Under counter ice maker

Get you a hoshizaki. Even though it is the best in my opinion, all under mount ice machines are money pits and will no doubt cause you headache in the not too distant future.

Kitchen Aid makes a good one. Make sure you change the filter every 6 months and keep the coil clean and it will last around 8 years. That’s about the life of an ice maker. You can’t beat great ice!

Apologies being late posting. I have had a couple of them with the last one being a Manitowok. I bought a little drink refrigerator to fill the spot now. Done with under the counter ice makers. FTS.

My wife likes the Sonic ice for drinks so we ended up buying one of those small ones that fit on the counter top. No Maintenance other than adding distilled water and seems to work pretty good. No drain line, supply line, water filters, cleaning coils, etc.

We have a scotsman and it's awesome. Have not had any issues, though it does need a full clean regularly (as all do). At our old house we had one of the GE opal counter top ones. We had it for 2 or 3 years with zero issues. It made ice pretty quick, but it obviously doesn't hold a huge amount.

I would absolutely not consider an ice maker that uses a pump to drain. You WILL have the pump fail and have water leak out of the unit … and you don’t want to worry about this happening when you are out of town on vacation. Trust me.

Gravity drain only, so if the spot you are considering for the unit won’t accommodate that, then get a beverage fridge instead.

Clear ice like nugget and sonic ice doesn’t have a freezer, it makes the ice and then just keeps it insulated. This keeps the ice clear. It also means the machines are somewhat constantly running and draining. That’s why they are more likely to leak. But the leaking can be mostly controlled. These machines are $1500 on the low end and $3000+ on the high end.

You can get an under counter regular freezer ice maker, it’s basically just a mini freezer that has the old school ice freezer ice maker in it. The ice isn’t as good, but they don’t drain so you don’t need a drain. They are also generally about 1/2 the price. They also make about 1/2 the ice a day, like 25 lbs instead of 40-80.

We have a Scotsman SCN60 nugget (soft pellets aka Sonic Ice) icemaker. I've had it since late 2016. Before that I had a Hoshizaki nugget icemaker in my previous house. The Scotsman is so easy to maintain, which is completely oppisite from the Hoshizaki. The design of the Hoshizaki required scooting it out and taking the top off of the machine for descaling, very cumbersome.

This maintenance is critical to function and longevity. I keep an inline filter that I change every 6 mos. when I de-scale and sanitize. Once a year I clean the fins and coils with compressed air as well.

This Scotsman is also marketed under some other brands such as GE Profile, among others, but it is the same unit. I highly recommend if you are going to buy one and want this kind of ice then get the Scotsman (or identical unit) and take good care of it.

Ice makers generally have a bad rep, but routine maintenance (you'll spend an hour doing it every 6 months) will be the key. My Scotsman has been trouble free and closing in on 9 years.