The best portable ice makers in Australia: Devanti 12 kg for most kitchens, Heller nugget if you want chewable ice

A portable ice maker is a small benchtop freezer with a water tank: fill it, press start, and nine bullet-shaped cubes drop into a bin every six to thirteen minutes, up to about 12 kg a day if it runs all day. The bin isn’t refrigerated, so the ice slowly melts back into the tank to be frozen again, which is the whole character of the thing: ice on demand for drinks, not a freezer full for a party. For most kitchens the Devanti 12 kg with self-cleaning is the one: 1.3 L tank, 90 W, self-clean, and a one-year warranty stated on both the Bunnings Marketplace listing ($99.95 on 1 November 2026) and the Amazon Australia one. If you want nugget ice, the chewable kind, the Heller HIMN12S at The Good Guys is $369 and the only one here that makes it. We can’t show Amazon prices; the Amazon buttons show today’s.

Questions to ask before buying a portable ice maker in Australia

• How hard is my water? The makers all say to descale, and the scale comes from the water. The national guidelines say hardness above 200 mg/L brings increasing scaling, so a filter jug helps most in hard-water cities.
• Is it approved for sale as an electrical appliance? Energy Safe Victoria says in-scope appliances must display the Regulatory Compliance Mark (RCM). Look for it on the unit or the packaging.
• What warranty is it sold with? Read the listing: the Devanti at Bunnings Marketplace states one year. The ACCC says the consumer guarantee usually still applies after a warranty expires.
• Does the bin keep ice frozen? No. The bin isn’t refrigerated, so ice melts back into the tank and gets refrozen. Empty and clean it as the maker says.
• Is the water I’m putting in safe to drink? Use the same water you’d drink. Better Health Victoria says to treat untreated natural water first, and that applies to ice as well.

Which portable ice maker should you buy?

Buy on tank size, bin size and who stands behind it, because the ice-making part is nearly identical across the sub-$150 units: nine bullet cubes a cycle, two sizes, 12 kg a day on paper. The Devanti 12 kg is the pick because it’s the one with a warranty stated on both listings, the lowest power draw here (90 W), a self-clean cycle and a drain plug, and an Australian distributor. The Alfordson ($94.85) has the biggest tank under $100 at 2.2 L (its own listing also says 1.5 L) and a 0.85 kg bin, at the cost of a 240 W draw by its listing and no warranty on the page. The Advwin ($89) is the cheapest, with a 0.8 L tank you’ll refill every couple of cycles and no warranty, power or size on its listing. On Amazon, the WIE HZB-12G (1.3 L, 100 W) is the one whose listing says what the others don’t: use filtered water, and the bin is not a freezer; the Advwin HZB-20AF is the Devanti 3.2 L’s twin with a stated 12-month warranty; the Crownful is the compact one (28 x 20 x 26.5 cm, a handle, a stated 12-month warranty, no tank size on the page) and the ecozy has an infrared bin sensor, 100 W and ice bags in the box, with no tank, bin or warranty figure.

Two units are different machines. The Devanti 3.2 L ($208.95) makes 24 proper cubes a cycle in three thicknesses from a 3.2 L tank into a 1.2 kg bin, 160 W, with a one-year warranty; its listing claims 20 kg a day in the spec table and 12 kg in the description, so believe the lower one. The Heller HIMN12S ($369 at The Good Guys) makes soft nugget ice in four to five minute cycles from a 1.7 L tank, 150 W, one-year warranty, and its page gives two bin sizes (600 g and 1.5 kg). Heller’s bullet-ice HIM10S ($269) is the same tank and power for 10 kg a day, which is the price of buying from a shop with a counter rather than a marketplace seller.

Water quality, scale and cleaning

The water you pour in is the ice you get. Chlorinated tap water makes ice that tastes of chlorine once it melts in the glass, and hard water (Adelaide, Perth, most tank and bore supplies) leaves scale on the evaporator fingers, which is why every listing here has a self-clean cycle and several mention descaling. Fill the tank from a filter jug or the under-sink tap: cleaner ice, and far less scale.

Clean it the way the listings say: run the self-clean weekly or after a fortnight unused (Crownful’s advice), descale every month or two on hard water with a food-safe descaler or dilute citric acid from our descaler guide, drain through the plug, and leave the lid open to dry so nothing grows in the tank. Stand a new machine upright for a few hours before the first run, as Crownful’s listing notes, because the refrigerant needs to settle after transport.

What a portable ice maker isn’t

It isn’t a freezer: the bin holds half a kilo to a kilo and the ice melts back into the tank, so for a party you scoop into bags in the freezer as it comes. It isn’t plumbed: you fill the tank by hand, which is also why it needs no plumber and sits anywhere with a power point. And “12 kg a day” is a round-the-clock figure; in use, you’ll see a few kilos between refills. If what you actually want is chilled water on tap, the water dispenser guide covers that, and the Advwin two-in-one in the left-out list below combines the two.

The one trap

Reading “12 kg a day” as a bin. Every bullet-ice unit here claims 12 kg in 24 hours and holds 0.5 to 0.85 kg of it at once; the number that decides whether you’re refilling the tank twice an evening is the tank, 0.8 L on the Advwin against 2.2 L on the Alfordson and 3.2 L on the Devanti cube maker. Buy the tank for the way you’ll use it, and buy the warranty if the price is close.

What we left out and why

• Advwin two-in-one ice maker with water dispenser ($199.90, Bunnings Marketplace). 12 kg a day plus chilled water, but no tank size, power or warranty on the listing.
• Silonn and other 12 kg bullet makers (Amazon Australia). The same machine under other names; the WIE is in the table because its listing is the one that mentions filtered water.
• Devanti stainless 1.3 L (Amazon Australia). A finish variant of our pick.
• Devanti 12 kg in white, silver and green ($99.95 to $119.95, Bunnings Marketplace). Colour variants of our pick.
• Maxkon 17 kg ($129.88, Bunnings Marketplace). Listed with no specs beyond capacity.
• Blizzard and Polycool commercial ice machines. Plumbed, freestanding units for cafes.