Omega VSJ843QS Vertical Compact Cold Press Juicer

**Update**

The juicer is still as awesome as when we first began juicing with it. No problems out of it at all. I’ve recently started making nut milks and oat milk in my juicer and it has been amazing. Cow’s Milk bothers my stomach so I need alternatives. The nut and oat milks from the store can be terribly expensive, so I watched a few videos on YouTube on how to make nut milk and oat milk with my juicer and it worked like a charm. The amount of milk I can make for the price I spend on the oats or nuts that I use is great. This juicer has paid for itself many times over and we’ve only had it for just under a year. Still very satisfied.

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This juicer is amazing! Wow! The pics I’ve submitted from this review is when I first started using it. But since those pics, I’ve juiced a ton of fruits and veggies. The fruit and veggie in the pic is kale, apples and ginger.

Let me start by saying I’m no expert in juicing. I’m new to this juicing life but I feel really good about my purchase. I did extensive research and decided I wanted a masticating juicer as opposed to a centrifugal one. Once I figured that out I did more research and decided on the Omega VSJ843QS.

Fruits/Veggies – I’ve read some reviews about it having trouble juicing soft fruits but I’ve juiced blueberries, strawberries, grapes, watermelon, kiwi, pineapple, oranges and pears. No problem. The only soft fruit I had trouble juicing was a soft mango (peeled of course). It does exceptionally well with hard or root veggies like beets and carrots. It does great with apples (peeled or skin on). It does great with cucumbers, ginger, you name it. I haven’t done wheatgrass yet but it does great with kale.

Pulp – For the most part the pulp comes out dry. Some softer fruits the pulp is still somewhat wet. I’ll take wet pulp and run it through again and that typically pulls a little more juice out. I’ve noticed that pineapples work well if you’re not juicing the whole thing. It will juice an entire pineapple but it clogs. I find myself having to uses the little brush that comes with it to dig the jammed pulp out of the exit chamber. It’s tedious but it will juice the whole pineapple.

Yield – I get pretty good yields out of my produce. I can tell based on how dry the pulp is when it comes out. That being said, it still takes a decent amount of fruit and veggies to get more than 15 oz of juice. Some fruits produce more foam than others but this juicer is not “foam free”. I don’t particularly mind the foam but I know it can be an issue for some people. It can easily be removed off the top of the juice with a cake spatula or a spoon.

Cleanup- the clean up is fairly simple. But it has a 8 individual pieces that you’ll be cleaning after every juicing session. The “auto-clean” feature isn’t really “auto-clean”. You simply pour water into the juicer while it’s on so the water can flush the auger and screen free of any left over pulp. Once you disassemble the juicer (a really simple process) it will still need to be rinsed and washed thoroughly. But the auto-clean feature makes it easier to clean it manually.

Assembly – Easy. All of the parts can look intimidating but they all fit together easily. It comes with simple instructions that you’ll have no trouble following and putting it together is a breeze.

All in all, this juicer was an investment for us. I’ve used it daily since purchasing it and the fact that it has a 15 year warranty is mind blowing to me. It lets me know that we’ll have it for a long time. I’m very satisfied with this appliance.

This thing is da’ bomb!

I previously had a centrifugal style juicer and just the slow process without whipping all the air into the juice made for a much richer tasting juice than my previous machine. This machine is so quiet too compared to the other one that I had.

Pros: Cleaning it, setup, dis-assembly, juice quality, quiet, quality of construction.

Cons: not really anything.

The feeder tube is not a larger mouth style so you might spend another 30 seconds to 1 minute prepping to juice since you need to make sure that the pieces are smaller but what does eight cuts on an apple mean compared to four on my previous machine. I don’t think I will cry about losing a minute each time I juice. The end product that comes out of the machine is just so rich and tasty it makes me want to scream. Very nice yield too.

Make sure to watch several youtube videos on how to use the slower juicer machines. Things like some leafy greens or celery do need to be cut fairly small due to the cellulose and fiber strands but, again, that is not really adding to prep time unless you like the large mouthed units that you can dump and run the produce.

The first juice I did was: beet root (1/2 lb), carrot (1lb), 2 red delicious apples, 1 orange, 2 ounces spinach threw all that into a blender with a banana and flax (a rip off of Jamba Juice’s Orange Reviver). The total yield on this, after the banana and blended, was just over 1 quart for those that are curious.

I had read that sometimes this style juicer can stop due to too much of a load so I did leave some of the carrots large on purpose to see what the size was that would stop the machine. Now I know that I needed a whopping one more cut on one fat piece of carrot and no more issues.

If you currently juice and are curious about slow juicers, go for it. Well worth the money, don’t forget 15 YEARS coverage on this bad boy. Or, if you have never juiced but are serious about starting, dive it. Don’t waste time with the $129 spinners….like the one I threw away already. High speed spinning parts – anything gets off balance and you have a juicer that will vibrate and slide all over the counter top and that is LOUD when it happens. I’d have to take the old one apart, put it back together carefully and half the time it still felt like I was using a machine that was going to explode.

Update: After only 2 months of use, and cleaning the parts according to the instructions, the pulp flap started slowing coming apart. I reached out to Omega today, and they wanted to charge me $10.95 shipping to send me the 1 inch piece of rubber! I paid $425 for this machine (I’m still paying it off, actually), which didn’t last 2 months. I am absolutely shocked. I wouldn’t recommend this company or this product.

This came beautifully packaged and mostly assembled. I do wish the instructions explained how to disassemble, not just assemble. I had an Oster juicer before this, which always yielded very wet pulp. The pulp from this juicer was bone dry! It was pretty easy to clean once I figured out how to disassemble everything. I like how the clear plastic parts have a yellow tint to them, since they tend to discolor anyway (like my Vitamix container).

After using a centrifugal juicer for the past 10 years, I decided it was time for an upgrade. After much research online I decided on the Omega VSJ843 juicer. It turned out to be an excellent choice. I get at least 20% more juice than I was getting using my old Jack Lalanne Power Juicer. So you save on produce, especially if you are using organic. The pulp comes out dry for all hard fruits, vegetables and herbs. Pulp from cucumbers will not be as dry because of the softness and high water content. The best part…NO PULP in the juice, so no straining required. Cleaning and assembling the juicer is easy and fast. Good for juicing spinach and other greens.The auger pulls in the vegetables on its own and you hardly ever need to use the plunger. The juicer is pricey, but if you are a person like me. juicing every single day of the year, it is most definitely a worthwhile investment. My only regret….I should have bought it earlier.

UPDATE
The juicer stopped working after just 4 months of use. I called customer service and was told that it was probably the motor. They asked me to ship the motor and not the accessories, to their repair center in Florida. Cost me $60 to ship it through Canada Post. They sent it back after 2 weeks with a note saying, ” UNIT TURNED ON- CUSTOMER DID NOT SHIP ACCESSORIES TO VERIFY IF A PART MIGHT BE DEFECTIVE- REPLACED UNIT.” They sent the motor back with new accessories which was AMAZING!! In order to find out which of old parts was not working I assembled the juicer by putting in one part from the old accessories with the new to see if it worked. Anyhow, I found out that it was the hopper or the lid with shoot that was not working. Although it clicked in place just right, the juicer did not turn on.
I was extremely disappointed in the fact that this product broke down in such a short amount of time.