Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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132 of 134 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
well built juicer, August 18, 2007
Breville BJE510 was nominated Australian Design Award and it deserves it indeed.
Built very well with outstanding attention to detail, solid stainless steel feed chute, thick and mirror finished acrylic parts that do not have difficult to wash nooks. Juicing carrots left no stains and washing with paper towel and few drops of mild detergent took about 3 minutes for acrylic parts and 5 minutes for the basket with help of soft brush. Locking bar is solid metal with safety - motor will not start if bar is not raised to lock position to prevent any accidental startup. Speed dial has solid feel and digital info display is very cool looking. After choosing speed the power requirement is automatically adjusting according to load. Unit is slightly heavy yet within a reason. Cutter assembly has simple yet solid lock and is easy to remove - no more pulling apart stuck cutter basket and motor base wondering when you are finally going to break it. Pulp from veggies comes out with little moisture and not dripping wet, so efficiency appears to be quite good. Amazon shipping came in double carton and manufacturer also uses very thick padding therefore no problem with shipping and no damage of any kind. In one sentence, this juicer is practically designed, works very well and looks good.
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67 of 67 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The "Lexus" of juicers, June 9, 2008
We owned a refurbished Waring JEX328 juicer for about two years and my wife used it to make juice for our children and me almost every day. It held up fairly well and we paid almost nothing for it at the time (around 30 bucks, I think), but it finally cratered a couple of weeks ago. We debated for a while whether or not to replace it with this Breville model or the Hamilton Beach Big Mouth Pro. We finally decided on this one because it had so many five star ratings and because it is an appliance we use so often, thus we thought it made sense to get the best one we could find, even with its steeper price. While I can't compare it to the Hamilton Beach model, I can compare it to the Waring model, and it beats the Waring model hands down.
As soon as you unpack the Breville you know you have a top quality piece of equipment. It does an outstanding job at juice extraction (the pulp is dryer than what the Waring produced, and the Waring actually did pretty well) and the clean-up is far easier. When cleaning the Waring, you had pulp caked up within the machine itself and it was a pain to clean it out, partially becaused it had a higher moisture content but also simply because of all of the nooks and crannies in this catchment section of the juicer. Although this section detached, it was still difficult to clean nonetheless . The Breville puts the pulp in a separate container off to the side, and as others have mentioned, if you line it with a plastic bag there is nothing to it. The only "pain" is cleaing the filter device, which is going to be difficult with any juicer you buy. The brush they provide does make this a little easier, however.
Now for the biggest difference: the noise produced when the machine is turned on. With the Waring, you had to pause the television, stop talking, cover your ears, and hope the neighbors didn't phone the cops on you for disturbing the peace. The Breville is FAR quieter. Don't get me wrong, it is not "whisper quiet" or anything like that, but it probably makes one third of the noise the Waring did.
Is it worth the higher price as compared to the Waring or Hamilton Beach? Hard to say. Like I mentioned, we got the Waring for practically nothing and it was a good introductory machine for us for juicing, but SO LOUD!
I can't really find any flaws with the Breville at all (we have run it for about a week now). Considering, however, that it costs almost three times what you can get the Hamilton Beach Big Mouth Pro for (I would chose this one over the Waring purely from my experience with it and from reading the reviews for the Hamilton), whether or not you want to go with this "ultra juicer" version boils down to sheer personal preference. How often you will run it and what variety of recipies you might want to put through it should probably be your driving factors, along side the price difference, of course. The main differences I found with the Breville as compared to the Hamilton were a slightly higher wattage (900 versus 800) and the variable speeds instead of only one, single speed. From our perspective, though, we have had no regrets in spending the extra cash for this top model.
EDIT 08/05/08: Just thought I would mention that since this review we bought the Hamilton Beach Big Mouth Pro as a gift for my wife's mother, so we had a chance to directly compare it to the Breville. It did a good job, but it was louder and not nearly as solidly built as the Breville. After this comparision, we are even more satisfied with our decision to spend a bit extra and get this model. The varible speed on the Breville is something you will definitely miss should you go back to a model that does not have this feature. Hope this helps!
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249 of 266 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Time + Money + Breville = Great Juices, June 3, 2008
I have a young daughter and it was a desire to be a good parent that drove me to buy this juicer.
Why I bought a Juicer:
I have a young daughter and as a parent I want the absolute best for her. Looking through the supermarket looking for good juices for her I found so many interesting things:
a) Labels at the supermarkets are confusing: sometimes mango juice is 98% apple juice with 1% mango and has all kinds of things like sugar, corn syrup, stabilizers etc.
b) You have to be very careful and become knowledgeable on what "from concentrate," "not from concentrate," "pasteurized," "stabilized," "5% real juice," "10% real juice," "no sugar added," "etc," means.
