You want a cold drink. You need ice to make your drink cold. Here lies the best tray for slinging cubes. Ahhhhhhhhhh.
This ain’t smartphone and tablet territory, boyscouts — this is primal stuff. The spec that matters most here is the ease with which you can pry those precious cubes out of their womb and stick them into a glass before pouring it down your wide throat. Each tray is trying to accomplish this just the same, but as you know, there can only be one champ.
5th Place: Fox Run Ice Cube Tray
The gimmick here is actually pretty clever: rather than pouring water all across the tray, Fox Run’s offering has a cover with a flip-open spout. Pour water into the spout, avoid spilling, and get an even fill distribution. Unfortunately, it works nothing like this — ironically the Fox Run suffered the worst from overfill, leaving you with one enormous, malformed tectonic plate of ice, rather than neat cubes. When you tried to wrest this slate from the tray, well, see above — it was ugly. Speaking of ugly, the thing itself is made of cheapest plastic, and the spout flap didn’t seem that sturdy. It’s also somewhat ugly.
Fox Run Ice Cube Tray
• Price: $US6.50
• Material: Plastic
• Cube Output: 14
• Gizrank: 1.0
4th Place: ONYX Stainless Steel Ice Cube Tray
Oh man, we wanted to love this thing so much — it’s gorgeous. Would you ever think an ice cube tray could be gorgeous? Neither did we — and yet. ONYX’s old fashioned tray looks like something you’d see in a design museum, not a freezer — a graceful mix of starship freighter and industrial revolution machinery.
A large lever is meant to literally pry your cubes out. And it does. Sort of. Unfortunately, owing precisely to the fact that it’s made out of steel, the ice sticks inextricably to the thing itself, meaning that a tremendous amount of effort is required to get those cubes the hell out of there, and when they do, they fly out en masse. Straining desperately, like a submarine captain struggling to flip some crucial control, isn’t conducive to outdoor booze fun. Especially when you get a face full of ice.
Still, the thing is beautiful. Hang it on your wall.
ONYX Stainless Steel Ice Cube Tray
• Price: $US30
• Material: Steel
• Cube Output: 10
• Gizrank: 2.0
3rd Place: Casabella Silicone True Cube Ice Cube Tray
We snagged this thing intending for it to be a control sample against the more sophisticated tray, but it ended up impressing. The Casabella has no conceit — it’s just a soft silicone mould. Each (very small) cube comes out with the least effort, requiring only a finger jammed underneath to slide it out. The cubelets pop out neatly and perfectly formed. Unfortunately. all this poking is a little time consuming, given that it takes most of a tray to full a standard glass. Not the height of efficiency, but it would be an OK match for a tumbler.
<a href=”“>Casabella Silicone True Cube Ice Cube Tray
• Price: $US10.50 (for two)
• Material: Silicone
• Cube Output: 18
• Gizrank: 3.0
2nd Place: Joseph Joseph QuickSnap Ice Cube Tray
A rare attempt at actual creativity when it comes to loosing the cubes, the QuickSnap comes with a sliding tab and pinch trigger built into each cube container. This means you can, in theory, click out a cube on a cube by cube basis. And it works — some of the time! The QuickSnap was sadly prone to overfill as well, meaning parts of the tray were bonded together, unable to be pushed out by the clever mechanism below. But when it did work, it worked perfectly — push underneath, the cube pops up, and you can turn it right out into your glass. It’s a great idea that needs a little refining.
Joseph Joseph QuickSnap Ice Cube Tray
• Price: $US13
• Material: Plastic
• Cube Output: 12
• Gizrank: 3.5
BESTMODO! OXO Good Grips Ice Cube Tray
No surprise here: OXO dominates kitchenware, and now it’ll own your freezer. The Good Grips tray doesn’t have any fancy iron lever or pinch tabs — just an extremely sturdy plastic body and a cover that slides with ease. Procuring cubes is simple: flex the tray back and forth once or twice, then slide the cover down for as many cubes as you want. Only need two? Slide down for two. Want most of the track? Crack, slide, and dump the whole shebang. It’s simple, minimal, and effective. And god, really, do you want to have to think about the ice cube tray more than you think about the drink the ice is going into? OXO gets that, and our Bestmodo nod in turn.
OXO Good Grips Ice Cube Tray
• Price: $US8
• Material: Plastic
• Cube Output: 12
• Gizrank: 4.0