Juicing is an excellent way to help add more nutrition to our diets. A while back my husband and I decided to purchase a juicer using a centrifugal system, extracting juice from produce while separating the pulp, to make a thin juice full of vitamins and minerals. We tried two different extractor juicers: Hamilton Beach Big Mouth Juice Extractor 67650, $49 at Amazon, and Breville Juice Fountain Plus JE98XL, $145.38 at Amazon. These are the best prices we have found of the two machines. In this post I will compare these two juicers to each other, and conclude whether we thought it was worth the extra money to get the Breville rather than Hamilton Beach.
Breville versus Hamilton Beach juicers: Which one is better?
Cost:
Cost wise, the Breville machine is more expensive by about $100, so we were expecting much better results as well. The results of testing both machines side by side, however, had us surprised!
We found the best prices of either machine at Amazon. Sometimes items can be found cheaper on e-Bay, but my experience is that their new items often go for full price, especially if you add shipping. It can be worth looking into, though.
Design:
The Breville machine is beautiful, with a sleek and expensive look to it. It comes in an attractive box, even! It is taller and wider than Hamilton Beach, requiring a bit more storage space. At the same time, the juice container is much larger, which is a plus if you do a lot of juicing in one sitting. The container also has a lid that serves as a foam catcher. There’s more to clean with a larger container and an added lid, and foam can be removed using a spoon on models without a lid. Hamilton Beach’s juice container is much smaller, but you can also fit a drinking glass under the spout in place of the juice catcher. This cannot be done on Breville’s juicer since the juice comes spraying out and will make a mess unless the proper container is in place.
The Breville juicer is more bulky and harder to move around as the parts are difficult to keep together. It is nearly impossible to lift the machine as one unit, and moving it even a few inches on the counter top is tricky.
The Hamilton Beach juicer doesn’t have quite as trendy of a design, but looks OK I think. This machine is somewhat easier to move because the various parts stay together a little bit better. There are several parts on juicers, and they do not necessarily fully interlock.
Cord length:
Breville’s cord is 41 1/4 inches long, or 44 1/2 inches including the plug.
Hamilton Beach’s cord is 27 1/4 inches long, or 29 1/4 inches including the plug.
For us, Hamilton Beach’s cord length was acceptable.
Performance:
I thought the two machines were similar in performance, which surprised me since there was a significant price difference. When comparing, using similar amounts of produce going through both machines, they produced the same amount of juice. If the Breville produced better (by teaspoons, maybe), it was not enough to justify spending the extra money based on this alone. The pulp from Breville was a tad bit dryer, didn’t stick to my fingers as much, which suggests more juice having been extracted from it. Again, the difference was very small.
I also tried to run the pulp through the machine a second time, which squeezed out a few more dribbles, but not enough to be worth the extra effort. At least for me. Machines in the several hundred dollar range will probably be able to extract even more juice from the pulp, but it seems to me that it would take many years of juicing before you could make up the dollar difference through juicing. I don’t see how purchasing a much more expensive machine would save money even in the long run, but I could be mistaken.
Noise level:
To me, the noise level was pretty equal for these two machines; I’m not sure which one was louder. They both are crazy loud, but so is my beloved, powerful Blendtec blender!
Programs:
I did like the two speed option on the Breville juicer, compared to one-speed-only on Hamilton Beach. The added low-speed on Breville is nice for when you juice soft items such as oranges; I found that the lower speed created less foam.
Cleaning:
The cleaning work-load was very similar for both machines, though the filter basket was easier to clean on Hamilton Beach. These baskets are both tricky to clean well; a brush is very helpful, but it still is time consuming to get all the little particles out of the tiny holes along the sides of the baskets. Leaving these particles alone is not an option since it will affect the performance of the machine eventually, plus it’s ICKY! Ewww!!
Both machines made some mess on the counters, back splash, and under the cabinets when fruits and vegetables were added to the juicers. Tiny pieces of pulp would spray out from the opening while the machines were running. Hamilton Beach did a little bit better than Breville did, in this regard.
Conclusion:
Of these two juicers, Hamilton Beach seemed like the better choice for us. Cost, size, clean-up, handling of the machine, and the fact that they were so similar in performance, were factors that led us to choose Hamilton Beach over Breville. The extra $100 for the Breville machine versus Hamilton Beach was not worth it in our opinion. I don’t see how it could be worth it for anyone, unless looks is the most important part. Yes, Breville does look pretty cool! But functionality is more important to us, and Hamilton Beach beats Breville in our opinion.
The idea of juicing with an extractor juicer seemed like a good one to us, cramming a ton of produce into one simple glass of juice. And I still think there are great benefits to this type of juicing. However, we quickly discovered some issues that had us rethink using a juicer. Though the juicer is nice for making raw apple cider and such, we later decided to purchase a powerful Blendtec blender instead, which was a much better fit for our family for our daily or weekly juicing purposes. Click this link to read about it in my post Juicing: Comparing Blenders to Extractors.
Thanks for a great report!
Thanks for the detailed review! This is EXACTLY what I was looking for, and will definitely buy the Hamilton Beach juicer.
I’m glad I could help!
Hamilton Beach was a joke, not heavy enough to stay on counter, kept vibrating almost off. The blade was new, tricky to clean, you really have to get in there. How did you deal with it not suctioned to counter and not heavy enough to be effective!!!
Breville is the strong study and used it over 100 days and needed a blade which I pinched from the Hamilton BEach!
That’s too bad that it didn’t work well for you. Mine does not vibrate like that, it’s never been a problem keeping it on the counter. I’m sorry you had an issue with yours, sounds frustrating!
Great review, Thanks! I used a 90’s era Omega Juicerator for YEARS in Florida but needed something for our Northern Lakehouse. I found LOTS of the Hamilton Beach units for sale on FB Marketplace. I guess juicing is just something that isn’t for everyone. I bought a ” used one, like new” unit for $25. After an initial re-mindset….I like it even BETTER than the old school Omega. I juice carrots, broccoli, some beet, celery, sometimes apple. Juice come out instantly in the included receptacle. The quality/ amount of juice is the same. I LIKE the bin where the pulp gets thrown. Putting a plastic grocery store bag in it before juicing makes cleanup MUCH easier. I don’t have to stop midway and empty anything like I did with the Omega.
When I turned the Omega OFF….it would spin FOR EVER before it could be cleaned out. The HB spins for 5 seconds.
HB Best practice: Plug the small hole at the far top in the waste bin with the plastic grocery bag or shredded vegetables will shoot out if it. Sure don’t know why they put it there. Enjoy!!