As I read reviews on this juicer I was really excited to try it out. The compactness, the color, the more convenient and less space taking device than my older masticating jucer, as well as the expected ease of use.
I tried the first recipe in the manual that I had ingerdiemts for: Sunshine Juice.(oranges, raspberries and mint). Easy enough. I used two oranges and a little more than a 1/2 cup of raspberries and three mint leaves. When I was done it didn't seem like there was as much juice as I was hoping for, so I added two mandarin oranges. Thats when the the filter started to get stuck or backed up, it seemed a lot of the pulp was staying around the auger. So I turned it off and started poking around the auger, I did this a few times and turned it on to see of that would help, it did not. I also used the reverse mode with no improvement.
At this point I had enough juice to my liking so I tried it. The juice was heavenly, my son even wanted me to make him his own glass of juice!! Feeling more confident to try again and taking the juicer apart, I found 3 or 4 small mandarin orange slices floating around in the pulp. Unfortunately, it was too late to continue juicing those slices because the seal was now broken around the auger and it would be a bigger mess.
I finished cleaning the juicer out, which was a breeze, so much easier than my biggerr one!
I made the recipe again for my son. Which turned out great, but had the same problem. I cleaned it out again, much faster this time, and then
I tried a second recipe with pineapple, ginger and sparkling water (Maui Wowie)
This also didn't make as much as I was hoping so I added more pineapple, and it backed up again. There was so much pulp that the juice stared coming out the feeder chute.
Long story short, when cleaning again I noticed the plug, that is used as a pressure valve, completely blocks where the pulp comes out. The valve is great for the use of cleaning but I beleive there is a design flaw because the plug comes too high and blocks the pulp chute opening. I was tempted to cut the longer part of the plug that blocked the opening, but didnt want to be stuck with a non-working juicer if my idea didnt work.
So I did what most people would do at this point, I am giving up and will be sending it back.
I looked at the reviews more closely and it looks like I bought the first generation that is 130 watts without a frozen chute attacment, the newer version is 150 watts and has a frozen feed tube attachment.
In summery, maybe there was a design flaw or maybe I am missing something, but I dont want to waste any more time on this juicer.
That said, I really do love most everything about this juicer the compactness, the ease of use, the color, the easy clean up and it does actually juice things really well, but only about 8 oz of juice at a time before you need to take it apart and clean the seive/screen, to juice again. So if you want to juice for more than one person at a time, I would go with another juicer.