Cuisinart CJE-500 Compact Juicer Review: Compact and Cheap Option

Living in a small townhome has a lot of advantages like having less space to clean, but when it comes to storing appliances, it can be a pain in the neck.

When space in your home becomes a premium, you need to maximize every inch of real estate.

A big juicer would not be practical, so you’d want something compact.

Let me introduce to you the Cuisinart CJE-500.

It measures roughly 10-3/4” tall according to the chef’s catalog so it will fit under most countertops.

The juice catcher though is a bit on the small side, only being able to hold 16 ounces or half a liter, so it is just good to make juice for one to two people.

Being a Cuisinart, it comes with a generous 3-year warranty.

Features of the Cuisinart CJE-500

  • Comes with a matte black motor base
  • 400-watt motor
  • Stainless steel cutting disk and micro mesh filter
  • Motor spins at 19,000rpm
  • Flow spout can prevent drips
  • BPA free
  • 16-ounce juice pitcher
  • 40-ounce pulp catcher
  • 3-year warranty
  • 2.25″ Feed Chute
  • BPA free
  • 14.5″ tall

The good

  • Small foot print does not take up a lot of space
  • Easy to use
  • Long 3-year warranty
  • BPA free
  • Not very noisy compared to bigger and more powerful centrifugal juicers

The bad

  • Small juice jug and pulp bin means can’t make a lot of juice in one go
  • Does not do a good job on leafy greens like kale

What to expect from this compact juicer?

Cuisinart CJE-500 Features

Powerful motor

This juicer isn’t overly powerful having just a 400-watt motor. But the blades spin at a dizzying 19,000rpm, the fastest so far among the juicers I’ve reviewed.

Can’t store juice very long

It is a double-edged sword because, on one hand, the fast-spinning blades mean shorter juicing time. But it sucks in a lot of air so the juice will oxidize quickly.

Not good for storing.

Even though Cuisinart markets this having a wide feed chute, it is half an inch short of other wide mouth juicers like the Breville or Hamilton Beach so you’ll need to do more pre-cutting.

Even though it is compact, it still has a separate bin for the pulp. Unlike the Breville Juice Fountain that doesn’t have one so clean up should be easier.

This will work best on…

…Hard vegetables such as carrots and beet, fibrous ones like celery, watery ones like cucumber and fruits like apple and lemon.

Not great for leafy greens

For leafy greens, it will struggle a little bit because it spins at such a high speed that there is a risk of the blades throwing the leaves around instead of extracting juice from it.

Good housekeeping compared it to other juicers and said it was the worst in terms of juicing kale.

Just in case you want to use this to juice greens. Instead of putting leaves in one by one, bunch them up together and roll them.

So it’ll be a more significant mass for the cutting disk to shred, and you’ll be able to maximize the yield from it.

How long can you store juice?

It rotates at very high speed – 19,000rpm. There will be lots of air will get sucked into the juice so storing juice extracted from this machine isn’t an excellent idea.

The juice that comes out will have lots of foam indicating that it has sucked in a lot of air.

You’ll have to drink it right away to get the maximum nutritional benefit.

How much preparation is needed?

The feed chute measures only 2.5” in diameter. So it isn’t as wide as the wide mouth Cuisinart juicers. You’ll probably have to chop apple, lemon, and oranges into halves or quarters to fit it in here.

The motor is strong enough though to handle 2 or 3 small carrots at once without bogging down.

How much juice can it extract?

To give you how much juice can be extracted from 12 small carrots watch this demo from Cuisinart…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCkAsulXFy4

It filled up roughly half the 16-ounce juice catcher.

Green juice

Here’s another demo this time with two green apples, one lemon, one orange, one tomato, and one medium sized cucumber…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGMy9DNXprI

You’ll notice that it almost filled up the juice catcher, but if you’ll look carefully there is a lot of foam as well, that’s the result of the blades spinning at 19,000rpm that sucks a lot of air in.

Is it hard to clean up?

Since this is a relatively small juicer cleanup should be fast, and it comes with a cleaning brush so cleaning the cutting disk and mesh filter should be easy as long as you wash it right after using the juicer. If you don’t, the pulp will dry up, and it’ll be a pain to clean.

What type of juicer is this?

It is a centrifugal ejector-type juicer because it has a separate container that catches all the excess pulp which is impressive because this juicer isn’t big.

How long is the warranty?

It comes with a 1-year warranty on the whole juicer.

Is it BPA free?

Yes, Cuisinart says that parts are BPA free.

