I've been making ice cream for decades. Starting with the old hand cracks & ice, then on to hand churned frozen custards, a Kitchen Aid frozen drum, and most recently a Cuisinart frozen drum. Yes they all work, and they are ALL work on some level, but this thing is simply too easy. Hand washed all of the food touching parts and started w/ a batch of lemon sherbert, and followed that immediately with a batch of vanilla ice milk using high fat cream line whole milk from our local grass fed Jersey cow dairy. No cream, no custard making, just sugar, milk, and vanilla. It was absolutely delicious! And incredibly simple. Poured my ingredients into a small bowl after dissolving the sugar, pre-chilled in the frig for a short while, and then poured into the machine's mixing bowl. Pushed Power button, then menu, where it defaults to ice cream, then pushed start and voila, an hour later it was all done. The consistency was a good deal firmer than soft serve, and it all transferred easily into the silicone containers that we bought specifically for this purpose. Dropped them both in the freezer for another hour each to firm up some more, but it all came out of the machine ready to eat. Frozen custard tomorrow, and then a five day fast to try and spare my liver and pancreas. This thing is dangerous, it's that easy.Clean up was a breeze, but I would suggest adding your ingredients as a pre-chilled mixture and do it with the mixing bowl out of the machine. That way there's no chance of spillage getting down into the freezer compartment. The Amazon driver delivered it upside down, in spite of the box markings, so I let it sit properly oriented for a couple of days before plugging it in and everything ran great. The noise level was about equal to our range exhaust fan on low, so those watching TV in the next room could barely hear it all.I've read a lot of reviews for much more costly Italian machines of this type, but I can't imagine how they offer any real value compared to this. With part of the money I didn't spend I added the extended warranty, but it seems well built, and it's not the sort of applian e that's gonna get beat around, so expect it should last a good while. It may leak refrigerant eventually, but for now it runs like a champ and I see no reason to expect it to not hold up.Over all I couldn't be happier with the purchase.