Everyone in my family is a big fan of shave ice. We've got a cast iron hand crank shave ice maker that we bring out for parties.I got this to try because I thought it might be easier. And for once, it is! Although I did not really pay attention to the measurements - it is much, much larger than I expected. Whoops!It's trivial to set up, the blades are already installed and calibrated. You just have to bolt the plunger on and you're ready to go.The quality of the shave ice is pretty good. Not as good as our manual shaver, which makes uniform fluffy ice (when the blades are calibrated and the ice is right), but good enough. The ice is a bit grainier overall and somewhat inconsistent - there's lots of the good stuff but there can be large bits. I had a few pieces as large as a half inch. It's far better than what you'd find at a sno-cone drive through though.The big win (for me) is that it takes any ice. A bag of ice from the store, ice cubes from the tray, a broken up giant cube. Anything that fits. I no longer have to freeze cylinders of ice days ahead of time in order to do shave ice. Unlike my ice shaver which operates best when the ice has thawed just a bit, this seems to work best straight out of the freezer.Another positive is that it's fast. Probably about 5X faster than my shave ice machine.Finally, it's easier to use. No worries about getting the ice perfectly centered, or what to do if it's lopsided. With this you put it in the hopper and press the lever down.The bowl provided with it is a bit small, but there's room for a larger bowl. I found two in my panty that worked fine and were bigger.The only problem I've come across is that small chunks of ice will sneak past the plunger, so when you pull the plunger out to reload, those bits of ice will come with it and fall out on the floor. A minor point - when you remove the bowl, there's a hole in it so water will drip through to whatever it's sitting on.I do wonder about changing the blades for it. So just be prepared for a bit of a wet mess. It did not throw water or snow around the room though, that was well contained.I do wonder about changing the blades - I don't see any replacements in the listing or anything about that in the very brief manual.Overall, I'm very happy with this. It give me something close to the same quality but with a lot less hassle and preparation.