I have a Vita-Mix and a juicer.

The Vita-Mix is excellent. It's a large, powerful blender and is used in many restaurants for making smoothies or iced coffees. You can also use it to make vegetable soups by just throwing in some veggies and water. It comes with an additional container for grinding grains or making peanut butter, etc. I think it was over $200.

I carefully researched before purchasing a juicer and eventually choose the "Green Star".

It uses stainless steel gears to smash the material into juice, which is better than spinning ones because the spinning ones oxygenate the juice as it's sprayed out in a mist which can adversely affect some of the enzymes. It's not a huge deal, but it does noticeably affect taste and nutritional value a little.

The only juicer that produces higher quality juice is a table press type that requires you to put the item you're juicing in and turn a bar on the top like an old printing press.

The juice quality of the press-type is nearly identical (very slightly better) in quality to the Green Star but requires many-times the effort for the same amount of juice. The GS also is very easy to clean, requiring only about 3 to 5 minutes for full cleanup, which can be much faster than trying to clean the stainless mesh centrifuge in a spinning juicer.

All things considered, I believe the Green Star is the best.

Below are pictures...

VIta-Mix

<img src="http://herballure.com/Images/Misc/VitaMix.jpg">


Green-Star
This is shown without the juicing attachment that fits on the front. It removes for easy cleaning.

<img src="http://herballure.com/Images/Misc/GreenStar.jpg">