The Best Juicer (2023), Tested and Reviewed

Feb 14, 2024

By Lukas Volger and Sam Stone

All products featured on Epicurious are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

To own a juicer is to lay claim to a certain lifestyle. There’s no way around the fact that this tool is an investment, and unless you’re already committed to a juicing habit, it can seem like a hard one to justify. Regardless of the range of other uses its manufacturer may advertise (smoothies! sorbet! nut milk!), a juicer is just a fancy, expensive, single-use appliance.

But what a seductive lifestyle it is! Just picture it, moving clear-headed from the bedroom to the kitchen after a blissful night’s sleep, where in a meditative state you transform a bounty of fresh produce into a vibrant, silky-smooth glass of green juice that’s neither sweet nor savory, just absurdly, deliriously nourishing.

The jury is actually out on that last bit. The science is somewhat split on whether juice is better for you than…non-juice. But we don’t mind because a well made juice is still an absolute pleasure to drink. Good, fresh juice should have the texture of liquid velvet, and taste bright and vibrant, and we’re continually amazed by how tasting different vegetables and fruits in a juiced format can reveal their hidden flavors, leading us to new ideas in our cooking. And beyond serving such juices by the glass, fresh fruit and vegetable juice can find all sorts of uses in the kitchen, as an ingredient in homemade soups, pilafs, dressings, and sauces, or in cocktails.

But with hundreds of very different models to choose from at staggeringly varied price points, it can be overwhelming to know where to begin when you’re shopping for one. We’ve tested dozens of juicers over the years and while all the juicers we tested succeeded in making juice, some of them do a markedly better job at it than others. Read on for our top picks, plus a few helpful tips on where to start in your own juicing journey.

The best juicer overallThe best budget juicerThe best centrifugal juicerSlow juicers vs. centrifugal juicersHow we testedWhat we looked forOther juicers we testedThe takeawayJuice recipes we love

If you’re after a cutting-edge juicer that’s maximally hands-off, requires minimal produce prep, makes brightly flavored and smoothly textured juices, is quick to assemble and disassemble, is easy to clean, and has a sleek, attractive design, the Nama J2 Cold Press Juicer is for you. We absolutely loved this juicer.

Why do we love it so much? First off, it delivers on the promise of its self-feeding hopper design. Most juicers, whether slow or centrifugal (this is a slow one), require you to feed ingredients through a narrow chute, sometimes forcefully with a tamper, which takes a not-negligible amount of prep work and active time feeding the produce through. Nama’s hopper, on the other hand, looks more like a blender pitcher, with a lid opening that’s just as wide. This means you don’t need to trim fruits and vegetables down to small pieces nearly as much as you do with other juicers we tested. And more importantly, you can pile everything into the hopper (they recommend layering it in with soft produce in the bottom and hard ones at the top), flip the lid closed, then simply switch the machine so that you start other morning tasks — no need to manually feed produce in, piece by piece.

The juice it yields is foam-free, beautifully blended, lusciously smooth, and has no stray chunks of vegetable debris. (It comes with a smoothie filter that allows more of the pulp through, which works great but isn’t nearly as important as the quality of the juice.) It had no problem processing any of the typically gnarly fruits and veg — fibrous vegetables like celery, kale, or ginger; or softer fruits like squeaky grapes or peeled citrus. Even parsley juice emerged verdant green, leaving pulp behind that was almost as dry as sawdust.

The Nama assembles in seconds, and is just as easy to take apart for cleaning, although Nama does say all parts should be hand washed. Being a slow juicer, there’s no juicing blade that can slice your hand open if you handle it at an odd angle, and the minimal pulp left inside the machine after operating rinses off swiftly, no scrubbing necessary. For juice aficionados and anyone looking to fully invest in a juicing lifestyle, the Nama J2 will step up your game.

We can’t ignore the fact that this is one of the most expensive models we’ve ever tested. At $550 it’s certainly not something that’s feasible for everyone to own. But with a 15 year warranty and a cut-above design, we believe it’s the best you can get if a juicer is an appliance you expect to use regularly. And if you’re currently frequenting juice shops to support your juice habit, the Nama will pay for itself in a matter of months.

And, this is a nitpicky detail, but the Nama won’t switch on unless all the interlocking parts are correctly assembled, and it took us a few tries of troubleshooting to get the process down. The advantage of this is that it’s unlikely you will break the very expensive juicer, but still a little irritating. (Their online video tutorials proved helpful.)

