NC301 CREAMi Ice Cream Maker, for Gelato, Mix-ins, Milkshakes, Sorbet, Smoothie Bowls & More, 7 One-Touch Programs, with (2) Pint Containers & Lids, Compact Size, Perfect for Kids, Silver

I've had this Ninja Creami for a few weeks now and have made about two dozen recipes with it - sorbet, lite ice cream, ice cream (I haven't tried gelato or milkshakes). So far, I have no complaints at all. I'm not understanding the negative reviews, other than to assume that people aren't following the recipes, tips and instructions from Ninja, or they are expecting a perfect commercial-like appearance. Anything I've made that came out "crumbly", as most of the recipes I've made did on the first spin, instantly became smooth just by waiting for a minute and then stirring it up a bit. Doing a re-spin will make it 'creamy' 99% of the time. Even if it's "crumbly" it instantly feels like 'silk' and melts in your mouth, and in this case the texture doesn't affect the taste at all. To be honest, this stuff is good no matter how it looks. I started with the basic recipes in the book that came with the unit, and followed them to the letter before exploring substitutions/additions or other adjustments. Chocolate ice cream was the first one I tried. I have to say, it makes the best chocolate ice cream I've ever eaten in 60+ years, hands down, no kidding. My husband, an ice cream fanatic, agreed. Although he isn't wild about chocolate anything, he said it was the best ice cream he's ever had and would eat it anytime. The sorbets are a breeze to prepare and come out great. They're even better if you take the time to chop up the ingredients/fruit first, but it's not necessary. I use a blender if I feel like going to the trouble, and blending say canned pineapple with a touch of coconut cream is worth doing. It's worth making that combo even if you don't blend it first, trust me. If you're using canned fruit you don't have to chop or blend anything (I guess there could be a rare recipe that specifically calls for it), but I find it makes it even better if you do. If your fruit has any pulp, the Ninja does a really good job of pulverizing 99.9% of it. Everything about the specific ingredients you use determines the outcome regarding texture - for example, a can of pineapple or mandarin orange slices by themselves will be more icy/sorbet-like than creamy, and canned pineapple tidbits with coconut cream or heavy cream will be extra creamy and not icy. I think it's of key importance to follow the instructions & recipes from Ninja first, not 'the internet', until you know what works, what can be substituted (successfully) for what, etc. As far as quantity and leftovers: Clearly, this processes one pint of ice cream at a time - you mix your ingredients, pour them into the Ninja pint and freeze for 24 hours. Yes, you have to freeze it for 24 hours, but you can prep and freeze multiple pints (I recommend buying extra Ninja pints) and have them ready. After 24 hours (or days/weeks later) you take it out of the freezer and process it in literally 2 minutes and it's ready to eat. If you should have any leftover, you can either let it melt in the pint container (so it will refreeze evenly), refreeze, and then reprocess it in the machine whenever you want, or, you can put it into any container you have, refreeze, and just let it sit out for a minute or two before eating it with no need to use the machine. It may not 'look' as good, but it certainly will taste as good (**note that if you do this you should do it in individual serving sizes because when it refreezes it's hard as a rock and probably won't scoop out of your container like commercial ice cream will). Just be certain that if you refreeze the recipe in the Ninja pint container that it refreezes such that the top of it is level (as all recipes should be). Otherwise you can damage the blade of the machine. As far as cleaning, I get what people say about the lid. It doesn't come apart to clean and has working parts inside that can be exposed to the ingredients. I haven't had it happen that I can tell, and I just don't see it as a big issue, unless you're letting the lid sit around for hours with stuff drying up on it. I immediately rinse mine, and after eating I soak the lid for a bit, rinse it well and let it dry. It's definitely not a deal breaker for me, and I'm pretty sure if any microscopic bits do get in there I'll survive it just fine. That said, I think Ninja could create a sealed unit that would make everyone happier. Otherwise, cleaning is a breeze. The pint container and lid/blade are the only things that need washing; I think they're dishwasher safe but I hand wash mine. If the machine holds up over time, I give it 5+ stars. Follow the instructions & recipes from Ninja kitchen before you experiment on your own and I think you'll be happy with this purchase.

