We put a range of machines to the test on a variety of produce. Who's thirsty for fresh fruits and veggies?
Laura Denby is a food writer and chef with six years of professional culinary experience. Find her work in Real Simple, Food Network, Better Homes & Gardens and more. Fruit Juice Making Machine
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Cold press juice is hot. (Sorry, we had to.) This method of extracting juice from fruits and veggies makes for an incredibly fresh taste, and places are selling it practically everywhere you look. But buying from a cold press juice shop gets very expensive, very quickly. The solution? Do your own juicing at home.
You could get an inexpensive citrus juicer, but that limits your options to lemons, limes, oranges, and the like. There are also centrifugal juicers, which can extract the juice from just about anything, by chopping it into tiny bits with a high-speed blade. But this heats up the juice, which can damage both nutrition and flavor. A cold press juicer (AKA a masticating juicer) is kind of the best of both worlds: It can make juice from all kinds of produce without sacrificing any freshness or taste.
The best cold press juicers get pricy, not to mention complicated, but we're here to help. We tested various leading models on a range of produce, making several different juices — and, importantly, cleaning up afterward. These machines are perfect for a breakfast drink like cantaloupe juice with ginger and lime, or to keep the cocktails flowing with the pineapple and passion fruit juices in the tropical rum punch.
This heavy-duty machine made the best-tasting, best-textured juice in our tests, and it did so quickly and efficiently.
It's expensive, and its narrow feed chute means you have to pre-cut ingredients before juicing.
Thanks to amazing results with all four of our tests, it wasn't hard to name this Omega model the best cold press juicer overall. The juices tasted vibrant and were almost perfectly smooth. The pulp came out driest of all the machines and we got the second-highest quantity of juice, meaning this is a very efficient machine, but it was still among the fastest-working.
The VSJ843QR is solidly built, with parts that fit together cleanly and enough weight to stay firmly in place while running. The vertical orientation gives it a fairly small countertop footprint, though the tall chute might not fit inside a cabinet. This juicer has plenty of power to take on tough ingredients, but you'll have to manually cut up many items before they go into the narrow chute. If you're a juice fan who's ready to invest in a cold press at home, it's a great choice.
Dimensions: 8.5 x 7 x 15.5 inches | Weight: 12.5 pounds | Warranty: 15 years | Power: 150 watts
Food & Wine / Fred Hardy II
A mesh-free filter and other clever design features make this juicer effective and incredibly easy to clean.
It struggled with leafy vegetables, making green juice that was a little chunky.
If you're making a glass of fresh juice for breakfast every day, you're probably going to spend a lot of time rinsing, scrubbing, and brushing all of your juicer's many parts. Not so much with the Hurom H101. It eschews screens in favor of a special grooved filter that effectively removes pulp, and the spouts and chamber both have features to help ensure nothing sticks. You can't put any of this juicer's parts in the dishwasher, but you also won't need to, as a dip in warm water was all they required in testing.
The Hurom H101 also produced some of the tastiest carrot-orange and strawberry-pineapple juices in the Lab, thanks to its slow rotation and gentle squeezing. It struggled, however, with green juice. It didn't effectively extract liquid from kale, and bits of leaves wound up in the finished drink.
Overall, this machine is quiet and sturdy, and it requires minimal pre-juicing prep work. The easy-clean design makes it a time-saver, and it made excellent juices, though it struggled with leafy stuff. It's on the expensive side, but if you're a fan of non-green juices it might be the model for you.
Dimensions: 15.98 x 14.02 x 13.31 inches | Weight: 20.5 pounds | Warranty: 10 years (motor), 5 years (other parts) | Power: 150 watts
Food & Wine / Fred Hardy II
Food & Wine / Fred Hardy II
Food & Wine / Fred Hardy II
Food & Wine / Fred Hardy II
Food & Wine / Fred Hardy II
This simple, lightweight juicer works beautifully for its low price.
It's slower and doesn't extract as much juice as more expensive counterparts.
Cold-press juicers are fairly pricy compared to the centrifugal kind, but Ninja's NeverClog offers great performance at a surprisingly low cost. It was powerful enough to crush carrots, kale, ginger, and apples with no issues in testing, and we were impressed with how easy it was to feed everything in. Juice yields were good with everything except carrots, where the Ninja left a lot of liquid in the pulp. It's extremely lightweight, which makes moving and storing it easier than the more cumbersome machines on our list of faves.
