NC800HDS

I spent a lot of time looking at the options before I bought this. I read hundreds of reviews of different juicers, and watched about 8 hours of videos comparing them in operation. Ultimately it came down to the NC800 or a vertical from another brand that also included a "homogenizing blank." I chose this one because it appeared easier to clean, and is better at roots like ginger and turmeric. I'm really really happy with this thing. It does an awesome job on ginger, turmeric, beets, celery, etc. People who say it isn't good at celery aren't following the typical instructions on cutting it up; you slice celery just the same as if you were going to stir-fry it, and this juices it right up with no problems at all. It also does way better at carrots than many reviews suggest; carrots are the most common thing I'm juicing, I'm doing that every day and it is working really well. I rarely have to push them at all, they just feed right down. I do slice them lengthwise first, not because the machine has trouble with them but because I'm trying to be gentle and kind to the machine. If you like to take good care of your appliances, and not try to shove the max amount through, you won't notice any problems with the foods that people say this isn't as good at. Except fresh fruit, it can't do fresh fruit other than very-crisp apples. However, it makes great sorbet from frozen fruit! Fruit I make into smoothies in a blender, so I didn't buy this wanting it to do fresh fruit. There really isn't a juicer that can "do it all," but this does everything-but-fruit really well. Broccoli works really well, including the stalks which I buy cheap at a store that sells their trimmings. Any juicer can juice a carrot, but carrots for juicing are really cheap. This thing does an amazing job at fresh veggies; kale is expensive, as are beets! The price of this machine will be made up over time by getting more juice out of the expensive ingredients; kale, ginger, turmeric, wheat grass, beets, etc. A glass of carrot juice costs me a few cents. I used to pay $3 or more to buy the juice. Same for wheat grass. And a ginger-turmeric tonic, I'd have to buy and drink 5 or 10 of them to get as much medicine, the ones they sell are just beverages, not tonic-strength. Now I can make it as strong as I want. And cleanup is as easy as it looked. I clean everything after each use, including using the brush on the metal screen, and it only takes me about 2 minutes normally, 3 after turmeric. :)

I've been juicing for over 30 years, and this is my favorite juicer. Note that the NC800 & NC900 are the SAME except for color. I also own the Kuvings Whole Slow Juicer, and I feel that the Omega NC800 is much better. I've noticed that most of the rave reviews on the Kuvings are from people who are coming from a centrifugal juicer - well, any slow juicer will be a vast improvement over a centrifugal juicer, so I understand their enthusiasm. Cleaning - hands down, the Omega NC800 is easiest to clean! By far. It takes less than 90 seconds. The Kuvings is not simple to clean (although, again, much easier than any centrifugal juicer!). Kuvings has lots of parts with nooks and crannys, plus a huge screen, all of which require careful cleaning. Pre- Juice Prep - this might surprise you, but although the Kuvings has a huge chute, the juicer itself is not too great at handling fibrous things, so anything tough and fibrous (like celery, kale, wheatgrass) needs to be cut into very small pieces, so the idea of the huge chute is kind of misleading. The Omega on the other hand, has a much smaller chute, but takes abuse much better. You can cram whole pieces of celery, ginger, kale, whatever into the chute and it just chugs along. No, the omega won't fit an uncut apple, but an apple is far easier to chop into pieces quickly than greens and celery, etc. juice quality - The omega handily wins for greens, and "mixed juices" (like a morning juice of 1/2 apple, 1/2 cucumber, handful of greens, few stalks of celery, piece of ginger, turmeric, half a lemon, couple of baby carrots, handful of herbs). Very little pulp in the omega, and a very hassle-free prep and cleanup. Kuvings has lots of pulp, so be prepared to strain. I don't do much fruit juice (other than a bit of apple or citrus in a vegetable based juice). The kuvings would probably be better for just fruit juices like just pineapple or oranges (but really, you should be mixing more vegetables into your juices). Nut Butters - Kuvings DOES NOT DO NUT BUTTERS! Very annoyed by this, as that was one of the reasons I bought it. But when I got home, I looked at instructions and it says nothing about nut butters. I called Kuvings, and they confirmed, the machine is not designed to do nut butters. Ugh! The Omega does awesome nut butters, they're better when the nuts are lightly roasted (raw almonds for instance take about the same amount of time as in the Cuisinart). Raw brazil nut butter comes out really well In the Omega. Nut Milks, Coconut Milk & Butter - This is where the Kuvings excels. You have not tasted homemade coconut or almond milk until you've made it in a Kuving. OMG something about crushing the nuts/coconut makes the milk taste infinitely better than if you use the vitamix. And, the Kuvings makes it easy, since no need for nut milk bag, it sends the pulp out the ejector (save the pulp and use it for yummy treats!). And coconut butter from the Kuvings was an accidental surprise - I no longer purchase this very expensive product from the store. Sadly, the Omega doesn't do milks. So, my take away is that the Omega NC800 is just an amazing all around juicer. The key to juicing is actually taking the time to do it everyday - this machine makes that much easier to do. PS - I highly recommend watching John Kohler of discount juicers on YouTube before buying a juicer. His videos are very informative and kind of amusing in a Sean Penn from Fast Times at Ridgemont High sort of way (although most are way too long, but you can fast forward).

