Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I was so excited for this product to arrive. I thought, "frozen fruit would be such a healthy alternative to ice cream". Not that I had super unreasonable expectations. After all, you can't turn a banana into a full fat ice cream sundae. What I was expecting was something more than just puréed frozen fruit. This product touts that the end result is creamy. I did not find that the result was creamy at all. No matter which kind of fruit was used. The "purée" isn't even reduced enough to be a creamy option! I have learned you cannot make fruit "creamy" unless there is some kind of base(i.e. yogurt or pudding,etc) in it to make it "creamy". I did try all the aforementioned tricks in the amazon reviews and in the booklet as well to see if that changed my opinion and nothing worked. I even made my health nut fiance try it and he said, "it's frozen smashed banana" *cue odd crinkle brow face*. So that is essentially a big "whoop de doo!" from the peanut gallery. Also, while I do love bananas, when they are mushed up they become gummy and sticky. I used fully ripe and frozen bananas as well. So I thought this product would help kind of reduce that and it didn't. I did try other frozen fruit as well such as strawberries and peaches. Strawberries came out like a granita/sorbet type dessert. I imagine this is because of the higher water content in a berry vs. a fruit such as the banana. Berries also have seeds in them so every time you bite you get a seed in your treat which is less pleasing to me but others probably wouldn't mind. I do think this would be a good option if you were making frozen fruit baby food though or for a teething baby, but then again, you could purchase a product for the same price or even a little more that you could have more options with. The cleaning and waste is probably one of the most irritating parts to it. Basically you have to have a lot of fruit because if you just put in one banana it disappears in the blade system inside the product unless you have another one to push it out. So basically it's a 2-for-1 system unless you want to take it apart to get the excess fruit in the blades with a spoon. Maybe I'm just a wimp, but I also thought that the spout part was kind of hard to twist off and lock in as well. The plunger system also wasn't really effective either. I used the right amount of pressure and the machine stopped from time to time. I know I wasn't using so much pressure that it completely stopped like some may have experienced. I also felt like while the cone/blade part is gooey with all the excess fruit you could slip and cut yourself on the blades. In my opinion, you have to be careful when taking it apart and washing/rinsing. The whole "You can just rinse it off and bam! You're done!" thing isn't true either. Fruit is sticky because of the fructose in it and it will not come off with just rinsing. I used dish soap because I don't have the luxury of a dishwasher and didn't want anything leftover or stuck on the blades. I did not find the product unbearably loud like some have said. I felt it was actually a little less loud than a blender with ice chopping in it. At the end of the day, I just felt that this product is not worth the money considering you could probably do the same thing in a higher end food processor (without liquid) which would have more uses. This is a one trick pony. Sure you can puree various frozen fruits, frozen yogurt cubes, and frozen pudding but that's about it! I sent it back for a refund.