If you’re not planning to go all in on a more expensive juicer or you’re a juicing beginner who can see the merits of using one for the occasional glass of juice or cocktail prep, the Ninja Never Clog Cold Press Juicer is an excellent one to add to your arsenal. You can find centrifugal juicers for cheaper than the Ninja, but they won’t be as easy to use and clean, or yield such delicious, smooth-textured juices.

The Ninja Never Clog has a much smaller footprint than most juicers, and indeed is more appropriately designed for single glasses of juice than whipping up a big batch for a crowd. But this small-size tradeoff is more of an asset for us, especially if you expect to use a juicer only occasionally. And if you wanted to juice carrots or ginger for a recipe, for example, you likely wouldn’t need more than 2 or 3 cups of liquid anyway.

With fewer, smaller parts, it’s easy to maneuver, store, assemble, and break down with just a few clicks. And it’s much easier to clean than any of the centrifugal models – just a quick rinse under running water will wash off any lingering fruit or vegetable matter.

This is more of a classic “feeding tube” juicer design, which means you’ll need to trim down your produce into relatively small pieces and add them to the machine in stages as it processes them,using the tamper to force them down. And at less than 2 inches in diameter, the feeding tube is quite narrow. Also, in weighing out the juice yield against the solids, the Ninja’s pulp discard was slightly heavier (wetter) than what other models produced, which means that the juice yield is less. But this isn’t entirely a drawback, since juicers with a higher juice yield often produced juice that wasn’t as good, with a lot of foam, separation, and fruit and vegetable matter that managed to filter through. We also found that while the machine runs quietly, some fruits like grapes created some squeaking as they were being processed.

Breville’s Juice Fountain Plus is a sturdy, straightforward, and powerful centrifugal juicer. We assembled it with ease, and though it isn’t compact, the machine is constructed to fit on a counter without taking up a ton of space. In the centrifugal juicer category, we found this model to be a standout, especially at the price point.

The Juice Fountain Plus features a three-inch wide feed chute (that’s extra wide) to push whole apples or citrus fruits through, so unlike other models, you don’t have to cut your fruits and veggies into tiny pieces before adding them to the juicer. Also, while most of the other juicers we tested had Forward and Reverse buttons on their power switches, the Breville simply had High and Low settings, which meant we could be specific about the power needed to juice leafy greens, soft fruits (low), and denser root vegetables (high).

Centrifugal juicers are notoriously difficult kitchen appliances to clean, but we found the Juice Fountain Plus postgame to be relatively simple. First, because both the pulp collector and juice container (which also comes with a froth separator) have lids, we didn’t have to wipe any errant splatters or fruit bits off the counter or cabinets. Second, the machine broke down into individual pieces, and with the help of the included cleaning brush, was clean in minutes. Most of the parts are even dishwasher-safe. If your household favors quantity and speed, the Breville Juice Fountain Plus is the best juicer for you.

Because the stainless-steel cutting disc and micro mesh filter basket move at high speed, the Breville was a bit loud (it has an 850-watt dual speed motor). However, that noisy power was worth it in the end because the machine juiced everything we gave it in seconds. And cleaning the Juice Fountain Plus, and all centrifugal juicers, is significantly more tedious (pulp flies everywhere, the cutting disc and interlocking parts must be scrubbed) and more fraught (the disc is sharp!) than cleaning a slow juicer.

In shopping for juicers, you will notice that vertical machines are one of two types of juicer: slow (sometimes called “cold press”) or centrifugal. Knowing the difference will help you determine which style of juicer is best for your home kitchen’s needs.

Slow juicers (a.k.a. masticating or cold-press juicers) take longer than centrifugal juicers to break down produce because the juicing process uses an internal mechanism moving at low-speed to manually crush and squeeze each piece as it passes through rather than tearing it to bits. Some slow juicers have smaller feed tubes, so you’ll have to prep your ingredients a bit more beforehand, but because there is no heat or fast-moving parts, the resulting juice has less foam and stays fresh for slightly longer. Slow juicers are quieter, easier to clean, and usually slightly smaller than centrifugal juicers. But they are more expensive as well.

Centrifugal juicers are fast and loud, and like the best blenders get by on a combination of speed and power. The mechanical whirring can make it sound like the machine is going to take off into space. This is because centrifugal juicers feature sharp metal teeth that shred produce while spinning rapidly. They’re the best bet for making lots of juice in a short period of time, but you’ll also need to drink your yield more quickly; the juice from centrifugal models separates and oxidation happens more rapidly. Juice from centrifugal juicers typically also contains more foam, which is why something like the Breville’s built-in froth separator comes in handy. Also, some believe that the heat generated by a centrifugal juicer’s rapidly moving parts reduces the nutrient levels in your finished juice (as we said at the top, claims about nutrients in juice are a little all over the place). On the plus side, however, they are usually less expensive than their slow counterparts.

