Best Ice Cream Maker of 2020
The Whynter ICM-200LS is one of our all-time favorite ice cream makers. This appliance is an excellent option for the impulsive ice cream maker, as it doesn't need the ingredients or machine components to be chilled beforehand, and can churn out ice cream or gelato in as little as 35 minutes. It made wonderful frozen treats all-around and is convenient and easy to use. The bowl is simple to clean — especially since you don't need to wait for it to thaw like its freezer bowl counterparts. It also has three different operating modes so you can fine-tune the consistency.
To accommodate such expedience, this appliance is large and expensive. With that in mind, we would recommend it to serious ice cream enthusiasts. Like most compressor-powered machines, the Whynter ICM-200LS doesn't take too kindly to being stored inverted for long periods. The product proved to have some delicate components — the first one we ordered arrived broken and leaking, forcing us to exchange it immediately. Though it might be a little more machine than the occasional user needs, the Whynter ICM-200LS is an excellent all-around machine for the devoted home ice cream maker.
For those on a budget, the Cuisinart ICE-21 is one of our favorite non-compressor ice cream machines. With the correct preparation — ingredients prechilled and bowl frozen for 8+ hours — this model only took about 15 minutes to make excellent ice cream. Furthermore, the Cuisinart ICE-21 doesn't take up a ton of countertop space and even comes at a relatively reasonable price. It makes delicious, creamy ice cream that turned out much softer than other machines — requiring a brief stop in the freezer to firm up.
However, the Cuisinart ICE-21 is a freezer bowl style machine, meaning that you do need to pre-freeze the bowl for at least 8 hours and can't make different batches of ice cream back-to-back. Cleaning up isn't too bad, but you do need to wait until the bowl is completely thawed since room temperature or cold water will immediately freeze when washing and hot water can damage the fluid inside. If you opt for this machine, you will have to leave a bowl of melting ice in your sink for a few hours. Regardless, this is still one of our favorite ice cream makers and is an excellent option for someone who likes to make small amounts of homemade ice cream on an occasional or semi-regular basis.
The Hamilton Beach 68330N is one of the least expensive ways to make large quantities of ice cream at home. You don't need to pre-freeze components for long periods, and provided you have ample rock salt and ice, can create multiple batches back-to-back. It makes delicious ice cream that's on the softer side — barely firm enough to hold a scoop shape. With a motorized paddle that churns the ice cream and automatically stops once it reaches the correct consistency, it overall is rather straightforward to use.
Unfortunately, this ice cream maker is exceptionally loud, bordering on ear-splitting. It's almost impossible to carry on a conversation over it, and our testers resorted to earplugs and noise-canceling headphones during churning time. Each batch produces about 12 pounds of melting ice and 3 cups of rock salt, making cleanup a hassle. Additionally, the cleaning process always seemed to make a giant mess across the surrounding area — even when we laid out a plastic tray to contain it. The Hamilton Beach 68330N is great if you are shopping on a budget, need large batches, and love traditionally made ice cream.
We found the Cuisinart ICE-100 to be the best of the group when it comes to frozen yogurt, creating a thick and creamy confection that was enjoyed immensely by our judges, as evidenced by how quickly their bowls were emptied. The gelato was delicious and silky-smooth, and the ice cream was thick enough that it held a scoop shape without additional freezing. It consistently made excellent ice cream and is relatively easy to use, with the machine stopping on its own once the mixture reaches the correct consistency.
Similar to the Whynter ICM-200LS, the Cuisinart ICE-100 is a large kitchen appliance, so storing it can be a hassle. We also found that most recipes we followed would cause the bowl to overflow a bit, making cleanup more challenging. The paddle has plenty of nooks and crannies to trap ice cream, while the inspection door to check consistency or add mix-ins also dips into the ice cream when you lift it, creating even more cleanup work.
