Product review (5 stars): but it makes quite a bit of ice pretty quickly. I ran a lot of water through ...
It's not exactly silent...but it makes quite a bit of ice pretty quickly.  I ran a lot of water through it and some test batches before acutally drinking anything with this ice.  We use it to supplement our refrigerators ice maker which for a family of 6 sometimes just doesn't keep up.  I even find this more convenient than getting ice from the fridge.  Just open the top and grab the ice.  Using it more frequently causes the ice to be less melted.  This does use a compressor to create the cubes, but once they have been dumped in the bin their only source of cooling is other cubes.  As they melt the water drips into the bottom reservoir and the unit will use that to remake the ice.  I would not expect this to keep up at a big party but for the price it definitely helps if you already have another source of ice.  Also the cubes cant be easily frozen in your freezer because they tend to get wet just based on the style of ice maker this is....the cubes will stick together in your freezer.  Sometimes when I expect a big use of ice I prefill glasses with ice and put them in the freezer...then if they stick together it doesn't matter because they are already in the glass.