This creates a half quart of ice cream in the least painful way that we imagine. Its all countertop, and the noise created, lasting approximately 45 minutes, is the same as our dishwasher. There is an auto-off function based upon stiffness of the cream which keeps you from going too far. Assembly for each batch is easy, and cleanup is a snap.Use of the Krupps does require planning, since the bowl has to be frozen for 12 hours before. We find this no problem since we keep it in the freezer all the time.Our only disappointment is in finding gelato recipes - you can find hundreds of incredibly good, fat filled, heart attack causing recipes (some come with the Krups), but we love the italian ices. This disappointment only comes because the Krupps has liberated us to make our own ice dreams.We seldom rate products as a 5, and we rate a lot of products.