Silonn Ice Maker Countertop 44lbs/Day Review: clear cubes in a compact box, with a few quirks

I picked up the Silonn countertop ice maker (the stainless "PRO" one, 44 lbs/day) because I was tired of constantly running out of ice from the freezer tray and the fridge dispenser that never keeps up when people come over. I’ve been using it almost daily for a few weeks in the kitchen, between family dinners, a small birthday party, and some weekend drinks. So this is not lab testing, just real home use: water jug on the counter, kids grabbing ice, and me forgetting to empty the bin half the time.

On paper, it looks pretty strong: clear cubes, self-cleaning, no plumbing, and a decent daily capacity for the size. I mainly wanted something that could handle 6–10 people on a hot day without constantly babysitting it. I also wanted clear cubes because the bullet-style ones from cheaper machines always felt a bit soft and weird in drinks. This one promises slower-melting, clear cubes and that’s what caught my eye.

In practice, it mostly delivers on the core job: it makes a lot of ice and the cubes look and feel good in a glass. It’s not perfect though. You do have to pay attention to cleaning, and you can’t just let the ice sit in the bin for hours and expect miracles. There are also a few minor annoyances with the full-bin detection and the fact that melted ice just gets reused, which is good and bad at the same time.

If you’re thinking about buying it, don’t expect a magical restaurant-grade machine. Think more: compact appliance that sits on the counter, gets the job done for most home scenarios, but needs a bit of care and some habits (like bagging the ice) to really work smoothly. That’s basically how it’s been for me so far.

On value, I’d say this Silonn sits in a good but not mind-blowing spot. You’re paying more than for the very cheap bullet ice machines, but you’re getting clear cubes, a stainless body, and the dual water fill option. If you’re someone who only uses a bit of ice here and there, honestly, a basic tray or a simple fridge dispenser is probably enough and this will feel like overkill. But if you regularly host people, drink a lot of iced coffee, cocktails, or just have a household that empties the freezer tray daily, the price starts to make sense.

Compared to other countertop ice makers I’ve used or seen at friends’ places, this one offers better cube quality and looks a bit more solid on the counter. The clear ice alone is a noticeable upgrade if you care about drinks not getting watered down too fast. Also, the 44 lbs/day rating, even if you never hit that exact number, means you’re not going to be short on ice during normal use. One unit easily handled a birthday party of about 10 people for us, as long as we kept moving ice into the freezer.

The downside for value is the question mark on reliability from some reviews. If you’re unlucky and get a bad unit, dealing with support and replacements is a hassle, and that obviously kills the sense of good value. Amazon’s average rating around 4.2/5 lines up with my feeling: mostly positive, but with a few duds out there. If you buy it, I’d test it heavily in the first month and make sure everything runs smoothly while you’re still in the easy return window.

So, is it good value? For someone like me who actually uses a lot of ice and wants clear cubes without paying for a built-in ice maker or a commercial unit, yes, it feels like good value for money. It’s not cheap, but it’s also not crazy expensive for what it does. If you’re more casual with ice, you might be better off with something simpler or cheaper and just accept softer, cloudier cubes.

From a design point of view, this Silonn is pretty compact and easy to live with. The vertical shape works well on a crowded counter: it’s taller than it is wide, so it squeezed next to my coffee machine without me having to rearrange the whole kitchen. The flip-top lid is angled and transparent, which is actually useful because you can quickly peek in to see how much ice is there without opening it and letting out the cool air. The stainless steel shell looks fine – nothing fancy, but it doesn’t scream cheap plastic either. Fingerprints do show up, but not as bad as on mirror-finish stainless appliances.

The controls are on the front, pretty straightforward: power, cleaning, and thickness setting, plus indicator lights for add water / ice full. No touchscreen nonsense, just simple buttons and LEDs. That matches the product: this is a utility machine, not a showpiece. The included scoop is basic but functional, and the removable ice basket is light and easy to pull out. Everything is accessible enough that cleaning around the bin and wiping inside doesn’t take much effort. The only thing you don’t really touch is the freezing plate area, which the self-cleaning mode handles.

