Product review (5 stars): Love it
I wanted a portable ice machine to take with us when we move from our current home. This machine is great, it's small (for an ice maker) but does take up some counter space. So if you're limited on counter top, you may want to consider storing when not in use. We use this every other day (my family LOVES ice) so we've cleared a dedicated space for it.
It produces ice very quickly and I love how easy it is to operate.
We purchased ours new, so it still had that "new plastic smell" - I would recommend running through 3 or 4 cycles of ice then dumping the ice if that's something that will bother you because it does transfer over to the ice.
Because it is evacuating/expelling heat to make your ice it puts off a fair amount of warmth from the venting fan. Not a problem for larger spaces but I would imagine in a smaller space it would be more noticeable.
I've seen a few comments about the ice not "keeping" for very long - I had not experienced this - the ice stayed ice as long as it would in a cooler/ice chest and the ice that melted was recycled to start the process over (really cool design). Plus it's an ICE MAKER and not meant/designed for long term ice storage. Transfer your ice to a freezer for keeping/storage.
This ice maker was very quiet too! The only noise of significance that we experienced was from the ice cubes falling into the catch tray. Other than that, virtually no noise from the machine itself.
If I had one suggestion it would be to have a notification sound to signal when the ice tray is full. Since the machine is so quiet sometimes I forget that I've made the ice. Which in truth is not a huge deal since it will sit and any ice that melts from my negligence will be recycled to start the process all over again. But from an efficiency perspective I'd like to catch it the first time around.