Actually, the cloves were big, I need to cut them into 3 to press individually, or else it wouldn’t pass. I guess it didn’t take that long, but I felt eternal. I will time it properly when I do it next time. 
BTW, do you peel the garlic when you press?
I peeled, because I feel I can press more without the skin.
Well, for me that was the part that took a lot of time!
I always peel the garlic clove - if I don’t peel it, I can’t see whether the garlic is bad/semi rotten or just have spots on the surface, that in my opinion are not supposed to be there.
This is just one of the reasons I don’t trust most restarants, they are too busy to really pay attention to how well they rinse and sort their ingredients, when prepping them.
A trick I do, when using the garlic press is to not rinse the chamber before I’ve pressed the last garlic clove. The garlic press still works without rinsing the chamber from garlic leftover
I saw some people use microplane, I think it’s faster. But the puree sometimes changes colour, into bright green, nearly blue. Very strange.
Yes, actually, without peeling, when you touch it, sometimes you can already know the state, like a soft one is not a good sign. But like you said, to be sure, there are some spots that you need to see it.
How about garlic germ, remove or stay?
For me, it depends what I’m doing, if it’s for a salad or something raw, then I remove it. If the garlic need to be cooked, I will leave the germs.
I own a bunch of Microplane graters (and love them for many reasons) and they are great for garlic puree, but again I have to hold the garlic between my fingers, when grating it and that gives me 1) The smelly stinky fingers, that I try to avoid and 2) Potential bloody garlic since my fingers are quite big and don’t handle small garlic cloves on a sharp Microplane grater very well.
That’s why I love my OXO garlic press - a whole pealed garlic clove will not cause smelly fingers since you have to open the clove before the garlic juice will be released.
I agree.
If I use the garlic clove in a pesto or salad where it’s raw, I remove the germ.
But in general heated cooking, I use the whole garlic clove, but as said I always peel it since 30-40% of the garlic cloves I buy usually are not 100% fresh and therefore should not be used for cooking.
I would recommend leaving the germ only when cooking the dish for a long time. For dishes that are cooked for a short time, it’s better to remove the germ.
Have to give it a closer look. Mine is stainless. Yours appears to be SS. Is it?
I actually do not own that knife. I merely did a photo zoomed-in of Respectfully_Declined knife. It has the brand name: 王麻子
It is a rather well-known and old brand from China. I do not know for sure, but considering how shiny it is, I am betting it is a stainless steel knife.
There used to be one around, a Westmark Extracta, that you might actually see in a restaurant kitchen. Not sure if they’re still made and if they are, if they’re as good as the old ones.
That said, I have an Oxo that’s works fine. Due to my arthritis, sometimes a knife is better and other times a press.
Edit:
They’re still around: Mehrzweckpresse »Extracta« Retro-look | Westmark Shop
that
