Frigidaire EFIC235

What Frigidaire publishes

Why bullet machines are fast

A nugget machine freezes water into flakes on the inside of a chilled cylinder, scrapes the flakes off with a rotating auger, and compresses them into pellets. Three stages, one of them mechanical, all of them under refrigeration.

A bullet machine dips chilled metal prongs into water and lets ice form on them, then briefly warms the prongs so the hollow cylinders drop off. One stage, no auger, nothing to compress. That is why this machine matches a 44 lb per day nugget rating at 200 W and costs considerably less to buy.

It is also why the ice is different. Bullet ice is hard and hollow. It is fine in a cooler, fine in a soda, and it is not the soft chewable ice people mean when they say nugget. The full mechanical explanation is on nugget ice versus bullet ice.

The 19-inch problem

The manual gives 19 inches of height. A typical gap between a kitchen counter and the upper cabinets is about 18. That single inch is the most common reason a machine like this gets returned, and it is printed in a spec table almost nobody reads before ordering.

You also need to open a lid on top to fill the reservoir, so the real requirement is 19 inches plus lid swing. Plan on an open counter, an island, or a pantry shelf with its own clearance.

Running cost

200 W published. Four running hours a day, thirty days, 18 cents per kWh: 24 kWh and $4.32 a month. Slightly more than the nugget-making EFIC255 at 185 W, and still under half the ceiling figure for the GE Opal 2.0.

Who should buy this

• Buy it if you need a lot of ice quickly and do not care about the shape — coolers, parties, iced tea by the jug.
• Buy it if you want the lowest cost per pound of ice among the machines we can source.
• Skip it if you came for chewable ice. Buy the EFIC255 instead — same manufacturer, nugget mechanism, 185 W.
• Skip it if your counter has cabinets above it.