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.

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.

I went through the reviews and purchased this maker in September. One of the key reasons being that it makes actual solid cubes vs bullet style ice. It is pretty noisy in general, but otherwise has worked well, and kept up with the demand over the holidays.In the last couple of weeks, the unit has begun making the most horrible noise when it's making ice - think of the scene from Dumb & Dumber... We took the back off of it, but it appears to be the pump, not simply a fan (which makes sense, since it's only when it's calling for ice that it makes the sound). I have reached out to support, but it's been several days and other than the automatic email saying they received my request, I have not heard anything. I am now on the hunt for a new machine... after spending a pretty penny on this one, I'm definitely not impressed. Buyer Beware.