Customer Reviews

Juiceman JM480S 1.1-HP 2-Speed All-in-One Automatic Juice Extractor and Citrus Juicer with Integrated Pulp Container

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

The Juiceman appears to be a great value at first. This appliance looks and feels sturdy and comes with two types of juicer. One is the classic "spinning cone" that you press a half a citrus against. It's essentially a motorized version of the glass juicer that we have just about all used at one time or another. The other juicer function is the "juice extractor" which is the configuration pictured in the Amazon website photo. This is the way we spent our testing time, in this configuration, and we were frankly kind of disappointed. The Juiceman produced juice, but it produced a LOT more pulp. I found I could get about as much juice by hand squeezing the pulp at the end of an extraction than the extraction itself. Seemed odd. We followed all the instructions, and our observation is that the recipe yields in the instruction book are optimistic at best. In general, it seemed to take us about twice as many apples to make a cup of juice as suggested in the book. It seemed to take about three times as many carrots. In talking with friends who had more experience with this kind of unit, we found that they had a couple of recommendations: 1. Make sure you have only the freshest, juiciest fruits and vegetables and that you soak carrots and celery in water before use; 2. The several times more expensive juicers exist because they work better. Upon checking some web sources, we found that most of the folks who are really happy with their juicers, whatever the brand, seem to gravitate towards the $300-500 kind. Wow! This Juiceman is $79. So, a way to look at it is, how much extra fruit and vegetable can you buy for the added couple hundred dollars? Probably enough that you'll get tired of juicing before you make up the difference. A poor way to look at it, I'm sure, but here is why I say this.

The Juiceman is not fun to clean. Juicing carrots seemed to leave a glaze on the surface of the extractor cup, which is a spinning steel and plastic bowl inside the machine. It has sharp spurs on the bottom of the cup to grind off bits of fruit and vegetable which are then centrifuged against the fine screened sides which allow the juice to fly out into the collection area of the unit when in operation. We went through half a Costco bag of carrots, four apples, a bunch of spinach, four large celery stalks, etc. This required emptying the pulp bin about four times. We got well under a pint of juice altogether. In fact, the four of us were using shot glasses to share the output. When we finished and I went to do final cleaning, it was very hard to remove the filmy glaze on the bottom of the extractor cup. I soaked it overnight in water. The next day, it was still had to scrub off. I used a toothbrush for the task. They supply a cleaning brush in the kit, which is essentially a stiff toothbrush, too. The other parts didn't have the filmy glaze, but there are a lot of parts to clean. The next hardest cleaning task is the plastic labyrinth that leads the juice out of the spout on the front of the unit. You absolutely need a brush or other implement to reach into these spaces to clean unless you have skinny fingers. Whatever you do, don't let this plastic thing sit after use - you need to clean it immediately. The rest of the pieces are more or less like cleaning a food processor.

I suppose the bottom line here is that I now appreciate why commercial fruit and vegetable juices are not cheap, especially the "organic" health food types. If you must have this kind of appliance, do a lot of checking beforehand and buy enough juicer that you'll be happy with it. This one is not enough unless you have other uses for all the pulp and have enough time to be inefficient about producing juice.

I was excited to try out this Juiceman Juice Extractor, as I had never owned a juicer before. Overall, it's a pretty nice product.

Pros:

+ Easy to assemble and take apart. It was fairly intuitive for me to put this together without needing instructions.

+ Simple to clean. I don't have a dishwasher, but the product says that it's dishwasher safe. I was also happy to find that there is a toothbrush-like cleaning tool included, to help clean the filter piece.

+ Simple to close the juice spout. This is a small, but useful feature, for when you are switching out the juice collection container

+ Two speeds. The fruits I used worked fine on the slower speed, but it's nice to know that there's a more powerful setting available.

+ Comes with a citrus attachment. This is great for making orange juice, lemonade, and other citrus drinks.

+ Recipes included in booklet. There were only a few, but it's a nice place to start.

Cons:

+ Juicing is not perfect. When I put apples through the machine, there were a few bigger pieces (around the size of a nickel) that the machine missed. I didn't think this was that big of a deal, though, since overall the juicer performed pretty well.

Overall, this is a pretty good product. I would recommend this to others.

The day I received my juicer I put all the pieces except the base into the dishwasher to more or less sanitize everything. I happened to have a bag of summer apples so when it was done washing I put it back together in no time, got out the apples, turned it on and started juicing. The apples were about medium size and fit whole into the chute. When I had gone through all of the apples I had a full pitcher of juice which was tasty and clean of any pulp. I removed all of the pieces, emptied the pulp into our composting bin and simply rinsed everything off except the base which didn't need any cleaning at all. It was that quick and easy. I did use the included brush to clean the filter but that took very little effort as well.

This juicer works so well I find it easy to make a quick, fresh drink when I want one. I don't think there is really any need to plan ahead. It comes with an instruction booklet with great tips. It can be used to either grind everything up or you can switch attachments to extract the juice from fruit like oranges or grapefruit and not have to remove the skin.

