REVIEW – You may remember a line in Real Genius, delivered by Val Kilmer; “Ice is Nice!”. For some reason this pops to the front of my mind anytime I use an ice dispenser. Today’s review is for an ice maker that is also an ice dispenser and a water dispenser to boot. The ice maker/dispenser built into our Samsung refrigerator gave up the ghost not once, but twice, so an offer to review a countertop unit from ecozy that makes nugget ice was a very quick and easy decision to make. Read on to see what I think you should know.
⬇︎ Jump to summary (pros/cons)
Price: $464.99 (with code below)
Where to buy: Amazon (Save with code: Code: GAEDGE20 expires 10/13/2025)
What is it?
The ecozy Nugget Ice Maker Dispenser is a countertop appliance that makes and dispenses nugget style ice along with being able to dispense water. A smartphone apps lets you customize some settings and get alerts when the ice is ready or if any action is needed.
What’s included?
- Nugget Ice Maker Dispenser
- Water Tank (already inserted in machine)
- Drip Tray
- User Manual and separate Quick Guide (not shown)
It is a pretty big box and might require a team lift at over 35lbs.
Tech specs
Model: IM-ND481B
Power Supply: 120V~60Hz 3.0A
Refrigerant:R600a 16g
Climate Class: N/ST
Vesicant: C5H10
Weight: 36.4 lbs / 16.5kg
Dimensions: 19.33 x 16.34 x 10.83 inches / 491 x 415 x 275mm
Materials: ABS Plastic
Design Pressure: High Side 200 psig / Low Side 103 psig
Design and features
The ecozy Nugget Ice Maker Dispenser isn’t a small appliance, but depending on your love of ice may just be worth the real estate. Dispensing ice feel like a luxury vs. having to scoop it out, and it doubles as a water dispenser as long as you’re willing to keep filling up the tank.
A large front facing control panel lights up with colorful touch panel buttons that let you operate the machine easily, and the brightness can be toned down two levels.
A large water tank with an intake filter allows for successive days of ice making before needing a refill.
A companion app lets you remotely start, stop ice making and get notifications about ice production or tank refills.
Assembly, Installation, Setup
Unpacking is straight forward and there’s not a lot of setup involved. It’s packaged pretty well. The hardest part is waiting a couple of hours to make sure that the refrigerant has settled.
Once out of the box, you’ll want to remove the film from the drip tray…
double check for any small sections of tape that keep a door closed and/or any other packaging materials that need to be removed like the foam ring in the ice bucket.
Make sure to leave a good 6+ inches on each side of the machine for the fan and exhaust vents to do their work.
Rinse the water tank out and wipe down to prepare. Add filtered or purified water up to the max line and reinsert the water tank into the machine.
Note that all the buttons are touch screen buttons. Press the Power Button to turn on the machine. Press the Ice Making button to start making ice. It takes about 1o minutes to start getting ice and 3o minutes plus to fill the ice basket. The machine will automatically stop making ice if it fills the ice bucket, or if it runs out of water.
While it’s making ice, you can press and hold the Timer button to set the clock. Use the up/down buttons to do that. A single press of the Timer button lets you set a timer to start/stop making ice. Holding up/down buttons simultaneously will switch between Fº and Cº temperature units.
Similarly, the WiFi button can be pressed and held for 5 seconds to set up WiFi with the App, and a single press toggles through brightness settings of the display (High, Low, Off).
The Light button turns the light on or off, while a 3 second press toggles the button sounds on/off.
To perform a clean cycle, press and hold the Clean button until you hear a beep. The cycle will run about 5 minutes after which it will automatically stop. You then need to turn the machine around and use the drain hose to empty the accumulated water.
You should only need to do this after clean cycles. Those are recommended weekly if your water quality is < 120 TDS, and every 3 days if your water is > 120 TDS. The machine itself displays your water quality right under the time, so no additional test equipment is needed.
When it comes time to dispense ice, place your glass on the drip tray right in the center and press the Ice button. It might take a second or two, but ice will start to fill your glass. Press the button again to stop. Note that the graphic for the Ice button has a slow on/off blink to it, so if you glance away, you may not see a button immediately when you glance back.
