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Juicero S

Oops! Juicero’s $400 Wi-Fi juicer works no better than your hands

Juicero LThis past week, Bloomberg reporters made a not-so-startling discovery about the much-hyped, internet-connected Juicero juicer: It’s even more unnecessary than previously thought.

For a couple of years now, cold-press-juice enthusiasts in the US have been sinking large sums of money into Juicero, the San Francisco maker of a $400 juice machine described as “the Keurig of juice” because it magically turns fruit and vegetable packets into healthy drinks.

The company’s raised more than $120-million from companies like Google Ventures and Campbell — wild enough success for founder Doug Evans to call himself the ‘Steve Jobs of juicing’.

The pricey single-serving packets run another $7 or so apiece. These pre-packaged bags of chopped fruits and veggie are then squeezed with a supposed four tons of force to extract the tasty, tasty juice within.

Technology never comes cheap, though, and this device is Wi-Fi ready and reportedly contains 400 “custom” parts.

Evans has outlined them such: “There’s two motors, there’s 10 printed circuit boards, there’s a scanner, there’s a microprocessor, there’s a wireless chip, wireless antenna. There’s 775 aircraft-grade aluminum. There’s a gear box. There’s latches that support 16,000 pounds of force …”

Sounds high-tech and all, but in a video posted to the Bloomberg Technology website, reporters got pretty much the exact same amount of juice out of a Juicero bag by just squeezing it with their hands as they did by putting it into the machine (see below).

Investors are reportedly furious to learn this — and many commentators and the Twittersphere are questioning the Juicero’s existence.

Says one: “Now, to be fair, the company’s concept of delivering pre-packaged fruit and veggie packs to Juicero customers is pretty nice, especially for anyone who’s ever performed the seriously tedious and messy task of cleaning a juicer.

“In this way, the Juicero really does seem attractive, since it promises zero clean-up.

“But the recent revelation raises a couple serious questions: Why pay for the expensive machine when you can do the same thing with your hands, and if you can get the same amount of juice out of a pack just by squeezing it, then what is the machine even doing?”

Juicero’s CEO, Jeff Dunn, has answered these concerns. Kind of. Here in his published response, he has essentially begged customers not to squeeze the juice bags because the company worked really hard on the system.

Source: Bloomberg, Inverse.com