Customer Reviews

New Z-Star Manual Portable Wheatgrass Juicer

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I am partial to the masticating (rather than spinning centrifugal) juicers for reasons I won't go into here, so I went nuts shopping trying to fit my budget. I looked over this model quite a few times thinking it wouldn't be suitable for more than wheatgrass, or assuming it would be a lot of extra work.

Turns out that it is so easy to use I can't hardly believe more reviewers don't talk about it. Granted I chop the veggies, but to give you a frame of reference it's less effort to turn the handle than to tamp the veggies down the chute, and you have to do that even with an electric (not that either is hard). I could liken the manual/electric usage to driving manual/automatic transmission. I actually prefer this manual over the electric masticating I have used most days. Staying actively engaged makes it go by faster or something.

It is also extremely efficient. I have also used an Omega 8005 and feel like I not only saved money up front, but am spending less on veggies. As a daily juicer, that adds up. It's also lower pulp in the juice and less froth, the first a matter of taste the second a matter of shelf life. If you like the pulp, you can obviously add it back in.

As others have mentioned the pulp wants to drop into the juice container. There are about a hundred ways to easily work around this. My personal favorite is to put something under the container to raise it up a bit, allowing it to slide "out of range." Complaining about that seems to me about as petty as complaining you need an outlet for your toaster. It's really no big deal.

I have been extremely pleased with what it is able to juice. I am growing wheatgrass, but so far have fed it mainly apples, celery, and carrots.

I suspect this is the Green Star or Solo Star or whatever it's called these days with a crank instead of a motor. That is just a guess, based somewhat on the available "conversion kit" for electric model owners. Either way it is a terrific juicer and I'm glad I didn't fork over triple the price for an electric motor.

Update 11 1/2 months after buying:
I finally had something go wrong with this juicer. I was making peanut butter with the plug in the cap and it broke. I jumped on the Tribest web site, found a toll-free number, and in less than a minute I had someone from the company on the phone who replaced the part free of charge. They honored the 1 year warranty with no hassles even though I was pushing the thing pretty hard (I think the rep was surprised I had successfully made as much PB as I had with the plug in). BTW - the peanut butter this makes is amazing. It's actually capable of making creamy peanut butter, just leave the plug out of the front cap. ;)

I just bought this model and it is far and away the best value I have seen. I have been using a Juiceman 410 for about 6 months, a centrifugal model, and I wanted to try one of the masticating/auger types. The Z-star manual juicer is a single auger juicer without the motor, and cranking the handle was a breeze. I performed a test with it and my Juiceman, where I juiced an apple, lemon, kiwi, 4 strawberries, and 1/8 honeydew, all unpeeled, in each machine, and the Z-star produced more juice. The Juiceman juice was smoother and had a whipped texture, but the Z-star made more and all the pulp was bone dry. In my opinion, there is no reason to buy a motorized single auger juicer as long as they make this one.

by the time the plastic motor housing broke on the Jack Lalanne model i'd been using, i knew enough about juicing to know that i wanted to try a non-centrifugal machine. read tons of reviews and agonized sufficiently and was on the verge of buying the Omega 8005 when i noticed this manual juicer. it employs more-or-less the same principles, with the obvious exception that you have to turn the crank as opposed to a motor doing it for you. and it's 1/3 the price. i juice mainly leafy greens, carrots and apples. it does a nice job with them all. it's true that carrots and apples etc. need preparation that would not be required with a powerful, centrifugal maching with a wide feed-chute. (i give the carrots a coarse julienne cut and quarter the apples.) others have remarked that these types of juicers (the auger type) don't do justice to fruits, which may be true of most fruits. but i've found that i get a decent return on oranges. i have come to believe that the juice tastes better, compared with that produce by a centrifugal machine, but maybe that's just the effect of hype. i do know that i get more juice per unit of vegetable/fruit. and the fact is that if you are using a centrifugal machine, and you want leafy green juice, you're gonna waste a lot of veg. plus those machines are obnoxiously loud. my advice: go old school, crank it yourself. btw, 4 stars not 5 'cause nothing is perfect.

I scoured Amazon for weeks before finally deciding to enter world of juicing with this manual juicer. I did a ton of research, and my decision to buy this was motivated by 1) the mastication involved (low temperature, extracts maximum juice, retains nutrients) 2) the ability to juice greens as well as harder veggies (other juicers have trouble with leaves and herbs, ie fennel - common cause of motor breakdowns in other juicers, I hear) and 3) manual feature.