Between produce prep, carefully feeding fruits and veggies through the chute, and thoroughly cleaning pulp-caked strainers, juicing is a fairly laborious process. So finding a machine that you want to use, despite the time and effort involved, is important.

We focused our testing on three of the most common juicer concerns: high juice/low foam yield, ease of use, and ease of cleanup. To compare like with like, we narrowed our product selects to all vertical juicers rather than horizontal ones, as the latter category tends to be cheaper but much larger and produces a lower yield. Height, weight, size, and number of pieces to assemble and disassemble also played a role in the evaluation.

When we got down to juicing, we used the same juice recipe for each machine: half of an unpeeled cucumber, two carrots, half an unpeeled apple, one stalk of celery, three large leaves of kale (with the stem), one hunk of ginger (with the skin), 10 grapes, 10 blueberries, and half a lemon (with the rind). One at a time, we fed each item through the chute. We noted how the pulp came out, then measured the juice and foam. Then we disassembled and cleaned each product by hand, keeping track of how much scrubbing was necessary to remove juice residue and pulp.

For each juicer, we also considered the following questions:

You’d think that the same produce sent through different juicers would yield juices that would at least resemble one another, but there is a surprising range in the output from one model to the next. Some models made juice that was half foam, with watery layering and off, bitter flavors. The best juices, on the other hand, were smooth and evenly textured, balanced in flavor, and not excessively foamy.

Most juicers have similar parts: a pulp container, a juice jug, a basket, a blade or auger, a base, a feeder chute, and a food pusher. We made note of extras like brushes and alternate baskets, plus smart knobs, buttons, and speeds. We also noted what cleanup was like, since with so many parts cleaning is a notable stage of the juicing experience. Things that had dishwasher-safe parts certainly got some extra points.

Juicers need to turn your food into smooth, drinkable liquid, so the heft and substance of the machines need to be up to the task. For all the scrubbing and fibrous material involved, it’s important that all the parts can withstand the work.

If you’re going to be using your juicer regularly, it’s going to take up valuable countertop real estate. But how much? And if you aren’t going to keep it out, is it easy to store?

There’s a range of price tags when it comes to juicers, but even for the least expensive models, a juicer is an investment. Some look like a deal, but still aren’t worth the money; others are investments we believe will ultimately pay off.

Breville’s new Juice Fountain XL Pro is a commercial-grade centrifugal juicer. It is incredibly fast and powerful, blitzing through produce with alarming force and speed. It’s also relatively easy to clean for a centrifugal juicer, with the sharp blade requiring a quick rinse rather than a scrub, and snaps together quite quickly. We found that larger chunks of vegetables passed through into the pulp container. But if speed and yield is at the top of your criteria, it would be a good pick. The only knock on it is its size: We just don’t think it’s practical for home use unless you have a large family or a bunch of roommates, and plan to be serving everyone juices on the regular.

The Hurom H200 Easy Clean Slow Juicer assembled in minutes and had a large hopper capable of fitting whole fruits (and a lot of other ingredients). It also worked quietly and produced very little pulp, meaning more actual juice. But while cleanup was a breeze, the machine had trouble processing fibrous ingredients like kale and ginger, and didn’t successfully juice a half lemon in our testing.

The Hurom H310 Easy Clean Slow Juicer is one of the company’s newer models and works well while taking up very little counter space. It produces juice with almost no foam, and its six pieces come apart and clean up easily. The design flaw of this juicer is in its hopper, which must be opened in order to add ingredients during juicing. Opening the hopper stops the internal mechanism mid-mastication, which, when restarted, can jam. The H310 had trouble with some of the more fibrous ingredients like kale, but if you’re willing to put in the extra prep time to break down some of the ingredients into smaller, more manageable pieces, it will work well as a personal juicer.

The Hamilton Beach Big Mouth Juicer has a lot of favorable Amazon reviews, thanks in large part to its low price. Many of them cite it as a good “starter” juicer, to test the waters before investing in a more expensive model. We found this model had the highest foam to juice ratio of any we tested, and the juices were murky and separated.

