 Not Good Enough |
| Review Date: July 26, 2009 |
| Reviewer: J. Murray, North Carolina |
This item arrived quickly and the Amazon experience for me still proves to be a consistently good one. This product, however; was another story.
I purchased this ice cream maker in the hopes that the frozen containers most other automatic machines use would be a thing of the past and I could free up some freezer space. The concept is wonderful, but the execution is horrible. This unit will not freeze ice cream. It simply will not get cold enough. I waited over two hours and still had mush. This is due to the fact that this unit uses the peltier effect to cool rather than a conventional refrigeration system. The process used in this item simply cannot succeed unless you're using it outside in the winter (ambient temperatures below 60 would do it I think). Aside from not being able to do what it was advertised to do the construction quality was extremely poor with fragile plastic throughout. The control panel was nothing more than a decal covering some buttons and it came off entirely when I removed the product from the box. We had to keep it out on the counter as a reference to know what the buttons were for on the front.
I returned this product for a refund. |
Nice idea, but....
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| Review Date: July 27, 2009 |
| Reviewer: HockeyWinger, Somewhere, Out There |
Cut and paste J Murry's review. I had virtually the same experience with mine....
First thing I noticed was the cheapy plastic feel and while my control panel hasn't fallen off yet, it really wants to. The second concern was it seems you can't remove the metal bowl from the unit to clean it.
Still trying to be positive, (I really like the idea of not having to use ice and rock salt anymore) I started a batch of sorbet. The instructions say the sorbet cycle, once the right temperature is reached, cycles the paddle on for two minutes and stops for one minute. Temperature wasn't going to be a problem because I had been chilling the ingredient in the freezer so they were already nice and chilly. But the motor ran constantly, and after a couple hours it was still going, but not frozen. Not by a long shot, first batch failed.
Tried another batch the next day, and let it go about 3 hours. It was almost ready to make a melted slushy... Second batch failed.
Third try I used one of the included basic ice cream recipes. I start the ice cream cycle and it starts doing the two minutes on one minute off cycle. Apparently the buttons are wired backwards. When the sorbet-labeled-ice-cream cycle ends I check and it doesn't look to bad, starting to thicken up, but not done. Sorbet is a shorter cycle, so I think it just needs a little longer. I started another cycle and you can hear he paddle is going slower since its thickening up. So check it and it doesn't look too bad, it looks like it made ice cream. That's when I decide to taste a sample. It wasn't freezing it was only mildly cool. It wasn't thickening and expanding due to freezing, it was beating the whipping cream into whipped cream. I basically had just made 3 cups of a chocolate flavored cool-whip knock-off.
Return label has been printed and will soon be on its way back to Amazon.
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I think this machine is bad news!
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| Review Date: July 30, 2009 |
| Reviewer: M. Winston, West Indies |
I could hardly wait to receive my ice cream maker. I had a Taylor commercial maker in the past and thought it would be great to have a home size machine without ice/salt. There were no reviews(if only!)when I purchased this in June, but it really looked great so I took my chances. Bad choice... the worst purchase I have made in years in fact. ( I guess we have to have one of these experiences now and then?)
Well, the control panel had fallen off before it was out of the box and it seemed a little flimsyish, but, okay, no problem, I'll just keep my kids away from this equipment. The motor started up smoothly, nice and quiet but...
Like the other reviewers experiences, it never froze anything. Ever. We did 4 tries of ice cream (leaving machine on for about 3 hours each time) and tried again with 2 sorbets last night, but absolutely nothing froze. This was total shock and awe. I mean I really thought it was going to freeze! Nothing close.
I might try to return this but since I live in the west indies and spent a great deal shipping the thing here and paying all the taxes and duties to get it into the country, it has been a very costly mistake already before any additional expense of sending it back to the US. So far no one from the company has returned my emails. I wonder if they are evading me. From the other reviewers info, I suspect they know the product isn't good.
But first I think I will take the interesting information from J Murray !(thanks J Murray!)and test it out. Gonna put the machine inside my freezer and run it in there for awhile and see if that works. I will let you know if I have positive results. And I'll take precautions not to shock myself :) Now if this doesn't work perhaps I can store spices or cutlery in it or something..
Meanwhile, I just ordered a big ice and salt machine (again) which makes 6qt per batch. For my family of 9, I just calculated that to make this much ice cream with the Koolatron would take me about 5 spins. And for 2 flavours, omg, 10 spins!!
I suddenly realized with great clarity that I would rather break a little ice than do 10 batches. And like another reviewer I am not happy that the metal bowl cannot come out....it is hard to remove liquid, probably ice cream too and then to clean it properly isn't so easy.
So although I am out some $, I am over the disappointment and can hardly wait for the arrival of the ice/salt bucket with a great new love and respect for this old time method..lol ..until i get the courage up to try another machine of this type again in the future.
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