The only thing I think is missing is a top for the pitcher in case there is any left over you could just put the pitcher in the refrigerator.

This is a great juicer - easy to use and no mess. Soon apple harvest will be starting so I can go get some fresh apples to use with my new juicer!

A little loud. I didn't mind because it was just for a few minutes. I didn't find cleanup that tedious, but I made sure to clean it as soon as I was finished juicing. My problem is that it broke after only two weeks of use. I had cut a small beet into four parts and was juicing the fourth quarter when the top cracked and broke. Disappointed. Based on a couple of other reviews, I will be purchasing the lower-end Breville to make sure I'm going to keep up with my juicing habit before I invest a lot of money into one of the more expensive models.

UPDATE January 26, 2012

I ordered the Breville BJE200XL 700-Watt Compact Juice Fountain and it arrived two days ago. While I can't yet comment on the durability (I will at a later date), I can say that the Breville is head and shoulders above the Juiceman. I am getting double juice yields. The Breville is even doing a fairly good job with the leafy vegetables ... the Juiceman couldn't juice those. It is also a more stable machine ... beets and carrots slide through the blades like cucumbers. The Juiceman would get stuck on them or I'd have to cut the vegetables into much smaller portions. If I keep up the juicing habit, I will invest in a higher-quality machine when this Breville dies or I feel like spoiling myself ... I can't imagine how quiet and much juice must be extracted from those Breville machines!

UPDATE February 11, 2012

The Breville juicer is still working and an amazing machine compared to the Juiceman. Spend the few extra dollars and get the Breville. I make up three to four glasses of juice a day and I think I've saved enough money on organic produce in the last two weeks to pay for the difference between the Breville and the Juiceman.

20 years ago I had a juicer for fresh carrot and apple juice, but as life get busier, juicing fell to the side and I gave away my juicer. Well, hitting middle age and after seeing the movie "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead" and starting a new health routine, I decided to try juicing again. Could not decide which juicer to buy. I read all the consumer report and online reviews of all the juicers I could find. I finally settled on this Juiceman Juicer because:

1) I wanted to NOT spend too much in case Juicing was not my thing = great price < $80

2) Centrifuge Juicer seems faster and enough for my needs (NO fine Wheatgrass)

3) It seemed the most simple to set up and clean when seeing it in the stores.

4) It was on sale (in store only) at Target for $54 - can NOT beat that price for any juicer anywhere.

5) It has an extra adapter to juice Citrus fruit.

6) It has 2 speeds and a nice powerful 1.1 hp motor with 2 year warrantee.

I went to Food-4-Less and bought 3 grocery bags of various veges and fruits for $21. Twelve juicing oranges for $1.80 made almost 5 cups of OJ (cheaper than the cartoon concentrated stuff). Juiceman did a great job with the Kale, Spinach, and Beet stems (put them in first). Two pounds of Carrots (wash and soak first) for $1.40 made over 2 cups of juice very quickly. Even more juice from the apples.

Yes, I had to empty the container of the pulp a few times, but SO WHAT is the problem??? It took me lees than 20 seconds to do and it all went into the compost. The pulp was a little on the moist side and I was able to manually squeeze a little more juice out of it, but again WHAT IS THE PROBLEM? I was not like the pulp was dripping wet. Perhaps some machines may be AT MOST 10% more efficient but then just use a little more veges or fruit. You can NOT compare this centrifugal juicer to a masticator. For the $250 difference in price, go buy yourself another 800 pounds of veges. Clean up was easy. Just make sure to scrub down the fine metal filter first and put everything in the dishwasher.

I have to say am VERY VERY VERY pleased with this Juiceman Juicer.

Pros

- Very inexpensive compare to all other juicers out there (10 visits to Jamba Juice will pay for this)

- Nice Citrus Juicer attachements as bonus

- Quick and efficient

- Easy set up and clean up

Cons

- Very Loud- probable 80 Decibles (but who cares - motor only on for a few minutes at a time).

- you have to empty the pulp tray frequently (but is this society that lazy?)

- perhaps 10% less efficient compare to the best juice out there (but for the money, BUY MORE VEGES!)

...don't get this one. I bought this Juicer 2 months ago, despite a few reviews warning of breaking parts. I've used it almost daily, typically juicing carrots, beets, celery, tomatoes, etc., and I didn't have any problems with it until today. Like some others, a plastic part broke off while I was juicing a beet. At the bottom of the chute, there is a small plastic wheel built into the side which acts as a guide to the food pushing cylinder. It's attached to a plastic piece that is separate from the main chute (you can see where it was probably inserted and glued). I've noticed small bits of veggie pulp seemed to be getting into the seam (or just discoloring it). Today that plastic section/wheel broke off (and spun madly inside the filter basket), and now the only way to use this juicer is to replace the chute.

My best friends have a Breville they've used for at least 3 years and they swear by it. I'm going to get a Breville.

I can fairly say I know more about juicers than the average person. This is a decent entry-level centrifuge juicer for beginners, or someone who wants quick and easy cleanup. The "juiceman professional II" was a better juicer then this imo. I was hoping this would be the same quality, only an improvement because of the larger feeding tube. I was wrong. The design has some flaws, but for simple juicing. it does the job well enough.

