[flybouy]

As others have stated I don't think there's much difference in the compact economical (low eend) units. They pressy much all work the same, are built in the same country, etc. We bought a $100 unit on sale ( can't recall brand) about 8 yrs ago. It's still going strong. I figure at $100 it doesn't owe me anything and has paid for itself many times over.

We also bag the ice in Zip Lock bags and primarily store it in the outside kitchen freezer. As an aside, a Zip Lock bag of ice in the freezer is a good tool to indicate if the fridge/freezer was off for an extended time. In our inside fridge (LP/120vac) we have remote tstats the display highest/lowest temp as well as current temp. The outside fridge I use a bag of ice cubes as a miner's canary. If you have a bag with one big fat ice block then you know it thawed then re-froze.