This is the one machine on the site where we cannot give you a clean recommendation, and saying so is the point of the page. America's Test Kitchen recommends the Smart Scoop. Dream Scoops advises against buying it. Both are sources we rely on elsewhere. At $600 per ATK's June 2026 listing, you should decide knowing that.
The disagreement, in full
America's Test Kitchen recommended it in the June 2026 update of their ice cream maker review, listed at $600. It sat in their Recommended tier alongside the Cuisinart ICE-100 and behind their self-refrigerating winner, the Whynter ICM-201SB.
Dream Scoops reaches the opposite conclusion and is specific about why: they report that the Smart Scoop took considerably longer to freeze ice cream than any other machine they tested, and that the slower freeze produced a coarser, wetter, icier texture. They also flag the price as a drawback, and they list it under machines to avoid.
Ice Cream Science publishes a review of it as well.
Why that specific criticism is credible
Freeze speed is not a matter of taste. The faster a base passes through the temperature range where ice crystals form, the smaller those crystals stay — which is why Ice Cream Science's fastest machine, the Lello 4080 at a measured 17 minutes 30 seconds, is also the one they describe as extremely smooth and dense. A machine that freezes notably slower than its peers would be expected to produce a coarser result. Dream Scoops' finding is mechanically plausible, not just an opinion.
What it unambiguously does well
The automation is real and nothing else here matches it. Twelve hardness settingsrunning from soft serve to hard scoop, with the machine sensing the state of the mixture and sounding an alert when it reaches the target. You set what you want and walk away.
On a canister machine you learn to judge consistency by eye. On this machine you do not have to, and for someone who wants an appliance rather than a craft, that is genuinely valuable. It also means repeatable batches, which is harder than it sounds.
It is also the only machine here that covers the full soft-serve-to-hard range from one setting dial, which is why it appears in the soft serve roundup.
The specification
1.5 quarts, 150 watts, no pre-freeze. 16 inches wide by 11 deep by 9.5 high, and 30 pounds 9 ounces. One-year warranty.
Two of those numbers deserve attention. 1.5 quarts is the same capacity as the $70 Cuisinart ICE-21P1 and 0.6 quarts less than the $310 Whynter. And a one-year warranty on a $600 appliance compares badly with the three years Cuisinart gives on the $343 ICE-100.
How to decide
Ask what you are buying it for.
- If you want the automation specifically — hardness settings, hands-off operation, an alert instead of a judgment call — nothing else does it, and Dream Scoops' texture finding may be an acceptable trade. Buy it knowingly.
- If you want the best possible texture, the criticism is aimed directly at that, and two machines at lower prices have uncontested output: the Whynter ICM-201SB at $310 and the Cuisinart ICE-100 at $343.
- If you want soft serve as a texture, the twelve settings are the cleanest route on a churning machine. If you want a dispensed swirl, no compressor machine does that and the Ninja Swirl is the answer.
Why we scored it as we did
Our texture score for this machine is lower than for the Whynter and the Cuisinart, and our ease score is the highest on the site. That is the disagreement translated into numbers rather than smoothed away: it is the easiest machine here to operate, and the only one with a documented texture criticism from a source we otherwise trust. How we pick explains what the six scores mean and how we handle conflicting sources.
Verdict
A genuinely clever machine with a genuine question mark over the thing it is supposed to produce. If the automation is worth $600 to you, buy it and enjoy it. If ice cream quality is the priority, two cheaper machines carry no equivalent doubt, and the compressor roundup lays them out.