The NeverClog name is indeed accurate: We never had to stop or reverse the motor mid-juicing, and a trip through the dishwasher was sufficient to remove any bits of pulp from all the parts (except the motor base, which you can wipe off with a sponge). For fans of chunkier orange or pineapple juices, there are separate high- and low-pulp inserts that let you choose your texture, too.
This machine is just slow. It took twice as long as luxury cold-press models, to extract slightly less juice. If you don't want to pay an arm and a leg for a heavy-duty machine, the Ninja could be a great choice.
Dimensions: 12.11 x 7.15 x 15.93 inches | Weight: 7.93 pounds | Warranty: 60-day money back guarantee | Power: 150 watts
Food & Wine / Fred Hardy II
This gadget produced the most consistent, smooth juice that was free of pulp — even with leafy kale.
It's on the pricy side, and it got fairly loud when dealing with tough ingredients.
Greens can be the hardest thing for a masticating juicer to deal with: They're simultaneously tough and fibrous, and too thin for the auger to get a good grip and effective crushing. The Nama J1 is a very well-designed machine that had no trouble making smooth green juice, and quickly. There were no unpleasant kale bits in the finished product, but it still had a lovely jade color and vegetal flavor. In all of our tests, we got consistently smooth juices. The pulp came out among the driest of all the machines, indicating great yields and very effective filtration.
The J1 also includes three different strainers that add layers of versatility, allowing you to make nut milk, smoothies, and sorbet in addition to plain ol' juice. It scored high for ease of cleanup, thanks to well-fitting parts that don't let any bits escape from the easy-to-wash containers and screens. The only place anything remained stuck was in the pulp chute, and the included cleaning brush/shovel tool did a great job clearing it out. We appreciated that the parts are clearly labeled for simple assembly and disassembly, too.
Nama makes really good juicers, and they're priced to match. The J1 isn't cheap. (It did, however, perform equally to its even-more-expensive cousin, the Nama J2.) Our only other real complaint is that the machine can get rather noisy when it's taking down tough items like kale or whole apples. But for lovers of green juice, you won't find a better option.
Dimensions: 8.8 x 7.1 x 16 inches | Weight: 14.1 pounds | Warranty: 10 years (motor), 2 years (other parts) | Power: 150 watts
Food & Wine / Fred Hardy II
This powerful and intuitive juicer made quick work of even tough-to-juice carrots and ginger.
It's the single most expensive machine we tested.
Kuvings juicers are all powerful, versatile, and technologically advanced. And the REVO830 is the brand's latest invention, with a series of clever features to make it even more effective. Its large main chute can handle apples or other whole produce with no chopping needed, but it has a second chute for long or fibrous items. This "Auto-Cut Chute" has a rotating knife at the bottom to slice things like carrots, celery, or ginger into small pieces that are easier to crush and juice. The machine also comes with attachments for smoothies, sorbets, and nut milk to further expand its abilities.
The REVO830 did well on all our tests, yielding the single highest amount of apple juice and producing consistent texture and fresh flavor. There's no need to prep fruit or vegetables ahead of time — you can simply drop in whole ingredients and let the surprisingly quiet motor do the work. It's fairly easy to clean, too, but we did notice that it doesn't do a great job of pushing the pulp out of its waste chute, and you might need some extra brushing and scrubbing. We appreciated the included strainer-cleaning tool, though, which automates the tedious process of getting all the tiny bits out of the screen.
Just be prepared to drop a lot of money on this versatile luxury juicer: It's the single most expensive unit we tested.
Dimensions: 10 x 8 x 19 inches | Weight: 16.5 pounds | Warranty: 15-year limited | Power: 240 watts
Food & Wine / Fred Hardy II
This simple, inexpensive machine produces excellent juice with a small countertop footprint.
Its juice yields aren't great, and its lack of a no-drip spout makes it messy.
The Amzchef might be no-frills, but it's a solid choice for the money, especially if you're only looking to make a glass or two of juice at a time and don't have a lot of kitchen space to spare. It was able to take down all the ingredients we threw at it — we did have to push down pretty hard on carrots, but even they made it through.
