NewAir Nugget Ice Maker NIM044BS00 Review: ‘Good ice’ with a bad reliability habit

I’ve had the NewAir 44 lb Nugget Ice Maker on my counter long enough to go through the full honeymoon phase and then start to see the cracks. If you’re here because you’re addicted to Sonic or hospital-style chewable ice, I get it. That’s exactly why I bought this thing. I was tired of driving out just to get a bag of ice and dealing with a noisy fridge dispenser that makes hollow cubes nobody in my house really likes.

Out of the box, this NewAir machine does what it promises: it churns out soft, chewable nugget ice that’s great for sodas, iced coffee, and packing a big tumbler. When it’s running properly, it keeps up easily with a small family. I can fill a big 32 oz cup, then my partner does the same, and the bin still has enough left for a third person. So on pure ice quality and speed, it’s pretty solid.

The problem is the pattern you see in a lot of reviews: noise, plastic shavings, and parts failing after a few months. Reading those, then actually hearing mine start making weird grinding sounds around month 5–6, was not exactly reassuring. I didn’t have a catastrophic failure like leaking all over the counter, but I did get the loud crunching and some dark residue in the water area that made me stop and clean it more often than I’d like.

So this review is basically: yes, the ice is good, and yes, the machine is convenient when it works. But there’s a real question of durability and whether it’s worth the price if you’re unlucky and fall into that 6–12 month failure window a bunch of users mention. I’ll walk through what I liked, what annoyed me, and who I think should actually risk buying this versus who should just stick to buying bagged nugget ice or a different brand.

Price-wise, this thing usually sits in the $400–$550 range depending on sales and where you buy it. That’s not pocket change for a countertop gadget whose only job is making a specific style of ice. So the big question is: does the quality of the ice and the convenience justify that price, given the mixed reliability?

If you look only at the first 3–6 months, you could argue it’s worth it. You get fast nugget ice at home, the design looks decent, and you aren’t driving to Sonic or the gas station for bags of ice. If you drink a lot of iced beverages, host often, or have someone in the house who chews ice constantly, the daily convenience is real. A couple of the 5-star reviews basically say it changed how often they use ice at home, and I get that feeling. You stop rationing ice and just use as much as you want.

The problem is the 3.0/5 average rating and the number of people having the same failures: plastic shredding, grinding, leaks, and broken arms just after the warranty ends. That kills the value pretty quickly. A $400+ gadget that lasts 12–18 months before becoming a paperweight is not great value, no matter how nice the ice is. And the customer service stories (shipping costs for replacements, having to destroy the old unit, weak support after the warranty) don’t really help justify the price.

So for value, I’d put it like this: if you absolutely love nugget ice, understand this might be a short-to-medium term gadget, and you’re okay with that risk, you might still feel it’s worth the money for the daily comfort. If you’re more practical and expect long-term durability for that price, I’d say it’s poor value and you should either look at a different brand or stick with buying bags of nugget ice from a local place. There’s better peace of mind elsewhere, even if the convenience isn’t as nice.

Design-wise, NewAir clearly tried to make this thing look like it belongs in a modern kitchen. The black stainless steel finish is decent and doesn’t scream "cheap plastic" from across the room. The footprint is narrow enough that it fit on my counter next to the coffee maker without blocking cabinets, but that 17" height means you want to measure under your upper cabinets. It fit under mine, but there’s not a ton of breathing room on top, so keep that in mind for airflow and filling the water tank.

The front drawer setup is actually pretty handy. You pull it out like a freezer drawer and scoop your ice. The viewing window on top plus the blue LED inside is more than just a gimmick; at a glance you can see if the bin is getting low without opening anything. For households with kids or guests constantly asking "is there ice?", this is nice. The controls are dead simple: power, clean, and basic indicator lights for water and ice status. No app, no nonsense, which I like.

Now the less fun part: noise. When it’s running normally, there’s a steady hum and some mechanical sounds that are totally expected for a small ice machine. But after a few months, I started getting those louder crunching/grinding noises other reviewers talk about. It’s not 24/7, but when it happens, you definitely notice it from another room. If you have an open-plan kitchen/living area and hate background noise during TV time, you might end up turning it off more often than you think.

In terms of user experience, the "no water line needed" part is both a pro and a con. It’s easy to set up, but you do have to refill the tank manually. For my use (several tall drinks a day), that meant topping it off at least once or twice in a busy afternoon. Not a huge deal, but it’s not as "set and forget" as a plumbed unit. Overall, the design is pretty solid to live with day-to-day, but the noise and height are the two big things to think about before you commit a chunk of counter space to it.

From the outside, the black stainless steel shell gives off a decent quality vibe. It wipes down easily, doesn’t pick up fingerprints as badly as glossy stainless, and doesn’t feel flimsy if you tap on it. The top window is clear plastic, the front drawer has a plastic face with some metal around it, and the inside bin is all plastic. Nothing felt like it was going to fall off in the first week, and the basic construction seems okay for a countertop unit in this price range.

The weak spot is clearly the internal plastic parts and moving bits that you don’t really see. The repeated reports of "black plastic shavings" ending up in the ice or in the water compartment is not something you want to hear about a machine that’s making something you put in your mouth. One reviewer even said they accidentally ingested some. That lines up with the black residue I noticed, even though I never found big shavings myself. It suggests that something inside is rubbing or grinding more than it should as the machine ages.