Noise-wise, the design is okay. The compressor hum is there but not aggressive – more like a small fridge. You hear more when the ice drops into the bin, but it’s a short clunk and then it’s quiet again. I had it running in an open kitchen next to the living room while watching TV, and it didn’t bother me. If you put it in a tiny studio or dorm, you’ll hear it when it cycles, but it’s manageable. There’s no weird rattling or high-pitched sounds on my unit, though one of the reviews clearly had noise issues, so quality control may vary.

The only real design annoyance is the full-bin detection. Most of the time it stops when the bin is full, but occasionally it tries to make more ice and ends up jamming pieces against the sensor or the top. It’s not a disaster – you just open the lid, move the ice around, and it continues – but it’s one of those small things that reminds you this is a mid-range appliance, not a pro bar machine. Still, for day-to-day use, the design is pretty solid and practical overall.

The machine’s outer shell is mostly stainless steel with some plastic parts. The stainless sides and front panel give it a bit more of a sturdy feel than the all-plastic units I’ve handled in the past, and they’re easier to wipe down. It’s not super thick metal, but for a countertop appliance that just sits there, it’s fine. The top lid and interior trim are plastic, but they don’t feel like they’ll crack the first time you close it a bit hard. The hinge on the lid is stable; I opened and closed it a lot while grabbing ice and never felt like it was going to loosen.

Inside, the important part is the stainless steel molds/evaporator plate where the ice actually forms. One reviewer specifically mentioned this and said it avoids the plating detachment issues seen on some cheaper machines. That matches what I’ve seen so far: no flaking, no weird spots on the metal, and no particles in the ice. For something that constantly gets wet and cold, that’s pretty important. The bin itself is a simple plastic basket with holes, light but not flimsy. It lifts out easily for cleaning or to dump a full batch into a freezer bag.

The buttons and control panel are basic but feel fine. They’re not fancy, but they don’t feel like they’ll stop responding within a month. Same for the included scoop: it’s just a basic plastic scoop, but it’s rigid enough to break apart the sheet of cubes without bending. The water reservoir is internal, so you don’t really see it, but the top inlet for a water bottle is straightforward – just flip the bottle and plug it in. You do need a compatible bottle neck size, though, and that’s not included.

Overall, I’d say the materials and build quality are pretty solid for the price range, but not on the level of heavy-duty commercial machines. It’s clearly designed for home and light office use, not a bar that runs it 18 hours a day. If you handle it normally, clean it, and don’t bang it around, it feels like it should last. The handful of failure reports online are more likely related to internal components (compressor, pump, sensors) than the visible materials, which look decent to me.

Performance-wise, the Silonn mostly does what it claims, but with the usual real-world caveats. The brand says 24 cubes in about 13 minutes, and that’s roughly what I saw. The first batch is always slower and a bit smaller while the machine chills down, but once it’s running, you can count on a new sheet of cubes every 12–15 minutes. If you let it run continuously, it easily keeps up with a family of four plus a couple of guests. For a bigger party, you’ll want to start it early and keep emptying the bin into freezer bags so it can keep cycling.

The ice quality is the strong point. The cubes are clear and hard, not cloudy and mushy like the bullet machines I’ve tried before. In drinks, they melt slower, which is nice for whiskey, cocktails, or even iced coffee. One user mentioned using distilled water to get super clear cubes – I tried both tap water and filtered water. Tap water gave me mostly clear cubes, just a slight haze in the center. Filtered water looked better. I didn’t bother with distilled because for normal drinks it felt like overkill, but if you’re picky, you can go that route.

The machine cycles itself pretty well. You can leave it on and it will keep the bin topped up, as long as you’re aware that the bin is not a freezer. If you leave the ice sitting there for hours, it starts to fuse together and partially melt. The water drips back into the reservoir and gets turned into new ice later, which is good for not wasting water but means the bin is more of a buffer, not storage. This is why several people, and I agree, recommend moving finished ice into a freezer bag and tossing it in the freezer if you want to stock up.

