A one-trick pony that performs well.

Although I purchased this product locally, I often come to Amazon to find out what others think of a product and what I wish I'd known before I bought it. Since no one has yet contributed a review of this item, I thought I'd share some thoughts to repay to Amazon the benefits I have received from other reviews in the past.

First, it doesn't really make "cubes." The ice it produces look like little knobs with holes in them. Better than cubes in that they have more surface area. But they aren't square.

More important, this is NOT a "freezer." It makes ice. Period. The ice drops from the nine little metal rods that protrude from the roof of the machine onto a shelf and a little blade pushes them into an internal, removable ice bucket. The bucket has holes in the bottom. As the ice melts, the water drips back into the reservoir underneath it and the machine makes more ice. The ice when in the machine is "wet" but doesn't stick together. However, if you take the ice out and put it into your refrigerator freezer section, the ice will freeze together. So, the design concept is that the ice maker is a closed system. You pour water into the reservoir, the machine makes ice rather rapidly and keeps making it as the ice slowly melts or you take some out. The machine has thick insulated walls that keep the ice from melting too fast.

Here's a worthy note. It consumes 1.9 amps when making ice and 2.7 amps when "harvesting ice" assuming 115 volts 60 Hz. Not bad.

I've only had mine for a day but it does what it claims to do. It just has some design characteristics I didn't expect. Nonetheless, it is a clever little device, not very large and quite attractive sitting on the kitchen counter. It has a white 6' long grounded power cord. It is fairly heavy and sits solidly on four rubber feet. It is quiet except when nine ice knobs drop onto the plastic tray inside. Then there's a muffled "clunk."

There's a 90 day limited warranty against defects in material or workmanship (which may not apply if you live in an implied warranty state). For service under the warranty, you have to return the ice maker to the distributor in CA so you may want to keep the box and packaging. Amazon may offer other remedies.

[Tuesday, August 05, 2008]