The Nutribullet Slow Juicer is surprisingly powerful, conquering everything from leafy greens to an entire half lemon, which gave other, more expensive slow juicers trouble. It also works noticeably faster than other juicers in its category, but that speed and power also brought more noise, as well. It produced juice with quite a bit of foam (likely also related to its speed), and although it didn’t expel much pulp, there was quite a bit of partially masticated fruit pulp inside when we opened it up to begin cleaning. Disassembly was challenging and required quite a bit of yanking.

The Breville Juice Fountain Cold is slightly bigger and more expensive than our winning model. It was easy to assemble and featured a big mouth chute, so we didn’t have to do any advance prep to our produce before juicing. But we found it slightly harder to clean than the other Breville models, with many ginger fibers stuck in the metal mesh basket, plus it was the loudest of any machine we tried.

The Breville Juice Fountain Compact was not as impressive as we’d hoped—the design eliminates the pulp cup, making the lid the receptacle for all the pulp. This made it more tedious to clean and didn’t actually save meaningful counter space (the machine is still bulky; the detachable pulp cup is the only component that makes it slightly smaller than the Juice Fountain Plus).

The Kuvings Whole Slow Juicer Elite is a very good juicer, but also a very expensive one. It’s heavy but has a slim profile and assembles quickly with the help of a “red dot locking system.” Plus, there are a few extra parts, like a blank strainer for making ice cream and frozen fruit sorbet, a hopper attachment for catching smaller items, and several cleaning tools. The extra-wide feeder chute was a bonus, but the pulp spout was more difficult to wash than other slow juicers. We also found that the juice was a bit gritter, with more bits of pulp than many of the others we tested, even at much lower price points.

The Cuisinart Juice Extractor is a centrifugal model with five speed settings, nicely locking parts, and a large juice jug with a handle, lid, and spout. We liked that it felt powerful, but manageable and not that it was whirring so fast it might fly off the counter (a concern with a few other models). But the motor was so jumpy that smaller and lighter pieces of produce, like grapes and blueberries, bounced up and out of the chute when added. It’s a great machine, but the Breville is better—and slightly less expensive.

Previously our top slow juicer pick, the Cuisinart Easy Clean Slow Juicer performs well, with a relatively small footprint, easy-to-clean and -assemble parts, and by making very good juice. Other reviewers have noted that it clogs easily with fibrous vegetables like kale and celery, which means that there’s more prep work required to get them into smaller pieces, to prevent clogging in both the hopper and the auger. But it’s still a great value if you’re looking for a slow juicer.

The Hurom Easy Clean Juicer also came with a few additional pieces to justify the high price point, like an ice cream strainer and a smoothie strainer. But despite its name, we did not find it very easy to clean. In fact, the many crevices and crannies where pulp got stuck made washing this model feel like a real chore. Plus, the chute mouth is quite small, requiring a lot of prep work before you can begin to feed your produce into the machine. Hurom’s newer easy clean models are big improvements.

The Hurom H-AA Slow Juicer came with some impressive add-ons as well like an ice cream strainer and tofu press set, but the chute was too small to fit produce that wasn’t cut into tiny pieces and the foam yield was quite high.

The Omega Vertical Slow Masticating Juicer was the only appliance that stopped working mid-testing due to produce backup. It was difficult to clean and not as intuitive to use as we would have wished—especially for the price.

The Tribest Slowstar Juicer gave an average performance. It was a little messy, with green and orange juice spattering onto the counter, and had a small chute that required a lot of effort on our part to fit kale and carrots.

The AICook Juice Extractor arrived basically fully assembled, which made it easy to use right out of the box. But the instructions mention that it isn’t suitable for produce with cores, hard seeds, hard skins, or lots of fibers, which felt like a lot to give up. It’s quite inexpensive, but you pay for it when it comes time to clean; after noisy juicing, we spent a long time trying to get pieces of pulp unstuck from various crevices, with middling success.

If you’re a juice enthusiast, or an aspiring one ready to commit to a regular juice habit, getting a well made juicer will enhance and streamline your juicing practice. For hands free, high-quality juice where cleanup is a breeze, the Nama J2 Cold Press Juicer is an investment, but simply cannot be beat for both quality and ease of use. For newbies testing the juicing waters and not ready to commit to a more expensive machine, the Ninja Never Clog Cold Press Juicer is a great deal for great, easy-to-make juice. Or if you’d like a centrifugal juicer, which is louder and more difficult to clean but spits out juice much more quickly the Breville Juice Fountain Plus can power through a pile of produce in seconds and is less expensive than comparably high-end slow juicers.

Put your new juicer to work with one of these recipes from the Epicurious archive. Or mix and match your favorite produce to develop a house flavor that you can make again and again.