Whether you're trying to get more nutrients into your diet or like to start your day with a big glass of greens, a good juicer makes it easy to whip up fresh-pressed produce in minutes. In the Good Housekeeping Kitchen Lab, we tested the top juicers that will best help you kick off your day strong.
When we test juicers, we juice carrots, which are hard and can sometimes taste bitter; kale, a popular leafy vegetable that's hard to juice and often jams in the machine; and apples, pulpy with a large diameter and oxidize quickly. We measure how much juice each juicer extracts as well as how much pulp. We also taste and evaluate how smooth each juice is and how sweet, and we monitor the juice for three days to see how well it holds up in terms of separation.
Here are the best citrus juicers, slow juicers, and centrifugal juicers of 2020:
Before you get shopping, there are three main styles to choose from: Slow juicers, centrifugal juicers, and citrus juicers. Slow juicers and centrifugal juicers are best for fruits and vegetables, while citrus juicers are great for simply squeezing oranges, lemons, lime and grapefruit. Below is a full breakdown of each, and which juicer might be right for you:
Slow juicers a.k.a masticating juicers typically have a narrow vertical chute that lead ingredients into a chamber where they are pressed by a rotating auger. The fresh juice is squeezed out through a strainer and into a pitcher, while the pulp is dispensed from another spout. The process is a little slow — it’s called a slow juicer for a reason! — but this considered a good thing: The slow, gentle process is believed to preserve nutrients better than high speed juicers that generate heat.
What we don’t love about slow juicers is they often require a little more prep work due to their small feed tubes (which means you'll have to dice up fruits and veggies into smaller chunks) and cleanup is arduous due to many small parts and crevices. Brands like Breville and Kuvings have found a work-around and recently introduced new, wide-mouth slow juicers, which allows fruits like large apples to simply be quartered instead of chunked into 1-inch pieces.
Centrifugal juicers juice much faster than slow juicers. Whole ingredients are typically dropped into the wider feed tube and pulverized at a very high speed. For example, in our leafy greens test, 100 grams of kale juiced in as quickly as 7 seconds, while it took upwards of 1 minute in the slow juicers. The juice from centrifugal juicers tends to come out a little foamy but most come with lidded pitchers and built-in strainers so you’ll never taste the difference.
Citrus juicers are the easiest to use and most streamlined, but they can only be used for citrus. They can easily be stored or remain on your counter because they take up minimal space. Citrus juicers also great for getting the most out of your lemons (and other citrus) with minimal effort, and unlike with a slow juicer or centrifugal juicer, you don’t have to worry about peeling, segmenting or removing the seeds first. If you’re juicing a lot consecutively, remember to empty the strainer periodically. The strainers are prone to build up, which could translate into a slower and messier juicing process for you.
If you hate prep-work, the centrifugal Breville Juice Fountain Cold Plus is the juicer for you. It can fit a whole apple in its 3.5-inch wide feed tube. Unique rivets on the top of the feed tube help position and guide ingredients into the juicer well. It juiced carrots and kale the fastest and was a top contender when it came to juicing apples. Results all tasted sweet and pulp-free. The juicer’s dial is easy to use with helpful speed descriptors (slow for soft fruit, high for hard vegetables). The large, 70-ounce pitcher and heavy-duty lid seemed like a bonus, perfect for serving extra large batches or storing leftovers.
Juicers can be pricey and fussy but we love the $99, no-frills Big Mouth Premium Juice Extractor from Hamilton Beach. It’s easy to assemble, easy to use, fast, and makes smooth, pulp-free juice. Best part is, all of the parts are dishwasher safe. It's our top pick and the most affordable!It also comes with an innovative side-cleaning tool for those who prefer to wash by hand. The tool wipes away pulp from the inside, outside, and bottom of the cutting blade in one swipe, while protecting your fingers. While the juicer was a little loud in our Lab tests, you can’t go wrong for the price, speed, and results.
Most juicers have metal mesh strainers that need to be diligently scrubbed. The Hurom Easy Clean Slow Juicer has heavy duty plastic strainers, which are a game changer: They have large vertical grooves that are easy to clean. The tiled juicing chamber pours out more juice, too, which leaves you with less mess inside. In addition to the new strainers and improved interior, this slow juicer comes with a double-sided cleaning brush that gets into all the crevices. Plus, the pulp spout has a little trap door that allows for even easier cleaning and less digging around. In our Lab's testing, this model made some of the freshest-tasting green juiceand we loved that you can control the amount of pulp. Other accessories include a smoothie strainer and an ice cream strainer.
The Breville Big Squeeze can manage all fruits and veggies due to its unique feed tube design. It can accommodate large fruits and veggies in its larger section, and skinny, leafy greens in its smaller one. It also has a large chute which encourages ingredients to feed themselves into the auger with little help from the pusher. This design helped prevent jamming in our tests and reminded us of commercial orange juice makers that line up oranges waiting to be squeezed. It came out on top on in our kale juicing test, in which we evaluated taste, temperature, time to juice, and yield. Results were smooth and relatively sweet.
The Hurom HP Slow Juicer wins for both style and function. Its curved design and back-facing pulp spout make it particularly eye-catching. Our favorite part is it comes in pink, mint or white, perfect for adding a pop of color to your day. The HP Slow Juicer was easy to assemble and use, and produced good juice. Clean-up was easy, too, with its dual-sided cleaning brush.
Breville's top-notch JuiceFountain Elite powered through sturdy fruits and vegetables faster (and quieter!) than most juicers we tested. It runs at two speeds so you can juice both hard and soft ingredients. Results were smooth, creamy and pulp-free.
This retro-chic appliance from Smeg will juice your oranges, lemons, limes, and other citrus fruits with ease. It comes in black, cream, pastel green, pink, red, and pastel blue so you can match it to your bar cart (or your cocktail).
This juicer does and has it all, from a wide-mouthed feed tube that can still juice thin ingredients, to multiple strainers for juice, smoothies, and ice cream. It also comes with an extra fine-mesh strainer for pulpy juices, although we didn’t find we needed it. Three cleaning tools arm you with everything you need when it comes to clean-up; plus, a lid opener in case anything gets stuck. Our favorite, and likely most underrated, feature? A carrying handle that allows you to move your juicer around easily. Is there anything they didn’t think of?
Nicole Papantoniou, Good Housekeeping InstituteDeputy Director, Kitchen Appliances LabNicole runs the Good Housekeeping Kitchen Appliances Lab where she oversees the content and testing related to kitchen and cooking appliances, tools, and gear; she’s an experienced product tester and developer, as well as recipe creator, trained in classic culinary arts and culinary nutrition.
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