The Breville Smart Scoop is a high-end ice cream making appliance that offers plenty of novel features and more control over the churning process than its competitors. It has a sleek and stylish design that looks right at home in most kitchens and has all sorts of interesting features, like alerts for the proper time to add mix-ins and a "keep cool" function.
Unfortunately, the Breville Smart Scoop is one of the most expensive products of the entire group, and it doesn't seem like this price increase translates to a noticeably improved ice cream making performance. If you want an ice cream maker that has all the bells and whistles imaginable — the Breville Smart Scoop even plays songs once the ice cream is finished — and you can afford it, then this is the product for you. However, we think it's probably overkill and a bit more expensive than what most people need or want.
While it's hard to beat a soft-serve ice cream cone on a hot summer day, we found making it ourselves to be a bit of a challenge. The Cuisinart ICE-45 did an alright job making large batches of ice cream and frozen yogurt and allows you to dispense and serve ice cream cones quickly, making it a good option for larger gatherings. And though the mix-in dispensers are a hit at parties, they didn't work with all types of candy.
Unfortunately, we found that there is a very, very short window — approximately five minutes or so — where the ice cream made by the Cuisinart ICE-45 was at an acceptable consistency for serving. It quickly moved from too thin to hold its shape to so thick the paddle couldn't churn, forcing us to scoop ice cream out of the bowl, effectively defeating the point of a soft-serve machine. Larger candies would clog the dispensers, and it ended up being a pain to clean. Unless you really enjoy homemade soft serve and are willing to put up with quite a bit of hassle for it, we wouldn't recommend it to most people.
Why You Should Trust Us
Our ice cream maker testing and review team is led by Michelle Powell, Austin Palmer , and David Wise . Michelle is armed with over a decade of culinary experience in a professional setting, covering everything from latte art competitions to managing artisanal bakeries. She holds her kitchen appliances to a high standard and has little patience for products that don't perform as they should. David and Austin have extensive experience reviewing and testing kitchen appliances for TechGearLab, having tested not only ice cream makers, but bread machines, food processors, microwaves, blenders, juicers, and vacuum sealers, as well as tons of other home and office products.
We spent weeks testing these machines, making a variety of different ice cream recipes to see how each one handled everything from soft serve to sorbet. We had a panel of judges blind taste the results — they didn't know which machine produced which treat — to ensure they were unbiased. Additionally, we were exceptionally familiar with the different quirks of each machine and the difficulty in cleaning each one and have some strong opinions about which were a breeze to use and which ones left us feeling frosty.
Analysis and Test Results
We comprehensively tested these products head-to-head, with a panel of judges ranking and scoring their performance in a variety of different evaluations. Our results are below, with particularly notable product performances highlighted.
Ice Cream, Gelato, and Frozen Yogurt Quality
We started by making ice cream, gelato, and frozen yogurt in each ice cream maker. Our panel of judges ranked and scored each dessert, noting taste, texture, and overall quality. We used basic gelato and frozen yogurt recipes for this — vanilla ice cream, strawberry, and chocolate — to let the churning skills of each product stand out more clearly, with all ingredients prechilled.
While the Whynter ICM-200LS didn't claim the top spot when it came to frozen yogurt or gelato, it was hard to beat the ice cream produced by this machine. Creamy and delicious, the Whynter ICM-200LS's ice cream tasted precisely how we would want homemade ice cream to taste. Unfortunately, the gelato and frozen yogurt came out much more like traditional ice cream than we would have preferred.
If you want top-tier frozen yogurt, then the Cuisinart ICE-100 is a phenomenal choice. The strawberry froyo made by this product was velvety-smooth and a universal favorite amongst our judges. The Cuisinart ICE-100 was also able to churn a much stiffer frozen yogurt than most other models. The final product was able to support its own weight and didn't immediately melt when transferred into a room-temperature bowl.
The Breville Smart Scoop is a game-changer when it comes to homemade gelato. It whipped up a creamy chocolate gelato and silky-smooth strawberry time after time, firmly establishing it as our go-to gelato option.