This is now the third time in my life I've tried a home ice cream maker. Well, third time is the charm! This machine is AMAZING! The chocolate hazelnut gelato you see pictured above is made with skim milk and sweetened with allulose, making it low calorie while still completely delicious and creamy. How the machine gets skim milk so creamy I have no idea! It's even better if you use a little half and half. The pint I made tonight was 315 calories for the whole pint, and it has exactly what I want in it. I hate all other non-sugar sweeteners, and I prefer not to have tons of fat and sugar. Here are the advantages of the Creami over my discarded ice cream makers of the past: --it seems to be nearly fool proof. You won't always get a great result if you're just winging it, but you do generally end up with actual ice cream. In the other ice cream makers, if you got the proportions wrong, it would sometimes not really freeze or it would get icy. --It's so much easier to get the ice cream out and to clean! The ice cream maker I had with a compressor was such a pain--you had to get the ice cream out around the paddle, or dig the paddle out of the ice cream, and invariably you end up making a mess. The Creami pints are so much easier to deal with. Even the lid, which is a little more annoying, is pretty easy to clean once you know what to do. (Read the manual, even though you have to go online to get it--it's important to take out the rubber gasket and clean under it.) --It doesn't matter if you have leftovers that freeze hard as a rock. We never enjoyed eating ice cream from our other makers on the next day, because they always hardened so much in the freezer. (And you had to make so much we always had leftovers.) With the Creami, if the leftovers freeze hard, you can just process them again and have just as good an experience the next day. The only real downsides I can see are 1) you have to wait 24 hours for your pint to freeze before you can make it into ice cream, and 2) the horrendous noise the machine makes. It's seriously loud, and the sound changes in alarming ways as the blade makes its way down and back up. The first few times I ran it, I was afraid something was going to break or blow up or something. I am now starting to get used to it and know the weird noises are normal. Dealing with the racket is totally worth it! If you've tried an ice cream maker before and decided it wasn't worth the hassle, give this one a try. It's wonderful!

I recently purchased the Ninja Creami, and it was great! It’s incredibly easy to use, and the results are consistently smooth and creamy. I love how customizable it is — you can adjust mix-ins, textures, and flavors to make everything from rich ice cream to lighter sorbets. The machine is fast, easy to clean, and surprisingly quiet. We can finally make healthy icecream and icecream with protein! Overall, the Ninja Creami has completely upgraded my homemade dessert game. If you enjoy experimenting with frozen treats or just want delicious ice cream without the hassle, this is a fantastic choice!

I've been wanting to buy this wonder for a long time. If you love ice cream and want your favorite combinations at home, you definitely have to buy it. It comes with all the accessories it claims to include and also has a manual that shows you how to assemble it and position all the accessories. It was very easy to put together. Another great thing is that it also comes with a recipe manual in case you don't know what combinations to make. In the video, I'm making a strawberry and blueberry gelato; the result was incredible. The only negative thing to highlight is that it's quite noisy.

I've wanted an ice cream maker for a while. I haven't been happy with store ice creams for a while, the taste and use of artifical & poor quality ingredients have been a turn off. Specialty shops, well they're expensive. My needs when researching were quality, easy use, cleaning and space. So I decided on the Ninja Creami. Size not bad I don't have a lot of counter space. It's takes up a little more than half the space of a kitchen aid mixer. The quality for the price will be reasonable if it last at least 5+ years. Received it yesterday and only had ingredients (canned peaches) in house to make sorbet. It came out creamy and delicious. Making sorbet pros: Easy! Just a can of peaches, freeze 24hr in container, mix on Creami and done. Con: 24hr wait. I was hoping to be able to make ice cream but you must prepare a base 24hrs in advanced (cream cheese, heavy cream and milk). Everything is a 24hr freeze prep. You can make a few base pints in advance (they supposed to keep up to 2 weeks). Booklet with recipes doesn't have base recipe, it's on a separate pamphlet, which is strange. Machine is loud (why 4 stars), but it's only for 3-4 minutes. Not a deal breaker for me. I will give an update once I've made ice cream and will video it. If you love sorbet this is your machine. I'll see in a month, but I believe this will be a great gift. Just to add, some reviews had stated plastic shavings in there ice cream. I inspected the container and lid before and after and found no evidence of this happening. There is an insert that explains how the containers should be filled and frozen. Follow their instructions and it shouldn't be an issue, but I will continue to monitor for signs.

