Igloo Automatic Countertop Ice Maker (ICEB26)

What Igloo publishes

45F to 90F, the widest window on this site

This is the finding that earns the page. Igloo's manual recommends a room temperature between 45F and 90F. Every other published range in this category starts at 50F or 55F, so this is the lowest floor any maker here commits to, by five degrees.

It goes one step further than that, with the only cold-room operating advice in any manual on this site: below 60F, select the small ice-cube size. There is a mechanism behind it — a colder room means a colder cylinder and a longer freeze, and a smaller cube completes in the time the machine allows — and it is the sort of instruction that only turns up when somebody has actually run the machine in a cold room.

For a garage, a basement bar or a screened porch that is the difference between a documented condition and a guess. The whole published field is on what temperature an ice maker needs, and the room-by-room ranking is on ice makers for a garage.

120 W, and the cheapest running cost here

The manual prints 120 Watts, 2 Amps at 110-120 V. Publishing both a wattage and a current is rare in this category, and the wattage is the useful one: at four running hours a day and 18 cents per kWh, 120 W is about $2.59 a month. Only the Frigidaire EFIC189, at a published 105 W, comes in lower among the machines with a single published wattage.

Be careful what you conclude from that, though. Bullet machines are cheaper to run because of what they do, not because they are better engineered: water freezes onto chilled prongs and the cylinders drop off when the prongs warm briefly. There is no auger turning inside a refrigerated cylinder, which is the expensive, power-hungry part of a nugget machine — the mechanism is compared on nugget ice versus bullet ice.

Per pound it is less flattering: 120 W for a 26 lb rating is about 4.6 watts per daily pound, against 4.2 for the Frigidaire EFIC255's 185 W and 44 lbs. Cheap to run, but not efficient — it is a small machine, not a frugal one. The arithmetic is on the running-cost page.

R134a, the odd one out

Every other machine documented on this site runs on R600a. This one lists Refrigerant: R134A, and the difference shows up in the manual itself: there is no flammable-refrigerant warning in it, because R134a is a hydrofluorocarbon rather than a hydrocarbon. Open any R600a manual in this category and the first page carries a fire-and-explosion caution.

For a buyer that cuts both ways. R134a will not ignite, which is one fewer thing to think about in a garage or a camper. It is also the older refrigerant, with a far higher global warming potential than isobutane, which is why the rest of this category has moved away from it. Neither point should decide a purchase at this price, but the site records what the manual says rather than assuming the category standard.

What it publishes that GE does not

It is worth pausing on how much of this manual is filled in, because the price does not predict it.

The 3-quart reservoir deserves its own note: it is the largest reservoir volume any manual on this site publishes, roughly two and a half times the 1.2 liters Silonn prints for the SLIM21. On a machine you fill by hand, that is the number that decides how often you are at the sink, and it is covered on how much water these machines use.

The gap: no footprint at all

There are no dimensions and no weight anywhere in this manual. For a machine whose whole appeal is sitting on a counter, that is the one omission that actually costs you something — you cannot measure a space against it before it arrives, and you cannot tell whether it clears a wall cabinet.

What you do get is the clearance figure: at least four inches of empty space on all sides, the same gap GE asks for around the Opal Mini. Plan for that on top of whatever the body turns out to be. The machines that do publish a footprint are ranked on nugget ice makers for small kitchens.

The variant maze, and which machine this is

Igloo's 26 lb line is a family rather than a model. Its manuals cover the ICEB26AQ, BK and RR, the carry-handle ICEB26HN series in several colors, a stainless IGLICEB26SS, a 33 lb ICEB33SL and a nugget dispensing IGLICEND40SS. The retail listings add reservoirs of 1, 1.5 and 3 quarts and a self-cleaning variant.

This page is built on the manual that covers the ICEB26AQ, and the buy row points at the Aqua 26 lb machine that manual belongs to, which we verified on sale new on 26 September 2026. If you buy a different Igloo — a handled one, a stainless one, a self-cleaning one — assume a different spec sheet, because that is what the manuals show.

One more for anyone who arrived here wanting chewable ice: Igloo does document a nugget dispensing machine, the IGLICEND40SS, and we could not verify it on sale new, so it is not featured anywhere on this site. The dispensing machines that are available are on self-dispensing nugget ice makers.

Who should buy this

• Buy it if the machine is going somewhere cool. A published 45F floor is the lowest in the category and the only one that comes with cold-room advice attached.
• Buy it if you want ice cheaply and do not care about the shape. At the bottom of the price range with a full specification table, this is the least risky cheap machine on the site.
• Buy it if refilling annoys you. Three quarts is the biggest published reservoir here.
• Skip it if you came for nugget ice. This makes hollow bullet cubes, and the chewable-ice field is on the nugget roundup.
• Skip it if you are fitting it into a measured space. No dimensions, no weight, and four inches of clearance on every side.
• Skip it if you want a documented clean cycle. We found no clean-cycle procedure in the manual we read, and Igloo sells a separate self-cleaning variant with its own manual. The machines with a documented cycle are on the self-cleaning roundup.