Is the best juicer an Omega juicer?
At Juicing for Men you will find two juicing buying guides. These guides help you cut through the jargon and decide which juicer is right for you. See, “Best Juicer Under $100,” and “Buying the Best Juicer.” We also reviewed the brand of juicers used in Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead. See, “Breville Juicer Reviews.”
We have made hundreds of gallons of juice in a wide variety of juicers. We have performed juicing tastes tests. We’ve given the, “What is the best juicer?” question a lot of thought.
The best juicer is: The Omega J series of juicers. I personally use the Omega J8006 juicer. It is simply amazing and is the best purchase I’ve made (in any category) in 2012.
What makes the Omega J8006 so great?
The Omega J8006 is what’s known as a masticating juicer – a member of the “slow juicing” family. A masticating works by grinding fruits and vegetables with an auger. The auger moves at approximately 80 RPMs. (Breville and other centrifugal juicers move at up to 10,000 RPMs.) Because the auger moves more slowly, the juice doesn’t oxidize as much and tastes much fresher.
You run the vegetables or fruit through the chute. The auger slowly spins, squeezing juice from one end and ejecting the pulp from the other.
(Juicing kale with the Omega J8006.)
The auger moves at 80 or so RPMs. Because the auger moves more slowly, it extracts more juice from the produce. You will absolutely get higher yields from the Omega J8006 than from centrifugal style juicers.
Does Omega J8006 juice taste better? Yes. Juice from an Omega juicer tastes better because the juice goes through less oxidation.
Oxidation is what happens when a fruit or vegetable is exposed to oxygen. When you slice an apple in half, you’ll notice it browns. (Add lemon and limes to prevent oxidation.) A centrifugal juicer makes thousands of cuts in an apple, thus leaving more surface area exposed to oxygen.
How long does the Omega J8006 Take to Clean? Two or three minutes. It’s easier to clean than centrifugal juicers because the screen is much smaller. I’ll be doing a separate post on cleaning the Omega juicers.
How long does it take to juice with the Omega J8006? It takes longer than a centrifugal juicer. Hey, it’s called a “slow juicer” for a reason. But once you factor in reduced clean-up time, it’s a wash.
Is the Omega J8006 better than the Omega VRT350? No. They are different juicers but both of them are the best juicers you can buy. When comparing a VRT350 to a J8006, you can only decide that one of those juicers is “first among equals.”
I personally lucked into a J8006. It was given to me as a gift. Otherwise I’d still be agonizing over whether to buy a VRT350 or J8006.
Can you afford an Omega J8006? $299 is a lot of money. A causal juicer probably shouldn’t buy an Omega. A causal or newbie juicer should go with the Consumer Reports best buy juicer.
Buy an inexpensive juicer at first. If you don’t like juicing, then sell the inexpensive on Craigslist. You’ll be out only a few bucks; big deal. Only buy a high-end juicer if you’re serious about juicing.
If juicing is for you, then you absolutely can afford an Omega juicer. I might even say that you can’t not afford an Omega.
Using kale, we performed a yield test using a Hamilton Beach Big Mouth Juicer, a Breville Juicer, and the Omega J8006. The Omega J8006 yields over twice as much kale juice as the Breville and about 50% more than the Hamilton Beach.
I juice around $15 worth of kale, collards, and other leafy greens each week. With the J8006, I’ll get the same amount of green juice from $7.50. That’s a 50% return on my investment.
The machine will have paid for itself after within 9 months.
If you consider juicing a fixed cost, my Omega Juicer will actually earn me money. After 40 weeks it’s paid for. Thus each week is $7.50 in profit gained from cost savings.
The J8006 has a 15-year warranty. Over the course life of the machine, the Omega juicer will have earned me over $5,500.
Now maybe I won’t juice every day. Maybe I’ll lose some days with the machine when sending parts off to be replaced. The numbers won’t be that clean.
I can confidently say that my $299 Omega will save me thousands of dollars – which, again, is savings from money that was already going to be spent. In economic terms, I earned thousands of dollars.
Maybe this post should have been titled, “The Economics of Juicing”?
Save Money by Buying the Omega J8004. The Omega J8004 has a 15-year warranty. It’s the same machine as the J8006. It just comes in white rather than chrome. Save $40 by not caring about the color of your juicer.
What is the difference between the Omega J8003 and J8005 and the Omega J8006 and J8004? They are the same machines save for two material differences:
- The auger is J8006’s auger is 8 times stronger;
- The J8006 is covered by a 15-year warranty; the J8003 is covered by a 10-year warranty.
The Omega J8003 has a 10-year warranty. You save some cash up front but sacrifice five years of the warranty. The Omega J8005 is the same as the J8003; it just comes in chrome
One last tip, if you’re going to order an Omega single-auger masticating juicer, double-check your order. Why didn’t Omega number the juicers sequentially? It would make more sense to say: the J8003 and J8004 are the same but for color; the J8005 and J8006 are the same but for color. That’s not what Omega did, however. Instead the J004 is the same as the J8006, and the J8003 is the same as the J8005. Man, that really is confusing!
Keep juicing!
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