many, many cases of citrus through both with no complaints whatsoever.

The Tribest Citristar is very similar to the Breville with the main difference being a lack of the overhead press arm and cup. This means that you have to physically hold the fruit on the reamer while it juices the fruit. Not a real big deal, just a little less convenient. It’s also quite a bit less expensive than the Breville model.

If you’re looking for a manual, non-electric model, I recommend:

The Tribest MJP-105 juicer is the best manual citrus juicer that I have ever used and trialed. Not only does it juice all sizes of citrus from limes to large grapefruits, but it is also designed to juice pomegranates!

It has an ergonomically designed handle with heavy-duty gearing to allow 200 lbs of pressing power with very little force needed from the operator. In other words, it’s a cinch to get all the juice with very little effort. Also, since it’s manual, no electricity is needed!

And The Winner Is…..

The choice is up to you! No matter which juicer you select above, they will all do an awesome job! I always like to say, however, that the best juicer is the juicer that you use EVERY DAY! Hold that vision of health in mind every day. Use your juicer as if your life depends on it. It will pay health dividends for you and your family for many years to come!

Let me know what juicer you have or decided to buy in the comment section below.

If you have any specific juicer questions, post those as well. I am happy to help in any way that I can! Stay juicy!!!