The difference is in how the ingredients are processed into juice.
With centrifugal juicers, a disc with tiny sharp teeth spinning at high speed shreds fruits and vegetables and the spinning forces the juice through a fine mesh sieve/filter basket, resulting in rapid juicing with almost no pulp. It happens at high speed so there will be some oxidation that occurs, but don't worry about claims of heat from this type of juicing damaging enzymes/nutrients. It doesn't raise the temperature more than 2ºF, and if you are using refrigerated produce, even less reason to worry about that. Centrifugal juicers are faster, louder and use more electricity than masticating juicers.
With masticating juicers, an auger (picture a giant screw) smashes, crushes and grinds up the fruits and vegetables, at a low speed. There are different sized holes in the filter, which allows pulp into the juice. Because the juice is produced at a low speed as the ingredients are crushed, there is little oxidation. Pulp in the juice means you're getting some of the fiber, which is good for you and especially useful if you're using vegetable juice as a meal replacement since fiber helps you feel more "full." Masticating juicers are more quiet and use less electricity, but have smaller feed chutes so you have to cut your fruits and vegetables into smaller pieces.
This is how I cut up items for processing through a centrifugal juicer with a 3" feed chute:
Basically, if it fits in the feed chute you're done. I halve my cucumbers because I put the leafy greens between the two halves to make processing them easier.
This is how I cut up items for processing through a masticating juicer:
Everything is cut into much smaller/thinner pieces except for the greens. I cut celery into lengths of only two to three inches, which keeps the stringy fibers from getting tangled in the auger.
So — is one type of juicer better than the other? Not necessarily. It really depends on your needs. Centrifugal juicers are faster, and models with big pulp bins make it easy to make a larger quantity of juice, which is great when juicing for two, etc. Masticating juicers are really good at processing delicate leafy things, which is a bit trickier in a centrifugal model. I think if you want to make juice in the morning and have some to take "to go" for later in the day, a masticating model might be better due to the lack of oxidation from low-speed extraction.
I recently switched to a masticating juicer as my primary juicer. I did have some concerns about the additional time I would need to spend both preparing the ingredients and the actual juicing. I've found it takes an extra ten to fifteen minutes (depending on how many ingredients and the quantities) from start to finish vs. with a centrifugal juicer with a wide feed chute.
If you like to juice in the morning but are concerned about time, cut up and prepare your ingredients the night before and keep them in a large plastic zipper bag in the fridge. (If you're using apple, you can rub some fresh lemon on the apple pieces to keep them from turning brown.)
The ingredients in the above photo (6 leaves lacinato "dinosaur" kale, 1 baby bok choy, 1 lemon, 1 large chunk ginger, 1 yellow pepper, 3 stalks celery, 1 fennel bulb, 1seedless cucumber) made about 32 ounces of juice.
I'm pleased that the masticating juicer makes far less noise than my centrifugal juicer, which I'm sure my downstairs apartment neighbors appreciate since I juice early in the morning. It also happens to require less counter space in my kitchen.
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