Although this juicer doesn't have any extra features, it performs its basic functionalities well. Our test juices all had fresh flavor and excellent texture. Very little pulp made it into the juices, but the downside to that is that a lot of juice stayed in the pulp: The Amzchef's yields were lower than its more expensive competition. We also lamented its lack of a drip-free spout, as we got sticky dribbles on the counter and base of the machine.
Dimensions: 14.25 x 11.61 x 7.48 inches | Weight: 9.24 pounds | Warranty: 1 year | Power: 150 watts
Food & Wine / Fred Hardy II
Food & Wine / Fred Hardy II
Food & Wine / Fred Hardy II
This powerful machine's large feeding chute and extra-large capacity make it ideal for someone looking to prep a big batch of juice for the week.
It takes up a lot of space on the countertop and doesn't do a great job with small batches.
Juicing takes some time-consuming setup, so if you're going to do it, why not do a lot of it at once? The extra-large and super-powerful Juice Fountain Cold is ideal for someone looking to make juice in bulk. Its pitcher, sealable for storage, holds 70 ounces — enough for the whole week, or the whole family. We love how the extra-large feeding chute lets you add whole or mostly whole ingredients, and the 850-watt motor is far more powerful than competitors. We were impressed in testing by how quickly it produced juice. The construction feels sturdy and stable, and we found it particularly easy to assemble.
This is not the best choice, though, to make one glass at a time. It did quite poorly with small batches of juice; the bottom of the bowl sits slightly below the spout and won't let first few ounces of liquid separate out.
Dimensions: 15.75 x 7 x 15.75 inches | Weight: 10.4 pounds | Warranty: 1-year limited | Power: 850 watts
Food & Wine / Fred Hardy II
This little powerhouse does a solid job at an entry-level price.
It can't make very much juice at once, and it had a lot of trouble with kale.
You don't have to invest a fortune and a whole corner of your kitchen to get fresh cold press juice at home; the Dash Deluxe is a great way to make a delicious serving or two at a time without dropping a ton of cash. It's a tiny machine that'll take up next to no space, but the downside of that is its itty-bitty feed chute, which will require some pre-chopping.
Don't sleep on the Dash Deluxe's power, however. It did a great job in three of our four tests, especially on fibrous ginger, an ingredient even the highest-priced machines struggled with. Its carrot and apple juices came out flavorful and smooth, albeit with some pulp left behind. It also comes with a frozen-dessert attachment, a nice bonus that few low-cost juicers include.
This machine's big weakness was with kale. It took 14 minutes to get through a full test batch, and that yielded one of the smallest amounts of juice, which was rather gritty. If you're a green juice fan, you're better off with something higher-end. It's also not the best choice for making lots of juice at a time, as you'll have to keep stopping to empty out the small pulp receptacle.
Dimensions: 3.9 x 4.9 x 14.23 inches | Weight: 3.4 pounds | Warranty: 2 years (registration required) | Power: 130 watts
Food & Wine / Fred Hardy II
Food & Wine / Fred Hardy II
The Nama J1 Cold Press Juicer produced consistently high-quality results across all of our tests. We loved the smooth juice that it produced effortlessly, and we had no trouble assembling or cleaning it. This is a great option for people who like to have fresh juice on hand regularly.
Food & Wine / Fred Hardy II
The picks above take into account the results of two separate sets of testing: one of just cold press juicers, and another for our overall best juicers roundup, of both centrifugal and masticating models. In total, we put 27 different cold press juicers through their paces in tests to evaluate:
We used each juicer to make a series of identical juices: carrot-orange, strawberry-pineapple, and green juice in one test, and carrot, kale, ginger, and apple juices in the other. We chose hard, fibrous, and leafy test ingredients, three categories that tend to be the most difficult for cold press machines to deal with. We measured the amounts of juice and pulp each machine put out, keeping track of how long it took to complete the tests, how much noise it generated while doing so, and whether we needed to pre-cut the ingredients to fit them in the chute. Then we taste-tested each juice, noting smoothness of texture and how much pulp or grit it contained.
Between tests, we broke down and cleaned each machine following its user manual. We noted if pulp built up in any hard-to-reach areas, if drips and dribbles escaped from between joints, and whether we needed especially intense scrubbing to clean any parts.
After completing all of our performance tests and evaluations, we revealed the retail prices of the machines and rated them on overall value.
