Worth Upgrading?

[scottbryan724]

i have the breville elite 800jexl

and im juicing everyday 20oz's..i want the best quality juice and most nutrients i can get out of everything

this is what i juice right now..carrots,pears,celery,cucumbers,romain lettuce,fennel bulb,spinach,kale thats pretty much it right now

so i want to know if it will be worth upgrading to say the omega 8006?

i need reliability and what i said above to make it worth doing

thoughts and opinions please?

[Aleesha Sattva]

If you want the best quality juice... then upgrade. the quality you get from a centrifugal juicer is not high.

a greenstar would suit you just fine for those types of ingredients. ;)

[scottbryan724]

If you want the best quality juice... then upgrade. the quality you get from a centrifugal juicer is not high.

a greenstar would suit you just fine for those types of ingredients. ;)

might be too much money for me but anyway is there any particular model

[Aleesha Sattva]

check your budget. then get the best masticating or twin gear juicer you can afford. there are so many reviews on the net and honestly some people love a model and others dislike it... so you just have to try to find the right one for you.

i recommend the champion to all my clients (i'm a fasting coach)... you can usually get a second hand one on ebay or craigslist and those machines last forever!

[Juicerguy]

Omega juicers are good also. I have the 8005 nutrition center and it works well for me and has a 10 year warranty on it. The model I have is around $259.99. The thing is built like a tank and juices everything really well for me, but as with all masticating juicers you have to be patient with items like pineapple, kiwi and others that mush up real quick. I found a good trick to deal with this is to refrigerate stuff before using it for at least 30 minutes and that hardens it up a bit for juicing. Anyhow the champion juicers look really similar I just haven't used one as of yet. Just thought I would throw another option in there. :)

[Arky]

Omega juicers are good also. I have the 8005 nutrition center and it works well for me and has a 10 year warranty on it. The model I have is around $259.99. The thing is built like a tank and juices everything really well for me, but as with all masticating juicers you have to be patient with items like pineapple, kiwi and others that mush up real quick. I found a good trick to deal with this is to refrigerate stuff before using it for at least 30 minutes and that hardens it up a bit for juicing. Anyhow the champion juicers look really similar I just haven't used one as of yet. Just thought I would throw another option in there. :)

Yeah, Aleesha recommended the Greenstar, and it is a good recommendation; they are very respectable juicers, but if one is on a budget, I do have a lot of time for the Omega 8003/4/5/6. I have an Oscar Vitalmax 900 which is almost identical to the 8006. No juicer is perfect (not even the really expensive ones), but the Omega 8000 series cover most bases in terms of what can be juiced, are robust (other than rarely needing a new juicing cone, if the silicone seal wears out a bit) and are mid-priced.

The Champion is a bit of an odd-ball. It does have some worthwhile applications but I feel quite strongly that it is not best-suited to general-purpose juicing, particularly if one is serious about juicing leafy greens. The rotational speed is also problematically high for certain tasks. Still, it is built like an absolute tank - very impressive build quality and will outlast almost any other juicer in existence. It also has the ability to chomp through quite a lot of produce, which may be appealing to juice fasters, although I question it's ability to get maximum yield out of the produce throughput. (and don't get me started on the wheatgrass juicing attachment! ;-p)


If I had mid-range finances and mid-range (yet serious) raw foodist requirements, I would be looking at the Omega 8005/6, or, if I couldn't afford that, perhaps a Samson/Matstone equivalent (but Omega preferred if possible). The only (reasonable) downside to the Omega 8005/6, or cheaper equivalents, is the speed of throughput (I don't mean the rotational speed, which I LIKE to be as low as these juicers are). I mean the speed at which one can juice a relatively large quantity of produce. This can be relevant for people who wish to go on extended juice fasts, where they may be juicing a number of pints every day, mutliple days in a row. For these people, this kind of single-auger masticating machine might not be ideal.

The Omega Vert 350HD was partly intended as an answer to people wanting single-auger performance but with increased produce throughput, so that's a potential option to consider, for serious juice fasters who happen to have a preference for single-auger juicers. However, I haven't personally used a vert-style single-auger juicer so this shouldn't be construed as a personal recommendation, on my part. I know there were some teething problems with the vert-style juicers when they first appeared on the market (juicing screen kept on breaking, etc.) but the later models (e.g. 350HD) should have overcome this now, what with higher quality materials being implemented. I understand some people feel the vert single-auger juicers don't handle wheatgrass as well as the older horizontal single-auger juicers (8005/6 etc.), but again, I haven't tried a vert yet, so I don't know if this has been resolved now.

John Kohler (discountjuicers.com) has some great youtube videos of many of the current model juicers, incidentally.

[Arky]

A related discussion:

http://www.rawfoodtalk.com/showthrea...to-juice-press


The point here is that you are going to need to figure out what your exact requirements are.

Do you intend to do serious extended juice fasts?
Do you need a juicer which is a good 'jack of all trades'?
Do you intend to juice only one type of produce? - i.e. Just leafy greens? Just wheatgrass? Just fruits?
Do you intend to follow a very specific formal protocol (Gerson, for example) ?
Do you need a juicer capable of large, and/or fast throughput of produce / output of juice?
Do you need it to be easy to clean? (this is particularly relevant if juicing every single day, as a machine which is a pain to clean will end up discouraging you from juicing regularly)

Until you've figured out what your requirements are, you really shouldn't be buying a juicer, or you may end up frustrated or disappointed. For example, Aleesha aluded to this point when she mentioned the Champion but noted that her emphasis with this particular machine is on juice fasting. I am keen on the Omega 8005/6 because it is a mid-priced 'jack-of-all-trades', fairly easy to clean, but the main downside (for some people) is that it's not rapid in terms of throughput/output (again, when I use the term 'rapid', I am not referring to the rotational speed of the auger). In the above-linked post, yet other aspects of juicing are discussed.

In summary, if you repost with your conclusions about your requirements, we'll all be able to offer you more specific advice.

[MysticTree]

Buying a juicer upgrade is frustrating often times because you really need to try different ones out to better gauge which is most suited. I get quite a dry pulp from my champion now that I have got used to her. I haven't tried juicing much in the way of greens - though I have put lettuces through, whole quite successfully.