There’s also mention of a small metal arm snapping off after about 14 months in one review, which apparently controls how the ice moves down the chute. That’s more of a design and durability issue than pure material quality, but it still falls under the "what’s actually happening inside this box" concern. When you combine that with the crunching noises, it feels like the internal design is a bit stressed and parts are wearing faster than they should.

So in practice, I’d call the materials and build decent on the outside, questionable on the inside. It looks nice enough on the counter and doesn’t feel cheap to touch, but the internals seem to be the weak link over time. If you’re picky about long-term durability and food-contact safety, the stories about plastic shredding and black residue are hard to ignore. This doesn’t feel like a "buy it once and forget it for 7 years" kind of build. It feels more like a fancy gadget that might need replacing sooner than you’d expect for the price.

Let’s talk about what everyone actually cares about: the ice. When this machine is behaving, the nugget ice quality is genuinely good. It’s soft enough to chew, still firm enough that it doesn’t instantly turn your drink into water, and the size of the pellets is close to what you get at Sonic or in a hospital. I used it for iced coffee, sodas, and just chomping on ice by itself, and it scratched that "good ice" itch easily.

In terms of speed, it gets going fairly quickly. You don’t get a full bin in 5 minutes or anything, but within 15–20 minutes, you already have enough ice for a drink or two, and it keeps building from there. Over a couple of hours it fills the bin unless you’re constantly scooping. The 44 lbs/day spec feels realistic if you’re running it continuously and using ice throughout the day. For a family or a small gathering, it keeps up fine. I never had a day where it completely failed to meet demand when it was working properly.

Where things fall apart is consistency over time. Multiple Amazon reviews talk about the same pattern: good ice for about 4–6 months, then loud crunching, black residue in the water compartment, and sometimes parts shredding or snapping. I didn’t have plastic chunks floating in the ice, but I did see dark streaks and had to run extra cleaning cycles. A few people also report the unit leaking water all over the counter after a few months, which is a different level of headache. My unit never leaked, but when you see the same complaints again and again, it’s hard to ignore.

So performance is basically a split story: short-term, it does the job really well and you get plenty of nugget ice for drinks, parties, whatever. Long-term, you’re rolling the dice a bit. If you’re okay with the idea that this might be a 1–2 year gadget and not a 5–10 year appliance, the performance is solid while it lasts. If you expect fridge-level reliability, you’re probably going to be disappointed based on the failure stories and my own experience with the noise and residue showing up way earlier than I’d like.

On paper, the NewAir NIM044BS00 looks like a pretty capable little unit. It’s a countertop nugget ice maker rated for up to 44 pounds of ice per day. Dimensions are roughly 17" deep, 10" wide, and 17" high, so it’s tall but not super wide. It’s meant to sit on a counter, plug into a regular 120V outlet, and run off a refillable water tank instead of a water line. So no plumbing, no permanent install, just plug, fill, and go.

Ice type is nugget / pebble ice, not cubes. Think Sonic or hospital ice: small, semi-compressed pellets that are easy to chew and soak up drinks nicely. The machine recycles meltwater back into the system, so if the bin is full and you don’t use it right away, the ice slowly melts and gets turned back into new nuggets. There’s a self-cleaning mode, a see-through window on top, and a blue LED light inside the drawer so you can see the ice pile up.

NewAir advertises it as portable, and technically it is: it weighs about 34 pounds, and since it doesn’t need a water line, you can drag it to a bar area, RV, or outdoor kitchen if you have power. But it’s not something you casually move every day like a blender. I’d call it "moveable" more than portable. Once you put it in a corner of the counter, it’ll probably live there.

What it’s not: it’s not a built-in undercounter unit, it doesn’t store ice for days like a freezer, and it’s definitely not a silent machine. If you’re picturing a quiet little box that just magically fills with ice in the background, temper those expectations. It hums, it clicks, and sometimes it grinds. Also, with an Amazon score hovering around 3/5 and multiple people saying it dies in under a year, you really have to treat this thing as more of a convenience gadget than a long-term appliance you’ll pass down to your kids.

On a daily basis, when it’s working, the NewAir is pretty easy to live with. You fill the water tank, hit power, and within a bit you’ve got chewable ice. The drawer access is convenient, and you don’t have to dig into some deep bin like older ice makers. For me, it covered normal home use plus a few small get-togethers without a problem, as long as I remembered to keep the water topped off.

The self-clean function sounds nice on paper. You press the button, it runs a cycle, and you drain it. I still ended up doing extra cleaning with a vinegar/water mix, similar to what one of the 1-star reviewers mentioned. If you want to avoid any funky smells or residue, you’ll probably treat that "self-clean" more like a helper than a full solution. I’d say plan on a weekly or bi-weekly deeper clean if you use it heavily, especially after you see any dark marks or cloudiness inside.

The big sticking point for me is reliability and support. A few users got replacements under warranty, but the process sounds annoying: cutting the power cord, taking pictures, and then at some point paying shipping for a replacement. Others were just past the 1-year mark and basically got told "too bad" with a 40% discount code on a new unit from NewAir’s own site. If you’re in the US that’s annoying but maybe workable; if you’re in Canada like one reviewer, the exchange rate and duties make that discount pretty pointless. It comes off like the brand knows these units fail but would rather push you into buying another one.

So in terms of effectiveness: yes, it makes the kind of ice you probably want, and it does it fast enough for real-world use. But the maintenance and the risk of it dying within a year or so are the real issues. If you’re okay with a bit of tinkering, frequent cleaning, and possibly arguing with customer service if something breaks, it might be fine. If you want something you plug in and forget about, this is not that product based on my experience and the pattern in the reviews.