Product review (5 stars): Impressive Ice Maker
I bought this rather than pay a plumber to run a new water line to where I have my refrigerator.  When it arrived, my first impression was that it was a lot bigger than I had imagined looking at the photo.  While some have talked about using this for a party or a barbecue, I would not generally think of it as being "portable".  I realize that just about anything can be portable if one is willing to haul it around but this just seems kind of big and heavy to be putting away and then taking it out as needed -- for me, it makes more sense as something for which one reserves a section of counter-top, or a small table as its semi-permanent location.  YMMV.

When I bought it, I thought that I might be so disappointed in its performance that I'd wind up paying for the ice maker and the plumber but I decided to roll the dice.  I'm glad I did, because frankly, I'm impressed.  This thing makes ice pretty quickly -- it doesn't make a lot of ice quickly but from filling it with room temperature water until the first batch of ice drops (enough, perhaps, to cool one small glass of liquid) only takes something like 10 minutes, and it gets faster with subsequent batches, undoubtedly because it keeps circulating the water over the cooling "rods" so the temperature of all of the water drops to near freezing in time. If I fill the ice-maker with water, in a few hours it will produce enough ice to fill my refrigerator's ice-maker bin (I'm not sure exactly how long because I'm not typically near it when it shuts off and it will shut off when its bin is full.  Its bin is smaller than the one in the refrigerator and so, a full fill of water will require emptying the bin at least two or three times.  If one does not empty it, though the compartment is insulated, it is not refrigerated so, eventually the ice will melt, and when enough of it melts that none is touching the "bin full" sensor, the ice-maker will start up again and start making more ice.  So, it could run all day (off and on) but unless you empty the bin you'll never have more than one bin of ice.

I am very happy with the unit but there are a few minor cons worth mentioning (but not enough for me to downgrade my rating).

One negative is the drain plug.  Others have mentioned the fact that it is just a removable plastic plug which could be easily lost.  Another downside to the drain plug, however, is that it is on the side of the machine.  That's probably better than it being on the back, which I would not be surprised to find is true of many such devices, but I think it would have been much more convenient if it had been put on the front.  This thing is big so you are probably going to wind up sticking it on a counter to get it out of the way and unless you have access to the side with the drain plug, you'll be forced to turn the thing around 90 degrees so the drain plug is in front where you can get to it.  It's not so heavy that it is impossible to rotate but it'd sure be a lot easier if it wasn't necessary.

As some have mentioned, it is a bit noisy, though I don't find the noise all that objectionable even when I am sitting in the same room with it (which isn't usually true).  The main thing I notice about the noise is that I often wonder just what the heck the machine is programmed to do given the erratic operation sequence at times. The basic flow seems to be:
1. Begin circulating pump
2. Start the refrigeration unit to cool the circulating water.
3. Once the ice is ready, stop both the pump and the compressor, and heat the rods so the ice drops into the collection area.
4. Then a plastic blade pushes the ice into the bin and the whole process starts over.
It's a simple, reasonable work flow but in practice, for reasons I can't fathom, the refrigeration unit and/or the pump will start and stop at different points (most commonly when it first starts up) for no discernible reason which just seems weird. I don't know if my unit is malfunctioning or if it was intended to work that way, but it sure seems odd.

Overall it is a fine ice-maker which, though unlike the refrigerator's ice-maker, requires some involvement in the process, but that is just the trade-off for the convenience of the unit working without a water-line hookup being necessary and saving the expense of a larger refrigeration unit which would allow the ice to be stored in the unit itself until needed.