Quick verdict: The Ninja and the Breville now cost the same, $149.95 each, so this stays a question of what you put in the machine, not what you can afford. Buy the Ninja JC151 if kale, spinach or celery are a regular part of your juice. Buy the Breville JE98XL if it is mostly apples, carrots and oranges and you want it done in two minutes. They are close to mirror images of each other, and picking wrong is the most common way to end up with a juicer in a cupboard.

This post contains affiliate links. I earn a commission if you buy through the Amazon links below, at no extra cost to you.

Ninja JC151 vs Breville JE98XL at a glance

Most pages ranking for this question compare the Ninja against a different, dearer Breville — the Juice Fountain Cold or the Cold XL, at $199.95 and $399.95 — and several never print a price at all. The JE98XL is the interesting one precisely because it costs the same as the Ninja to the cent.

The independent test that settles it

TechGearLab buys the juicers it tests and put both of these through the same 13-machine pool on the same rubric. That is what makes the numbers comparable — not two separate reviews with two different methods, but one test containing both machines. The full citation and links sit on the individual reviews of the Ninja JC151 and the Breville JE98XL.

Read the two bold rows together. On hard produce the Breville scores three points higher; on leafy greens the Ninja scores five points higher. Same price, same test, opposite strengths. Almost nothing else in the category gives you a decision this clean.

The Ninja does take the higher overall score. It is worth being clear about why that can mislead: the overall score weights leafy greens at 20% and hard produce at 20%, so a machine that is superb at greens and poor at roots comes out ahead of one that is the reverse. If your shopping list is the reverse, so is the ranking.

What the difference actually feels like

Speed. The Breville is dramatically faster. An 850-watt motor spinning a shredding disc gets through a bag of apples in the time the Ninja takes to work through two. The 3-inch chute swallows whole fruit, so prep is quicker too. If juicing has to fit into a weekday morning, this is the machine that survives contact with reality.

Greens. The Ninja is not slightly better here, it is in a different category. A spinning disc needs structure to shred and kale offers none, so it comes out of the Breville as damp pulp. The Ninja’s slow auger crushes it against the screen instead. A 3.7 out of 10 is not a machine you can coax into doing this job with better technique.

Noise. The Breville sounds like a blender. The Ninja does not — an 80 RPM auger physically cannot make that noise. If you juice early in a shared house, that is a real difference rather than a spec-sheet one.

Juice that keeps. Slow-pressed juice separates and oxidises more slowly, so the Ninja’s output survives a few hours in the fridge better. Centrifugal juice is best drunk soon after making it. Neither is a health claim — it is a texture and shelf-life difference you can see in the glass.

Cleaning, honestly

The Breville cleans up better, which surprises people who assume the fast messy machine must be worse. It has fewer parts and they are larger. The Ninja has more components and a finer screen.

Both share the same failure mode: rinse the filter while the pulp is still wet and it takes two minutes; leave it to dry and the mesh sets hard. That single habit matters more than the difference between the two machines. If yours is already jamming or slowing, the juicer clog diagnostic covers which cause you actually have.

Which one should you buy?

Three questions. Answer them honestly about what you will actually juice, not what you intend to juice.

1. Will greens be in more than a third of your juices? If yes, buy the Ninja and stop reading. Nothing else outweighs a 3.7 on the machine that cannot do the job you bought it for.
2. Do you need it done in under three minutes on a weekday? If yes and greens are occasional, buy the Breville. Speed is the thing that decides whether a juicer stays on the counter.
3. Are you juicing for more than two people at once? The Breville’s 35.2 oz jug and 2.6 quart pulp bin handle batch work; the Ninja’s 24 oz jug means stopping to empty partway through.

If the answers pull in opposite directions — greens matter and speed matters — neither of these is your machine. That is the case for stepping up to the Omega Cold Press at $199.87, which handles greens properly without being as slow as the Ninja on everything else.

The case for buying both

Worth doing the arithmetic, because it is not obvious. The Ninja and the Breville together cost $299.90. The Nama J2, the premium hands-free machine, is $599.00.

So two machines that between them cover every job either one does badly — greens on the Ninja, hard produce and speed on the Breville — cost half what one machine at the top of the market costs. If you have the counter space and you genuinely juice both kinds of produce, that is a better use of $300 than compromising on one machine, and considerably better than $599.