I've had this for about a week and have thus far have juiced carrots, celery, parsley, cilantro, ginger, tomatoes, spinach, kale, chard, fennel, collard greens, oranges. Each time, I've enjoyed great tasting and fresh juice that FAR beats anything you can buy in grocery stores (even the "fresh" kind from, say, Whole Foods.) Nothing beats producing juice in your own kitchen!

Basic operation and concept :
Place cut veggies in a chute and tamp down with a plastic plunger (included). The produce meets a single barrel/auger which, while turning, crushes and feeds the produce through a stainless steel filter. Juice pours out the bottom while pulp is extruded out the opening on the front end.

Here's my take overall:

Pros:
- love the manual juice aspect: no motors that could potentially break, no elecriticity required, get a good arm workout in the process
- works like a charm for juicing greens (everything from parsley to spinach - this is apparently troublesome for other electric juicers)
- good construction - parts easily fit together, intuitive disassembly and setup, is a snap to attach and take apart
- good amount of juice extracted from veggies ($1.50 worth of kale or chard --> 10 oz juice)
- pulp seems relatively dry (esp from greens)

Cons:
- You need a stable, protruding surface to attach the clamp. Usually not a problem for most people, but I live in a studio apartment about 400 sq foot with a tiny kitchen. My counter does not "jut out" enough to securely clamp the stand - thus, I have it attached to a mobile wheeling cart which used to support a microwave. This is fine, but it is a bit wobbly which makes juicing a bit harder. Make sure you have a good surface for attaching. Also make sure you have a lot of room to maneuver so you can get good traction for turning the arm.
- The juicer didn't work so well for tomatoes - most of the pulp and juice stayed in the auger/filter part and wet all the pulp extruded. Would not recommend this for juicing tomatoes.
- Harder veggies have to be cut into smaller pieces. For example, you couldn't juice a whole carrot or even a whole carrot cut in half. I would recommend all hard produce be cut to the size of baby carrots. Once you do this, no problem at all.
- stainless steel mesh takes a lot of scrubbing to fully clean - the included 'toothbrush' for cleaning is already frayed after just 3 uses!

And there's the whole pulp falling into the plastic container thing, which as another reviewer helpfully pointed out, you can evade by simply using a different container or propping the plastic container on a plate to keep it out of the way of falling pulp. Not a big problem at all.

What about the work involved with the manual handle? Not too bad, in my opinion - it is a little tougher with harder veggies - I'd equate it to the arm effort involved in grating manually, for example. Nothing too crazy if you don't overload it.

All in all, I am very happy with this purchase. I'd certainly recommend this as a starting juicer that's an easy way to get in the world of juicing.

Note: for people who anticipate juicing a lot (and a lot of different veggies besides wheatgrass), this may be a little impractical as it does take time with the manual process to juice - about 20-30 minutes for 10 oz juice including prep, setup, juicing and cleanup time.

It's not that great of a juicer like I read in other reviews. I got it for traveling. When I received the unit the juicing screen and rubber o-ring that secures the juicing drill into the base was poorly glued. Bad sign, and sure enough came off and broke in less than a month. Also, the handle needs to be 100% set in place accurately or it will bend the inside of it when juicing because you really crank hard and stop working.
Depending on what you are juicing, it can be a real work out. The representative was surprised that I used it to juice carrots.??? I mean come on, wake up. List something besides wheatgrass on your website or reading material if you think it can't handle it.
It's not that portable. It stands pretty tall, has quite a few parts , a heavy metal base and you need to clamp it to something with the vise. (I guess you can say an RV is good for traveling too)

Recently I mailed it in for replacement parts or hopefully a complete replacement. This will take another 2 months to have it delivered, repaired or replaced and mailed back. Which is a huge burden if you planned to take it traveling with you....goodluck
In all, yes, in all you can take it traveling with you. I'll keep this product review updated

Here's the update.
I mailed it back to the company and they fixed or replaced all the parts.
They did a turn around within a month.
While it may not get much juice from harder produce like carrots. It does give more juice than a centrifugal (eg. a Hamilton juicer) when juicing fruits.
Based on what's available, it a good juicer.

I like the fact that the Z-Star juices wheatgrass as well as fruit and vegetables. I do not mind turning the handle at all. It did a great job on the wheatgrass. As someone mentioned the pulp did tend to fall into the juice, but all I had to do to remedy that was use a taller container to catch the pulp as it came out. I cut my beets and carrots into 1 inch pieces. When it was clamped down the Z-Star did not bounce around for me. I had it clamped to cutting board that pulls out from under my kitchen counter. I did try frozen grapes and that did not go well, but fresh grapes were great. I like the Z-Star because even though I can't spend $400 on a juicer I can still have fresh juice.

