Jack Lalanne Juicer (SLH90) Review

Juicers are some of the most sought-after kitchen accessories for those who can afford them.

Whether you are a family in a large home who wants to increase the amount of healthy content in their diet or a fitness fanatic who lives alone and wants to boost their immune systems and energy levels.

A juicer releases the enzymes, nutrients and vitamins in food and allows you to boost both the flavor and supercharge the nutritional benefits of multiple foods in one single drink.

It is simply much easier to consume many fruits and vegetables in one drink than eat them all over the course of the day.

The Jack Lalanne Juicer is one of the most remarkable juicers currently available on the market.

It utilizes a centrifugal style blender to churn your food with a presser in the top to make sure that every drop of nutrition in even the toughest fruit and veg is drained out into your cup.

To look at it, it’s a very hefty yet compact unit that will compliment most kitchen styles, whether modern or bespoke.

The clear plastic elements will mean that you can see through the casing and check on the process of your blended foods.

Having this level of control will give you the option of determining how much pulp is left in your final drink.

But what are the features of the Jack Lalanne Juicer? What materials is it made out of and how do they help with the efficiency of the juicing process?

How much can you be expected to spend on this device? What marks this juicer out from all the other models that you have on the market?

Well, allow us to allay your fears, because we’ve compiled an in-depth review of the Jack Lalanne Juicer (SLH90) so that you know exactly what it is capable of before you go out and purchase one.

We’ll cover the assembly as well as the performance and whether you will have to chop your food before feeding it into the tube. We’ll cover cleaning, use and durability too.

First off, we’ll start with some of the basic pros and cons of this juicer before getting into a more comprehensive review of its performance.

Pros

• This unit is very easy to assemble - all you have to do is place a few components into their housing and you should be good to go.
• Cuts down on prepping time - that’s right, you can put into your vegetables and fruits whole with this unit, simply feeding them into the wide chute and pushing them down with a tamper.
• This has a decent performance, able to mince up plenty of fruits and vegetables in one simple action.
• This is a very hygienic unit - with a composition of stainless steel and plastic, you can get this one spick and span in no time at all.

Cons

• This product definitely struggles with blending certain chunky foods such as apples, which have an awkward shape and don’t feed into the chute well.
• There is a lot of pulp in your final juice - if you don’t like any solid matter in your final juice, then we would recommend that you don’t opt for the Jack Lalanne Juicer.
• This unit doesn’t have the lifespan of a lot of the other units that you can find and some users might not find it worth the price.

How Much Do You Have To Prepare Your Food Beforehand?

This unit is a centrifugal juicer, so it will rotate at a high speed of 15,000 RPM and upwards.

You’ll be able to dispatch kilos of vegetables and fruit quite easily and efficiently. The feed chute is around 3-inches in width, so you can fit more or less most vegetables in completely whole.

The 3-inch entry point is the standard size of a lot of the juicers that you can find on the market, including ones manufactured by Breville, Cuisinart and Jamba.

All these are leading juicer makers and Jack Lalanne has gone to no expense to make sure that this juicer conforms to the industry standard.

However, you won’t have to chop any of your foods for insertion into the juicing machine.

The single food that most users have had difficulty inserting whole into the machine is apples. Because of their spherical, slightly uneven shape, you might have to slice your apple in half before pushing it into your machine.

If you are planning on skipping this citrus fruit, then you should have no problem with this juicer, as it can plenty large quantities of food in a single session.

This is a great unit if you want your juice fast, for example, as a quick boost before you go to work in the morning or as a little immune top-up before bed at night.

For example, with juicers such as the Omega 8006, you have to dice up your wheatgrass and spinach before you feed it into the machine.

You’ll have to cut oranges into eighths and apples into sixteenths if you want to get that extra smooth texture in your cup at the end.

When we tested other models such as the Tribest Solostar 4, we found that the performance was roughly the same, with food having to be thoroughly diced and chopped beforehand to give you that smoother texture at the end of your juicing.

This will be a dividing factor if you’re planning on giving juice to children who might be averse to the pulp.

All-in-all, the Jack Lelanne juicer will cut down on a lot of your prep time, moreso than these other juicers and might be a boon for those that are in a hurry and don’t necessarily mind about having a super-smooth quality to their final product.

However, it will probably give you a lot less of a nutrient output than a slow presser whose design is geared towards vitamin and mineral retention.

How Good Is The Performance?

If you are planning on juicing large quantities of fruit and vegetables in one single sitting, then we would recommend using this juicer.

Using centrifugal technology, you can be sure that you will be more than capable of producing a healthy out-of-juicer yield in your cup.

We used a simple test to determine the yield that this juicer produced and how well it compared to its rivals. The method is simply juicing a single fruit or vegetable, then taking the resulting juice and running it through a sieve to see how much pulp remained in there.

With the Jack Lalanne juicer, the results of the final juice were around average, with there being a moderate amount of pulp left in the remaining juice.