The obvious objection is counter space and two lots of washing up, and it is a fair one. But nobody selling juicers has any reason to suggest it, which is why you will not read it anywhere else.

One thing to check before you buy the Ninja

Amazon prices the JC151 finishes separately. The Charcoal reviewed here is $149.95 today; the Silver JC151SL is $149.99, within four cents of the Charcoal. It has been listed $20 higher before, for an identical machine with the same motor and the same filters. The Charcoal simply has more accumulated ratings because it has been listed longer. Stick with the Charcoal unless the colour matters to you, and check both prices before you buy.

How this comparison was made

Prices, availability and rating counts for both machines were verified on both products’ live Amazon listings with a United States delivery address on the date shown below — $149.95 each, both in stock at the time of writing. The performance figures come from TechGearLab, which buys the units it tests and scored both machines in the same 13-juicer pool on the same rubric; the source is cited and linked in full on the individual review of each machine. I have not run a side-by-side yield test on these two juicers myself, and no number here is presented as if I had.

Verdict

There is no winner here, and any comparison that declares one is not paying attention. Two machines within $20 of each other with the same star rating and opposite competences: the Ninja for greens, the Breville for speed and hard produce. Decide by looking in your fridge rather than at the overall scores, and if the honest answer is that you want both kinds of juice, buying both still costs half of what the category’s flagship does.

Check Ninja JC151 Price Check Breville JE98XL Price

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the Ninja JC151 or the Breville JE98XL better?

Neither, and that is the honest answer. They sit within $20 of each other and hold the same 4.5-star average. In the same independent test the Ninja scored 8.7 on leafy greens against the Breville’s 3.7, while the Breville scored 8.3 on hard produce against the Ninja’s 5.3. Pick by what you juice, not by the overall ranking.

Why does the Ninja rank higher overall if the Breville beats it on hard produce?

Because the scoring weights leafy greens and hard produce equally at 20% each, and the Ninja is further ahead on greens than the Breville is on roots. If your juicing is mostly apples and carrots, the overall ranking is actively misleading for you.

Which is faster, the Ninja or the Breville?

The Breville, by a wide margin. Its 850-watt motor and 3-inch whole-fruit chute get through produce in a fraction of the time the Ninja’s 80 RPM auger needs, and there is less pre-cutting. Speed is the main reason a juicer stays on the counter rather than in a cupboard.

Can the Breville JE98XL juice kale and spinach?

Not well. It scored 3.7 out of 10 on leafy greens in independent testing. A centrifugal disc needs structured produce to shred and leaves give it almost nothing to grip, so greens come out as damp pulp. No technique fixes this — it is how the mechanism works.

Is it worth buying both instead of one better juicer?

It can be. Together they cost $299.90, against $599.00 for the Nama J2 at the top of the market. Two machines covering greens and hard produce respectively cost half what one flagship does. The trade is counter space and two sets of parts to wash.

Which is easier to clean?

The Breville, slightly — fewer and larger parts, and it scored 8.0 against the Ninja’s 7.0. Both depend far more on rinsing the filter screen while the pulp is still wet. Left to dry, the fine mesh sets hard on either machine.

How This Comparison Was Put Together

Plainly: this is a research-based comparison, not a hands-on test. I have not run these side by side.

What it rests on: the published specification for both – a 150W cold press auger against an 850W centrifugal basket, which is a difference of mechanism rather than degree, along with chute size, jug capacity and which parts are dishwasher safe; plus independently published testing where it exists, cited in the text with the source named; and the pattern across verified-purchase reviews for each.

What I could not establish: a yield figure for either. The percentages quoted across this topic have no independent test behind them that I can find, and this comparison declines to repeat them as fact.

Related guides

• Best Juicer 2026: Cold Press and Centrifugal Picks Compared
• Masticating vs Centrifugal Juicer: Which Should You Buy?
• Ninja NeverClog JC151 Review
• Breville JE98XL Review
• Best Juicer for Celery in 2026

Quick verdict: The Nama J2 ($599.00) is the only juicer here you load once and walk away from, and the hands-free hopper genuinely works. What it does not do is produce dramatically more juice than a $200 masticating machine. You are paying roughly $400 for your time back and a 15-year warranty, not for a better glass of juice. That is a real thing to buy — just buy it knowingly.