The weak spot is reliability based on some reviews. My unit has been fine so far, but there’s at least one person who had three units in the family with issues: one dead out of the box, another noisy and then underperforming after cleaning, and a third that started making weird shaved ice and then died. That suggests the quality control is not perfect. On the flip side, many reviews, plus my experience, show it can run quietly and consistently for weeks if you follow the basic rules: let it sit 24 hours before first use, use the cleaning mode regularly, and don’t run it in a super hot, enclosed corner.

On the specs sheet, the Silonn PRO is a countertop ice machine that claims up to 44 lbs of ice per day, with batches of 24 cubes in about 13 minutes. There’s a 3-liter internal water reservoir, plus the option to stick a compatible water bottle on top as a second feed. No plumbing is required, so you just plug it into a standard 120V outlet, fill it with water, and you’re off. The footprint is roughly 13.8" deep, 9.5" wide, and 14.6" high, so it’s not tiny, but it will fit on most kitchen counters under cabinets without drama.

Inside, it makes classic clear square-style cubes, not bullet ice. That’s important because these cubes are harder and melt slower than the soft, cloudy bullets you see on cheaper machines. You can choose between two thickness levels, but to be honest, both settings are in the same ballpark – it’s more about slightly thicker or slightly thinner, not some big difference like crushed vs large cubes. There’s a self-cleaning mode that runs for about 20 minutes and cycles water through to help remove mineral buildup, which is handy if your tap water is hard.

In everyday use, the machine is semi-automatic. You turn it on, it starts freezing water onto the cold plate, then it drops a sheet of cubes into the bin. When the bin is full, it’s supposed to stop making more ice. When the ice melts a bit, that water goes back into the reservoir and the cycle continues. So it’s not a freezer – it’s more like a temporary storage that keeps making new ice as long as there’s water. If you want to store a lot of ice for later, you still need to move it to your freezer, ideally in freezer bags.

So overall, this is a compact, self-contained ice factory for a counter, not a built-in freezer or a full bar machine. It covers a typical household’s ice needs pretty well, but it still has the usual countertop limitations: no long-term cold storage, some noise when cycling, and you do need to maintain it a bit if you don’t want scale and weird behavior over time.

In terms of doing the job it’s supposed to do, I’d say this Silonn is effective but a bit high-maintenance. It absolutely makes enough ice for normal home use, and the cubes are the right shape and clarity for drinks. For a small gathering, I just turn it on an hour before people arrive, let it fill the bin, then keep emptying it into a freezer bag every so often. As long as I keep feeding it water, it keeps up. Where it gets a bit finicky is when you don’t treat it like a fridge. If you leave the ice in the bin for too long, it melts and sticks together, so you either have to break it apart with the scoop or accept that you’ll be recycling water instead of building a big stock.

The self-cleaning mode is useful, but it’s not magic. You press the button, it runs a 20-minute cycle and flushes water around. If you have hard water, you still want to run this every week or two like the manual says, and maybe use a bit of vinegar occasionally (following the instructions, not dumping half a bottle in). One reviewer who had issues with noise and poor performance was told by the seller to clean it, and after that they got only one batch of ice before it stopped. So clearly, if something is already going wrong inside, cleaning won’t fix every problem. But as regular maintenance, it does help prevent mineral buildup and odd smells.

In my case, using filtered water and running the cleaning cycle every couple of weeks kept the ice neutral-tasting and odor-free. I never noticed any plastic smell or taste, which I’ve had with cheaper machines. The only time I tasted anything off was when I let water sit in the reservoir for several days unused – my fault. After dumping it, running a quick clean, and refilling, the ice was fine again. So, it’s effective as long as you treat it like a water appliance, not something you can ignore for months.

If you’re the kind of person who hates any maintenance, you might find this annoying. You can’t just plug it in and forget it for half a year. But if you’re okay with a quick clean now and then, it stays pretty fresh and does its job well. For me, the trade-off is acceptable given the amount of ice it produces and the quality of the cubes compared to basic fridge makers.