Reviews you can trust.
See why.Electric Citrus Juicers
We tested seven inexpensive citrus juicers to see how they compare to our favorite (but much more expensive) electric citrus juicer.
Published Feb. 1, 2015. Appears in Cook's Illustrated July/August 2008, America's Test Kitchen TV Season 10: Pork Two Ways
Top Picks
What You Need To Know
One lemon for a vinaigrette is easy enough to juice by hand, but for larger extraction projects we use an electric citrus juicer. A good one should extract maximum juice with minimal effort and be easy to clean, tidy to store, and quiet enough to use early in the morning. Our favorite electric citrus juicer, the Breville Stainless Steel Juicer, is all those things, but at roughly $200, it’s an investment. Could we find a good citrus juicer for less than $100?
We compared seven models priced from about $20 to about $80; all have a spinning reamer that you hand-push a halved citrus fruit into to force out the juice. We juiced 10 limes, 10 oranges, and 10 grapefruits with each and measured how much juice they pressed from the fruit, as well as how long it took. We also considered how challenging they were to use, clean, and store, and how quietly they operated.
Except for the motorized bases, all the juicer parts are top-rack dishwasher-safe. Only one was annoying to clean: It has six detachable parts, the most of any we tested, and some were hard to snap together. We docked points accordingly.
Next, we looked at where the juice goes once it’s extracted from the fruit. Two juicers have attached carafes; five dispense their juice from a spout, and the user finds and secures a catching vessel below. We preferred attached carafes because when you’re working with slippery fruit (often early in the morning), it’s easy to jostle the catching vessel and pour out the juice all over the counter. The two fixed carafes felt more secure; both detach with a twist and have tidy pouring spouts, so they can go directly on the table for serving.
Last but not least, we looked at how easily and thoroughly the juicers juiced. Testers found that a good juicer can extract 30 percent more juice than a bad one. The difference? Their reamers. The reamer is the plastic domed piece that bores into the fruit, pressing out the juice. All of them are crisscrossed with ridges. If the ridges were too sharp, they cut into fruit, sectioning it and spinning it around instead of pushing into the pulp; too dull and the fruit slipped off, or they couldn’t bore deep enough into pulp and left good juice behind. The best juicers came with two medium-ridged reamers, one for small fruit like limes and lemons and one for large fruit like oranges and grapefruit.
In the end we narrowed it down to two machines: Both were easy to clean with stable attached carafes and well-designed reamers. We put these two through a final gauntlet of 50 limes each—100 halves of fruit—one right after another, to compare how durable and easy they were to use. One model was the ultimate, inexpe...
Everything We Tested
Highly Recommended
- Cleanup: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 3 stars out of 3.
- Juice Extraction: 3 stars out of 3.
This juicer extracted every last drop of juice smoothly and efficiently, but it's expensive.
- Cleanup: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 3 stars out of 3.
- Juice Extraction: 3 stars out of 3.
This juicer expertly and securely extracted juice with two sizes of medium-ridged reamers. An attached carafe saved us from spills and detached easily for table use. It’s cheap, light, and easy to clean, with a screen for adjusting pulp levels and a quiet motor that won’t wake late sleepers.
Recommended
- Cleanup: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Juice Extraction: 3 stars out of 3.
This juicer has both large and small reamers with sharp ridges that efficiently juiced citrus of all sizes. It has an adjustable pulp screen and was light, cheap, and easy to clean. It has a sturdy attached carafe and a nice pouring spout so it can be used at the table, but its louder motor is less preferable for quiet mornings.
Recommended with reservations
- Cleanup: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
- Juice Extraction: 3 stars out of 3.
This juicer’s large and small reamers have deep ridges that scoured the last drop of juice from citrus of all sizes. It spun the fastest, so it juiced quickly and efficiently, but it doesn’t have an attached carafe and it stuttered occasionally, which didn’t impede juicing but made us suspicious of its motor.
Not Recommended
- Cleanup: 2 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 0.5 stars out of 3.
- Juice Extraction: 2 stars out of 3.
This model has a decent reamer, but it made an awful high-pitched whine, rendering it unbearable to use. Our backup copy did the same and online reviews also report the problem. Unless you intend to use it to rouse a lazy teenager from bed or call a pack of wild dogs, avoid it.
- Cleanup: 1.5 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 1.5 stars out of 3.
- Juice Extraction: 1.5 stars out of 3.
Limes slipped off this juicer’s rounded, smooth reamer; while oranges and grapefruits fit more securely, its shallow ridges struggled to get all the juice. It also clogged constantly because the juice flows through multiple chambers and out of a narrow spout.
- Cleanup: 1.5 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 0.5 stars out of 3.
- Juice Extraction: 0.5 stars out of 3.
This juicer’s reamer was pointy with very shallow ridges, so limes had to be carefully balanced on its tip. It doesn’t have an attached carafe, so whenever the fruit skidded out, the machine knocked the catching carafe aside. The blunt-ridged reamer also couldn’t dig as deep and left juice in the peel. We had to stop multiple times, too, to clear pulp from its rather narrow spout.
- Cleanup: 0.5 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 1 stars out of 3.
- Juice Extraction: 0.5 stars out of 3.
This is the only machine that juices two fruit halves at once, but it wasn’t any faster. Its reamer’s ridges were too sharp and cut into the fruit instead of pressing out the juice. Oranges were ok, but limes proved too small and grapefruits too large. Cleanup was a pain, too, with lots of individual pieces that were fussy to snap together.
Reviews you can trust
Reviews you can trust
The mission of America’s Test Kitchen Reviews is to find the best equipment and ingredients for the home cook through rigorous, hands-on testing. We stand behind our winners so much that we even put our seal of approval on them.