This post contains affiliate links. I earn a commission if you buy through the Amazon links below, at no extra cost to you.

Every other juicer asks you to stand at the counter feeding produce down a chute one handful at a time. The J2 has a wide self-feeding hopper: you tip in the whole recipe, press start, and go and do something else. At 4.7 stars from 1,513 ratings it is the highest-rated machine in the juicer buying guide, and by some distance the most expensive.

Specifications

Check Price on Amazon

What an independent tester found with the Nama J2

The Spruce Eats put the J2 through a home kitchen and published the result. Two things in it are worth more than the star rating.

First, the yield. Their reviewer described the quantity of juice relative to produce and pulp as similar to a masticating juicer — not better than one — and said outright that the leafy greens yield did not impress. That matters at this price, because “high yield” is the phrase the product listing leads with. If you are buying the J2 expecting materially more juice from the same kale than a $200 machine gives you, the independent account does not support that.

Second, the cleanup. They found it genuinely quick, with one caveat worth knowing before you own it: the parts need to be properly dry before reassembly. That is a two-minute habit, not a flaw, but it is the kind of detail that only turns up in an account from someone who actually lived with the machine.

One disclosure about that source, because it changes how much weight it carries: The Spruce Eats states that its reviewer was sent a sample of the J2. That is a supplied unit rather than a purchased one. Their conclusion was still positive, and the fact that a reviewer holding a free $599 juicer volunteered that the greens yield underwhelmed is arguably the most useful sentence in the piece.

So what does $599 actually buy?

Not more juice. Time.

A masticating juicer is slow to feed by design, and the feeding is the part that makes people give up. Standing over a chute pushing celery through for ten minutes is the difference between a habit and an appliance in a cupboard. The J2 removes that entirely: load the hopper, start it, come back to a jug of juice. Whether $400 over a $199.87 Omega is worth that depends on how often you juice and what your time is worth, and no review can answer it for you.

The second thing it buys is the warranty. Fifteen years, against one year on the Breville JE98XL. Amortised over that term the J2 costs about $40 a year, which is a fairer way to look at it than the sticker.

Why nobody has undercut it properly

The obvious question is why a $599 hands-free juicer has not been copied at half the price. It has been tried. Omega — a company that has made masticating juicers for decades — sells a hands-free wide-mouth cold press juicer at around $180, and it currently averages 3.5 stars. Omega’s conventional juicers sit at 4.3 to 4.5.

That gap is the argument for the Nama. Self-feeding is mechanically harder than it looks: produce has to be cut and fed evenly by the machine rather than by a hand with judgement, and doing it badly produces jams and poor yield. The J2 holding 4.7 stars while the cheap alternative sits at 3.5 is the clearest evidence that the engineering is where the money went.

The honest weak points

The yield claim is oversold. The listing leads on maximising juice output. An independent hands-on account put the yield in line with a normal masticating juicer and specifically flagged leafy greens as unremarkable. At $599 that is the single most important caveat in this review.

50 RPM is slow even for a cold press machine. Slower is gentler, but a full hopper is not instant. Hands-free does not mean fast — it means you are not the one standing there.

Parts must be dry on reassembly. A small thing that becomes an irritation if you are the kind of person who reassembles straight out of the drying rack.

It is $599 for a single-purpose appliance. Unlike the Omega, it is not sold as a nut-butter-and-pasta machine. It juices. If it does not earn counter space several times a week, that is a lot of money sitting idle.

Who should buy it

Buy it if: you already juice regularly and the feeding is what you resent. That is the specific problem this machine solves and it solves it properly. The 15-year warranty makes more sense for someone with an established habit than for someone testing whether they have one.

Skip it if: you are buying your first juicer. Start with a $149.95 Ninja and find out whether juicing survives contact with your actual mornings. Most juicers are abandoned within a year, and finding that out for $150 is considerably better than finding it out for $599.

Skip it too if you are buying it expecting more juice per pound of produce. Buy the Omega and pocket the $400.

