I had been wanting a pellet ice machine for forever and my hubby got this one for me for Christmas! I had read some of the reviews online about 6 months ago about the machine being very noisy, which turned me off of purchasing the product at the time. And the first night of the machine being plugged in I had to unplug it because it sounded like a dying cow in my kitchen at 2 am! The next morning I read through the instructions again with the noted possible "noises" the machine will make...dying cow not one of them. I proceeded to fill up the water resevoir to the max fill line and plugged 'er back in. Works like a dream -- as long as there is sufficient water in resevoir for the machine to pull from! No more dying cow in my kitchen.