Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

UPDATE: After 2.5 months I learned if I use really cold water the cubes will be bigger than if I use room temperature water. I freeze water in a 16 ounce sour cream container to give me a good size ice cube then I put that in the ice maker reservoir and fill with tap water. Original Review Purchased this out of necessity due to my freezer breaking down. We didn't want to have to run to the store for ice every other day so we bought this ice maker. Three friends commented that these are the 'good' cubes. Some things to know... 1) The instructions say not to tilt the machine beyond 45 degrees and this includes transportation. No fault of the Amazon delivery person but the box was in three different position when he was bringing it to the door. Who knows what position these ice makers are stored?! The box isn't labeled 'this side up.' The instruction say leave the machine sitting in the proper position for 2 hours but knowing refrigeration units it should be left upright longer. I left ours overnight before using. 2) The first batch of ice isn't that great with fewer cubes and some only being partial cubes. See pic. After that they're all great. 3) If transferring to a freezer use a plastic container for storage. Stainless steel freezes the cubes together. Also, after a few minutes of freezer time break up the cubes with the scoop because when transferred, the cubes will be dripping water which will freeze the cubes together. Use a towel under the tray when transferring or water will get on your floor. Once they're broken up and frozen then all is good. 4) There's very little difference between large cubes and small cubes. One pic shows a batch of each side by side. 5) Contrary to others reviews the ice makers isn't hard to drain. The video shows how to drain the machine and the entire action of getting the cubes from the frozen fingers into the tray. 6) One pic shows the sensors that determine when the ice tray is full. I pull the ice forward to clear the sensor path. This gets another 27 cubes into the tray when the entire tray is full and not just the back of the tray. 7) When the entire tray is full it holds 108 ice cubes (12 batches of 9 cubes) yielding 626 grams or 1lb 6 1/8 ounces of ice in 102 minutes. 8) It takes approximately 8.5 minutes per batch of ice (9 cubes). I did the math and that would be about 19.5 lbs of ice in 24 hours of continuous ice making and not stopping to fill the water reservoir or transferring ice out of the tray. I think the claim of 26 lbs in 24 hours is a little aggressive although the batch time does vary. 9) The reservoir holds approximately 76 ozs. of water which yields about 2-5/8 baskets of ice weighing about 3 lbs. 12 ozs. It takes about 4 hours before the reservoir is empty of water. All in all... I love this ice maker and highly recommend it. If you found this review helpful, please click the ‘helpful’ button below. Thanks.