Timing and Preparation
Next, we looked at how long it took to make ice cream with each product and the amount of preparation required beforehand. While this doesn't necessarily differ too much from product to product, the freezing mechanism used is the main differentiating factor.
Freezer bowl models, like the Cuisinart ICE-21 and the Cuisinart ICE-45, require the bowl to be frozen for at least eight hours and can't be used to make multiple batches in the same day since it has to be defrosted, cleaned and refrozen for 8 more hours. Unfortunately, if you are looking to be spontaneous with your frozen confection creation, these models aren't great options as they work best if you pre-cool the ingredients.
Compressor models, such as the Whynter ICM-200LS, the Breville Smart Scoop, and the Cuisinart ICE-100 can be used anytime — the ingredients don't even have to be chilled in advance, though it will take longer to churn if they aren't. And though most manufacturers recommend giving them a brief rest in between batches, these appliances can usually be used multiple times a day. Finally, ice and rock salt machines, like the Hamilton Beach 68330N can be used immediately and repeatedly, provided you don't run out of rock salt and ice. However, these products run through a surprising amount of ice with each batch.
In general, we favored the compressor models the most, but the freezer bowls are a close runner-up if you don't mind planning ahead and don't need multiple batches in one go.
Ease of Use
While making the ice cream to evaluate, we also judged how difficult it is to operate each machine. We compared the initial unboxing and assembly of each appliance — if any — and how much work it took to get each one set up to make ice cream. Additionally, we looked at the user-friendliness of each interface, how intuitive the controls are, as well as if there is a timer to set the churn time.
The Whynter ICM-200LS and the Cuisinart ICE-21 both stood out by being particularly convenient and user-friendly to operate. The Whynter ICM-200LS has a digital timer and three different operating modes to fine-tune the churning of your frozen concoction. The interface is intuitive and easy to understand, as well.
The Cuisinart ICE-21's simplicity is what makes it so easy to use. This freezer bowl model's one-button interface doesn't leave a lot of room for confusion. You just pop the pre-frozen bowl into place, dump in your ingredients, and hit go, with the ice cream ready to consume in 15-20 minutes.
Ease of Cleaning
Unfortunately, the necessary chore of cleaning exists each time you want to indulge in homemade ice cream. Fortunately, our favorites aren't too much work to clean. The compressor models require you to clean out the bowl, paddle, and lid by hand — the components for these machines aren't generally dishwasher safe. The freezer bowl machines are a little more effort to clean, as you need to wait until the bowl naturally thaws beforehand. Hot water can damage the bowl and room temperature, or cold water will simply freeze to the bowl if you don't wait. Salt and ice style are about the same difficulty to clean, but require you to dispose of large quantities of brine and clean up copious amounts of --inevitably — spilled salt.
The Breville Smart Scoop is one of our favorites when it comes time to clean up. You don't need to wait for a freezer bowl to thaw, and the layout of this machine means it isn't prone to getting dirty if you are careful, limiting your cleanup to the bowl, lid, and paddle. The bowl is easily wiped out by hand, and the paddle and lid are dishwasher-safe, though you should double-check the manual for any special cleaning instructions.
On the other end of the spectrum, the Cuisinart ICE-45 can be quite a pain come cleanup time. It has lots of parts in contact with the ice cream, and the soft serve dispensing mechanism requires considerably more attention to clean than other appliances. The Hamilton Beach 68330N also can be a hassle to clean.
You have to dispose of 12-15 pounds of semi-melted ice and rock salt inside the ice cream maker for the best-case scenario or 12-15 pounds of semi-melted ice and rock salt plus everything you spilled for the worst-case scenario. We found the latter to be true virtually every time.
Conclusion
Hopefully, this has helped you get well on your way to churning some delicious homemade ice cream and alleviated some of the confusion in selecting the perfect style of ice cream maker for you!
— Michelle Powell, Austin Palmer, and David Wise