The Best Ice Makers for an RV

Search for an RV ice maker and you will be shown the same countertop machines everyone else is shown, with the word portable attached. The machines are fine. The framing is not, because it skips the two constraints that actually decide whether one works in a vehicle: where the electricity comes from, and how hot the vehicle gets.

So this page is ordered by those constraints rather than by price. Everything below comes from manufacturer manuals, and where a manufacturer publishes nothing the page says so instead of guessing.

What an RV actually demands of one of these

• An inverter-sized electrical load. The published nameplate is the number to plan from, because the compressor draws far more for a moment at startup than it does while running.
• A published temperature range, ideally. Most manufacturers in this category publish none, which is itself worth knowing before you put one in a vehicle that bakes.
• Weight and a way to hold it. These machines get stowed for travel and set out on arrival. A 34 lb box with no handle is a two-hand, both-arms job every single time.
• A small footprint with clearance. RV counters are short, and the 3 to 4 inches of air these machines want at the sides and rear is not optional — it is how the heat leaves.
• A water plan. All of these are reservoir-fed, which means carrying water to the machine, unless you have hookups and a machine that can take a line.
• Somewhere for the meltwater to go. No bin here is refrigerated. The ice melts and drains back to the reservoir, and on travel day all of that has to come out.

The three picks on published figures

Power is the whole problem

On shore power at a campground, none of this matters — a countertop ice maker is a small appliance and a 30 amp pedestal will not notice it. Off grid it matters entirely, and the honest way to plan is from the nameplate rather than from a running-watts figure.

Two things fall out of that table. The first is that the small machines really are small loads: the Silonn and the EFIC452 sit around a tenth of what a domestic microwave pulls. The second is that a published wattage, like NewAir's 170 W, is a better planning number than a nameplate, because a nameplate is a maximum you will rarely reach. Neither, though, tells you the startup surge, and that is what actually trips an undersized inverter — so leave headroom and check your inverter's own surge rating rather than a rule of thumb from a forum.

The general electrical background, including why a nameplate is not a consumption figure, is on ice maker electrical requirements.

Heat, and the numbers almost nobody publishes

An RV parked in the sun is a greenhouse. That matters because a refrigeration cycle rejects heat into the room it is standing in, and the hotter the room the harder it works — until it stops keeping up.

Only two machines on this site publish an operating range at all. Silonn's manual says to use the SLIM21 in locations between 50F and 90F. The first-generation GE Opal manual specifies 55F to 90F. NewAir does not publish a range, but its manual does warn not to use the appliance in a very cold environment, lower than 41F, which is the only cold-end guidance any of these manufacturers gives.

Ninety degrees is not a high ceiling for a vehicle. The practical consequences are that the machine should run while you are in the rig with the air conditioning or the vents doing something, that it should not live pressed against a sunny wall, and that in shoulder seasons at altitude the cold end becomes the live constraint instead. The whole temperature question is on what temperature an ice maker needs.

Silonn SLIM21, if the machine actually travels

This is the only machine on this site that one person moves with one hand. It is 13.7 lbs, roughly 8.7 by 11.4 by 11.6 inches, and the manual's own title calls out the carry handle. On a rig where everything gets stowed before you move, that is worth more than any spec on the sheet.

It is also the lightest electrical load of the three nugget-and-bullet options and the only budget-brand machine here with a full published specification table. And it documents a 30-minute self-clean cycle you are told to run weekly, which matters in a vehicle where the machine sits unused between trips.

The honest cons: it makes hard bullet ice, not nugget, so nobody is chewing it. The basket holds 1.32 lbs, which is about two and a half tall glasses before it stops. And 26 lbs a day is the lowest rated output on this site. It is a machine for one or two people, not for a group at a campsite.

NewAir NIM030SS00, if you camp on hookups

The NIM030 is the only machine in this comparison that can take a water line — its manual includes a section on installing an automatic water line using a 1/4 inch PE tube. In a rig with a fresh water system that is a genuine advantage, because carrying jugs to a reservoir is the chore that stops people using these machines.

It also publishes a rated power of 170 W, an actual consumption figure rather than a ceiling, which makes it the easiest machine here to plan an inverter around. And it has the best documented cleaning of anything on this site: a CLEAN key, an eight-minute cycle, and a manual that tells you to run detergent through it and then rinse it back out.

The honest cons: it is 34.2 lbs with no handle, which is a real lift in and out of a cabinet, and 17.64 inches deep before you add rear clearance, which is more counter than many rigs have. Its 30 lbs a day comes from the manual's title rather than its specification table, so the rate is a weaker number than it looks.

Frigidaire EFIC452, if the cabin runs hot

Ice that survives is worth more in a vehicle than ice that is pleasant to chew, and that is an argument for clear cubes. Dense ice has the least surface area for its volume, so it lasts longest in a warm cabin, in a glass and in a cooler.

It is also the lowest published draw on this site at 90 to 120 W, and at 14.1 inches tall it is the only machine here that clears a standard overhead cabinet gap with room to open the lid — which in an RV, where every counter has a locker above it, is a more useful number than in a house.

The honest cons: no clean cycle at all. Frigidaire documents hand cleaning only for this machine, which is the wrong trait for an appliance that sits idle between trips with damp surfaces inside. It is also slow by design, and at 11.3 by 14.8 inches it takes more counter than the Silonn.

The part everyone forgets: travel day

None of these machines is designed to be moved with water in it. The reservoir is open to the pump, the bin is not sealed, and the meltwater path runs back into the tank. Driving with any of that full means water in the cabinet and a machine that spends the journey warm and wet inside.

• Drain the reservoir and the bin before you move. Every machine here has a drain plug for exactly this.
• Wipe the interior and leave the lid open until it dries. A sealed damp machine is how biofilm starts.
• Stow it upright and secured. These are compressors, and they do not like being carried on their side.
• After a long stand, let it sit upright before switching it on again — NewAir says two hours, Silonn says 24.

The full procedure, including what to do at the end of a season, is on how to drain and store an ice maker.

Choosing, in three steps

• Work out your power situation first. On hookups, anything here works. Off grid, start from the nameplate and your inverter's surge rating, and prefer the smallest machine that makes enough ice.
• Then choose the ice for the climate. Hot cabin, clear cubes. Cool cabin and you want to chew it, nugget.
• Then check it fits, including the 3 to 4 inches of clearance and the cabinet above the counter. That is where most of these decisions actually end.

If portability rather than the vehicle is the real requirement, the wider comparison is on the portable roundup, which explains what portable does and does not mean in this category.