This slushie machine is very easy to use. You just wash the plastic container and slip it into place and lock the lid. Then you take your juice, soda pop, or lemonade and just pour it directly into the top of the plastic container. You turn it on, push the button that says slushie and then press start. The first time, I filled it to the max line (48 oz) and it took about 55 minutes until it was ready. We emptied it out and then poured in the remaining juice that was left in the purchased juice container and the slushie was done in 30 minutes. The slushie consistency is amazing. The machine works perfectly well. It dispenses easily and there is a drip tray to keep it pretty tidy. It is a very large machine and it does take up a lot of space on the countertop. But it is very nice quality. At the very end of the slushie batch, there is about 20 oz left in the machine that will not come out. You can take the holding container off the machine and use a long handled spoon to help get out most of the slushie. There is a bit of slushie that is frozen to the center silver metal cylinder, which is what freezes the liquid. The juice is directly soaking around the metal cylinder so for that reason, you can not quickly and easily change out the flavor of slushie. You first have to run the machine thru a self cleaning cycle to clean off and unfreeze that metal cylinder and then rinse the plastic container before starting a new flavor batch. It is fairly quick to do, but it does take about 1 1/2hours to clean and change the flavor before the next flavor batch of slushie is ready to serve. Of course, if you want to keep the same flavor of slushie, you can continually add more to the top opening and it freezes and is ready to serve in about 30 minutes. All of the removeable parts are dishwasher safe and it does have a self cleaning cycle that takes about 5 minutes, which really makes it nice. It has a bottom plastic catch tray that holds all the drips from the self cleaning cycle, so that all you have to do is dump that tray and give it a rinse. It comes with a book of recipes that you can try, or you can just directly pour store bought juice, pop, lemonade, etc. You can adjust the thickness of the slushie that you want, as well as choose other drink types. So far, all I have done is made slushies. Easy, delicious and lots of fun!

This slushy machine has been a great addition and find since we love going to get slushies from our local gas station and now, we can make them at home!You need to wait for two hours when this machine arrives to let it settle before plugging it in (in the event that it was placed on its side during shipping). After reading and following directions this is super easy to use.I placed Arizona Mucho mango tea in this for the first attempt at making a slushy and turned the thickness up to the max (instead of the recommended thickness setting) which resulted in a thicker slushy that was a bit harder to get out of the machine. The second go round we placed this on the recommended setting and used Coca cola and made the perfect slushy that came out of the machine as it does at our gas station's slushy machine!The cleaning of this machine is super easy with a 4 step process of selecting the self-clean button and placing water in the machine and in 4 minutes it was done. The second step of cleaning this slushie machine was removing three pieces that was easy and intuitive to remove, clean and place back on.I love that this comes with two sets of instructions, a quick guide and a more detailed manual with pictures of awesome looking drinks and the ingredients and settings used to make them. I literally can't wait to try all of the different drink selections that can be made with this machine.This machine runs really quietly. I have it on a counter over my dishwasher and hands down when both are running all you hear is my dishwasher that's not really that noisy over this machine.You can make as little as 2 cups of slushies or 6. The minimum time it takes to make your drink is anywhere from 15 to up to 45 minutes depending on what you are making and how much you are making. Typically, 15-20 minutes is all you need to make the maximum number of slushies at any given time. I gave my husband some slushy with coconut rum in it and the first thing he said after trying it is that "it feels like we are on vacation on a tropical island". My husband's sentiment were exactly why I wanted to order this machine, in addition to the pleas of my 11-year-old who loves slushies!My only concern is not knowing if you can run this machine all day. For example, if you make more slushy than you can drink, I'm not sure how long you can leave this machine running until you want to finish the rest. I've looked through the instructions; and will look again and update this review if I can find how long is the maximum time you can leave this running.Overall, this is a fun machine to have and impressive for my sons' friends when they visit to have our very own slushy machine. I'm also looking forward to using this when we have adult events. I really love the versatility of the types of drinks you can make and the pictured recipes that come with this machine.So far, we are all LOVING this machine and I would highly recommend it!