How this assessment was made

Specifications, price, availability, warranty and rating data were verified directly on the product’s live Amazon listing with a United States delivery address, on the date shown below, along with the white variant and the competing Omega hands-free model referenced above. The hands-on findings on yield and cleanup come from The Spruce Eats’ tested review of this exact model, which discloses that its reviewer was sent a sample by the manufacturer — noted here because a supplied unit is a weaker form of independence than a purchased one, and readers are entitled to weigh it accordingly. I have not tested this machine myself and no measurement here is presented as mine.

Verdict

The J2 is an excellent machine sold on a slightly wrong premise. It is not a juicer that gets more out of your produce; it is a juicer that removes the ten minutes of standing at the counter that stops people juicing at all. If that is the problem you have, it is worth the money and the 15-year warranty makes the arithmetic better than the sticker suggests. If it is not, there is a $199.87 machine that makes essentially the same juice.

Check Price on Amazon

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the Nama J2 worth $599?

It is if the thing stopping you juicing is standing at the counter feeding produce, because the self-feeding hopper removes that entirely. It is not if you expect materially more juice: an independent hands-on review put its yield in line with a normal masticating juicer. Spread across the 15-year warranty it works out around $40 a year.

Is the Nama J2 really hands-free?

Yes. The wide hopper takes a whole recipe at once, so you load it, start it and leave. That is the machine’s entire reason to exist and it is the part that works as advertised.

Does the Nama J2 give a higher juice yield than cheaper juicers?

Not dramatically. The Spruce Eats found the juice-to-pulp ratio similar to a masticating juicer generally, and was not especially impressed by the leafy greens yield. Treat the marketing emphasis on maximum output with caution.

Nama J2 or a $200 masticating juicer?

Same juice, roughly. The J2 buys back the ten minutes of feeding and adds a 15-year warranty against the one to two years typical elsewhere. If you juice several times a week the convenience compounds; if you juice occasionally, the cheaper machine is the sensible buy.

Why are cheaper hands-free juicers rated so much worse?

Self-feeding is harder to engineer than it looks, because the machine has to cut and feed evenly without a hand making judgements. Omega sells a hands-free cold press juicer around $180 that averages 3.5 stars, against 4.7 for the J2 — that gap is the clearest evidence of where the extra money goes.

How hard is the Nama J2 to clean?

Quick, by masticating juicer standards, with quick-release parts and a supplied brush. The one habit to learn is drying the components properly before reassembly, which an independent reviewer flagged as the only real annoyance in daily use.

How This Review Was Put Together

Plainly: this is research-based, not a hands-on test. I have not owned or used this, and nothing here should be read as a report from my own kitchen.

What it rests on: the published specification – the hands-free hopper that is the machine’s entire premise, auger speed, the chamber design and what it means for cleaning, and the price relative to the rest of the category; plus independently published testing where it exists, cited with its caveats; and the pattern across verified-purchase reviews, which for the J2 concentrates on cleaning time and on whether the hands-free feed justifies the cost.

What I could not establish: yield against cheaper masticating juicers, which is the claim a $599 machine has to answer. No independent cross-brand test covers it. Where yield is discussed here it is attributed to whoever measured it, with their sample caveats intact.

Related guides

• Best Juicer 2026: Cold Press and Centrifugal Picks Compared
• Omega Cold Press Juicer Review
• Masticating vs Centrifugal Juicer: Which Should You Buy?
• Best Juicer for Celery in 2026

Quick verdict: The Breville JE98XL ($149.95) is the fastest, easiest route to a glass of apple, carrot or beet juice at this price, and it has the ratings to prove it — 4.5 stars from more than 16,700 buyers. It is also close to useless with leafy greens, and Breville sells a smaller machine that does the same core job for about a third of the price. Those two facts decide whether this is the right buy far more than anything on the spec sheet.

This post contains affiliate links. I earn a commission if you buy through the Amazon links below, at no extra cost to you.

The Juice Fountain Plus has been on sale for over a decade, which in small-appliance terms is close to geological. An 850-watt motor spins a cutting disc against a mesh basket, and a 3-inch chute swallows a whole apple without pre-cutting. Every review tells you it is fast and fiddly to clean. Neither fact answers the two questions that matter.

