Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Here is my experience with these after about a week: I use them to make ice using bottled water. The trays are nice silicone. Have not noticed any offensive smells with the trays or ice produced. The holes on the top are not to fill the trays as one might initially expect - rather, they are so water can expand and have some place to go. This has its pros and cons. In order to fill up the interior sphere, you will up the lower tray with water, above the level of half the spheres. You then push down the top lid and this pushes water up into the upper half (very clever design). Any over-fill comes out via the holes on top and spills out on the topside of the upper tray. In the directions, they suggest filling the tray so that the resulting water level is below the level of the overflow holes once everything is put back together - this is tantamount to splitting the atom on your kitchen counter. It's difficult to gauge where this level is. But, nevertheless, it's not too bad; in most cases, the water is below the level of the holes after you get used to filing the trays a few times. Takes about 4 hours to freeze the ice. In the directions, they say you need to press up/down around the edge of each ball, in order to break the saturn like ring of ice. Okay, wasn't expecting to have to do that, but not the end of the world. This helps snap off the little ring that forms due to the seam between the two trays. In most cases, your sphere of ice will have some remnant of this ring, but typically not overly so. The sphere will also usually have a nipple of ice, which has frozen and expanded up into the overflow hole. This can be readily snapped off (before taking the molds apart). If you aren't throwing a fancy party, then it can also just be left. All in all, not too bad. I will say the sphere tend to have a nasty habit of fracturing in half (maybe 1 out of 8 or 10 produced). This seems to be the result of inclusions formed during freezing, so if you do something tricky to make perfectly clear ice (I've heard you can boil water, but have never tried that successfully) then perhaps this wouldn't be as common an issue. Still, even with a few of the spheres turning into half moons, it's still handy to have large balls of ice around. Do these last longer than normal smaller ice cubes? I have no idea. I was planning to test it with a gram scale and measuring out water, etc. but have no gotten around to it. The trays are a bit on the expensive side, but even so, it's a fun novelty to experiment with. It is nice to use fewer, larger balls of ice in your water or whatever your drinks are.