Smeg CJF01 citrus juicer review

One minute review

Smeg is a household name that has been around for years and is a particular favorite of ours. Inspired by their Italian heritage, they use bold colors, unique designs and innovative new materials to differentiate themselves from the busy home appliance market and, therefore, others competing to make the best juicer on the market.

The Smeg CJF01 citrus juicer is no exception to this. With its retro 50s styling and beautiful pastel blue hue (also available in other colors), it looked really smart on our kitchen countertop. 

It does exactly what is intended; it juices citrus fruits. It's also incredibly easy to set up with minimal assembly required, and it's obvious how to use it just from looking at the instructions and the appliance.

Smeg claims that it has an anti-drip, pop-up spout that allows liquid to be dispensed easily in a clean way. Further to its design, the universal cone and strainer mean that you can squeeze both large and small fruit.

At $199.95 / £139 / AU $206, it is what we consider to be a high-ticket item. Yes, it does what you need it to, but you can juice lemons in a much more affordable way with something more manual - although it is less effort with the Smeg CJF01 citrus juicer to hand.

Smeg CJF01 citrus juicer: price and availability

• List price: $199.95 / £139 / AU $206
• Widely available

The Smeg CJF01 is priced at $199.95 / £139 / AU $206 and is widely available through resellers. You can't buy it directly from Smeg but you can find out where you can buy it from through their website.

It is the only citrus juicer from Smeg in all available regions. They do also have the Smeg slow juicer which is a more versatile option - it just doesn't do citrus.

•  Price and availability score: 3/5

Design

• Beautiful colors; pastel blue, pink, cream, pastel green & white
• Retro 50s styling
• No buttons, switches or dials

The Smeg CJF01 citrus juicer is a very good-looking appliance. If you already own one of the brand's 50s-style fridges, coffee makers or kettles, it'll feel like a natural choice to bring into your kitchen.

In Smeg's own words it's an appliance that is 'designed to show off', and that it does. It has smooth curved lines, along with everything you need to juice a variety of citrus fruits. It measures 1.86 x 7.8 x 6.2inches / 29.5 x 20 x 16cm  (h x w x d), so this is a juicer with stance, too - some may even say bulk. There are no buttons, switches or dials to press or hold which adds to the appeal, not to mention the ease of use. 

The 70W motor with an integrated on-off sensor does all the work which is activated by pressing down one-half of the fruit until it runs dry. Juice pours out of the non-drip spout, and while this does channel the liquid very well, we found that it does, regrettably, drip - even after removing your vessel from underneath it.

It comes with a removable cover to protect it when not in use (which can also be used as a bowl for holding peel), and all of the components are removable for washing, which makes using the appliance from start to finish quick and easy.

• Design score: 4/5

Performance

• Juiced the citrus fruits easily
• Very easy to use
• No built-in strainer for pulp or small pips

We found the Smeg CJF01 citrus juicer very easy to assemble, very easy to use and equally very easy to clean. We juiced all of the citrus fruit varieties we could find in our local greengrocer - grapefruit, orange, nadorcotts (a type of clementine), lemon and a lime - and even a kiwi fruit, where there was some logic behind the decision.

The drip spout is not adjustable so we were pretty limited to what glass/vessel we could use. Luckily, we had a few of the same glasses which worked out well for juicing all the citrus fruits in line - and for the purpose of this review. The height to the base of the spout is 120mm, so a vessel of up to this height is what you'll need to have to comfortably have the juice trickling into.

We started big with the orange. We cut it in half (widthways), placed it flesh-side-down onto the juicer and applied some pressure. The motor kicked in and started to rotate the juicing cone inside of the orange half. It took just a few seconds for the juice to start trickling out down the drip spout and into the glass.

Next up, we juiced a couple of nadorcotts. Juice extraction was good but, the skin on this particular citrus fruit isn't as thick or as waxy as the lemon and it started to fall apart in our hands. When it started to do this I stopped juicing it, the motor automatically powered off, and I could see that it had quickly eaten away at the fleshy fruit.

The lemon and lime juice was efficiently extracted and the skins were intact after extracting all of the juice. The larger pips were captured on the strainer but with the lime, in particular, smaller pips made their way into the glass, so you'll (also) want get a small sieve for filtering out anything you don't want in the juice.

Juicing grapefruit with the Smeg CJF01 was by far the easiest way to go about it. Grapefuits are large and often have tough skin so using a manual citrus juicer was a lot more effort (in this case) to extract the juice - we did try, as a comparison.

The juicing cone worked through the flesh quickly and a lot of fruit was collected on the strainer, but pips did make their way through.

I decided to try to juice a kiwi, purely out of curiosity. The logic was that I could cut it in half easily and that it has soft fruit for the juicing cone to work its magic on. However, juicing a kiwi with a citrus juicer is not advised. The skin is really thin and the flesh doesn't juice - we felt it was a good experiment, though.

Whilst juicing all of the fruits we listed above, we measured a consistent noise level of 54dB which, for context, is only a little louder than moderate rainfall, so it's super quiet. This appliance won't be the early-morning wake-up call that we all dread - that can be something else.

• Performance score: 4.5/5

Score card: Smeg CJF01 citrus juicer

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

• First reviewed: July 2022