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

I am a heavy user of ice and the refrigerator doesn’t really hold up to my needs so for twenty years I’ve had $80-150 ice makers doing its thing day and night. They don’t last forever, but I am happy with anything that can give me four or five years of continuous use.So. I have lived with cloudy ice all my home life. My Frigidaire maker died and I needed a new ice maker. I started doing research instead of picking up whatever Costco features this week.The idea of clear ice sounded unnecessary to start with. I don’t drink nearly enough whiskey to be bothered by cloudy ice cubes. Sure, I’ve got a couple of ice ball makers and I get the idea of controlling the water dilution of your alcoholic beverage.But two things sold me on this ice maker - it produces a pretty large amount of ice (perhaps a little slower than my cloudy ice makers but when you’re into the production each finished cycle is easily more than twice as voluminous as the cloudy makers I’ve had.The other “feature” is that clear ice causes vastly less foaming in a carbonated drink. I thought this was a throwaway feature but is it not. It is my absolutely favorite feature of the clear ice. You can fill a glass of carbonated water a lot quicker when you don’t have to wait for the foam to dissipate. Snd the carbonation sticks around in the drink much longer.The clear ice also does not melt as fast as cloudy ice. I generally take a class of fizzy water to bed at night, in a yeti tumbler. With cloudy ice there is generally some ice left in the morning, but the glass is substantially fuller of remaining clear ice.There a “trick” not clearly labeled in the manual (and an ice maker manual is a rather cursory read) and that is how to make thicker ice cubes. You good the start button (when you turn in the appliance) for about five seconds, and you don’t get much in way of confirmation, but the ice making is a little slower and the cubes a good bit thicker.Now this comes at a price: when the flat sheet of thick ice cubes come off as a solid sheet, the anemic little plastic scoop is NOT up to the task of breaking up the sheet into individual cubes.Do yourself a favor and buy a metal scoop. Wait until you get the unit so you can measure what is a comfortable width and depth of your scoop. (And while you’re waiting for the new scoop, just run the ice maker in small cubes - the plastic scoop can handle that.)While I researched the Clear Ice Makers, I did see several that offered an attachment where you can use an external jug for water.Min retrospect, I would like to have a ten gallon set up, but I am so pleased with every other aspect of this ice maker that I would buy this unit again, in spite of not having an external water attachment. But: I’ve gotta have SOMETHING to complain about so you know that I really like the other aspects of the maker.You’ll be done with cloudy ice forever after this!

It became obvious to me after researching ice machines online that there are only a couple of manufacturers make all of these "different" ice machines! I owned a Nostalgia brand ice machine that made the bullet type ice. It used a moving tray to lift the ice up and into the bin. This is the same one as the Igloo and other bullet shaped ice machine "brands" that still sell in the one to two hundred range. My Nostalgia one had its microswitches on the tray lift mechanism fail. I replaced those with these:uxcell 10 Pcs G605-150S06A Micro Limit Switch Roller Lever Subminiature SPDT Snap Action LOTThat got it working for another six months until the tray lift motor when nuts and over cranked the tray past the stop point causing the tray to break in half at its crank pivot point. That is when I decided to look for an ice machine with fewer moving parts!That is how I found this "clear ice macine". Again after some research it is obvious that again there are only one or two companies that manufacture ALL of these "clear ice machines". Luckily, this machine has only the pump and a small microswitch activating lever that gets pressed down when the ice tray gets full. As ice is removed from the bin or it melts the lever pops back up and ice making resumes.This machine uses a constant waterfall of water over the freezer metal cube form. The pump flows water over the metal ice mold for a prescribed period of time after which the freezer compressor shuts off. The ice then falls off the metal mold into the bin.The "clear Ice" is nice in some ways. The square and clear cubes contain little air and melt more slowly than the "white bullet type ice". The clear ice also remains more crunchy longer than the bullet type ice that gets very soft as it melts. I kind of like both types of the ice. I can tell that my big lab-shepherd 80lb female liked the softer white bullet type ice better. But, she still follows me when I go to get ice out of the bin as she enjoys crunching a couple of cubes.Some have complained about the ice coming off in one big 24 cube piece brick and having to break up the cubes and that being a hassle. However, the trick is to wait a little while when it stops making ice before getting cubes out. With a little patience, after about a half hour the brick of square cubes breaks apart perfectly as the brick falls apart as the ice melts.Again, the biggest plus with this machine is that there is no motor or tray lift mechanism! It is just the pump and the microswitch plastic lever. I still have plenty of microswtches and I am confident that I can find a pump to replace the machines one if it fails. I think the key to keeping the pump healthy is to make sure the H2O bin is always full enough so that the pump doesn't run dry.All in all, I am happy with this machine so far. I think it was worth the extra hundred to get this better ice machine design. It also makes plenty of long lasting 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.