NewAirBullet Ice Machine - 28 lbs/Day Countertop Ice Maker, BPA Free, Portable Ice Maker Machine, 3 Size Ice Cube Maker, Ideal for Home Office, Kitchen or Bar | Red

This gets a 5 star rating from me. It's built really well and it's very quick at putting out ice. My wife and I are bartenders and have get togethers with friends at least once a week. We make so many cocktails that the refrigerator ice maker couldn't keep up with us. Rather than buy bags of ice, or bag the ice during the week from the fridge to save for "cocktail nights" I looked into getting something else that made ice without the pain of freezing ice cubes in trays (I hate to be lazy, but I wasn't going to do that every week).For those confused about how this thing works, it's pretty basic and any bad review about having to do this or that to keep the machine making ice should be ignored. It has a holding area for water. Keep that filled. We have a blender next to this thing and we just fill the blender basket with water and dump it in the ice maker (takes two fills and about 20 seconds to do). You're all set for quite a bit of ice after that. In about 15 minutes you'll have your first dump of ice cubes. The tray that holds the ice cubes inside of the machine has slits on the bottom so when the ice in the machine melts, it goes right back into the process of making more ice. We always use the large cube setting and the ice melts nicely with the drinks. I'm not a huge fan of "red", but I don't really care since this icemaker does its job very well. We have it sitting on the kitchen counter and the window on the top of the door is kind of pointless, but who cares... if you had it sitting lower it may be really useful to someone.There is very little effort to keep the icemaker focused on its job... making ice. The lights on the front do exactly what they're supposed to. Green means on and the size of cube choice. Red means either "I'm out of water... fill me", or the bin is full of ice. There is a big metal sensor on the inside right of the machine. If you want an insane amount of ice, just do this trick... If an ice cube comes in contact with this sensor, just take the little scoop it comes with and move some of the ice away from it. It'll pump out a ton of more ice. If the sensor didn't exist then this machine would keep making ice until it ran out of water. The only thing I noticed is that if you let it run out of water, and then fill it, it may not continue to make ice. Just press the power button and wait like 10 seconds. The machine will turn off and then the pump releases the water back into the holding tank. Turn it back on and you'll hear the pump fire back up and it will begin the icemaking process all over again.I love it, and we have used it EVERY day since it arrived. One thing to note is that it does not have a freezing/refrigeration type of cooling to keep the ice frozen. It will and does melt back into the icemaking process. We don't really care because it's in a constant rotation of making ice and don't consider it any kind of deal breaker. It would greatly increase the cost, I'm sure. Along with the size and probably the electricity it would use. I could definitely see this as an RV must have, or even on a boat.Bartender tested and approved.

I bought this NewAir AI-100R portable Ice Maker in March 2011 as a birthday gift to my husband. He likes to drink an ice water or ice with juice all the time.At the very first couple times of using that icemaker, I had to spill the newly made ice cylinders, because they smelled like plastic, but after that we did not have any problem with the taste of the ice. In 1 month after I bought the ices maker, we had some important family event and had to have a constant flow of the people in the apartment. For a week we had about 60-80 visiting people per day. For all that time my new Ice maker was working and making ice non-stop from 7:00 AM till 11:00 PM. I was really glad that I was able to make enough ice for all our visitors and was proud to demonstrate them my new ice maker. And I think that I saved so much money by making my own ice instead of buying it at the supermarket!Ice maker was working fine every time I need some ice since I bought it (for 9 months already).If you have guests, you just have to start making ice in advance and store fresh ice in the freezer. I use clean plastic bags to store fresh ice. If you are expecting a large group of people, it is better to start making ice a day before the event to store enough. Ice maker makes some noise, but it is mild and does not bother anyone.The freshly made ice is wet, and it sticks to each other at the freezer. I have a habit to stir ice cubes in the plastic bag to separate them from each other after it was sitting in the freezer for 15-20 min.At the hot summer time, when you start ice maker after it was off for certain amount of time, the 1st portion of the ice cylinders will be very wet, thin and flimsy and it is better to dump it back to the water tank. After that there is no problem.Minor inconvenience is that even though machine has a red light on to indicate that there is no more water at the water tank, there are always some water left at the water tank. I always must spill out unused water. The removal of the water is done by the little pipe at the bottom of the ice maker that has covered by a metal cap (attached to the machine) and a little tiny plastic plug (unattached to anything and very easy to drop). If you will loose that tiny plug, then you will have a big problem. Better to be careful and do not drop and loose it.We love our ice maker and its red color adds a cheerful atmosphere to my kitchen.

Since my refrigerator does not have a built-in ice maker, and the freezer space is a precious commodity, I decided to look into these portable Icemakers as another option. After reading reviews on quite a few, I chose this model, mostly due to its nice look since I plan to keep in on the kitchen counter. I was ready to accept the fact that these machines were not going to be creating mounds of ice right away, but the time it takes to fill up one large glass is close to an hour. At first, I was disappointed, but then thinking about it more reasonably, it is fighting a lot of obstacles. 1) It starts up at ambient / room temperature. Unlike a fridge that is already cold, it has to create its first batch of ice into a room temperature tray which will help melt that ice if not collected immediately. 2) It is not a refrigerator, so it is not designed to store the ice once it is produced. 3) If you try and salvage the units good work and store the ice in a separate freezer, I have found that it melts just ever so slightly on the way in to weld most of the little pieces together. This requires the use of an ice pick or possible using a different storage approach, which I have not yet figured out.One thing I am going to try is using a plugin timer so that I can have the machine turn on an hour before I get home. This way it will be ready to go and there is no need to worry about too much ice since it has a full sensor.Combined with my Reverse Osmosis water, the ice is a wonderful treat. All things being considered, it looks good, runs quiet, and with a bit of strategy, produces a good amount of ice.