ICE 3 MIS2200 Personal Vending Machine: Review

ICE 3 Vending Machine: Cheaply made in China, stay away and save your money

Deceptive advertising can be, but when you can take a machine apart there is nothing but the truth to see. This is surely the case for the ICE 3 MIS2200 personal vending machine or chill can dispenser. Sold under the names Heartland America or Curtis, this is truly a piece of junk and cheap from bow to stern. At $79 I council you to run away from this unit.

A neighbour was throwing this out so I picked it up and disassembled it. To start I had no idea of its purpose. This machine has a display for 3 types of pop cans on the front. The inside compartment has three bays where you can load up 18 cans, 6 for each flavour. Press the appropriate button and a can drops down into the bottom compartment for you to reach in and pick it up.

The name is cute: ICE 3, or more correctly ICE³. Get it? Ice “cubed”? There is no brand name, per se. Now that the comedy part of this article is finished let’s get on to the meat of the issue: A lack of quality and function.

Contrary to advertisements, this unit is not refrigerated. At best it might keep the cans cool to the touch and at worst you will feel near nothing very chill. This is because the cooling unit consists of two computer fans, one 4″ and the other 2″, a small heat sink and a large heat sink, as well as an on-off switch and a power input. That is it for electronics. No compressor, no refrigerant, nothing so fancy. How the “unit cools 27-32F (15-18C) below ambient room temperature” (source) is beyond me. Frankly it cannot. If your cans were refrigerated prior then this little unit will keep it somewhat cool because of the styrofoam insulation in the back and the front of the unit. I would not call this refrigeration or even cooling, but insulating. Your laptop or personal computer has the same cooling capacity as this unit.

ICE 3 Personal Vending Machine: Can dispensing mechanism has very thin and fragile plastic parts. The top metal mechanism is pushed by the front panel blue buttons, pushing the can down and out of the holding trays. Photo by Don Tai.

The can dispensing mechanism is also very poor, made of extremely thin plastic and relies on gravity. Push a button and two arms force the can downward and through to the bottom compartment. The problem is that there is no spring to retract these two arms back to their original position. The unit is prone to jamming, and after a short while the plastic will fatigue and break. Overall the plastic, while looking nice on the outside, is thin and low quality. Save for the push bar, the rest of the dispensing unit is all plastic. The side rails are cheap and thin plastic. At least they would slide on the cans very well. Cheap and low quality plastic, through and through.

Hopefully this unit will never be sold again, as it is a terrible waste of money. You could get better cooling function by buying a styrofoam cooler for $5 and adding $5 in ice. The styrofoam cooler might not look as nice but it would work a whole lot better and longer as a cooler.

Cheap, cheap cheap, low quality plastic overall. The fit seems good though. The doors line up and close Ok, though you must close the latch manually. The latch is also cheap plastic and when it breaks the unit would not be able to close on its own. The front three blue buttons are the nicest feature of the unit as they are large and fun to press. The brushed and dimpled aluminum plate in front looks nice but servers no real purpose. This could not be a bash plate, as one bash and the unit would topple over and break.

Conclusion: Do not buy this unit as it will never function to cool your cans of soda. Get a styrofoam cooler from the supermarket and some ice and your drinks will be much cooler, and you will have more money in your pocket for more drinks. As a near useless piece of machinery this is bad for Mother Earth and a waste of our natural resources.

I have gutted what little there was of electronics and some cheap plastic rails from the inside. We will use it as a plastic box of some kind, though it is not air tight. It does look nice from the outside. Hurray for design aesthetics and boo for engineering.

ICE 3 Personal Vending Machine: Complete electronics system consists of 2 computer fans, 2 heat sinks, on-off switch, power input and an IC. How can this unit cool anything without a compressor, cooling mechanism and refrigerant? It cannot. Photo by Don Tai.