After 2 weeks of research and comparison, I settled on this juicer. It is VERY easy to clean (clean the juice screen before anything dries), juices everything I put in it handily (don't worry about squeaks-that's from spinach rubbing and nothing to worry about), easy to assemble and take apart and leaves pretty dry fiber as the remnant. I have not had to use reverse once and it never came close to bogging down. I occasionally did have to put some pressure on the "shover" to get things down and sometimes the last few crushed pieces don't go all the way thru but that's usually fruit and just a small amount. It does produce pulp in the juice but I like that. You want clean juice, buy a centrifugal juicer and waste more of the not-inexpensive produce & fruit or just strain it. As suggested, I cut everything up beforehand and tossed it into large bowls as I did so and then just fed the various hard/soft/fruit in as a mix and it ate it right up, green leaves being no problem at all. I cleaned it out after every individual juice and it does take some serious time, about 2 hours, to produce 4-24oz mason jars of juice this way but I'm ok with that given the results. You could do it faster without the cleaning and I doubt the flavor would be affected with a different juice but I have the time to clean it that way. Recipe books abound for juicing and I've found you can easily double an ingredient, add other things like garlic cloves, spices or ginger to just about any recipe and not ruin it. I won't use the pasta nozzle additions or make nut butters so you're on your own with those. At $340 it was mid-level for prices for horizontal juicers but with a rock-solid warranty and company behind it. I see no need to pay $500-$800 for the twin grinder models that I was also considering. They can't produce it faster or get much more juice out of it than the NC800HDS does. You won't be disappointed. Update: Still love it. Experience shows juicing gets faster, 3 hours now produces enough jars of juice for a week since I don't worry about the 3 days mentioned as the vitality span of the juice and I can't tell the difference. First, let the auger pull the stuff down and don't shove on it unless it stops dropping. I'd guess that's where some people break the auger and/or overload the motor. You don't need to do that much. Second, cut the pieces smaller than you need to just to get them in the chute. It only takes a couple of more knife slices and the auger can then more easily pull them in to crush. Third, I make 3-5 jars of the same juice I like at once so I run them all through without cleaning out the machine. I found that I didn't need to and it still worked great but clean between juice types or fruit vs vegetables. Also a 1/4 or so of water at the end of a juice type run tossed into the chute helps move out remaining stuff and doesn't affect the juice. Fourth, clean screens thoroughly when doing so. A little extra brush scrub makes sure you're getting ALL the juice you can. I also set the nozzle to 5, no matter what I'm juicing. Fifth, the recipes I've been using from a book actually fill a 24 oz mason jar almost exactly to the top. I expect most of them will. Last, experiment with your ingredients and don't think you must follow a recipe to the letter. Once you found those you like, toss out or add what you want and see how it tastes. I've found 2 that I've improved for my taste. Veggies and fruits are NOT cheap these days and it costs me close to what my meat & potatoes budget did to juice, if not a bit more. Still, I've lost 2 lbs a week for the past 6 weeks, while exercising of course, and have never felt hungry or deprived while having a juice in the morning, one in the afternoon and then a reasonable actual meal at dinnertime, fish or turkey and salad usually. I'm delighted I bought this and have actually used it. I hope you will be too.