The amount of pulp that remained is weighed separately and the overall performance of the juicer is determined by how much ‘after-sieve yield’ is left.

When it comes to juicing apples, this machine tends to struggle, with quite a substantial amount of apple pulp left in the sieve afterward.

Some users have reported that the ‘juice’ extracted from an apple with this juicer is actually more of a thicker, ‘puree’ style consistency. This puree would barely sieve during our own trials.

Apples are a popular way of sweetening up a juice drink, as well as having many healthy bacterial properties. So if you do want to add apples to your celery or asparagus juice, then you might be struggling to get the right consistency.

It might also throw off the consistency of your original juice if you are adding apples in towards the end of the mixture.

All-in-all, this juicer rates averagely when it comes to blending. It might be able to juice your vegetables and fruits quickly, but it might not be the most efficient model for this process.

Also, if you want to add apples, the most common fruit, into the mix, then you might want to choose another juicer for the task.

How Easy Is It To Assemble?

The manufacturer of this juicer boasts that it is a fusion juicer, in that it blends the features of a centrifugal juice with some of the components of a slow press juicer.

However, it doesn’t really deviate from the standard elements that you might find in a centrifugal juicer - this one is certainly fast, but it can also run the risk of overheating your juice.

However, when it comes to assembly, this juicer is quite easy to lash together, coming with simple parts that you can probably guess by sight alone rather than having to pore over the manual.

It has very few detachable components that are dishwasher friendly and can be quickly removed, rinsed and replaced if you are in a hurry.

This one comes with a press that you use to push the vegetable or fruit safely into the funnel.

It also comes with a chrome locking arm that can be slotted into place over the cover to prevent any juice from spraying out as well as preventing any fingers from straying in and potentially causing serious harm while the machine is switched on.

There is an optional anti-drip cover that you can choose to put over your spout if you want to prevent any excess juice from spilling onto your kitchen counter. 

However, some users have decided against this as they have found the operation too fiddly and sometimes causing more mess than it seeks to prevent.

Overall, this is a very easy unit to assemble and will be a perfect starting machine for those people who might not be used to working a juicer.

If you are short on patience and time, then we would certainly recommend getting the Jack Lelanne, which could see your juicer up and working out of the box in less than half an hour.

How Easy Is It To Clean?

Having a clean juicer should be on the top of your priority list, as it will prevent the transmission of bacteria from one juicing to the next, as well as removing dry food matter that will become stuck to the inside of your chute or filter and severely impede the function of the machine.

The body of this juicer is made from stainless steel, which is a remarkably good surface to keep clean. The plastic filter containers are removable and very easy to clean, being dishwasher and hand wash friendly.

This juicer comes in a wide variety of different versions, all categorized in terms of color: black, blue and stainless steel.

As we have mentioned above, the stainless steel option only has a body that is made of metal, whereas its components such as the chute and the feed nozzle are all plastic and detachable.

The black version of this juicer is probably the best to clean, as a lot of the stains that you might get from fruits such as oranges and blueberries will not show up that well against the black body. However, with the blue and stainless steel, this kind of tinting can become commonplace.

You must also be aware of the fact that if you’re juicing large quantities of vegetables on a regular basis, then the chances are that you’ll be experiencing a lot of staining on the inside of your juicer.

The light blue plastic elements of the blue model will be particularly susceptible to this.

This juicer also comes with a remarkable cleaning brush that will help you to chisel off some of the more stubborn stains.

The brush itself is extremely tough and resilient, with a short and thick handle and rounded end that you can use to get into all the hard-to-reach nooks and crannies.

The brush head is long and you can use it to get into the gears that can become gummed up, giving you the ability to remove any stubborn food matter that might have dried and will impede the overall function of your machine.

The brush bristles are white so you can see how much matter that you’ve removed, with some extra bristles that you can replace when your brush gets too worn.

The brush’s design is what makes it so unique and gives it that extra advantage over cleaning your machine.

Combining this with the detachable elements of the juicer, you can easily pop out the parts that get overly exposed to food matter and juice, giving them a hard scrub over every inch.

You can also clean the filter basket with this brush to a decent standard. Luckily, thanks to the design, this basket is designed not to retain much waste matter anyway, depositing the pulp into a storage bin in the bottom of the unit that can be unclasped and emptied in your waste bin once it is full.

Dishwasher Safe Parts

The manufacturer has stated very clearly that you can use all of the components of this juicer in the dishwasher except for the electric motor hub unit that powers the juicer itself.

You should put these detachable components in the top rack for a light soaking, away from the washers heating elements that might end up warping the plastic.

Being able to put your juicer in the dishwasher will make all the difference between it being lightly cleaned and having that in-depth clean after every use.

If you have the time, we would recommend you put your juicer in the washer after every use to minimize stains and increase the functionality of your machine.

The Jack Lalanne Juicer earns major plus points for its cleaning abilities. It comes in materials that are very easy to wipe down afterward, with detachable plastic components that you can remove and stick in the dishwasher.

