****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
I'm addicted to Sonic ice, and am on a mission to find a home icemaker. I didn't realize how confusing the terminology used to describe ice is, though - there is pellet, nugget, and pebble as well as cube and whatever the bullet-shaped ice is called. And none of the listings seem to give you a good picture of what the ice looks like!I ordered this one hopefully. It's a nice little machine and very easy to use - not very loud at all when it's running. But it doesn't make the Sonic-style ice pellets. This one makes small vaguely trapezoid-shaped almost-cubes. It is fairly soft and chewable straight out of the machine, but once frozen hard (in your freezer) it is harder. Still chewable, but harder. So I was a little disappointed.A second disappointment is that it's not very fast to make ice. By the time the bin is full, the bottom layer is melting. If you aren't using it immediately and want to freeze it, if you put it in a container in the freezer it tends to freeze into a large hard chunk that's hard to break up. Best bet is to dump it into a gallon-size freezer bag and freeze it flattened out as much as possible. Then when you want to use it it's fairly easy to break it up (I beat the bag with an ice-cream scoop). Once it's frozen hard and broken up you can empty the bag into the icemaker bin or another tub/container with no problem. I use a LOT of ice, and this little machine can barely keep up with me. If several people use ice - this might not keep up.I tried a second brand machine and got a defective one, so I've ordered a third. If it's a failure, too, I may just keep this one. It's not Sonic ice, but it isn't all bad.Edit update: The third machine I tried was in-between the first two, size-wise. It made ice the same SHAPE as this machine (trapezoids) but they are slightly larger. The ice bin is larger, but it's still slow to make ice, and with the large size and weight of the machine I decided to send it back, too, and keep this smaller RW FLAME machine. Maybe by the time I wear it out it will be easier to find a Sonic-type home ice machine.
