This Ice Cream maker is simple the best, most professional one I've ever used. And I've used several. Admitingly, I never owned one of the industry standard ones (4k-10k ones), but for home usage, this one takes the cake EASILY. And honestly, it FEELS like a industry standard unit build wise and results wise. Extremely easy to use, literally plug and play, the best for clean up (IMO), AND THE RESULTS are finally ice cream parlor style, and just so well built I am very impressed. The design is VERY smart for cleaning, which is important for me. The bowl is not removable, and is literally part of the entire casing and lid (one molded piece of stainless steel ! So there is no way of leakage ! With removable bowls, you have the problem of ice cream, water, batter, debris, and funk getting below the bowl, or seeping down the "seam" that has to be there in a design as such. With this one that is not the case at all. This is what costs so much, the "cut no corner" design. ALSO, the entire top has a ridge around the whole unit. This again is ingenious as if a bunch of liquid get poured on top of the unit (for cleaning), it has no way of rolling down the sides of the machine. SO cleaning is as simple as after you remove your desert, just pour some hot water all over the top of unit and in bowl... wait for a few minutes, then wipe it all down with a sponge (rinsing your sponge from time to time). Then do a final dry dry with a paper towel or two and the thing polishes right back up. It is so helpful under messy situations. I get no mess anywhere using this due to its ingenious design (IMO). Not too much anymore do you see a product made that is obviously not trying to save money by a poorly built mechanisms, parts, and casings. Well this one takes the cake. Obviously they know how to keep things built right in Italy. Unlike here in the US. This thing is a BEAST, just like we USED to make here in the US back in the 60's and 70's before plastic and fake metal coatings (fake stainless steel) took over on ALL our products, and before we decided to get everything built or assembled in Mexico, China, etc.. This thing is HEAVY like it should be. This thing is ENTIRELY made of stainless steel ! (other than the buttons and knob). The gear, crank, rod, and paddle are extremely solid and well built. I can tell they will last forever. 100% stainless steel and fit to each other very well and secure. No loose movements or faulty connections. Its literally the best design and strongest design I've ever seen in a Ice Cream maker under 4k. The paddle is properly designed to fit onto the rod correctly so it practically would hold itself there fine by just setting it in its "groove" place, BUT on top of that, it then has a stainless steel screw knob that screws down and completely LOCKS that paddle in place. Absolutely NO room for error, breaking or damage later on. All these pieces are removable as well for easy clean up. And you can feel their well builtness by the weight they have. Seriously. Now onto the whole reason we buy these things. Making the Ice Cream ! Man, this thing is beautiful. I followed instructions to a tee, blended my batter correctly, made extremely smooth, etc... Then chilled it for a while in fridge (about 2 hours). I then poured it into the machine, turned the machine on and set the time for 60 minutes (manual says 30, but I was going to stop it at 30 if it was done, but wanted a hour on the timer just for the hell of it), and then I went to the sink to wash some fruit to eat it. By the time I was eating my fruit (5 minutes), I glanced over and I could see the batter inside already taking a "thicker" form. I was impressed, that was quick ! Then about 5 more minutes it was already looking like very soft ice cream. I was excited at this point. About every 5 minutes the batter took on a new form, looking more and more like professional ice cream. Then sure enough, on the dot of 30 minutes after I started it, the ice cream was DONE. It was THICK, but creamy. The paddle/gear had stopped cause the ice cream was so thick/perfect ! (This is also how I knew the machine was well built, it seems to have a gear in it that is meant to do this, I could tell no damage was happening to the motor or gear like usually would if a engine was on but getting stopped) -- Anyway, I turned off the machine and couldn't believe the results. SOOOOOOO much like ice cream parlor ice cream !! Nothing like the homemade ice cream that every other maker has done for me. No ice crystals, no harden places, no inconsistencies, just thorough creamy, whipped, ice cream that was slightly hard to scoop out with a ice cream scooper and held its "classic" scooper form perfectly !!! But was not too hard !! NEVER before has a ice cream maker done all these attributes of parlor style ice cream so perfectly. NEVER. The real test (to see how professionally it "whips" it) - I then got it all out of the machine, minus what I was eating, lol, and then put it in a airtight container and put it in the freezer. Came back the next day, and WOW !!! Unlike other homestyle ice cream makers, this ice cream was NOT overly hard ! It was still PERFECT. Actually even a touch better than after I first made it. It was truly like them buckets of ice cream at a parlor. For real. I don't know if you know, but that is a big problem with other homestyle ice cream makers. Even if you do ever get a decent consistency with one, after you freeze it overnight, the ice cream is so hard you need a chisel to get to it. That is because the maker did not "whip" the batter properly, and freeze it to a professional temperature in the CORRECT amount of time. This is all physics. Ultimately, you will be VERY happy with this purchase. I understand it is expensive, but if you spend less, you will get A LOT less of a performance and A LOT less built of a machine, so honestly, this is the best bang for the buck. Save money now by getting a cheaper model, but spend it later buying a new machine ! On top of that, you will have a lot crappy ice cream consistency. So if you do the math, it really is worth the dough. Of course your choices are compressor auto chilled units like this one, or the older fashion kind with the bucket you got to freeze. Obviously if you go with the older fashion kind you are in another ballpark. They are so inexpensive that if you simply do not have the money for this one, and are less anal about professional results of your ice cream, then they are a better buy for you, cause jesus, they are very inexpensive and do crank out ice cream (bad consistency ice cream though). But my comparison was mainly this one again all other compressor auto chilling units. The less expensive models yield you FAR less results product wise and build wise than this one compared to the dollars you save. So they are simply not worth it at all. In the long run I would consider this one actually cheaper. Plus in the happiness return from how ecstatic you'll be over your ice cream results !! All in all, as you can tell, this machine comes HIGHLY RECOMMENDED by me. Also Amazon shipped it instantly, it came in 4 days ! Free Shipping, and the lowest price. I am very happy with this purchase and the whole transaction. Some others having problems with this unit, don't seem to be using it right, and not preparing their batter properly IMO.