The cleaning brushes will also help you get rid of the more stubborn dry matter.

How Easy Is It To Use?

This machine operates very easily at two different speeds, which will definitely make it an attraction for those users who don’t have too much experience operating a juicer.

All you have to do is juice the harder, more fibrous foodstuffs on the more intensive setting, while softer fruits like bananas and oranges should be juiced on the lighter setting.

This is probably one of the easiest juicers to use, with this multi-speed option that is clearly printed on the side of the machine, we would probably even suggest that you wouldn’t have to consult the manual before using your juicer.

However, the Jack Lalanne does come with a very simple-to-understand and comprehensive manual that details all the instructions and components parts and how you should use them.

It even has a section on juicing tips that give a much better understanding of proper juicing techniques and what to expect from certain types of fruit and veg.

It even goes into the water content of each fruit and vegetables, which will give you a much better idea about the volume of juice that you can expect to be expunged into your cup.

How Portable Is It?

This juicer, when completely put together, only weighs around 5-pounds, making it a great unit to carry between countertops, ideal if you’re planning on using it at an event or function.

A lot of people run health food kiosks at festivals and might want to offer freshly blended juices as part of their menu.

This is one of the lightest units that we have on this list, which also makes it much easier to store. If you are pushed for countertop space, then you might have to put it back in the cupboard after every use.

The portability of this unit will also be great for senior users who might find it difficult to carry bulkier pieces of equipment.

The power cord of this juicer is around 48 inches long, so you can operate this one quite some way from the original power source.

In terms of juicing volume, you can churn out around 36 ounces of fluid from one single juicing, which is fairly average for a juicer of this caliber. This comes with a 60-ounce pulp container too.

However, if you do want a larger fluid and pulp container, you can find others on the market that go a lot higher than this. The Breville Juice Fountain Duo, for example, can produce upwards of 48-ounces of juice and a 108-ounce pulp container.

So if you fancy making juice for more people, then you might want to save money and splash out on a heftier unit.

How Durable Is It?

When it comes to having the best juicer that will truly be able to stand the test of time, you’ll want to look at the build quality as well as some of the materials that it is made out of.

This model of juicer’s materials definitely matches up with the price and the overall durability of the machine.

However, there are various components of the Jack Lelanne that are less resilient than others.

The juicer’s container and the froth separator that you can put inside the juice container are less than optimal when it comes to containing the amount of juice that your machine will produce.

The handle is quite susceptible to snapping off over repeated use, as it is very thin and made from a plastic material.

It is attached to only one point of the container, which is a design flaw that could result in it breaking off if you handle it with more than delicate care. This will certainly be a problem when your container is full of juice.

Having exerted force on this part of the handle will certainly lead to it coming off.

You can still hold the juicer cup in your hands even with a broken-off handle, so it won’t lead to the functionality being compromised, but it will look very unsightly and might even lead to scratches and scrapes on your hand.

The froth separator is also prone to wear and tear, constructed from thin plastic pieces that create a sieve over the top of the cup to drain away some of the thicker elements of your juice.

Because of the thin constitution of this sieve, then it is certainly susceptible to puncturing, as well as increased mild perforation.

Obviously, the durability of this model will be affected by how much you plan on using it. If you are a once-a-week juicer, then you can guarantee that your juicer will last a lot longer.

With some tender loving care, this machine will certainly last you a number of years.

However, if you want intense juicing in a shop or market scenario, then you might be looking at a more expensive unit that is made entirely from steel composition that can handle the extra knocking and banging without getting damaged.

If you plan on using your blender frequently and intensively, we would recommend that you steer clear of this model.

How Versatile Is it?

This is a centrifugal juicer, and as a rule, centrifugal juicers are only able to produce juice, they cannot be adapted for making milk, purees, sauces or other types of paste.

Slow juicers, on the hand, can do these things, so if you are looking for a wider pallet of sauces then we would recommend that you get a slow juicer, also called a slow cold press.

A slow juicer uses a cold-crushing device that will be able to crush harder foodstuffs like almonds and cashews into a kind of butter-like substance.

However, these are a much slower process than the centrifugal, which usually operates at an average speed of 15,000 RPMs.

Masticating juicers are also very versatile, you can mix and match all sorts of ingredients with this device, which replicates the movement of the human mouth to extract as many nutrients from the organic food matter as possible.

Our Final Say

The Jack Lelanne juicer is a great starting juicer, with plenty of features such as a centrifugal blending style and a durable wipe-clean body and components that can be placed in the dishwasher.

If you want speed but not necessarily efficiency, we would certainly recommend this unit for most users.

However, the durability and versatility are really where this unit lets itself down. It has a very flimsy plastic construction in the juice cup and does not really produce anything other than juice.

So if you are looking to buy a juicer that you can use intensively and regularly, there are plenty of other units that would probably be more suitable for your needs.