I just received my Vevor Ice machine today.Nice looking modern stainless style - it's pretty big but it fits under my cabinets on the counter.What kind of Ice is it:little cylinders that are about 3/4" long by 1/2" wide - so they are small, like a fast food restaurant type ice.Followed the instruction to clean before first use and wiped it all down inside and out.I ran it through 1 clean cycle (I used 2 quarts of water with white distilled vinegar added ) then a second clean cycle with just plain water. (it takes about 8 minutes to run 1 cleaning cycle) The cleaning cycle is basically just running the pump to cycle water through the system without the chiller running.You just fill up the reservoir with a couple of quarts of water and turn it on.Details:from a cold start:It takes about 5 minutes to cool the system down. It runs a bit louder during this phase but still pretty quiet. This is using cold tap water in a 70 degree kitchen.After the 5 minutes of startup and cool down the noise drops by about half and is just a little hum from the pumps. totally acceptable and quiet actually compared to some I have had.About 11-12 minutes in, it dropped it's first ice nugget.At 30 minutes I had about 8 oz or 1 1/2 cups of little ice nuggets.At 60 minutes from the cold start, I had about 1lb or 3 1/2 cups of ice (specifically I had 17 3/4 oz of Ice)I decided to empty the catch tray at this point into the freezer, it still barely covers the bottom of the pretty large catch basket.The next 72 minutes produced another 1lb and 7 oz of ice nuggets or about 3 1/2 to 4 cups.This puts it right at it's stated rate of production of 37 lbs in 24 hours or 1.5 lbs per hour.I put a little more than 2 quarts into the water hopper to get started and it took about 2 1/2 hours before it stopped and needed a refill, that left about 1-2 inches of water in the hopper.This produces a soft ice - or a wet ice - easily pop one in and crunch it up like candy. It does not hold the ice. you have to move it to a freezer.I suggest if you dump it in a container in the freezer you shake the excess water off well before popping it in the freezer or there will be clumps that freeze together. As it is a wet Ice it will also freeze the pieces together if it's in a hard freeze temp. I let them start to freeze and after a bit I give the bucket a good shake to try to try keep them broken up.Overall I like the thing. It's so simple to use. Actually does exactly what it says.