Sana 929 Ultimate Juicer review: Brilliant but messy

Sana 929 Ultimate Juicer review in a sentence: A masticating juicer that can handle anything but requires the usual strip down and clean-up afterwards.

If I’m honest, I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the best juicer appliances. While they’re undeniably good to own if you’re keen to up your juice and smoothie intake, they can be a bit of a pain to own, mainly due to the cleaning that’s involved. It doesn’t matter if you plump for a centrifugal juicer, which spins and removes juice or if you head in the direction of a masticating juicer, which mashes your ingredients – there’s always plenty of cleaning up to do when you’re done.

That was definitely the case when I tried the Kuvings Whole Slow Juicer a while back. That is a great appliance and got the job done quickly and easily. Less quick and easy was the cleaning required to get it back to the way it looked before I started mashing up fruit in it. It also left me wondering if the labour-intensive work involved in producing fresh juices and smoothies was really worth it. Especially so when you can pick up a fresh container of the stuff when you’re out doing your weekly shop.

Of course, the argument is always that using a premium juicer will give you better quality juice. There’s also the flexibility of being able to create your own juice, smoothies and related liquid treats that can have everything and anything added, depending on your taste and dietary requirements. So, when I got offered the Sana 929 Ultimate Juicer to try, I decided it was time to revisit the juice lab – well, my kitchen – to see if it could deliver more positive vibes.

Sana 929 Ultimate Juicer: Price and availability

The Sana 929 Ultimate Juicer is available now at UK Juicers for £1,345, which I think seems like an awful lot of money for something that produces juice. However, if you consider that it comes with a lifetime guarantee, meaning it’ll never wear out then I suppose you have the chance to get your value out of it. That said, you’ll want to be serious about your juicing to warrant using it every day due to the clean-up work involved in returning it to its original shiny state.

Sana 929 Ultimate Juicer: What is it?

Sana is a leading European brand, and the 929 Ultimate Juicer is a flagship product. In fact, the blurb states that this is a ‘best in the world’ juicer. It’s certainly one of the most expensive but pull everything from the box and it’s easy to see why the cost is justified.

The 929 Ultimate Juicer is made largely of food grade stainless steel. It weighs a lot and, for the most part, feels incredibly sturdy as a result although sits on a slightly less impressive plastic base. It will not go anywhere mind as the 7.8kg weight makes sure of that.

Along with the bulk, there’s muscle too thanks to a 150-Watt brushless motor that offers up four different speed settings, so you can tailor performance to suit your material to be mashed. The 929 Ultimate Juicer is very flexible too because thanks to that power and the build quality it can produce nut butters along with the likes of non-dairy milks, salsas and sorbets. In fact, this is an appliance that can seemingly take on any kind of job without failing.

Sana 929 Ultimate Juicer: Is it any good?

As you’d expect from a premium-grade juicer, the Sana 929 Ultimate is very good. It took me a little while to get everything out of the box and assemble it for duty. The good thing about this is that Sana includes a compact but comprehensive manual with some clear diagrams about what goes where. The other bonus with this appliance is that the component parts are heavy duty and lock together with a satisfying clunk.

You get three stainless steel juicing screens with this machine, which means they can be easily switched depending on the sort of thing you're mashing up. The manual advises using the finer screen for most tasks, but does also explain why you’ll want to change for a screen with bigger holes for harder fruit and veg. Switching these over is straightforward enough though be warned they’re also the hardest thing to clean. There is a neat little brush included to let you tackle the worst of any pith build up, mind.

There’s a dual feed chute up on top, which is where you put your fruit or veg in with a slot for things like chunks of orange, while berries can just be poured into the angled hopper and roll straight down into the masticating mechanism. There’s a wooden plunger included too, which is used to push down ingredients into the machine – rather than using your fingers or metal implements, both of which would be dangerous and very stupid.

Sana 929 Ultimate Juicer: Performance

I found the Sana 929 Ultimate Juicer to certainly be up there with the best of them when it comes to performance. This appliance is a serious bit of kit and was easily able to handle anything I chose to put into it. It runs smoothly and pretty silently too but there’s no doubting its potency either, whichever of the four speeds you’re running.

Every time I used it, no matter what the ingredient, the Sana munched and mashed its way through the ingredients without fuss or bother. The bonus with this appliance is that there’s a homogenising screen, which can be used as a strainer for making something like a smooth nut butter. And, because of the machine’s muscle, it does this with ease too. Very impressive.

There’s a 1000ml glass container that goes underneath the outlet for the juice, while the polished stainless steel pulp container is a work of art. In that respect, the Sana 929 Ultimate Juicer is great at containing both the end result and the waste without making too much of a mess of your countertop. I got some excellent juices from its innards, while it’s great at getting to work on tougher vegetables too. Overall, I have no doubts about its mechanical ability.

Inevitably though, the fun ends when it comes to clean up time, which whilst being easy to do for the most part thanks to the chunky components, still involves quite a lot of work. My biggest challenge was getting the filters cleaned, which can be done but don’t expect to do it in seconds. The main body of the machine is easily wiped down and a lot of the larger non-electric components can be rinsed or washed in warm soapy water. It is a bit of a faff though.

Sana 929 Ultimate Juicer: Verdict

The Sana 929 Ultimate Juicer is a chunky little number with dimensions of 390L x 200W x 385H, with a design that somehow seems to take up more space than you’d expect due to its irregular shape. Nevertheless, assuming you’ve got room for it on your countertop and deep enough pockets to purchase it in the first place, this is definitely one of the best juicers you can buy.

You get a bulletproof build quality and the components, especially the internals that do the real hard work, are superbly crafted. The motor is more than capable of handling any kind of task, even if you’re smashing nuts into dust. I think the speed options, from 40 to 65 to 90 and topping out at 120 covers all bases too, so the speed spectrum is ideally suited for a variety of juicing or crushing jobs.

Plus, there’s a 10-year guarantee for the motor so that and the limited lifetime parts cover makes the price seem less ridiculous. The only thing is to make sure you use it; otherwise, the Sana 929 Ultimate Juicer could turn out to be a very expensive countertop dust collector. Lightweight juice fans need not apply.

Sana 929 Ultimate Juicer: Alternatives to consider

Of the other models I’ve tried I’d suggest having a look at the Kuvings Whole Slow Juicer. Again, while you’ll extract excellent juice from this appliance, you will still be faced with a clean-up operation afterwards. It’s great for making other things too, so is just as versatile as the Sana unit.

For my money, however, I still think the best Nutribullets are an ideal alternative to juicers. They’re more compact and can be used quickly and easily with slightly less cleaning up to do at the end.