Best Juicers for Novices and Nutrition Nuts

Sales of juicers have been surging as more people look to bring the juice-bar experience home. Follow the hashtag #juicing and you'll be inundated with recipes, from conventional carrot and apple to trendy green juices (Martha Stewart starts every morning with one) packed with kale, pears, cucumbers, and the like.

Though the health benefits of juicing tend to be a little overblown—there's no substitute for whole fruits and vegetables—a juicer can definitely add more vitamins, minerals, and disease-fighting substances to your daily diet. But only if you use it every day, of course. And here's the, er, fruit fly in the ointment. Some of the juicers we tested were so complicated to operate and hard to clean that they'd probably end up collecting dust in a dark corner of your kitchen cabinet.

But we did find capable models from the two main types. Juice extractors, also known as centrifugal juicers, use a rapidly whirling disk to cut fruit or vegetables into tiny pieces that are then spun to separate the juice from the pulp. Auger-style juicers, also called masticating or cold-press juicers, work by slowly crushing and mashing the fruits and vegetables. There are pros and cons to each, so see our juicer profiles to find the juicer that's just right for you.

(To make the best produce choices for your health and for the environment, read our special report on pesticides in produce.)

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For first-time juicers

Juice extractors are easy to use, and they're generally less expensive than auger-style machines, two reasons we recommend them for juicing novices. The top-rated Juiceman JM8000S (shown above), $100, features a large feed tube the size of a tennis ball, which means you won't have to spend a lot of time cutting up your fruit and veggies. Plus its blades can handle hard produce, such as carrots and beets. The Cuisinart CJE-1000, $150, performed almost as well, and this machine is a bit quieter, which you might appreciate if there's a baby sleeping in the next room. Because of the high speed of their cutting blades, both models turned out juice that was fairly frothy in our tests.

For nutrition nuts: Auger-style

Because they slowly crush produce, the auger-style juicers we tested left behind more pulp, and that can make for a healthier, more fiber-packed juice. They're also better suited to wheatgrass and leafy vegetables. Best of the bunch is the Kuvings Whole Slow B6000, $430, which features a wide feed tube and produced a nice volume of froth-free juice. The Fagor Platino 967010008, $200, has a smaller feed tube, but if you don't mind the extra prep work, its juice output was among the best of all tested models, plus it's well-priced for an auger-style juicer. Both models come with a reverse button for when produce gets jammed in the masticating augers.

For multitaskers

The Omega NC900HDC, $330, auger-style juicer also scored big for juice output, and it's different from other juicers in that it comes with attachments for fresh pasta, coffee beans, almond butter, and more. We cranked out a few pasta batches, and it worked as promised. Note that you have to make the dough separately, so it's not as handy as a dedicated pasta maker that mixes, kneads, and extrudes all in one.

—Daniel DiClerico (@dandiclerico on Twitter)