it was somewhat expensive but our previous ice maker, a Thereye, went out after only a year. (Although when our first Thereye went out after only a few months, the company sent us a replacement for free, which was really good!) I'm hoping this one will last longer. We tried a Euhomy nugget ice maker but it was rather small and didn't have an external water line hookup and had to be refilled every day. This Gevi ice maker seems like it will work out very well and is super quiet. I was able to hook my existing plastic water line right into it. I plan on running a drain line as well with a cut off valve so I can more easily run the cleaning cycle weekly.