Specifications

Check Price on Amazon

Question one: what happens with leafy greens

Deciding between this and the Ninja specifically? The Ninja JC151 vs Breville JE98XL head-to-head covers both at the same $149.95.

TechGearLab buys the machines it tests and ranked the JE98XL second out of thirteen juicers, overall score 68. Strong result. Then look at how that 68 is built:

A 3.7 out of 10 on leafy greens is not a quibble. It is the machine telling you what it is. A spinning disc needs something with structure to shred; kale and spinach have almost none, so they get flung against the mesh and come out the pulp chute damp rather than juiced. Celery does a little better because of the fibre, but not much.

Meanwhile the hard produce score of 8.3 is genuinely excellent, and it is the highest in that test pool. Apples, carrots, beets, ginger, hard pears — this machine is superb at all of them and does the job in seconds rather than minutes.

So the honest framing is not “is the Breville good.” It is: green juice, or not? If greens are the point, buy the Ninja NeverClog instead at the same price, or read the masticating vs centrifugal comparison for why the two mechanisms diverge so sharply. If greens are not the point, keep reading, because this is the better machine.

Question two: do you need this one, or the Compact?

Breville also sells the BJE200XL Juice Fountain Compact. Same brand, same centrifugal principle, same 3-inch chute. The Compact is priced at $70.92 on Amazon, against $149.95 for the JE98XL. It carries the same 4.5-star average from 12,941 ratings, which is a large enough sample that the rating is not noise.

The extra outlay, about $79 on current listings, buys three things. A second speed — low for soft produce and greens, high for dense roots, where the Compact runs at one fixed speed. A much bigger pulp bin at 2.6 quarts against the Compact’s far smaller container, which is the difference between juicing continuously and stopping to empty. And a 35.2 oz jug with a froth separator, where the Compact juices straight into a glass.

That is a real upgrade if you juice for more than one person or in batches. It is close to worthless if you make one 12 oz glass in the morning and wash up straight after. Most reviews of the JE98XL never mention the Compact exists, which is convenient for anyone earning a commission on the more expensive machine. I would rather you bought the right one.

The other sibling worth knowing about is the BJE430SIL Juice Fountain Cold at $199.95, which adds a cold-spin system intended to keep the juice cooler. It rates slightly lower (4.4 stars) and does not change the fundamental leafy-greens limitation, so it is a $50 step sideways rather than up.

The Breville JE98XL chute is the real feature

Everything else about a juicer is negotiable; prep time is not. The reason people stop using juicers is not that the juice is bad, it is that quartering apples and topping carrots at 7am gets old in about a fortnight. A chute that takes a whole apple removes the step that kills the habit.

Two speeds matter more than the marketing suggests, too. Low speed for softer produce reduces the amount of foam whipped into the juice; high speed for beets and carrots stops the motor bogging down. The froth separator in the jug catches what does form.

Cleaning is the tax you pay

The 8.0 cleaning score is better than the Ninja’s 7.0, which surprised me, and the explanation is that there are fewer parts and they are bigger. The filter basket is still the problem: fine mesh with pulp driven into it under centrifugal force needs the supplied brush and running water, immediately, every time. Leave it to dry and the mesh becomes genuinely difficult.

Five parts come apart in seconds and the pulp bin is detachable. Call it three minutes of washing up per session if you do it straight away. That is the honest cost of owning this machine, and it is the single most common reason the ratings that are not five stars are not five stars.

Noise, heat and the oxidation question

It is loud. An 850-watt motor spinning a disc at high speed sounds like a blender, and there is no version of this machine that is quiet. If you juice at 6am in an apartment with thin walls, that is a real consideration.

On heat and nutrient loss: this is the claim slow-juicer marketing leans on hardest, and it is oversold. Centrifugal juice does incorporate more air, separates faster and is best drunk within a few hours rather than kept overnight. That is a texture and shelf-life difference you can actually observe. The stronger claims about destroyed enzymes and lost vitamins are not something the independent scoring supports — TechGearLab rated this machine 8.3 on juice quality, only half a point behind the cold press machine.

Who should buy it

Buy it if: your juice is fruit and hard vegetables, you want it made in under two minutes, and you are juicing enough volume that the 35.2 oz jug and 2.6 quart pulp bin earn their keep. On that job, at this price, nothing in the category beats it.

