Very pleased. I've always loved shave ice like you get in Hawaii. Gone through a lot of shavers, grinders, etc. Most recently used a Westbend model that shaved the ice pretty finely. But it was really LOUD and really SLOW. So I figured I'd give this one a shot. I'm happy I did!This unit is loud, but it grinds through a snow cone's worth of ice cubes in seconds. If you use ice cubes in this you do get somewhat coarsely crushed ice. But you can also get truly shaved ice by using a slab of ice rather than ice cubes. And it's easy to make a perfect size slab with the one pint plastic take home containers you get from the deli section of a supermarket.