After a couple of months of reading labels and books, I became a learned shopper for juices. I only buy 100% natural orange juice, not from concentrate, without additives etc. Beyond orange juice though, things become very complicated: Just try to find 100% mango juice with no sugar, high fructose corn syrup, stabilizers etc added to it ---- I found it pretty much impossible and you can't get watermelon juice, cantaloupe juice, guava juice (well really hard), strawberry juice etc -- and if you happen to find something decent it was probably packaged in South Africa and shipped here with no clear markings on when it was packaged.
So, in order to get my daughter a greater variety of juices...made from more than just orange juice in a 100% natural fashion drove me to buy a juicer.
Why I bought this Juicer:
I looked at so many juicers and the basic principle on 99% of them work in pretty much the same way:
a) you have a spinning cone shaped cup with a very fine mesh on the outside.
b) a blade at the bottom of the cone tears up the fruit
c) the centripetal force smashes the ground up material against the mesh sides -- juice flows through the wall of the strainer while the fibrous leftovers stay in the spinning mesh cup
d) the juice makes it through and dry fibers get pushed up due to the cone shape of the container and finally out of the top of the cup onto a receptacle on the side
e) Viola! -- Juice!....oh, and Messy leftovers!
Given that the basic principles are the same for most juicers, I started looking for a few things:
a) The best constructed product out there
b) Ease of cleaning
c) Versatility
-- Construction
This Breville product is indeed very durable. Its rock solid. I can't say enough about how tough this product is. Bear in mind there are quite a few plastic products on it which are crystal clear. Yes they could break but seems unlikely that they will unless I bang them against something pretty hard.
-- Ease of Cleaning
The clear pastic parts have a plus that it makes it easy to clean and see that everything is clean.
The mesh is much easier to clean than I thought
--Versatility
The motor has several speeds to help get the most juice out of different fruits. Speed is important. If the speed is too fast, juicy fruits will be spun out of the juicing cone leaving precious juice in the fibrous remains. So I really like the 5speed variable speed.
What I have found:
a) Juicing is Hard --
-- Depending on the fruit it can take a lot of fruit to make little juice
-- Cantalope, Watermelon make lots of juice from each
-- Oranges make medium amounts of juice from each
-- Pineapples, Mangos, Peachers make little juice from each
-- You have to prepare the fruits before you go down the road of juicing and this takes time
-- Once you have all of your ingredients prepared, its almost heartbreaking to see the Breville turn them into juice in about 30 seconds --- literally 30 minutes preparing fruits sometimes so that the juicer can crush them in 30 seconds and then to make half a pitcher that you drink in 3 minutes....hmmm
b) Juicing is Expensive
-- You have to buy fruits that are in season and cheap otherwise juicing is a prohibitively expensive proposition
-- No matter what type of fruit you use save watermelon and cantalope, it will always seem that you're throwing tons of fruit into the hungry beast to make very little juice.
-- It is amazing how much fruit this machine will consume and all that fruit is pricey
-- So, unless you're a millionaire and have all the time in the world, you're going to be relegated to making juice only from things that are in season.
c) Juicing is Great
-- Ok now you're probably saying, "oh, I don't know about this whole juicing thing after this crazy guy points out all the negatives." Not quite, there are a ton of positives to juicing.
The Opportunist Blender -- I'm blending all kinds of different fruits, especially all the marginal fruit in my refrigerator (I used to buy lots of fruit, and still do, and don't consume it all) As that fruit gets ripe and just before it goes to waste, before I would just throw it out, but now I just bring out my juicer and throw it all into the machine. It makes short work of blueberries, strawberries, all berries and then I throw in a few oranges (oranges have become my defacto base for my juices) and viola! I've saved my old fruits that would've gone to waste and I've created a healthy concoction that I could never get at the store....don't ask me to recreate it but all and I mean all my blends taste great with the Breville.
The Health Nut -- I make it a point to blend at least 1 to 2 times a week for my daughter and I absolutely know 100% that she's getting 100% fresh and pure juice and she loves the juices I make! She looks forward to juicing. She's 2 and she just sits there on a highchair while I juice -- such wonderful times.
Overall:
a) The Juicer has NOT replaced supermarket juices. I still buy 100%orange juice, not from concentrate
b) I don't buy other juices like mango juice etc
c) I still buy Motts for Tots kindof juices (go figure)
d) The Juicer has allowed me to supplement our diet with 100% natural juices a few times a week
e) The juicer has allowed me to use fruit that I would otherwise throw away.
What I Learned After Owning the Breville:
-- Juicing is not the glorious thing that its made out to be in the infomercials, its tedious, dirty, expensive, and you get little juice
-- Its very healthy and if you do it right (with in season, juicy fruits), you can make some wonderful and very healthy juices....You know exactly what you're putting into it
-- If you're going to buy a juicer, buy this a fantastic choice.
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