I'll probably do a couple of updates on this.
I've always been a little curious about ice makers. This one seems to work by having 2 rows of what I'll call 4 shiny metal "teats." Apparently these get dipped into a very shallow plastic tray that fills with water. I'm guessing that the coolant is circulated thru these but I think they might use 2 or more temp settings during the freezing process. One seems to give you the air/ice "cubes," while the other gives you what looks like mostly solid cubes.
Note: all of the so-called cubes are actually hollow cylinders. When a new set of cubes is ready, the machine seems to use air to dislodge them one by one. It's actually sort of fun to watch, but as I have said many times, I'm easily amused.
The air cubes are probably chewable but I haven't tried yet. These transfer all of their chill to a room temp liquid very, very quickly and then just disappear. The more solid ones tend to last a while.
The main diff I see between these petite little cubes and the ones from the freezer is that the latter come out much colder. The freezer is set between 0 and 5 degrees F. So these tend to be much colder than what you get from the machine and therefore say, 8 freezer cubes seem to last about the same amount of time as a couple small scoops (comes with dainty scooper)from the machine.
I should also mention that the body of the machine does not appear to be refrigerated. It is insulated though. Even so, if you leave several batches in the machine, they tend to melt and stick.
Another important observation is that, aside from turning it off, what will happen is that either the basket will fill with ice and the machine then stop or it runs out of water. In either instance, the ice basket will let the ice melt and then drip down into the reservoir underneath the basket. As the basket becomes lighter (or as the bottom fills with melt water), the machine will keep going through these cycles until you turn it off.