I purchased this juicer on May 30, 2016 and it arrived on June 6, 2016. I have juiced before with the Jack LaLane juicer. Very nice juicer but the downside was the cleaning. Took too long to clean and was a hassle, so because of that I stopped juicing and gave it away. When I first bought the Omega NC800, I was a little dubious about getting back into the juicing cycle again. Well, my doubts put to rest. This juicer is FANTASTIC. I've been using it for about a month now and it does an amazing job. It is relatively quiet, easy to use and the best part is that it cleans up quickly. About every 2-3 days I will juice a couple of containers, mostly kale (yuck) with strawberries, blueberries, lemon, pomegranate, apples or oranges (to hide the taste of the kale or chard). The pulp that extracts is pretty much dry, which means I'm getting most of the juice. This juicer has the wider tube, so you don't have to cut up your ingredients as small (good choice on the larger chute). FYI.....adding lemon to your ingredients extends the shelf life. It disassembles very easily for cleaning and is easy to put back together. $350 at first seemed very high, but after using it, the price is well worth it and comes with a 15 year warranty....WOW!!!! I haven't tried making peanut butter, salsa or sorbet yet, but have no doubts that this juicer will do nicely. I would recommend this juicer highly!!!!!

Overall, an excellent juicer, as many have already noted. I have been using the refurbished version for about 3 months. Pros: --Strong motor! The only time it has jammed was when I was juicing carrot greens, which was probably my own fault for stuffing too much in. The only way it could be better if if it was a tiny, gasoline-powered V-8 engine. --Slightly bigger feed tube in comparison to other juicers. Less slicing and dicing saves on prep-time, so I can get back to playing Warcraft. --We have a worm-bin, and a compost bin, and the resultant pulp is great for feeding these. We feed the worms veggie-pulp (no citrus!) only once a month, but the worms gobble the stuff up! The rest goes into our giant, barrel-shaped compost bin (which we also got right here on Amazon!). Cons: --Not dishwasher safe! This is my chief complaint. There are 7 parts to hand wash, and I admit it is not too hard and only takes perhaps 5 minutes. The package comes with a horse-sized toothbrush for scrubbing the innards (note to self-get some more toothbrushes and toothpaste for our daughter's Shetland pony). For this price, you'd think they would make the parts with better, dishwasher-safe plastic! But, despite the parts not all that hard to hand wash, I am pretty lazy and would rather just toss them in the dishwasher along with everything else. For this, minus one star! ---It doesn't do a great job with softer, less-fibrous items, such as lemons, softer varieties of cucumbers and pineapple. As a result sometimes the mush backs up to the top of the feeding tube. I've since learned to mix things up by sending through a few carrots or celery stalks now and then when juicing the mushy stuff, to help push things through. No longer a big source of drama. -- The juice-catcher could be designed a little better by having a properly shaped pour-spout. It is a little nerve-wracking pouring into small-mouth containers, or when I pour the uber-fresh juice directly into my mouth (especially carrot juice! Yum!). --The collar where you lock in the feed-tube component can get a little difficult to open and close. I dribbled a few drops of vegetable oil behind the collar and worked it back and forth a few times, and it seems better now. Overall, great quality, create great juice, and is a great value for the money! Highly recommended!

I just got this juicer and used it for the first time this morning (I will update my review, if needed, after a few weeks of using). But after just the one use, I was blown away by what a difference masticating over centrifugal makes. I previously bought the Breville JE98XL Centrifugal juicer. At the time, I had wanted to get a decent juicer but didn't want to spend much. (In hindsight, it cost me more to get a cheaper juicer that didn't squeeze much out of anything I juiced.) If you're only interested in making orange juice and stuff, the Breville was fine, I guess? The pulp was never that dry (and yes, I tried all the tricks) plus the centrifugal juicers are CRAP at juicing greens. IYES, yes they are - there's no amount of rolling greens around other produce to get more out of them. And forget running the pulp back through a centrifugal juicer, it usually just spins right back out immediately. I don't juice fruits, other than lemons & limes and MAYBE the occasional apple. I'm interested primarily in greens. So I gave up on juicing at home for awhile because the amount of money I was spending on produce for the amount of juice I was getting was ridiculous. Also, I could not STAND cleaning the large screen on the Breville. No matter how much soaking and scrubbing I did, the screen always seemed covered in pulp residue. But I've been feeling run down with allergies lately. I spent a lot of money purchasing fresh green juices from a nearby place and noticed that I felt significantly better for a few days. Given how much I spent on a couple days' worth