Buy the Compact instead if: you make one glass at a time, you are new to juicing and not certain the habit will stick, or the price gap matters. Same brand, same mechanism, same rating from nearly 13,000 buyers.

Skip Breville entirely if: kale, spinach, wheatgrass or celery juice is what you came for. A 3.7 out of 10 is not a machine you can coax into doing that job.

How this assessment was made

Specifications, price, availability and rating data were verified directly on the product’s live Amazon listing with a United States delivery address, on the date shown below, along with the two sibling models named above. The performance figures come from TechGearLab’s tested review of this exact model, which buys the units it tests and scored the JE98XL and the Ninja JC151 in the same 13-machine pool on the same rubric. I have not run my own side-by-side yield test between these machines, and no number here is presented as if I had.

Verdict

The Juice Fountain Plus has lasted more than a decade on the shelf because it is very good at one clearly defined job. Buy it for hard fruit and root vegetables and you will use it; buy it for green juice and it will end up in a cupboard. Before you do buy it, spend two minutes deciding whether the Compact at a third of the price does everything you actually need — for a lot of people making one glass a day, it does.

Check Price on Amazon

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the Breville JE98XL good for leafy greens?

No. In TechGearLab’s testing it scored 3.7 out of 10 on leafy greens, the weakest part of its result. A spinning disc needs structured produce to shred, and kale and spinach have too little of it. For green juice, a masticating juicer is the right tool.

What is the difference between the JE98XL and the BJE200XL Compact?

The JE98XL adds a second speed, a much larger 2.6 quart pulp bin and a 35.2 oz jug with a froth separator. The Compact runs at one speed and juices straight into a glass. Both use the same 3-inch chute and both average 4.5 stars. The JE98XL is listed at $149.95; Amazon no longer displays a price on the Compact’s listing, where other sellers start around $71.

How long does the Breville JE98XL take to make a glass of juice?

Under two minutes for most fruit and hard vegetables, and much of that is feeding rather than juicing. The 3-inch chute takes whole apples, which removes the chopping step that makes juicing feel like a chore.

Is centrifugal juice less healthy than cold press juice?

It incorporates more air, separates faster and is best drunk within a few hours rather than kept overnight. The stronger claims about destroyed nutrients are oversold: the same independent test that rated its leafy greens performance 3.7 rated its juice quality 8.3, half a point behind a cold press machine.

How hard is the Breville JE98XL to clean?

Five parts come apart quickly and the pulp bin detaches, but the fine mesh filter basket needs the supplied brush and running water immediately after use. Around three minutes per session if done straight away, considerably longer if the pulp is left to dry on.

Is the Breville JE98XL loud?

Yes. An 850-watt motor spinning a cutting disc at speed is about as loud as a blender, and there is no quiet setting. Worth factoring in if you juice early in the morning in a shared or thin-walled home.

How This Review Was Put Together

Plainly: this is research-based, not a hands-on test. I have not owned or used this, and nothing here should be read as a report from my own kitchen.

What it rests on: the published specification – the 850W dual-speed centrifugal motor, the 3-inch feed chute, the Italian-made micromesh filter and the pulp container capacity; plus independently published testing where it exists, cited in the text with the source named; and the pattern across verified-purchase reviews, which for this juicer concentrates on how much pulp ends up in the juice and on the filter needing scrubbing.

What I could not establish: yield against cold press machines. The percentage figures repeated across this topic have no independent test behind them that I can find, and this review declines to state one.

Related guides

• Best Juicer 2026: Cold Press and Centrifugal Picks Tested
• Ninja NeverClog JC151 Review
• Masticating vs Centrifugal Juicer: Which Should You Buy?
• Best Juicer for Celery in 2026

Quick verdict: The Ninja NeverClog JC151 ($149.95) is the cold press juicer I recommend to most first-time buyers, and it is genuinely very good with kale, spinach and celery. It is also, by independent measurement, clearly worse at hard produce than a centrifugal juicer costing exactly the same money. Buy it if leafy greens are a regular part of what you juice. If your juice is mostly apples, carrots and beets, this is the wrong machine at this price.

This post contains affiliate links. I earn a commission if you buy through the Amazon links below, at no extra cost to you.