Noise

Even though Cuisinart claims that this machine is quiet, it isn’t exactly as quiet as a Jack Lalanne juicer because it spins at such a high speed, but it won’t be as loud as a Cuisinart juicer, so it falls right in the middle.

You can still talk at a normal tone even while using this but don’t expect it to be very quiet, just a heads up.

Dimension

  • 10-1/4” x 10-3/4” x 8” (width x height x depth)
  • Weighs around 9.9 pounds

Product Specification

ModelCuisinart CJE-500 Compact Juice Extractor
Feed chute size and shapeRound

2-1/2" in diameter
RPM
(revolutions per minute)
19,000rpm
Juice collector capacity16 ounces
Pulp collector capacity40 ounces
Disk type Stainless steel
TypeCentrifugal juicer
Juice vegetables?
Juice fruits?
Cant it make nut butter?No
Can it make sorbet?No
Can it grind coffeeNo
Can it process foodNo
Dishwasher safe
Top rack only
Warranty3 years
Voltage110/120-volts
Motor400 watts

The package includes

  • Motor base (400 watts)
  • Pusher
  • Cover and feed chute (one piece)
  • Stainless steel micro mesh filter and cutting disk (one piece)
  • 40-ounce pulp collector
  • 16-ounce juice jug
  • Cleaning brush
  • Recipe booklet
  • Manual

Consumer Rating

Lots of consumers loved the compactness of this juicer saying that it fit in their small kitchen.

One even used it in his motorhome.

What’s great about it is that it isn’t very tall, so they didn’t have to remove it from the countertop after using it, they leave it there.

Great for hard ingredients

As for performance, this seems to be great on hard ingredients like carrot and beet.  But it struggles with leafy greens like kale as it didn’t extract a tablespoon from a few leaves of kale or any other leafy green.

Like what I’ve said all along, to get the most out of leafy greens from this type of juicer, you’ll have to roll up leaves on top of another so that the cutting blades have something to chew on.

If you put in leaves one by one, it won’t be as effective.

Not great for leafy greens

If you’re looking to juice a lot of leafy greens, a juicer like the Samson or Omega would be a better option, though more expensive.

One consumer put it best that this isn’t the right juicer for you. If you want to be serious with juicing but for those starting, this is an excellent option if you don’t want to spend a lot of money.

It is excellent for juicing fruit

For fruits, there were mostly positive reviews in terms of yield. Just don’t forget to peel oranges and lemon or the rind might clog up the mesh filter.

Speaking of clean up, you’ll have to clean this juicer up after fill up the 16-ounce juice collector because the filter isn’t designed to handle pulp from more than 16 ounces of juice and will clog. Also, clean it immediately after using it.

There was one complaint that was a bit of a concern for me. The strainer rubbing against the plastic below it, there were around six complaints about this, and they were really concerned about it and rightfully so.

It seems to me that this can be caused by pushing a hard piece of ingredient too hard that might have messed up the alignment of the filter basket.

The holes in the mesh filter are a bit large so expect a bit of pulp in your juice according to some consumers.

If you want a pulp-free juice, run it throw a finer strainer or sieve.

Where can I buy this?

You can buy this juicer from Amazon for less than $75 or direct from Cuisinart. My choice would be in Amazon because it’s more than $20 cheaper and you get 2-day free shipping if you enroll in Prime. Yes, even if you get the free 30-day trial, they’ll ship it within two days.

Another reason would be the availability of the extended warranty of up to 4 years just in case you want that extra peace of mind.

This juicer would be great for…

…People looking for a compact juicer that will fit in their kitchen tables.

This juicer isn’t very tall measuring 10-3/4” compared to the juice fountain’s 16” so it’ll fit under most countertops fitted with cabinets.

Great warranty

Price between these two juicers is roughly the same, but this Cuisinart comes with a longer 3-year warranty compared to Breville’s 1-year warranty.

Can only run small amounts of juice

Another issue would be the small juice catcher (only 16 ounces), so you’ll just be able to make half a liter at a time. One workaround would be buying a larger Pyrex jug to make bigger batches. Don’t forget the sieve to remove excess pulp.

Weigh your options carefully.

Overall this is an excellent juicer for small homes even motor homes where every square inch of storage space matters because it isn’t very tall at just 10-3/4” so it’ll be easy for you to store this on the table without it taking too much space.

Just be mindful of the limitations and potential issues I’ve enumerated in this review.

2 thoughts on “Cuisinart CJE-500 Compact Juicer Review: Compact and Cheap Option”

  1. I know you say it won’t work with making nut butters, but what about nut milk? Where the the soaked nuts are juiced with accompanying water.

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