of juice, I figured I could either resign myself to spend too much on juice for a few days or just go at it again with a better, masticating juicer. I would have loved to have gotten one of those huge Norwalk's but I wasn't about to spend $1000+. The Omegas got good reviews and I decided to go for the NC800 over the J8006 for two reasons: One, the adjustable end cap because it said that you could tighten the pressure of the auger for things like greens, but loosen it for softer fruits or hard vegetables. I wanted to get the very most out of greens that I possibly can. Two, the feeding tube is oval and a little bigger than the J8006. I don't mind doing prep work and cutting things up, but if there was an option, might as well take the larger tube. The NC800 really doesn't cost that much more than the J8006 so might as well go for it. Some other reviews have said there's a learning curve - I really didn't find it difficult to use, at all. I thought I had done something wrong at first because it took a few minutes for the first bit of juice to come through when I started feeding kale leaves into the tube. But then the juice started to make it's way out and I was amazed at the size of the puddle from just a couple kale leaves. I spent a couple of minutes cutting up celery, peeling a cucumber & cutting it, tearing apart leaves, and peeling a lemon. No big deal. And totally worth it. Especially since with this juicer I can make one big batch and stick the rest in the fridge for a day or two. For this first go around I juiced: one cucumber, a small knob of ginger, about 6 stalks of celery, several leaves of kale and romaine, two small lemons. (I also added a couple pinches of sea salt at the end for an extra kick.) For the amount of juice I got with this juicer, I would have had to have used TWICE as much produce in the old Breville centrifugal. Plus, this juice definitely tastes brighter and crisper AND the juice actually seems a little thicker without being pulpy at all. (Oh, I forgot - I also added parsley and I can actually TASTE the parsley flavor now!) There are many little parts but it is SO easy to clean. You really don't need to scrub anything if you clean it immediately - just rinse it under hot water or let it soak for a few minutes and rinse off. I scrubbed the little screen quickly with the brush that's included, but it was SO quick and easy. Lastly, this juicer is much quieter than the Breville. The noise never bothered me so much, but with this one, I feel like I now have the freedom to start the juice even while the rest of my family is still sleeping. I LOVE this juicer and I wish I had just spent the extra few dollars to get it last year. (PS I am now off to try to convince someone on Craigslist to buy the old juicer... *smile*)

I've had the NC800 for five months now. I use it once a week to make carrot with beet juice and celery juice for the week. I have a Champion juicer and a Greenstar (Tribest) juicer, but the Champion clogs up on celery and the Greenstar requires cutting the carrots lengthwise and is way too hard to push carrots through, so I'd have two juicers to use and clean which is very inconvenient. I also wanted a juicer for occasional leafy greens, since my old Wheateena grass/leafy greens juicer finally died. The NC800 is excellent with only a couple acceptable weaknesses. It is inexpensive considering it can do all my juicing and even make nut butters very well like the Champion. This is the first juicer I've used that does a very good job of juicing leafy greens, so a dedicated expensive greens juicer is no longer required. It definitely sets a new standard for juicers. The juice is still cool with very high quality full flavor. It lasts a week in the frig, which says a lot about the quality of the juice extraction. There is only 1 or 2 tablespoons of foam on the top of a quart, which is very good. It's quiet with little vibration. Easy cleanup is very important. The Greenstar was a real pain to scrub and clean all the parts. The Champion was pretty easy. The NC800 is a little easier than the Champion. I'm lazy so I often let it sit for hours after juicing or between juicing different vegetables, usually 5 lbs of carrots, a beet, and 4 stalks of celery and it's still easy to clean. I use an Oxo bottle brush which reaches all the way into the juicer body and cleans it right out. Even the screen cleans easily without any scraping or scrubbing with a hard toothbrush. I almost exclusively juice one quart of carrots, one beet, and a separate two quarts of celery juice: Celery juices easily with dry fiber out and absolutely no clogging/backup, like you get with the Champion. Carrots are clunky to push through (it seems to break them into chunks first and then grinds them) and you only get 4 cups from 5 lbs of carrots instead of the usual 5 cups, which is the worst I've seen in a juicer but not that important to me. It takes all but monster size carrots. I can't remember having to cut a carrot lengthwise first but I think I have once or twice. Beet is a little clunky, like carrots, with the same inefficiency but the juice is very good, like every other juice. I have juiced some other fruits and vegetables just to get an idea of the overall capability of the NC800: Spinach juices very well