Green Power GS-3000 190 Watts Juicer

A few years ago, I bought a Breville centrifugal juicer after learning of the benefits of fresh raw juices. Only after buying it did I learn of the problems of centrifugal type juicers. They destroy most of the nutrients by running at 13,000 RPM which whips in air and air contact is what destroys the nutrients, so centrifugal juicers pretty much make colored sugared water, not juice. They are also extremely inefficient with leafy greens or wheatgrass, they pretty much throw these items into the pulp bin unjuiced and are not too efficient in general either.

I now wanted to buy a good juicer, and decided on the Omega 8005, but literally minutes before buying it, I read one review complaining of the plastic auger getting grinded into the juice or pulp. After informing myself more it became apparent nearly every Omega 8000 series juicer suffers from this problem, well over 90% of owners I ask did have this problem.

So I had to resume my research, I looked at the Green Stars briefly thinking I could never afford one, but it quickly became apparent to me that the Green Star was the only juicer worth buying, all others have one major issue (extremely inefficient) or another (grinding plastic powder into your juice). I then learnt the Green Stars start at $340 on 2-life.com for the 1000 model, and the 3000 model was $380. This was more reasonable than the $550 MSRP, so I started looking at it seriously, and noted many other advantages to this model:
-Extracts 100% more (twice) juice than a professional restaurant citrus press for citrus fruits
-Extracts 33% more juice than the Omega juicer
-Extracts 50-200% more vitamins than other juicers (confirmed by independent studies)
-Has a fine or coarse screen, to allow pulp or not in the juice
-Has 2 pressure adjustment knobs, one low pressure for things like citrus fruits, and one high pressure knob for hard things like carrots to put more pressure on the pulp, with both knobs, you can turn them to increase or decrease the pressure on the pulp (the low pressure knob is optional but if you want to make juice from citrus, tomato or other soft fruits, you need this knob)
-Due to the 2 above points, this is one of the rare juicers that does well with soft things like citrus and tomatoes, others struggle or clog with these items
-Makes juice that lasts 3 days rather than 15 minutes before loosing most if it's nutrients

Now with all those advantages, I was really starting to think it was worth the extra money. So I started reading reviews, they are all good reviews but almost all of them complained of the clean up, so now I wasn't so sure anymore, if it takes 10-15 minutes to clean and end up not being used, I'll end up having a $400 paper weight on the kitchen counter. After asking several owners of this juicer on raw food forums, I then learnt it could in fact be cleaned in 5 minutes or less. So finally, I decided to get it, not knowing if I would end up not using it, it was one of the hardest purchases I've made, because not only is it the most expensive counter top appliance in the kitchen now, I was also risking not using it if it really was too hard to clean, so I was either getting a great juicer I'd use for years, or throwing $400 out the window, but I decided to buy it hoping it would get used. After all, I still used my old one but maybe only once a month (because I knew I was wasting lots of money each time I use it due to its extreme inefficiency).

I've now had the Green Star for almost a week. The first thing I wanted to know was how hard it was to clean, so I made a juice and then cleaned it. The first time I was a bit concerned as there are several parts to clean (7-8), but already by the 2nd or 3rd time I was cleaning it in 3 minutes! I really think the clean up is exaggerated in other reviews or maybe they clean it very thoroughly. I must say I do not dry the parts on mine, I just let them air dry, that saves a LOT of time. I've literally been using it 3-6 times per day since I got it, and have no problem taking the required 3 minutes to clean it each time. It does come with a brush designed specifically to clean this machine which makes the clean up much quicker.

I decided to start with the clean up because honestly that's the one and only concern I had before buying it and I feel many others may be put off this machine from the reviews claiming it's hard to clean.

Now for the juicing, I've done all sorts of juices with it so far and it works really well. I make fruit juices (orange, grapefruit, or orange-grapefruit, apple, and others), vegetables juices (carrot-tomato-scallions-beets-ginger and other similar blends) and tried wheatgrass also. The Green Star juices all of these flawlessly. The manual recommends the coarse screen for citrus juices, but this made them with much too much pulp for my liking, so I use the fine screen for almost everything, it makes pulp free juice like I like it. It's also quite faster than I expected due to the slow 110 RPM and what I had heard, but I can push a fairly large carrot through in just a few seconds, you can feed items through it at a very reasonable speed so it doesn't take very long to make even a large glass of juice. The biggest difference is in the taste of the juice, most juices out of my Breville were tasteless, those same juices out of the Green Star are to die for, the difference in taste is incredible. Not to mention, it extracts MUCH more juice than my old one, so I'm not wasting money by using it, it gets every last drop out.

I also tried making ice cream from frozen fruits as this machine can also do that. This works very well but only makes frozen fruit based ice creams (you could always freeze an ice cream mix into ice cubes and then run the ice cubes through the machine, I have some raw recipes that ask to do this), I do have a real ice cream maker (also reviewed here) but they each have their advantages, so I may keep using the juicer for ice cream every now and then. One trick I learnt is that since the metal gears are at room temp when you start, it will melt the first pieces of fruit you put in, so now I run 2 ice cubes through the juicer before making ice cream to chill the twin gears. I then discard of the slush that comes out, and then feed in a bit of fruit, a bit more slush will come out, then put a bowl under to catch the ice cream and you prevent melting the first bits.

I've actually even made a mashed "potatoes" recipe in this juicer (I have a raw mashed "potatoes" recipe that asks to pass the ingredients through a Green Star juicer, but a blender/food processor can also be used) and they turned out great, especially with the raw gravy that went on top of them.

I am very happy with my purchase and as I've already said, the clean up of this machine can be done in about 3 minutes, it's very easy to clean, no more than my old Breville juicer, in fact probably easier.

I highly recommend this juicer over any other if you can afford it, the centrifugal ones are not worth buying in my opinion, and a hand crank auger style juice would be a better option if you cannot afford a Green Star.