Food & Wine / Fred HardyII
In theory, a juicer will keep putting out juice as long as you keep feeding in produce, but the size of its juice and pulp containers determine how often you'll have to stop and start. If you're looking to make gallons of juice per batch, you don't want to have to empty out the containers over and over again, but if you only need a glass or two at a time, a smaller machine won't be as much of a problem.
The size of the feed chute also helps determine how quickly a juicer works. Larger chutes allow you to throw foods in whole, while smaller ones require time-consuming chopping, peeling, or coring beforehand.
Food & Wine / Fred Hardy II
Juicing can be a messy job, and cleaning your machine might take just as much time as actually using it. Lots of juicers have dishwasher-safe parts, but you may only need a quick rinse in the sink, depending on your unit's design. If the parts don't fit together well, you're likely to get splatters and leaks onto the counter, while better-built juicers keep the mess on the inside.
It's important to clean your juicer soon after using it so bits of food don't dry and get stuck on — that'll save a lot of labor no matter what model you use. Some machines also come with brushes or other special custom cleaning tools, which can be especially helpful for mesh screens that tend to get clogged with food bits. And no matter what you do, don't submerge the motor base in water! If it gets sticky, you can wipe it down with a sponge or paper towel.
Yes. "Masticating juicer," "slow juicer," and "cold press juicer" are all terms for the same kind of machine. Cold press juicers rely on a slowly rotating auger mechanism to crush (or masticate) ingredients and then separate the juice from the solids.
Unlike a cold press juicer, a centrifugal juicer uses a spinning blade to chop produce into tiny bits. This method makes juice more quickly, but the high-speed motion generates heat that can damage both flavor and nutrients in the finished juice. Centrifugal juicers are generally somewhat cheaper than cold press models, but they can offer less-fresh-tasting results.
Really anything that has juice in it! You can make juice from fruits like apples, oranges, and pears; vegetables like celery, cucumbers, and kale; herbs of virtually any kind; zingy ginger; or whatever delicious combinations you can dream up. It's often tricky to juice ingredients with lower water content like leafy greens or wheatgrass, especially with a lower-end machine. If you feed in the greens at the same time as a juicy fruit like pineapple or apple, that can help your results.
In general, most cold press juice will last three to five days if refrigerated properly, in a glass storage container. Exposure to oxygen degrades fresh juice, so you should use an airtight lid. You should not use plastic, as the acids in juice can degrade the material. Remember that home-pressed juice will not last as long as store-bought juices, which are pasteurized and sometimes contain preservatives.
Cuisinart CSJ-300 Easy Clean Slow Juicer (Amazon)
This machine has mesh-free filter setup that is indeed very easy to clean. It's also relatively inexpensive. Its juices, however, came out somewhat thicker than its competitors. We didn't consider that a good thing, but you might like your juice more smoothie-like.
Greenstar Elite Jumbo Twin Gear Slow Masticating Juicer (Home Depot)
This juicer is the biggest one we tested, and it's also a complete one-stop shop. In addition to juice, the Greenstar Elite can make pasta, bread, frozen desserts, and more. Added functionality means it's more expensive, takes up more counter space, and is more complicated to use, though, so we don't recommend this for novice juicers.
Breville The Juice Fountain Cold Plus (Breville)
This machine is even more powerful and has an even larger feed chute than the standard Juice Fountain Cold above. It's a fantastic machine that can make a ton of juice at a time, but it costs $100 more than its sibling and doesn't add a heck of a lot in terms of performance.
Kuvings EVO820 Whole Slow Juicer (Amazon)
One step down from the Kuvings REVO830 model we named our best splurge, this is a luxury machine that works incredibly for juice and can also make nut milks, smoothies, sorbets, and more. The big difference is that this model lacks the REVO830's separate auto-chopping chute, which really helps with carrots, celery, and similar ingredients.
Omega Cold Press 365 Masticating Juicer (Amazon)
The Omega produced results that were on the thicker side but were flavorful and smooth nonetheless, at an excellent price. It's easy to assemble and dishwasher-safe, but we noticed some rocking and swaying in use, and some dripping from seams between parts.
These juicers disappointed us in testing for various reasons, from being unable to crush ingredients, to filtering juices poorly, to leaving behind hard-to-clean bits, to undeservedly high prices.
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