with 1/5 foam at most, which is far better than other juicers like the Greenstar which claim to be able to juice leafy greens. There is a trick to juicing leafy greens. Don't bunch them up or try to push them through. Trickle them slowly through on their own. Mustard greens juice efficiently and better than spinach. Use the same method as spinach. Just cut them in half if necessary before dropping them through the juicer. Even a high quality $1000 grass/leafy greens juicer will only do a little better, and is completely unnecessary. Cucumber does backup but clears quickly when you use the reverse button. You do need to cut cucumbers in half lengthwise and there is a lot of pulp in the juice, which you may want to filter out. This is one of the few items where you do need to switch from the 5 setting to the 1 setting to get it to juice decently. It's good enough, but if you drink a lot of pure cucumber juice, this might not be the best juicer. Oranges juice like the Champion giving you an Orange Julius type juice, creamy and milky, which some people, like me, prefer. Grapes give hard fiber out but backup after only 2 cups, so it isn't usable unless you are only using a combination of some grapes with mostly other juices. The 1 setting, like cucumbers, definitely helps in the case of grapes. Apples backup after only 3 apples. You will have to cut medium size apples into quarters. You will get too much foam, too. This is definitely not a juicer for apple based juices, but you might get away with juicing 1 or 2. Pistachios make fine nut butter. I used raw pistachios and the nut butter was dry but that just depends on the nut. You can always just add a little oil. There is a trick to making nut butters. Like leafy greens, you need to just trickle the nuts in slowly with no filling up and pushing which will just clog it and make it very hard to push through. This is different, but just as good as the Champion for nut butters. The plastic pitcher doesn't pour very well and the plastic fiber out container is a pain to clean. I use my Greenstar glass pitcher and a glass bowl for the fiber which is easy to empty and clean. As others have mentioned, this NC800 HDS 5th generation is the same as the NC900 HDC 6th generation with the same big feed chute, except for the color, silver/gray vs chrome. I think the NC800 also comes in red. I'm very happy with my NC800, and it's a little cheaper. 25 Nov 2017 update: I get a cup of juice per pound on small carrots. If you use small carrots or slice them lengthwise as others have suggested and use very little pressure to mostly let them pull through on their own you'll get as much juice as almost any other juicer. You decide whether you want to juice faster or slower by slicing and patiently waiting in order to get more juice per carrot. 23 Dec 2018 update: I just got 3 oz of wheatgrass juice with a little less than a tablespoon of foam from 4 oz of wheatgrass, so it really does juice wheatgrass, too.

I originally got a much smaller juicer (vertical slow juicer) that came highly recommended. It works very well but it's hard for me to clean the filter/screen so I decided to get this Omega NC800 because it's considered an easier juicer to clean. I've only used this one 3 times but I'm impressed. Of course, it cost more than twice what my other juicer costs so that should be considered. It takes up a lot more room - more than twice the counter space to use it. Plus it's significantly heavier but I'm guessing, better material and better build quality. The downside, which hasn't bothered me yet, everything has to be pushed down the feed chute whereas the vertical juicer is more or less self feeding. The supplied pusher doesn't reach all the way to the auger so some things might not get juiced without using a carrot, some celery or something to "encourage" it. Plus, it sometimes takes quite a bit of force to get the food pushed down which might be problematic for people who are weak or too short to reach. They would be better off with a vertical auger which is sort of self feeding. The Omega NC800 juiced all of the foods I put into it very well, without much foam. There was more pulp than expected in the sieve I used to filter the juice but that might have to do with not being familiar with the settings on the end cap. Plus, it was not more pulp than my other juicer, I just expected less since it cost so much more. I was impressed by how dry the discharged pulp was. It wasn't as compacted as my other juicer and filled the supplied container quickly. The supplied juice catch container is rather small too and the height is limited which can mean stopping to empty both if planning to juice significant quantities. I juiced mixed greens, celery, carrots, cucumbers, cabbage, pears, apples, limes and ginger which all went well. The next juice was carrots and kiwi. I was surprised to find kiwi seeds on the bottom of my glass of juice. I would have thought they wouldn't get past the juicer screen filter. Oh well. Then I juiced celery and pear. The celery doesn't need to be cut up like my small vertical slow juicer. If it fits into the chute it gets juiced so much less prep time. I'm very happy with my Omega NC800 and highly recommend it. Any changes after using it longer - I'll update my review