The JC151 is Ninja doing what Ninja does: taking a category that used to start near $300 and putting a competent version on the shelf for about $150. It is a masticating juicer, a slow auger that crushes rather than a disc that shreds. What matters is not whether it is good, but where it is good.

Specifications

Check Price on Amazon

Ninja NeverClog JC151: the independent test numbers

Cross-shopping these two directly? The Ninja JC151 vs Breville JE98XL head-to-head puts the full decision in one place.

TechGearLab buys the juicers it tests and ranked the NeverClog first out of thirteen machines, with an overall score of 76. That headline is the part every affiliate site repeats. The category breakdown underneath it is the part almost nobody quotes, and it is far more useful, because the same lab tested the Breville JE98XL — a centrifugal juicer at an identical $149.95 — on the same rubric in the same 13-machine pool.

Read the middle two rows again. On hard produce the Ninja scores 5.3 and the Breville 8.3. On leafy greens the Ninja scores 8.7 and the Breville 3.7. Those are not small gaps and they run in opposite directions.

Two machines at the same price, from the same test, are close to mirror images of each other.

This is the single most important thing to understand before buying either one, and it is why “which juicer is best” is the wrong question. The right question is what you are going to put in it. I go through the mechanical reasons behind this split in more detail in the masticating vs centrifugal comparison.

Does the NeverClog name hold up?

If yours is jamming regularly, this guide to diagnosing a juicer clog walks through how to tell which of the four causes you actually have.

Mostly, with an asterisk. The auger turns slowly under high torque, which is the right combination for celery strings and kale stems — the fibres get crushed and pulled through rather than wrapping around a spinning screen. Ninja also fitted a Reverse program, which backs the auger out of a jam without disassembly.

The asterisk is that a reverse function existing is an admission that jams still happen. “NeverClog” is a marketing name, not a guarantee.

What it honestly means is that when the machine does bind up, clearing it is a button press instead of ten minutes at the sink with a brush. That is a real improvement over cheap slow juicers, and it is worth having. It is not the same as never clogging.

Where the 150 watts shows

A 150-watt motor sounds feeble next to the 850 watts on the Breville, and the two numbers are not comparable — torque at low RPM is a different job from speed at high RPM. But the hard produce score is where the limit becomes visible. Dense carrots and raw beets are the load that a slow auger struggles with, and 5.3 out of 10 is a below-average result even among the machines it beat overall.

In practice that means slower going and more pushing on hard root vegetables. It does not mean the machine cannot do it. It means that if hard produce is 80% of what you juice, you are paying a masticating premium for the thing this machine is worst at.

Cleaning

Step by step, across every juicer type: how to clean a juicer.

Every juice-contact part is dishwasher safe, which is the single best thing about living with it. The 7.0 cleaning score is a shade below the Breville’s 8.0, and the reason is the filter: a fine mesh basket with pulp pressed into it needs a brush and running water regardless of what the dishwasher can do afterwards. Budget two to three minutes at the sink after each session. Leave it until the pulp dries and that becomes ten.

The two interchangeable pulp filters are a genuinely good feature rather than a spec-sheet one. The Less Pulp filter produces juice you would recognise from a bottle; the Lots of Pulp filter keeps enough body that the juice feels like food. Swapping them takes seconds.

The colour price gap

This one is worth knowing before you click buy. The JC151 comes in more than one finish, and Amazon has not always priced them the same. At the time of writing the Charcoal (JC151) sits at $149.95 and the Silver JC151SL at $149.99 — the identical machine, same 150-watt motor, same filters, same jug, four cents more. The gap has been $20 before. There is also a Navy JC151NV.

The catch is review volume rather than quality: the Charcoal has accumulated 3,691 ratings at 4.5 stars and the Silver only 170 at 4.3, because it is newer to the listing. With the prices four cents apart, buy the Charcoal unless you want the Silver, and check both prices before you click, because the gap has been $20.

The step-up is the JC152 NeverClog 3-in-1 at $199.99, which adds slicing and shredding attachments. That is only worth $50 more if you actually want a part-time food processor; if you do, a dedicated food processor does that job better.

