Frequently Asked Questions
How We Tested and What We Tested
We put each juicer through the paces, funneling a mountain of vegetables and fruit through each device, testing especially its ability to handle both tough and fibrous veggies and softer produce such as greens and berries. We taste-test a classic green juice (apples, carrots, celery, cucumber, leafy greens) and a carrot-apple-ginger. We also compare both the yield and frothiness of the juice among different juicers, from the same recipe or the same fruit.
As of the most recent round of testing (January 2025), we also subjected each device to “torture tests” by intentionally not following instructions: loading produce in the wrong order, failing to chop ginger or pineapple, and leaving lemon in its peel, to see which devices spin fruitlessly or jam up sadly with fiber and pulp.
We test each device with a decibel meter, noting when it’s much louder or quieter than the 65 decibels one might reach during polite conversation. And we assess each device for ease of cleaning.
Some cocktails were also created, all in the name of research.
What Are the Different Types of Juicers?
Most all-purpose juicers fall into one of two types. Centrifugal juicers or masticating slow juicers that are also known as “cold press.”
A centrifugal juicer offers speed and a lot of power. In essence, it operates a bit like a blender with an added mesh screen to separate juice from pulp. A fast-rotating blade shreds fruit and produce and grinds them up against a mesh screen, often at a speed of thousands of revolutions per minute. Whatever passes through the mesh is the juice.
The power and speed mean centrifugal juicers are often whizzes at processing roots, pineapples, and other harder or dense-fibered produce that might pose difficulty for a slow-press auger. Softer fruits such as berries or leafy greens won’t do so well here, offering lower juice yields or even clogging up the mesh screens. Centrifugal juicers also tend to produce frothier juice, given the high agitation. That said, rotating quickly also makes them quick.
A masticating juicer—sometimes called a “slow” or “cold press” juicer—is both the newest trend in juicing and a much older technology. Basically, slow juicers operate on the same principle as an old-fashioned cider mill, slowly “chewing” and pressing fruit at a much lower rate, which some believe subjects fruits and vegetables to less oxidation and heat and thus preserves more of their essential character.
More verifiably, slow juicers tend to net higher juice yields and less waste than centrifugal juicers and are more effective in particular on leafy greens, soft fruits, and berries. They also add less froth and aeration to the resulting juice and produce more evenly textured results.
Masticating juicers were once loaded into a horizontal grinder and chute, which took some effort and required you to attend to juicing during the whole process. More recently, the advent of vertical masticating juicers from South Korea changed all that—with big hoppers one can load up, shrug, and depart from as the juicer does its work. The majority of juicers we’ve included in our guide, and all of our top picks, are now slow, masticating juicers.
We’ve also included a classic citrus juicer for simple orange, lemon, and lime drinks. These are quite simple devices and mostly the same as each other aside from style and ergonomics. Basically, you press a halved citrus fruit onto the ridged dome of a reamer and turn on the device. The reamer will twirl till the juice is juiced.
Masticating and centrifugal juicers can, of course, juice unpeeled citrus—and the added zest can be quite flavorful in lemon and lime juice. (Actually, this is my preference.) But to avoid such zestiness, you’d otherwise have to peel your citrus before loading into a juicing chamber. The easiest way to juice an orange will always be to halve it and press it against the ridged dome of a citrus juicer.
Are Juicers Good for Your Health?
Juicing is an easy way to add more fruit and vegetables to your diet, but it’s not a magic fix. There area few easy ways to maximize the health benefits and minimize drawbacks like blood sugar spikes.
WIRED contributing reviewer Emily Peck talked to Kylie Jane, nutritionist and founder of UK wellness brand SANA Wellness (unrelated to Korean juicer brand Sana Products), for her advice on healthy juicing. These are the five ways to ensure that juicing is a healthful addition to your life and avoid sugar overload.
- Balance fruit with vegetables: Fruits can contain a lot of sugar, so to combat this, make vegetables the base of your juices. Aim for a ratio of 80 percent vegetables to 20 percent fruits. Try spinach, kale, cucumber, celery, ginger, and beetroot. When adding fruits, go for those with a lower glycemic index like green apples, berries, and pears.
- Incorporate fiber: Juicing removes most of the fiber from fruits and vegetables, but it’s crucial for slowing down the absorption of sugar, aiding digestive health, and keeping you feeling full. Consider blending some of your juice with whole fruits or vegetables to keep some of the fiber intact. Alternatively, add a fiber supplement or incorporate some pulp in cooking or baking to ensure you’re getting enough.
- Add healthy fats: To stabilize blood sugar levels and increase satiety, incorporate sources of healthy fats into your juicing routine, such as avocado or coconut oil.
- Enhance with “superfoods”: Matcha and collagen are popular supplements that can easily be added to juices for an extra health boost. A teaspoon of matcha is rich in antioxidants and provides a gentle energy boost without the jitters of caffeine. Collagen may help with skin elasticity and hydration, as well as healthy hair, nails, and joints.
