Frigidaire EFIC103-AMZ-SC Counter Top Maker with Over-Sized Ice Bucket, Stainless Steel, Self Cleaning Function, Heavy Duty, Stainless

My husband was tired of travelling to the store every two or three days to buy me ice. Not just any ice at any store, it had to be a certain ice. Bless him, I have the best husband. I drink lots of ice water and love to chew on the ice. Our new home came with a fancy fridge with a built in ice maker/crusher that we don't use. The ice is too hard, and when you use the crushing option, it provides you with smaller chunks of razor like ice shards. Needless to say we don't even have it hooked up anymore. The ice I prefer is round with a hole in the center. I'm not sure how or why, but it produces a softer less deadly, chewable ice. I'm not a huge fan of the snow cone type ice as it melts too fast and even from the start there is really nothing to chew. So my husband figured he spends close to $400 a year on ice. This does not include transportation to and from the store. I found this ice maker online and he said "GET IT!!" I purchased it and told him not to get his hopes up because if I didn't like the ice it produces, it's going back. Well that isn't the case. I LOVE the ice, it's smaller and even softer than the ice we had been purchasing from the store. It also has the hole in the center of the cube, which makes me wonder if that is the key to soft chewable ice. The unit is fairly quiet. In fact it's much quieter that the refrigerator ice maker. I think it's because it has less of an ice drop to create that earth shattering noise. It works really fast. I've only made the large cubes, which are still fairly small, and it will produce them in about 10 minutes. It drops enough to fill a small glass, but in 10 more minutes you have more. We hooked it up, left the house for 2 hours and came home to a full bin of ice. I emptied into a large 2 gallon ziploc freezer bag. It took about 4 full bins to fill that bag up. When the ice enters the ziploc it's a little wet, so it tends to refreeze in the freezer and make a solid chunk. This chunk easily separates with one hard drop of the bag onto the counter, so this is not an issue at all. The 2 gallon bag takes up a lot less space in the freezer than the 20lb bag we had previously been buying. I primarily take from the counter top unit when I fill my glass and save my ziploc as a backup. The rest of the family uses a lot of ice and the unit does well to meet our demand. My only complaints (and they are by no means deal breakers) are that the counter unit is much larger than I was expecting. I wish it took up less space on the counter AND for being so large, the bin that holds the ice is rather small and fills up quickly. That's all.. Otherwise, I love it. So happy to have found it.

The product description and some photos in the listing are not accurate, this does not make 3 sizes. It only makes one size cube. That said, this is a nice unit. Set up is easy. Pour in water to the fill line, put in the basket and press the start button. It makes ice until the basket is full. When you un-box, take off all the shipping tape holding the inside basket and the ice ejector flap. There is a hidden piece of tape holding the ice ejector flap in place for shipping - it needs to be removed. The ice basket was totally full after about 75 minutes. One basket of ice fills a 1 quart Chinese restaurant soup container to put ice in the freezer for storage. It is fairly compact - 11 inches high, 10 inches deep and 9 inches wide. The machine is pretty quiet, there is a low intermittent fan sound when it is running. The instructions say to have some free space around the unit for air intake and discharge. I am impressed with it.

As explained below, this machine is unbeatable--for the first 16 months. But now in the 17th, I'm noticing black particles in the water. I clean them out, but they return with the next batch. They're not solid pieces of rubber (as one might expect from a worn-out gasket), but pieces of "mushy" blackness." This machine has been so good, my wife wants to buy another if it performs as well as this for the first year. I'm less certain, esp. if I have to pay more than $100 for such limited use. I'll try to reach the company to see if they've corrected a problem that does not appear to be mechanical but related to bad materials. ORIGINAL REVIEW: My wife has a hip injury and prefers remaining upstairs. She uses ice cubes on a daily basis, and our refigerator is downstairs, where it has been grooming me for my role as the iceman [who] cometh. However, as an individual who is not averse to drinking water at room temperature and, moreover, straight from the bottle, I'm no more a fan of ice cubes than our two cats. Solution: a portable, or "counter-top" (though ours is on the floor) ice maker. My wife deserves the credit for coming up with the idea, and then ordering the machine--the first of two that wimped out on us (I should know--these personal conveniences began to seem heavy after carrying them, a second time, from upstairs to the street curb, where the city disposal team picks them up, unless a private citizen (i.e. scavenger) gets there first. After these two strike-outs, I selected (and paid for) this particular IGloo machine with the LED buttons in a vertical row. I did my "research" (let's be honest and call it by the right word--ie, "shopping"), and I liked what I read about this machine from those whose observations were detailed, specific and realistic (for a hundred bucks you can't expect an arctic miracle machine--it's an "Igloo," not an Ice Palace). After ten months of daily use this particular Igloo is hitting close to 1000-- knocking out ice cubes that are as big, clear and sparkling as they were on the first day. My wife has had me move the machine from her office to the bathroom--where it not only keeps spitting out the cubes but lowers the temperature of the room by 5 degrees. I prefer warm (which fits my "room temperature" taste). But as long as this machine keeps up the good work, I'm not complaining. As far as cleaning, I simply wipe the bottom with a sponge now and then. At this point I have no reason to give the machine less than 5 stars. Perhaps my standards aren't as high as other shoppers, esp. after disposing of the first two machines in the first 2-3 months. But for the nice price, a year's worth of trouble-free service seems reason enough to recommend this small over-achiever. Any ice cubes after the first 12 months will be "gravy" (which I hate--so at the first sign of failure, this iGloo goes to the curb and gets replaced by a new model of the same machine.

This ice machine works well and fast ice producing

Love it

Makes nice ice

It did not work

I like the fact that for me and my friends, when we need to ice the most, it keeps up to us. I haven’t run out yet.

The fancy lights are malfunctioning… which is not so cool. The display keeps saying to add water to a full tank. It is taking a long time to make ice not the +/- 7 minutes is should be. But the lid is a lethal weapon. I have five cuts on my right hand and three on my left. Ouch…they hurt more than paper cuts. No thanks. This is the FIFTH ice maker I buy in just over two weeks….the other four all different brands did not work right out of the box. I am still searching for a good ice maker…price is not a factor with respect to quality.