Our Apologies to Your Fave Juice Place Once You Get This Affordable Juicer

If your fresh-pressed juice habit is starting to take a toll on your bank account, this awesome budget-friendly juicer has got your back.

Something about a fresh juice always makes us feel like we’re going to live forever. We know chugging down a refreshing glass of kale-celery-apple juice isn’t actually enough to erase the damage caused by late nights and ill-advised fourth slices of pizza, but it sure feels like it might!

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So BuzzFeed Reviews put the best of the best home juicers to the test — looking at taste and volume of juice, motor wattage, and ease of cleanup — and found an affordable juicer to help you kick that $9-a-day store-bought juice habit once and for all.

Even mid-priced juicers can cost hundreds of dollars, so the skeptics among us didn’t have terribly high hopes when we set about testing machines in the budget category. But we were pleasantly surprised to find that the Hamilton Beach Big Mouth Juice Extractor, the least expensive of all the cheaper-priced picks we tested, was our favorite.

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First, a bit of general juicer info: When it comes to juicers, there are two major categories: single-auger and centrifugal.

Centrifugal juicers use a fast-spinning blade and centrifugal force (science!) to separate the liquids contained in fruits and veggies from their solid parts. Single-auger juicers (aka cold-press juicers, masticating juicers, or “slow juicers”) have many names, but only one gear. They are — you guessed it — slower than their centrifugal counterparts. Single-auger juicers generate less heat throughout the juicing process, making them purportedly better at preserving valuable nutritional enzymes that centrifugal juicers’ heat can break down (although the evidence to support this isn’t universally agreed upon).

Single-auger juicers are also generally pricier, so all the budget machines we tested were centrifugal. This centrifugal model gets the job done like a pro, and at just under 10 pounds, it's one of the more lightweight options on the market as well.

The chute on this juicer — that’s where you insert whatever you want to juice — is 3 inches wide, or enough to fit half a medium-sized beet or a small apple. This cuts down on prep time, making this machine a good pick for anyone who wants a glass of juice within five minutes.

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Some reviews of this machine noted that it was slower than machines with more power (like the ones we tested in the $$ and $$$ brackets), which stands to reason, but it still makes a damn fine glass of juice in under two minutes, putting it neck-and-neck with its higher-priced competitors in this category.

We tested apples, beets, kale, celery, and carrots, and this machine’s 800 watts were more than sufficient to create perfectly smooth juices in every combination. Some of the juicers we tried tended to be more efficient at extracting juice from one type of fruit or vegetable than another — which resulted in, for example, kale stealing all the thunder in our kale-apple-celery juice (such a diva). The Hamilton Beach had no such problem — the fruit and vegetable flavors were well-balanced in every juice we made.

This model is easy to set up (not a given when it comes to juicers) and to use, with just a simple on/off switch.

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Every juicer we tested was somewhat annoying to clean, but this one was less annoying than most — its plastic parts are all dishwasher-safe, and if you want to cut down on cleaning time, you can line the machine’s pulp bin with a plastic bag.

Note: All the juicers we tested in this price category produced a significant amount of foam. You can always cut down on foam by using a fine mesh strainer, but we didn’t find it hugely off-putting. In short, if you want to drink green but not spend a whole lot of it, the Hamilton Beach Big Mouth Juice Extractor is your best bet. (Plus, it comes with a three-year limited warranty.)

And if you listen closely (or, er, read through some Amazon reviews), you can hear the sound of tons of happy customers singing this user-friendly juicer's praises as well:

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“I wanted a reasonably priced juicer to make sure I actually LIKED juicing first. I decided to go with this one based on its reviews, and I really don't plan on upgrading any time soon! This juicer does a great job and it's so easy to clean. I love that it comes with a brush to get the pulp out of the mesh part, too. For anyone who wants to start juicing without breaking the bank, definitely try this one out. PROS: Easy to clean, not too bulky on counter, comes apart easily, juices well. CONS: Loud (but what do you expect when you're extracting the juice out of fruits and veggies?)” —Kate Bugusky

“First of all, I want to say that this juicer is the BEST. Cleaning is so simple and it works. I never thought homemade juice could be this tasty. As far as the sound it makes, which almost all the people complained about in their comments, let me tell you something. This is a centrifugal juicer. That means that while you push down on the fruit, the juicer scrapes off the fruit into smaller pieces while the juice is extracted. But it does it so fast that the juice drips down through the spout, and the other parts of the fruit that you don't want get flung into the container in the back. The only thing I don't like about this juicer is the on/off switch. It should automatically shut off once you let go of the button. Overall, I am very pleased with this juicer. I certainly would recommend it to anyone.” —T.N.

"I've had this juicer for a year and have definitely put it through its paces. I juice regularly, including several weeklong sessions of juicing for two or three people with no other foods. When I juice like that, I tend to make all of the juices for the week in a huge batch and freeze them, so I am running this juicer for two to three hours at a time with no break. Because of that, I think I can speak pretty confidently of this juicer's abilities. Is this a high-end, top-of-the-line juicer? No. But I know people with the $300 juicers, and I am satisfied with this one. It extracts pretty similar amounts of juice as theirs, and the cleaning is pretty much the same process. One day I might upgrade, but until then, this is the juicer I recommend to people who are curious and want to try juicing without a large investment up front.” —Heather Tenney

Go on and get juicin'! Get it from Amazon for $54.99.

And check out our picks for best mid-priced and high-end juicers on BuzzFeed Reviews.

This post was adapted from a BuzzFeed Reviews article written by Jessie Gaynor. Some reviews have been edited for length and/or clarity.

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