There are 5 Water buttons. The first says Water and is a press to start, press to stop. The next 4 dispense the specified amount, either 24, 18, 12 or 6 ounces with no further action required.
To turn the machine off, press and hold the Power button for 3 seconds.
Performance
The ecozy Nugget Ice Maker Dispenser makes great ice. It’s that crunchy chewy kind you can get from Sonic (who by the way sells bags of that ice in the drive thru should you ever need it on a road trip).
The fact that the ice is stored up in a rotational ice bucket and is dispensed into a glass at the press of a button is great. I really like that the ice and water buttons are completely separate. Our Samsung fridge has stacked levers and when the ice maker did work you always ended up getting some amount of water when you just wanted ice.
The machine makes ice pretty quickly as long as you remember to think ahead about 15 minutes. More importantly, it keeps it cold and at the ready any time you leave the machine on. It also keeps its temperature pretty well overnight with the machine off, still having a pretty full ice bucket in the morning. Should you leave it off long enough any ice melts and the water finds its way back into the water tank ready for the next cycle.
All is not perfect however. This machine is NOT quiet. I’d almost equate it to running the microwave or possibly the dishwasher. My wife thought it sounded like a printer, and since it’s on a counter in the kitchen surrounded by hard surfaces, she could hear it from her office upstairs. There are some loud vibration noises that happen as you start the ice making process. You’ll also hear moving water which at first might give you a panic about leaks (none occurred). It does make ice dropping sounds as you might expect when ice falls into the bucket, but it also stirs the ice about every 5 minutes or so when the ice making is off, but the power is still on. That’s a rumble sound that I wasn’t expecting and sounded akin to digging through a bin of lego.
We’ve taken to turning it on late afternoon when the ice bucket is empty and we usually have a TV on anyway so the added noise kinda blends in. We’ll turn it off after dinner or as we go to bed. There’s still plenty of ice in the morning for iced coffee, and anything remaining melts back into the water tank for the next afternoon cycle.
If you happen to dispense too much ice, it’s nice being able to dump the ice back into the bucket via the handy door up top.
One small annoyance is that when reinstalling the water tank, there’s a small square edged lip above the drip tray. (See my green lines at the right).
You end up setting the tank on the drip tray and then sliding the tank into the unit only to hit that lip sloshing water out of the tank and into the compartment, which luckily then spills into the drip tray. It doesn’t take long to learn how to avoid this, but why not just make that flush and avoid the problem all together? While dispensing water is handy, it does deplete the water tank much faster, and since there isn’t a way to run a water line directly into the unit, you just end up having to refill the tank more often. We’re just using the machine for ice which seems odd given there’s one button for ice and 5 buttons for water.
Final thoughts
If you have the counter space and like nugget ice, this might be a good option for you, but if you like a quiet, tranquil house the ecozy Nugget Ice Maker Dispenser is likely going to be too loud for your calm abode. The app is handy at times, but overall feels unnecessary.
What I like about ecozy Nugget Ice Maker
- Clean, crisp nugget ice dispensed directly into your glass
- Ice bucket stays cold when on and a solid 12+ hours when off
- Melted ice returns water to the water tank
- App is handy to start ice making, or run the occasional firmware update
What needs to be improved?
- Has a pretty large footprint if you have limited counter space
- Loud fan and machine noises when making ice, or even when keeping ice cold
- Lip above water tray can make it easy to spill water from the tank on reinstall
- No ability to directly connect a water line, which makes using as a water dispenser odd
Price: $464.99 (with code below)
Where to buy: Amazon (Save with code: Code: GAEDGE20 expires 10/13/2025)
Source: The sample of this product was provided for free by ecozy, whom did not have a final say on the review and did not preview the review before it was published.
Check out these other ice maker reviews!
- Vividmoo Countertop Nugget Ice Maker review
- Ecozy 451B Countertop Nugget Ice Maker review – Crunchy nugget ice, quick and easy
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