T. Fogerty | Wednesday, June 24, 2009
This juicer is one of the worst juicers I've ever used. Don't be fooled by the claims made during the infomercial. This juicer barely has the ability to shred the produce fed into it, much less efficiently extract the any juice from the pulp. Worst of all, it is actually dangerous to use. It all comes down to poor design.
The primary flaw with this juicer is that the feed tube directs its contents into the center of the shredding blade where it spins the slowest. To make matters worse, the teeth at the center of the shredding blade are arranged in the same circular path. This tooth arrangement fails to generate any shredding action between the blades, and only grinds circular groves in the produce. Thus, the produce tends feed very slowly, or actually stalls in the grind tube. This slowed feeding action also seems to cause the centrifuge basket to slow down, and clog up. I'm not exactly sure why this happens, but I suspect it may have something to do with the produce binding between the bottom edge of the feed tube and the center of the shredding blade. Obviously, once the centrifuge basket gets clogged, less juice is extracted, the pulp is wetter, and more juice ends up in the pulp receptacle.
The second flaw is that the pulp is only discharged into the pulp receptacle from one side of the shredding /centrifuge chamber. This tends to cause the pulp to linger in the centrifuge basket, and compounds the clogging problem. Once the centrifuge basket gets clogged, the pulp begins to stick to the inside of the shredding /centrifuge chamber, and eventually seems to make its way into the juice catch basin.
The third flaw is that juice catch basin is flat on the bottom, and does not drain well. Pulp particles in the juice tend to settle on the bottom the juice catch basin, and eventually may stop the juice from draining. When this occurs, juice will flow over the inside lip of the juice catch basin, and stream down the motor housing. Wait; it gets worse! Since the motor's cooling vents are on the sides of the motor housing directly below the juice catch basin, juice escaping from the juice catch basin tends to flow into the motor housing through the cooling vents creating an electrical hazard.
Not flaws, but worth mentioning:
When the juice catch basin is installed, and the shredding blade spun onto the drive shaft before the centrifuge basket is installed, it will be very difficult to uninstall the shredding blade because there is no way to stop the drive shaft from rotating.
Since the feed tube is located in close proximity to the drain spout & juice cup, small produce items sometimes fall into the juice cup during the juicing process.
A little about the company, Powerjuicer.com:
If purchasing directly from Powerjuicer.com, they will try to convince you to buy the accessories. Take my word for it; the accessories are not worth the money! Furthermore, the accessories package may be charged as a separate purchase. Therefore, if one of the purchases are placed on backorder, it may not arrive until the money back guarantee on the other one expires. Either way, you may be stuck with one of the purchases, if you decide to send the other one back.
Buyer Beware!