Always wanted to try this out, so when I got it I was a little surprised that the bowl and dasher were plastic, but the bowl has liquid gel in it internally. Don't know if they could do that with metal and ceramic. The dasher held up well and did its job, even as the ice cream got harder. It does make ice cream a little harder than soft serve, but when you freeze it, it becomes no different than store bought hard ice cream. If I had any negatives to report, they would be that you don't have a lot of clearance to "slowly pour" the batter in the bowl as it's mixing. Had to ladle into a measuring cup to pour. And the bowl is 2 qts, but not sure you could make a full 2qt recipe. Haven't tried yet. All in all it's fun to experiment with different recipes and I'm looking forward to trying more!