The pro's:

- Easy to setup, cleanup, and maintain.

- Affordable price

- 2 speed motor

The Con's

- Lose of nutrients because of the centrifuge process.

- Some vegetables do not juice well, such as broccoli.

- Wasted juice (pulp is not dry)

Listen if you are serious about juicing look into Green Star or Norwalk. I like the higher quality juicers too, but this is a good juicer to travel with, or use in a pinch because of it's speed and easy maintenance.

My old roommate was a bigtime obsessive juicer. He had one of those $300+ juicers that tore through everything like it had a gas motor and was amazing. This juicer isn't one of those, for sure, but it's probably 90% of the way there - and for $250 less. I like that it is easy to clean out. Some juicers are a huge pain, requiring them to be almost entirely disassembled - but this one doesn't require that much work.

Another great aspect is that it gets ALL the juice. There's no juice left in the pulp after it gets done with the work. That's good, since fruits and vegetables are expensive - and wasting juice is just silly. So many other juicers in this price range leave 50+% of the juice in the pulp. This one does a much better job.

This is a really nice juicer, it's rather cleverly designed and feels very solidly put together.

It operates in two modes, with two sets of accessories (so you need somewhere to store the parts for the configuration it's not in too).

The first is the primary setup using the high-speed spinning blade/strainer which centrifuges out the juice while spinning the pulp out separately.

The alternative setup provides basically a powered version of a simple hand juicer/reamer where you replace the components on the top with a clever reduction-gear that powers the reamer, and you just press the half-fruit down on it and it collects the juice. The problem with this mode is that it's LOUD! The reduction gearing makes a horrible screaming sound that drove people out of the house and I was specifically asked "not to ever do that again". This mode is not much quicker than just manually juicing your fruit, so I would probably stick to using the regular juicing mode.

If you're not sure you need a machine like this then you need to consider the not-insignificant amount of counter space and accessory storage required. But as these things go it is well designed and very well built and works well at least in its normal juicing mode.

G.

I have never owned or used a juicer before, and have always squeezed things like lemons and oranges by hand. I always thought that having a juicer was a great idea, and when this became available to review for Vine, I ordered it immediately. I had no preconceived notion of what I thought the juicer would be like as far as assembly or use, so my comments are written as a first time user with no prior experience in juicing.

Upon opening the box, there were 9 parts that needed to be washed (excluding the base) prior to use. I washed them all by hand, because some pieces were quite large and would have taken up a lot of space in my dishwasher, and others were just too big to fit in my top rack due to height constraints. All of the pieces were quite sturdy and were easy to clean. The juicer does come with a cleaning device that looks like an oversized tooth brush. I did not use it, however, because the juicer was easy to clean (including the pulp strainer) without it.

My first attempt at juicing was using the citrus attachment. While I did not find the assembly all that intuitive, it was not all that hard to assemble after a little bit of trial and error. The instruction book is fine, however, there are so many pieces to the juicer, that I had to keep flipping back and forth from the instruction page for assembling the juicer to the page that lists all the parts, to make sure I was putting the correct pieces together. Once assembled, I tried the suggested method for juicing citrus (I used oranges) by using an apparatus that comes with the juicer, which is supposed to hold the orange in place. I found it to be a bit cumbersome to use the suggested tool, and the orange kept moving around the juicing cone. I found it much easier just to hold my hand over the top of the orange (to keep it in place) while the juice was extracted. Four oranges later, I had two full cups of juice. The juicer definitely got all the juice out of the orange, and it yielded more juice than it would have if I had done them by hand. The trade off is, I could have juiced the oranges much faster by hand than it took to assemble the juicer and juice them with the machine. Advantage to the juicer as far as yield is concerned, but advantage to a hand juicer for convenience. If you had to do a very large batch of oranges or lemons, it would be well worth the time to use the juicer, but for a smaller batch, I will probably stick with my hand juicer.

My next attempt was to juice apples. Unlike another reviewer that said she could get an entire apple into the chute, I had to cut my apple in to 6 smaller pieces. Initially, two apple pieces got stuck, and I had to turn off the machine to try to pry them out. The rest of the apple went in easily. One apple yielded 1/2 cup of juice and was very fresh tasting, although a bit foamy. It also yielded 1/2 cup of pulpy residue, which was a bit surprising to me. I thought the idea of the juicer was to extract as much juice as possible, but 1/2 cup of pulp for one apple seemed to be a bit much. It had small chunks of unground apple in the strainer, and I would have thought that they would have been juiced, not left as pulp.

I really like the idea of juicing things like apples, pears, pineapples, and strawberries to make fresh juice, and I would not hesitate to take the time to assemble this juicer to use it for that purpose. I would also use it for large batches of lemons and oranges, but I will stick to my hand juicer for smaller batches of these items. I think this would be a great purchase for someone who wants to try juicing. The price is quite affordable and the results were pretty good. As I try other fruits or vegetables, I will update this post.