looking for a good juicer--masticating about 300$

[dannic]

Hello.  My husband and I decided to get a juicer mostly for greens and veggies an nut butters, lol. 

I have been reading reviews on omega, samson and solostarII and am having a really tough time deciding on a juicer.

Omega has the longest warranty; but people seem to have troubles getting them to answer/fulfill as there seem to be alot with defects...

Samson breaks alot, but they are good about getting replacement parts to you...

solostar...I can't recall, it's all getting fuzzy, lol

Anyway, anyone have any sites with great reviews?

Personal experiences with different brands? 

I'd really like some help choosing.  I don't want to spend 300ish and not have it work for us. 

HELP!

[Bad Mama Jama]

i love my VitaMix, which does everything and you can even get a reconditioned one cheaper than the standard price.  happy hunting!

[dannic]

Thanks!  I actually have and love my vitamix, but when I want a non pulpy juice, I have to strain it and dislike the extra step, lol. 

Anyone else want to chime in?

[LightForest]

I LOVE my omega juicer (I think I have the 8006? it's stainless steel). i agree that a nicer slow masticating juicer fills a very different need than the vitamix. the juice comes out with very little pulp or foam and it tastes amazing. and you can juice ANYTHING including spinach. the pulp comes out very very dry - especially when you juice greens. i honestly have no complaints. we haven't had any problems with ours (we've had it since christmas) so i can't speak to the customer service issues, but i remember the longer warranty being a selling point for me with the omega. i've heard people complain about how you have to cut the fruit/veg into small pieces with the omega - this is true. if you look for reviews on youtube then you can see people prepping the food to be juiced, and you do have to cut an apple or a beet up quite a bit to get it to fit into the chute. i've figured out a pretty good way of sticking greens (chard and kale mostly) into the chute whole - i just stick in the leaf first and i sort of twist the stem as the auger catches the leaf to create a stiff bundle that feeds right through. and with carrots, i finally found that the 5lb pounds of organic carrots sold at whole foods are the perfect size for the chute with no cutting - that was major as we juice a lot of carrots!

I haven't used the juicer yet to make nut butter, but i'm looking forward to doing that (would love to hear from anyone here who's tried!). I did try making pasta once with some of the special blanks that come with the omega, and i was really dissatisfied with the result. but i do want to try that once more because the other time i was working with a rather dry egg-free, semolina-heavy dough... maybe it would work better with a more traditional pasta dough? We have used the omega a lot for frozen desserts and that's been a huge win. We've done a lot of bananas, peaches, persimmons, mangoes, strawberries, and pineapple and the resulting frozen treat is light and creamy and delicious.

one buying tip (if you're buying the juicer new) -- i got mine from drugstore.com with a coupon code (they frequently have $20 off codes for new users), and i purchased through ebates while they were having a 12% cashback day for drugstore.com. with such a big purchase that really helped to whittle the cost down!

[dannic]

thanks for the review!  Have you noticed any wearing/plastic scraping off of the auger?  This seems to be a big complaint in the omegas right now; and in the recent reviews on amazon, omega is not fulfilling warranty...

IT seems like a great juicer until you have problems...I am soooo torn.  LOL

[LightForest]

I've noticed some discoloration but no actual wear or damage to the auger whatsoever. Am I remembering correctly that the plastic type used in the 8006 is somehow better than that used in previous models? If this is the case then I'd wonder which particular model is experiencing the defect. I also wonder how people are using the juicer to cause this problem... It's just difficult for me to imagine any scenario where the auger would be under that much pressure but you wouldn't notice the jam in time to reverse the motor and clear things up... Maybe If you're making almond butter? Or grinding coffee beans?? I don't know...

[dannic]

No, it was specifically to this model; I know, it's strange...but the reviews said it was happening in regular juicing and that the company said it was normal?!? Also that the plastic wouldn't be in the juice, but in the pulp.  Still...It seemed to be a newer problem within the past yr or so...most of the negative reviews are 2011/12.

The other negative was that it seems Omega is virtually ignoring warranty issues right now; so they have this great 15 yr warranty but nobody can get them to fulfill/answer complaint calls, ect...

Again, it wasn't a ton of negative reviews, but it seems the ones having problems coulnd't get a satisfactory resolution...

ETA: I heard that production has moved from US to Korea and that may have something to do with it?

[LightForest]

Yeah, the customer service issue you describe is pretty disconcerting. It's a gamble you'll have to accept if you choose the Omega. Like I said, I'm happy with my purchase, and there are so so many glowing reviews online that I wouldn't let a few bad ones dissuade you (remember, people are so much more likely to post a review when they're riled up about a bad experience, while there are multitudes of people like me happily using the product who've never written a review)... It's a really nice product and the chances are high that you'll be happy with it if you choose it. There are many nice competing products out there as well, but none of them do AS many jobs AS well, IMO.