What this machine is actually for

Buy it if: green juice is the point. Kale, spinach, chard, celery, cucumber, herbs, wheatgrass. This is the cheapest machine I know of that handles those properly, and the 8.7 leafy greens score is the reason it took the top spot in a 13-juicer test despite a mediocre hard produce result. It is also the right call if you want to make juice in the morning and drink it at lunch, because slow-pressed juice separates and oxidises more slowly.

Skip it if: your juice is apples, carrots, oranges and beets, and you want it in two minutes. At exactly the same price the Breville does that job substantially better and cleans up faster. Skip it too if you juice for four people at once — the 24 oz jug means stopping to empty partway through.

If celery juice specifically is what brought you here, the celery juicer guide covers the machines built for that one job, including the step up from this one.

How this assessment was made

Specifications, price, availability and rating data were verified directly on the product’s live Amazon listing with a United States delivery address, on the date shown below. The comparative performance figures come from TechGearLab’s tested review of this exact model, which buys the units it tests and scored the JC151 and the Breville JE98XL in the same 13-machine pool on the same rubric. I have not run a side-by-side yield test on these two machines myself, and I have not invented one — where a number appears here, it comes from a named source that measured it.

Verdict

The NeverClog JC151 earns its reputation, but not for the reason the marketing implies. It is not a machine that beats a centrifugal juicer at everything for the same money. It is a machine that trades away hard-produce performance to be very good at the one thing cheap juicers are traditionally hopeless at.

If that trade matches your shopping list, it is the best $150 in the category, and the Silver finish is the same machine at nearly the same price. If it does not, the identically-priced Breville is the better tool and no amount of cold-press marketing changes that.

Check Price on Amazon

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the Ninja NeverClog really never clog?

No, and the Reverse button proves it. The slow high-torque auger jams far less than a cheap masticating juicer, and when it does bind the Reverse program clears it without disassembly. That is a real improvement in daily use, but “NeverClog” is a product name rather than a guarantee.

Is the Ninja JC151 good for celery and leafy greens?

Yes, and this is its strongest suit. TechGearLab scored it 8.7 out of 10 on leafy greens, the highest result in its 13-juicer test pool. Celery, kale, spinach and herbs are exactly what a slow auger handles well.

Is 150 watts enough for a juicer?

For soft produce and greens, comfortably. For dense carrots and raw beets it is the machine’s weak point, and the independent hard produce score of 5.3 out of 10 reflects that. Watts are not directly comparable between masticating and centrifugal juicers because torque at low RPM does a different job from speed at high RPM.

Ninja JC151 or Breville JE98XL?

They cost the same and are close to opposites. The Ninja wins on leafy greens (8.7 vs 3.7) and juice quality; the Breville wins on hard produce (8.3 vs 5.3), speed and cleaning. Pick based on what you actually juice, not on which one ranks higher overall.

Is the charcoal JC151 cheaper than the silver one?

Amazon prices the finishes separately. The Charcoal JC151 is $149.95 today against $149.99 for the Silver JC151SL, for the same machine with the same specification, though it has been listed $20 cheaper before. The Charcoal is simply the higher-volume listing with far more accumulated ratings, which is a listing difference rather than a quality one.

How long does juice from a cold press juicer keep?

Slow-pressed juice separates and oxidises more slowly than centrifugal juice, so a day or two in a sealed container in the fridge is realistic rather than the drink-it-now window a fast juicer gives you. Shake before drinking; some separation is normal and is not spoilage.

How This Review Was Put Together

Plainly: this is research-based, not a hands-on test. I have not owned or used this, and nothing here should be read as a report from my own kitchen.

What it rests on: the published specification – the 150W high-torque auger, 24 oz jug and 36 oz pulp bin, the two one-touch programmes and adjustable pulp control, and dishwasher-safe parts; plus independently published testing where it exists, cited in the text; and the pattern across 3,600+ verified-purchase ratings, which is a large enough sample that the absence of the clog complaints common to cheap masticating juicers is itself informative.

What I could not establish: juice yield against other cold press machines. Ninja’s anti-clog claim is a marketing claim, and no independent cross-brand yield test covers this juicer.

Related guides

• Best Juicer 2026: Cold Press and Centrifugal Picks Compared
• Masticating vs Centrifugal Juicer: Which Should You Buy?
• Best Juicer for Celery in 2026