Newair Silver Countertop Ice Maker Machine, Compact Automatic Ice Maker, Cubes Ready in Under 15 Minutes, Portable Ice Cube Maker, Perfect for Home/Kitchen/Office/Bar

Order arrived early, 7 days, in perfect condition. The NewAir ClearIce 40 is an amazingly small, but productive ice maker. It really does make 40 lbs of CLEAR ice/day. The ice bin holds 3.5 lbs, so it must be emptied every 2 hours. The overhead water supply reservoir holds just over 2.0 liters, or 2 quarts 4 ounces, and needs filling 9 times/day, or every 2 hrs 40 min. No supply/drain plumbing!The ice itself is very roughly a cube in shape. It is produced by a 3-high, 8-wide refrigerated grid. Water pours over the grid and gradually forms ice. This makes ice with no air, so it is crystal clear. When the machine is ready it switches from refrigeration to heating on the grid metal. In 30+ seconds it warms the grid enough to drop the ice into the ice bin below. Immediately after dropping ice, the machine starts making the next ice.The ice generally does not break into individual pieces to any significant degree when it falls in the ice bin. As other users have suggested, the ice can be broken up by dumping it into a large Ziploc bag and smacking it down on a hard surface to separate the individual cubes. You can put the ice bag in a freezer after that if you want, but you will need to smack that totally frozen bag of formerly wet ice down on a hard surface because the wet ice cubes will freeze together.The cubes produced by the above process are compatible with my freezer’s ice dispenser and crusher, which is designed for the usual crescent-shaped ice.This machine is great because it does not require a supply water and sewer drain hook-up, and it is about as energy efficient as can be.It takes more user effort to use than a commercial ice machine that just makes ice and dumps it in a very large bin, non-stop. Such machines have no refrigeration for the ice, so the ice is constantly melting and going down the drain, which adds to electricity cost.This ice machine uses 180W. In 24 hours this will be 4.3 kWh (30 to 80 cents) on your electric bill, in the production of 40 pounds of ice. It has implicit refrigeration of the ice storage bin because the very cold, 32° water pouring over the freezing grid falls below the ice bin, where it is re-pumped over the freezing grid, serving to refrigerate the ice bin compartment without hard freezing. This results in bin ice lasting well with little melting through the entire two hours to create six loads of ice, at which time you must empty the bin.The machine automatically stops when ice bin is full, and that ends refrigeration until either you dump the ice bin or some of the ice simply melts. Once the machine is waiting for you to empty the bin, the rate of icemelt increases because the refrigeration compressor stays off until some ice melts or you empty the 3.5 lb bin.The cost of this machine will be recovered after it has made enough ice to fill from a few dozen to several dozen bags of store-bought ice. So in the long run it will save on your cost of ice.

Wrote to the company after having this for less than 4 months about how the ice clogs up, resetting it didn't help, so we unplugged it for 9 hours, and it worked fine for 2 days then again went to this BLOCK of ice that is not falling and gets stuck as water falls around it making it larger and larger. THIS IS ALWAYS HAPPENING now, and it's a bummer as this is our 2nd ice maker we've tried, the prior one had metal shards in the water, and though it was easier to use (sets ice thickness, didn't block up) it was tough to keep clean...so we tried this one, only to find this constant problem.When I wrote to their email from their booklet, they NEVER RESPONDED. So this is a WASTE OF MONEY PRODUCT! it's not working to make ice, only forms a giant block which (if left on and unattended) may cause some POWER OUTAGE or a fire to happen thanks to it being locked up and not moving the ice, but water flows constantly over the block making it larger and larger. We only used it for a few hours a few times a week, so leaving it on and wasting that much electricity wasn't an option for us, and it SHOULD NOT BE THE MANNER IN WHICH THIS MACHINE WORKS. Many letters to them and calls to them led to NOTHING and sadly it's been a few months of us having it so AMAZON won't refund it. Amazon needs to know, this is a terrible machine and should not be on their website as anything purchasable.

With 14 of our grandchildren living in the neighborhood, our adult children, their spouses, friends, and neighbors -- not to mention our pool, deck, and Kamodo Joe, we have one of the busiest backyards in town. We also keep a couple of coolers on the patio loaded with all kinds of beverages for kids and adults respectively. For years, keeping those drinks cold meant periodic trips to the grocer's for bags of ice -- an inconvenience and expense. Several years ago I did the math, and calculated that a small ice maker would pay for itself in one summer, so we bought a 20 lb. model. It worked well -- took a bit of baby sitting -- but made enough ice to keep one cooler full. On really hot weekends we still sometimes had to send some one out for ice. It lasted a couple of years. We replaced it with another one of the same capacity. It also died after 2 summers. The need for ice has not diminished one cube, so this year we upgraded to the NewAir, designed to produce 40 lbs. of ice per day. From day one I was completely satisfied with it, but waited until after the Memorial Day weekend to write a review. No counter-top ice make has ever performed more heroically. We kept both coolers teeming with ice and ice-cold beverages with ice cubes to spare. Haven't had to buy a bag of ice since.This machine takes a half gallon water at a time. We have a pitcher dedicated for the purpose. Yes, it must be filled and emptied manually, but my wife and I routinely check every time we pass it, and it is little trouble.My only complaint is that the ice collection basket could have been designed with higher walls. The clumsy old man that I am tends to spill a few cubes each time I empty it. My wife does not seem to have that problem, so maybe it's only me.

We purchased this after trying the nugget ice maker. This was 10x better than the nugget ice maker by far.It is quiet, very quiet, I was thrilled with the difference in the sound level. The ice was clear and was made fairly quickly and consistently. The water reservoir up top was easy to fill and if you keep your ice inside the ice maker as it's made it holds a fair amount and once the level of ice drops it will start making ice on its own again. The one thing I couldn't get used to was the way the ice would come off in sheets and had to be broken apart. It just didn't work out for us. We tried something new and it didn't work. We're going back to the 50lb Newair bullet ice maker.