This is a fine juicer for wheatgrass, though I probably wouldn't use it for most other veggies. Greens, yes, if I'm not using my Philips centrifugal juicer for other things.
It's bigger than I thought it would be. But then, I guess I hadn't read the dimensions carefully before purchase. The juicer is all built of solid materials - the plastic parts are not cheesy and should last as long as the metal parts if treated like kitchenware. The only thing that strikes me as a little funny is that juice drips from the joint between the end cap and the clear body. Not that it's a problem, as these drips are also caught by the long juice receptacle. But it's seems the kind of thing self-respecting designers would want to avoid. And it would be a simple fix: just make the end lock tolerances a little tighter.

But apart from that, it's just the cat's pyjamas. The foot clamp fits on lots of different kitchen protrusions, and the rubber protectors keep the unit from messing up your counter. Allow plenty of space around the unit for turning the crank (removable). Squeaks when turning, due to the silicone seals around the moving parts, but that just means they're doing their job.

Makes great juice fast, cleans up easy, and has no CO2 footprint. Why buy an electric unit?

I've had my juicer for 2 years now and couldn't be happier with it. I've juiced garlic, beets, carrots, apples, limes, lemons, oranges, parsley, cucumbers, pineapple, collard greens, dandelion greens, spinach, swiss chard, celery, grapes, and tons and tons of kale. It needs to be very securely fastened to a table or counter edge so that you can turn the handle easily. A tall glass works much better for catching pulp than the container it comes with. And it does take some prep work upfront to cut up your veggies. But it's fun to mash everything in there and crank it up and give that arm a workout! You need to set aside some time but for me it's a very peaceful morning exercise and the juice feels so good.

I recently started growing wheatgrass at home in the Sproutman/Tribest growing trays (we use organic soil but it can be done without soil). We already own a Champion juicer and a Vita-Mix 5200. So, I was very hesitant to purchase yet another appliance but Champion said they will not have their 'wheatgrass blade' ready until at least October and the thoughts are mixed on whether or not it's as nutritious to use the Vita-mix for wheatgrass. I figured since I was making the investment to grow our own (only because I was tired of paying for it at Whole Foods and tired of recycling all the little trays, boxes, etc.) Plus, I thought it would be a fun learning experience for our 4 yr old (which it has!). I went with this model solely because of the cost. I'm bummed that it is made in Korea, but I have to live with that. We used it for the first time this AM (my 4 yr old and I) and it assembled easily and, after an arm work out getting it started, it worked extremely well. There is a little cup that will catch the juice but you need to take the pulp from the front of the machine with your hand. It's really simple and I actually put the pulp through the juicer another time (don't know if that's a good idea or not, but Ann Wigmore states that she did it this way in her Wheatgrass book). The juice sticks to the cup just a bit so I added a very tiny amount of drinking water to get the remainder (it's enough of a chore that you won't want any to be wasted!!!).
Here's the biggest news: I had no idea that I would actually be able to taste the difference between what we are growing versus what we had been purchasing (which was VERY expensive...I calculated that for 4 of us to have a total of 7 ounces a day, it was about $7-8). The difference is remarkable; I can truly taste an incredible difference. While I believe the frozen kind made a difference in our overall health, I never quite felt that 'rush' that people describe when drinking it but now I get it.
Bottom line: if you are looking for a relatively affordable wheatgrass juicer, I would highly recommend this (And I also like that it can do some other fruits/vegetables in case we are in a pinch if the electricity is out during hurricane season). If you can afford one of the electric ones, maybe it would be faster and easier but this definitely does the job for a once a day juicing experience!

I bought a cheaper wheatgrass juicer and promptly returned it in order to buy this one. I made the right decision! This juicer is well-built and works great. My girlfriend works at our local juicebar and this manual juicer works just as great (if not better) than their electric juicer that is much more expensive.

I mainly use this juicer for wheatgrass. So far I have estimated that I get about 10 or 11 shots of wheatgrass for each basic-size tray I grow, which is about what is expected from what I have read about trays. I grow two trays and so far have always been able to make 2-3 ounces of wheatgrass everyday for us. I have also tried carrots and apples with the juicer...this worked well, but I must say that I am a little concerned about using this juicer for heavy vegetables over a long time. The juicer gets juice form carrots and apples just fine, but I do not want to put too much strain on the machine, then compromising my ability to make wheatgrass shots.

Just making wheatgrass (and other greenery) shots with this machine saves me so much money. I would spend over $100/month at the juicebar for wheatgrass, so I can get my money back pretty quickly with this machine.

I fully recommend it! Besides, I saw this juicer being used on an episode of Chef Gordon Ramsay's the F-Word and I trust him.

Hope this review helps.