- Choose the right time to juice: Drinking juice on an empty stomach can sometimes cause blood sugar levels to spike more quickly. It’s often better to drink juice as part of a meal or after you’ve eaten some solid food, especially foods high in fiber, protein, or fats, to help slow down the absorption of sugar.
What Juicer Accessories Are Important?
Once you’ve decided what ingredients you want to put in your juicer—be it hard fruit or leafy vegetables—it will be easier to choose between a masticating “slow” juicer or a faster centrifugal design. Either way, it’s important to look for a juicer that comes with the relevant accessories you need. For tasks other than juicing—such as making nut milks and butters or ice creams and sorbets—you’ll need a juicer with the relevant food processing parts.
Also consider how much you’re willing to prep your ingredients. While there are regulations on the size of the feeding chute you can find due to safety reasons, some juicers are equipped to take a whole apple in one, which means less chopping. To make it even simpler, the most modern slow juicers, like those from Nama and Hurom, have self-feeding hoppers.
Dishwasher-safe parts are practical and save scrubbing time, but please be aware, even the easiest-cleaning juicers will take time and attention to clean. Pith, rind, pulp, and juice are sticky and messy. That’s just how it is.
A Reverse button is another useful feature to look for, especially with slow juicers. This allows you to reverse the juicing process should you overeagerly stack your juicer and ingredients gets stuck.
Other Juicers We Liked
Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
Tribest Slowstar AI Vertical Hopper Juicer for $600: I’m still testing the full capabilities of this brand-new device from Tribest—perhaps the most interesting new juicer of the past couple years. While the rest of the kitchen went smart, most juicers have remained resolutely analog. But this Tribest is a touchscreen device with preset spin speeds for individual vegetables and an AI-controlled function that modulates spin speed depending on the resistance of each produce item. This seems to work, making this thing an absolute beast for pitching through tough lemon peels or ginger. So far, so good! But there are compromises, including a smaller hopper size and a lower continuous operating time than my top picks. And while its screen-free hopper and feeder design is easy to clean, it’s still not as simple to clean and reassemble as the Hurom H70, and there are more parts to keep track of. And so upon initial testing, it remains just below the top-pick threshold, as I continue to suss out the device’s performance.
Photograph: Emily Peck
Kuvings AUTO10 Juicer for $730: The Kuvings AUTO10 is the original big-big-big juicer, a 3-liter hopper meant for large batches without ever having to load an extra carrot or an extra batch of spinach. The extra liter of space over the J2 will matter to some power users. The stainless steel blade and added strainers on the AUTO10 Plus upgrade are also nice touches. But this size comes at the expense of bulk and height—making this a difficult fit for most kitchen counters. While this Kuvings is a slightly higher-watt machine than the Nama J2, the versatility of the J2’s multiple hoppers and accessories, and its US-based customer service, gives the Nama a slight edge. But if you know you’re a big-batch juicer, you will not go wrong with this Kuvings.
Photograph: Emily Peck
Omega Juicers VSJ843RR for $399: WIRED contributing reviewer Emily Peck tested and recommended this juicer in previous versions of this guide, praising its excellent juice and high yield. But the device is less intuitive than the current generation of high-end juicers, leafy greens required a bit of fiddling to push through the feeder tube, and the device struggled with fibrous vegetables such as pineapple and broccoli.
Photograph: Emily Peck
Sana 707 Cold Press Juicer for $200: This is a classic horizontal juicer, the style in vogue for much of the previous century. It offers a lot of versatility, with attachments for anything from coffee to pasta. And it’s economical, as compared to hopper-style juicers. But as with other skinny-mouth feeders, you’ll find yourself hand-feeding carrots and celery and little apple wedges to make a juice batch.
Omega Time-Saving Batch Juicer for $226: WIRED had previously recommended this set-and-forget model from Omega as a budget slow juicer, despite lower performance than top picks that cost twice as much. But we’ve put it back on the testing bench after seeing some consumer feedback about durability, and for now we’re more likely to recommend fast-spinning centrifugal juicers as a budget option.
Omega Juicers Wide Mouth Cold Press Juicer JC4000 for $135: On the one hand, this Omega wide-mouth is quite economical for a slow cold-press juicer. But it’s also a lot of fiddly work to assemble it properly, it leaves a fair amount of pulp unextracted, and despite its “wide-mouth” name, requires a bit of chopping to feed fruits that aren’t carrots or celery through its vertical feeder—at least as compared to newer-model hoppers. It’ll get the job done, for not a lot of money. But you may not fall in love with it, and as a budget cold-press pick I prefer Omega’s batch model.
Gone but not forgotten: The Sana 868 wide-mouth vertical juicer ($300) is still gettable on Amazon, but it’s listed as discontinued on Sana’s site. The 868’s feeder-tube style is not in vogue at the moment, but the utility for this device comes from the low cost and the coarser screens that allow this device to be used for both juicers and smoothies. This said, if you mostly make smoothies in the morning, a blender is a whole lot easier to clean.
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