Ice cream quality is great and it’s super easy to use. I recommend buying extra containers to be able to have more variety in your freezer. You will not be disappointed with your purchase if you actually use it and not just have it collect dust.

A must for home made vegan ice cream / sorbet. Much easier to end up with something with a good consistency with this than a traditional ice cream freezer. By "much easier", I mean this thing is practically fool-proof. Mango with carrot is my current favorite sorbet-- just cut a large carrot into thirds, and jam the carrot pieces, vertically, into the center of a cup filled with pieces of mango (optionally sweeten to taste) and freeze. Comes out nice and creamy. Nearly every random thing I've tried has come out well (partially fermented berries was really interesting). Raw cashews are good to make stuff extra creamy-- cashews with cocoa powder, vegan sugar (all sugar except the common white cane sugar which is filtered through "bone char" [charcoal made from bones]) and water makes amazing _creamy_ vegan chocolate ice cream (recipes using cashews are best run through a blender before freezing, but the less liquid ones can just have cashews mixed in whole before freezing since they won't separate out). Extra strong lemonade (one large lemon per pint), run once through on sorbet setting makes a really refreshing shave ice. Over-ripe bananas just jammed into a cup and frozen comes out super creamy and yummy. Etc. I'm really happy with this purchase. Negatives: This thing is loud! No, this thing is *really* loud! I close the kitchen window to not disturb the neighbor, shoo the cat outside, and wear industrial hearing protection ear muffs when running it. It has a lot of structural plastic parts. I hope replacement parts will be made available because with all that plastic, something is going to break eventually. Minor nit, it requires you to lower the bowl and re-raise the bowl before it will let you run 're-spin'. I have to 're-spin' nearly everything I make (everything where the goal is a creamy texture gets a 're-spin'). I'm worried about the extra wear and tear on the plastic mechanisms caused by this ritual lower bowl + raise bowl + 're-spin'. The portion of the splined shaft that the blade rides on, that is exposed when the unit is not running, needs to be wiped off after each use, but you cannot access most of the length of the shaft (it extends down into the cup when in operation). I hope they have some sort of seal that self-cleans this shaft, since the user cannot. The separate two packs of additional pint cups are very expensive for what they are (and you will probably want to buy some extras).

We were enjoying the CREAMi until it inexplicably managed to cut up one of the included plastic containers used to hold the ice cream mixture - filling our batch of ice cream with stringy pieces of plastic of various sizes that were stuck to the blade. Upon closer inspection it turns out that this has happened to all of the containers that we have used even though we have carefully followed the directions for the unit and made less than 10 batches of ice cream so far. Unfortunately the plastic shavings on the other containers were smaller and we just ate them without realizing what had happened - thanks Ninja! I had assumed that this would be something that Ninja engineers would ensure wasn't a possible outcome, since this seems dangerous not to mention disgusting. What moved me from being a disappointed customer to an angry one is that it is clear that many CREAMi users have reported this issue for at least the past year, some here and some on Ninja's facebook page, with at least one user claiming that Ninja support knows about the issue. That user claimed that it is a known motor defect, my guess is that the spindle assembly is improperly balanced, the shaft is not sufficient to prevent deflection, or the blade coupling mechanism is failing. It is hard to trust this thing after this experience and my takeaway is that Ninja shipped the CREAMi with this obviously dangerous defect and apparently is aware of it (or at least should be) and has not issued a recall. If you like eating plastic shavings and enjoy feeding your friends and family small pieces of plastic then I suppose this product works great, otherwise Ninja/Kraft should be held accountable by customers and regulators for continuing to ship this defective product without alerting consumers. Here's a fun game for CREAMi owners - take a moment to inspect the bottom walls of your ice cream containers. If they contain fine scratches then congratulations - you too have eaten sharp little plastics shavings in your CREAMi ice cream just like I did.