FRIGIDAIRE EFIC189-Silver Compact Ice Maker, 26 lb per Day, Silver (Packaging May Vary)

It’s quiet and quick to make ice.

I have a condition where I have to increase water intake, and I prefer my water with ice, so I thought this would help.

This icemaker has worked great so far, the design is pretty robust and it makes enough ice to keep up with my 5 person office (I’m nice and sharing). This is a continuous circulation design, so as ice is made, it’s dumped into a tray, which melts into a water holding tank, which is then recirculated in the freezing chamber on top.

The freezing device consists of several rods with stubby extensions which rotate into a shallow pan of water which is filled via pump from the reservoir beneath the ice basket. The stubs of the rods submerge and as they cool, ice forms around them, making cup shaped cubes. There are options for small or large. My one worry was that the ice would not be very cold and would melt and break quickly, but the larger size cube is quite robust and solid. With the lid down the cubes last fairly long, enough so I’m not bothering to transfer them to the freezer to save them. If I kept the icemaker in a hot room or garage this might not be as practical, but it works very efficiently in an air conditioned office. As the small plastic basket fills, there’s some sort of sensor that automatically shuts off the machine from creating another load, so it can be left relatively unattended. I haven’t paid much attention to the scooping design which collects the cubes and dumps them into the basket, but there haven’t been any problems with it so far.

I use water from a filtered fountain and the cubes taste fine, perhaps even better than the water straight out of the filter. I have not tested with unfiltered water, but the water is so gross in my neck of the woods I would be afraid to damage it.

I work around a lot of humming machines, so the noise is easy for me to tune out. It can be a little noisy when cycling, so if you’re sensitive to that sort of thing you might want to put it in a different room. I honestly don’t care either way, because the ice is convenient and delicious!

Very glad I purchased it, and wavering on getting a second one for at home.

Useful ice maker that arrived when it said it would.

We are always running out of ice and this has solved the problem. I wish I would have bought this a long time ago.

This ice maker is excellent and will delivery the 26 lbs. of ice per day. What a lot of people don’t understand about countertop ice makers is that when the ice is made it is about 27 degrees and the ice maker is not a storage freezer. Think of it like the ice that was just made will sit in the ice maker which is like keeping ice in a cooler. It won’t get colder it will just slowly melt and then gets turned back into ice again.

Keep in mind when you pull ice out of your kitchen freezer that has been in there for several hours it is around 0 degrees vs. the 27 degrees right out of the countertop ice maker. So, ice from your freezer is going to last a lot longer in a drink than ice out of this countertop ice maker. So, that may not be ideal for some if you are having a drink outside on a hot day and not using an insulated cup. For best results take the ice out of the countertop ice maker and put it in a gallon ziplock bag and place it in the freezer for a little while so it will get down to the 0 degrees. That is not necessary though. The ice that comes right out of the machine is plenty cold enough for drinking beverages indoors. If you want to use the ice outdoors just place the ice in an insulated cup.

Pros:
Very quality built machine.
Very easy to use.
It uses lights to notify you of the status rather than annoying beeps.
It really does make 26 lbs. of ice in an hour.
First ice in about 8 minutes.
Full basket of ice in about an hour.
Pauses itself when ice basket is full and will resume ice production automatically as soon as some ice is removed.
Light comes on when water needs to be added (keep in mind you still have a full basket of ice when this triggers).
Melts very slowly and if you leave it on over night it only comes on once or twice to replace the ice that melted.
Quite operation.
It doesn’t take up a lot of countertop space so we are able to leave it out and it matches our stainless steel fridge.
It comes with a nice ice scoop which is great for parties.
This ice maker keeps dropping ice every 8 minutes.
The cord is very long so it doesn’t have to be right up against the outlet.

Cons:
The only con I have about the machine is trying to drain the water remaining when you are done using it. There is a drain plug underneath it that is a little tricky to use because you can’t see underneath the machine and you can’t just turn the machine upside down to drain it per their instructions. That will harm the machine.

What I found to be a great solution is instead of using the drain plug I use a microfiber towel to soak up all the water left in the machine. That only takes a quick second and you don’t have to move the ice maker over the sink to drain it. I then leave the lid open to make sure it dries out. So it really isn’t a con if you use the microfiber towel. It is so easy this way which means I never mind using the machine even to make a small amount of ice.