ecozy Mistalo Drop Core Review: A Hands-Free Nugget Ice Maker vs the GE Profile Opal
| October 30, 2026
Quick Verdict
The ecozy Mistalo Drop Core is the nugget ice maker for people who want the ice without giving up a square foot of counter. The hands-free dispenser is the feature you'll use every single day, the ice chews like the Opal's but comes out wetter and melts faster, and cleaning is the easiest we've seen on a countertop machine because the parts come out. It's not a stockpiler: nothing's refrigerated and the basket doesn't keep ice as cold as the Opal's, so it's for making ice while you're using it, or bagging it promptly. If that's how you drink, it's a solid buy, and with Amazon's coupon on the page it's often well under the $340 list price. If you want a bin full of ice waiting for a party, the Opal still wins.
Watch the Test
The whole first night and the next-day descale are in the video: unboxing, the first cleaning cycle, the first batch timed on the display, a spicy margarita, and the tablets. The numbers below come from that footage.
What Is the ecozy Mistalo Drop Core?
The ecozy Mistalo Drop Core is a countertop nugget ice maker that dispenses ice hands-free, like a fridge door does, except it sits on a counter and makes the soft, chewable nuggets that fridges can't. It has a color touchscreen with a clock, a water temperature readout and a TDS number, two cleaning modes, a Wi-Fi app with scheduling, and a child lock. ecozy sent it to us to test alongside the GE Profile Opal we've used for years.
It launched on Amazon at $339.99, but that's rarely what you'd pay. Amazon runs a clip coupon on the listing, $100 off at launch, and the box for it sits right under the price, so check it before you buy. ecozy also gave our viewers 5% off with the code 4GNM7MRR through November 30, 2026. Amazon doesn't always let a promo code stack with a coupon, so try it at checkout and keep whichever saves more.
Size and Where It Fits
This is the reason to look at it. By our tape the Mistalo is 13.5 inches tall, 6.5 wide and 15 deep. The Opal 2.0 Ultra is 16.5 tall, 10.5 wide and 16 deep, so the Mistalo gives back four inches of counter width and three of height. The water tank pulls out of the front like a drawer and the top cover lifts off, so it doesn't need clearance on the sides or the back. Ours fit on the bar where the Opal never did.
Setup to First Ice
Everything that touches water gets washed first: the tank, the ice basket under the top cover, the drip tray. Then peel the protective film off the stainless sides. The manual wants a cleaning cycle before the first batch, and it wants water under 200 TDS, so everything we ran through it went through a Brita pitcher first.
We started the first batch at 8:04 PM with 75°F water. ecozy claims eight minutes to first ice. We saw the first nuggets in the window at about 20 minutes and had enough for a drink at about 40. Once the water in the tank cooled, it sped up a lot: by the time we made a drink the tank read 66°F and nuggets were dropping steadily. The second day, with the machine already cold, it kept up with everything we asked of it and filled the bag ecozy includes for stockpiling.
The Wi-Fi app with its schedule function is the one feature we haven't set up yet. We'll update this review when we have.
The Ice
It's real nugget ice: soft, chewable, packs into a glass. Next to the Opal's, the Mistalo's nuggets are a little smaller and a little squarer, more cube than pebble. They chew the same.
The real difference showed up after a week, not on the first night. The Mistalo's ice comes out wetter than the Opal's and melts faster. The basket doesn't hold it as cold, so a glass of nuggets goes slushy sooner, and stockpiling takes more attention: the bag has to go into the freezer soon after the basket fills, not whenever you get to it. In a drink that's poured and finished it doesn't matter. For a punch bowl or a party, it does. The first drink on it was a spicy margarita with Tanteo Habanero, shaken briefly on pebble ice and poured over more of it, and it held its dilution through the glass. It'll do the same for a Jungle Bird or a Painkiller.
Hands-free dispensing is the feature that changes how you use the machine. Glass under the chute, press, and it fills while you reach for the bottle. It stops on its own after a set time or when you press again, and it drops a couple of extra nuggets after you stop, so give it a second before you pull the glass. Any glass we own fit under it, including a mixing tin.
The basket isn't refrigerated. Ice left sitting melts back into the tank and gets remade, which is normal for countertop machines, but it happens faster here than on the Opal. A full indicator on the display tells you when to empty it, and ecozy includes bags for moving a batch to the freezer.
Water Quality and the TDS Reading
The screen shows a TDS number for whatever is in the tank. TDS is total dissolved solids, basically how much mineral is in your water, and it's what scales up an ice machine. ecozy wants it under 200. Our Brita water read 121 to 125 on the first fill. The number wanders while the machine is making ice, from 125 down to 31 and back up past 100 over an evening, so treat it as a trend rather than a lab result. The label on the back ties it to a cleaning schedule: clean weekly below 120, every three days between 120 and 200, and run a descale if it stays above 200.
Noise: it's quiet enough that we recorded the whole video with it running next to the microphone.
Cleaning and the Descaling Tablets
This is where the Mistalo beats the Opal outright, because the parts come out. There are two modes: a short clean cycle of about fifteen minutes that you'd run weekly, and a thirty minute descale. We ran the descale with ecozy's tablets, which come 24 to a box for about $10. One tablet, dissolved in a glass of filtered water and added to a full tank, sends the TDS readout to 960, which is the tablet, not your pipes. The instructions call for two descale runs with that solution, then dumping it, rinsing the tank, draining the machine from the two tubes on the back, and running two short clean cycles with fresh water before making ice again. All in, it's about an hour and a half of mostly waiting. Do it on a day you're not making drinks.
Mistalo vs the GE Opal
- Buy the Mistalo if you want hands-free ice, you're short on counter space, and you make ice while you use it. Or you host and want guests pouring their own ice without a scoop.
- Buy the Opal if you want drier ice that holds up longer in the basket, a bigger basket and the side tank for a long party, and you don't mind scooping.
- Buy neither if you want ice ready and waiting for hours. Both melt what you don't use.
Where to Buy
The Mistalo Drop Core is sold on Amazon. The cleaning tablets are a separate purchase and worth adding to the cart, since every ice machine needs them. You'll see the Mistalo in the background of our videos from now on, and the full test is on YouTube.
Pros
- ✓ Hands-free dispensing: glass under the chute, press, done. No scoop, no wet hands
- ✓ Small footprint: 13.5 by 6.5 by 15 inches, four inches narrower than the Opal
- ✓ Drawer-style water tank and a removable top cover, so cleaning doesn't mean flipping the machine
- ✓ TDS readout tells you when your water is going to scale the machine
- ✓ Full-color touchscreen with a clock, water temperature and a TDS readout
- ✓ Quiet enough to record a video next to
Cons
- ✗ Ice comes out wetter than the Opal's and melts faster. The basket doesn't keep it as cold, so stockpiling takes more attention
- ✗ Nuggets are a little smaller and squarer than the Opal's
- ✗ First batch is slower than the box says: about 20 minutes to first nuggets on a warm fill, 40 to a drink's worth
- ✗ A full descale with the tablets is about an hour and a half of mostly waiting
ecozy sent us this ice maker and the cleaning tablets for free. Opinions are our own. This post contains affiliate links. If you buy through them, Cocktail Underground may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
