I was telling a couple of the girls at work yesterday about how I'd gotten a Yonana and how eager I was to try it. One of the other girls comes up and says, "You ordered a Yonana?" I said yes, thinking she was going to tell me wonderful things about it. Instead, she said she'd had one, that she hated it, and recommended that I immediately pack it up and ship it back without trying it. She claimed it was noisy and difficult to clean. She recommended getting a Ninja instead and said a Ninja is more versatile, but then she went on to say that she has to add liquid to her fruit, which defeats the purpose for why I'd ordered the Yonana in the first place. I'm on Weight Watchers, and I'd ordered the Yonana because all you need is fruit and fruit is zero points on Weight Watchers. What's not to love about "free" food? My co-worker also complained about needing to use two bananas for the Yonana and said that bananas are too high in carbs. High in carbs or not, bananas still count as "free" food on Weight Watchers and, contrary to what my co-worker said, you do not need to use two bananas nor do you need to use any bananas. So, being the stubborn person that I am, I decided not to take my co-worker's advice. Last night I got to try the Yonana. My assessment...it is noisy. So noisy that it should be packed up and shipped back? No. It's no more noisy than my blender or my son's juicer. And it is not difficult to clean. Not in the least little bit. In fact, I was a bit wary of the blades on the blade cone because they looked a bit evil, like they could scrape up a knuckle without a second thought - but the blades actually ended up being very easy to clean off. You can actually just run the parts under water and rinse them off, it cleaned up that easily. If my co-worker wants to see difficult to clean, she can borrow my son's juicer, which requires scrubbing with a toothbrush to get all the pulp out. I'd read some reviews on the Ninja and one of the reviews complained that the Ninja is a pain when you want to add additional ingredients because you have to take off the motor and take off a lid and there was another step that I don't remember. My co-worker agreed that you do need to do all that, but she poo-pooed that review as saying that's really not an issue. Well, I can't vouch for the Ninja, but I can say that adding fruit to the Yonana is very easy. You just pull out the plunger (which you can get a little bit of suction there) and pop in the fruit and then plunge away. Creating the "ice cream" is very quick. I mean, very quick! In less time than it takes to dig frozen real ice cream out of a tub, you can have a Yonana treat. (Well, okay, that might not be totally true as you do need to thaw your frozen fruit first...but take the thawing part out of the equation, you can have the Yonana treat more quickly than real ice cream and without the cussing and swearing.) There is no waste in ingredients with the Yonana. I am always astounded by my son's juicer at how much wasted product is left over. With the Yonana, you get to eat every bit of what goes into it. You will want to disassemble the unit right away, however, because you will find that some edible "ice cream" remains between the blade cover and the blade cone and some in the gasket too, but that's very easy to scrape out, put in the bowl, and enjoy. I did notice that it seems that the first bowl of Yonana gets cheated out of some of their treat and subsequent bowls seem to be more filled. I'm not sure what the reason for that is as it didn't appear that there was fruit left in the plunger. Maybe it's the amount of fruit that remains between the cone cover and blade cone? I don't know, but a solution is to make one big batch and then separate it into portions. The unit is much smaller than I'd expected it to be. It takes up less room than a toaster or a traditional blender or my son's gigantic juicer. It is tall, however. But if you leave it out on a countertop, height isn't an issue. It's the footprint that would be an issue. One thing I discovered that I don't really like about the design of the Yonana is that the spout the "ice cream" comes out is too close to the unit and sometimes the "ice cream" wants to curl back toward the unit and not into your bowl, even though I had the bowl pushed up next to the machine. A simple fix would be for the Yonana designer to make a longer spout. Next Yonana generation maybe. In the meantime, the user can use a higher bowl, or maybe a glass? Overall, am I 100% sold on Yonana? No. I wish I could say I am, but, after tasting my first creation, I think I'd rather just eat the fruit. The concoction does not taste like ice cream - it does, however, have the texture of soft serve ice cream. Oddly, my son, who drank a full 12 ounce glass of grainy juiced carrots without complaint made faces as he ate his banana/peach Yonana. He did eat it all, but I don't think he's going to be asking me to make him another Yonana treat. As for me, I do not like bananas, at all, and a few areas of my banana/berry tasted way too much like banana. (And, yes, I know, you do not need to use the bananas. I made my Yonana treat using just one banana, one half before the berries and one half after.) Am I going to ship my Yonana back? No. I'm going to give it more of a try. First off, a lot of the reviews and the Yonana owner's manual/recipe books all say to use ripe bananas. I didn't have ripe bananas. I just froze the bananas that were the most banged up looking and they really weren't all that ripe. So I'm hoping that bananas that are truly ripe and not simply banged up will make a difference. Also, I intend to give it a try using just fruit without the bananas. I am also hoping that in time I will move beyond the desire for my concoctions to be ice cream and that I'll just be happy that I'm having a Weight Watchers zero point treat. My husband also said that he thinks the Yonana will be a nice cold treat come summer when it's hot. So, do I recommend the Yonana? Yes, I do. In fact, despite my not being sold on the taste of my first creation, I do intend on sharing my Yonana experience with my Weight Watchers group as well as my friends. Like a few of the reviews said, if you want ice cream, go buy ice cream. If you want a good, healthy, zero point treat, then, by all means, get a Yonana. It's a good machine that does exactly what it's meant to do. Follow up - I tried again and used just a berry mix (strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries) and four slices of peaches (no bananas). Very good. Even better, I mixed in a container of blueberry Fiber One yogurt (just one Weight Watchers point). Now, that was a good mixture that I can easily eat multiple times. It is runny, like soft serve ice cream that's melted, but, boy did it taste good.
