NewAir ClearIce40 clear ice maker review

We have not run a ClearIce40 for a season. The numbers below are NewAir's published specification as carried on its own product page and by its retailers, read against the mechanism this class of machine uses and what owners consistently report. Where a claim is the maker's rather than ours, the sentence says so.

On an ice machine that matters, because the things that decide whether you keep one are long-run: whether the cubes stay consistent, whether scale builds, and whether the compressor noise stops registering. How we pick sets out what we will and will not claim.

The number people misread is 40 lb a day. It is a production rate, not a holding capacity. Like every countertop machine, this one makes ice much faster than it can keep it, and uncollected cubes melt back into the reservoir to be refrozen. The practical consequence is that you treat it as a tap: start it, collect what you need into a bucket, and let it refill.

At 13.75 in tall it is one of the few machines in the category that genuinely lives under a standard upper cabinet, which sits 18 in above the counter. That is worth more than it sounds - see the Opal 2.0 review for what happens when a machine is 16.5 in tall and the lid opens upward.

Machines in this class make clear ice by a completely different route from a mold. A mold uses directional freezing: it insulates every face but one so the ice grows in a single direction and pushes dissolved gas and solids ahead of it into a sacrificial end you cut off. A machine sprays water repeatedly over a chilled plate, so each layer freezes thin and fast while the moving water carries impurities away. Both work, and neither is magic - directional freezing explained covers the mold mechanism in full, and why is my ice cloudy covers what goes wrong in a freezer tray.

What that means for the drink: machine cubes come out clear enough that you will not sort them, and consistent enough to use in a mixing glass without thinking. They are also unavoidably cube-shaped and cube-sized. That is right for a highball, right for a shaken drink, right for stirring, and not what an old fashioned traditionally wants in the glass.

• Where machine cubes win: daily volume, mixing-glass charges, shaking, highballs, anything where you need twenty cubes rather than four.
• Where a mold wins: the single 2-inch rock, spheres, and anything the guest is going to look at.
• Where both lose: crushed and nugget ice. Neither makes it - see how to make crushed ice.

It runs a compressor

This is the honest reservation about every countertop ice machine and it applies here. A compressor cycles, a pump sprays, and finished cubes drop. None of it is loud, all of it is periodic, and periodic noise is the kind people notice. In a kitchen that opens onto a living room you will hear it. Owners who are happy with these machines generally run them in bursts before they need ice rather than leaving them on all day.

It is deep, not wide

At 11.4 in wide it takes less frontage than most people expect, but 14.5 in of depth is most of a standard 24 in counter once you allow clearance behind for airflow. These machines reject heat, so pushing one flat against a backsplash is how you turn a seven-minute cycle into a twelve-minute one.

The drain plug is a chore, not a flaw

There is no plumbing in and no plumbing out, which means the water you put in either becomes ice or sits in the reservoir. Draining it between uses is the single most effective thing you can do to keep a reservoir machine from going musty. How to clean a countertop ice maker is the full routine.

Almost nobody arrives at a clear ice machine first. They arrive after a mold, having discovered that four cubes a day is a constraint on how many drinks they make. That is the honest trigger for buying one, and it is a volume trigger rather than a quality trigger.

Clear ice molds vs ice machines is the long version of that decision, and best clear ice makers places this machine against the rest of the category.