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Oct 17, 2023

The Best Ice Cube Tray

We’ve read through this guide and stand by our current recommendations. Novelty

We’ve read through this guide and stand by our current recommendations.

Novelty ice cube trays are cool (forgive the pun), but a good basic ice cube tray—the kind that doesn't dribble, or crack, or cling to the ice—can improve your daily life in a small but meaningful way. For a good ice cube tray that allows you to make plenty of ice without worrying about smells or spillage, we recommend the OXO Good Grips Ice Cube Tray, which comes with a rigid, sliding plastic lid that allows for clean stacking. Each tray makes 14 half-moon-shaped cubes that can be pushed out of the tray easily.

With easy-to-remove cubes and a lid that allows you to store the filled tray at an angle, Good Grips No Spill Ice Cube Tray is the best pick for most people (who don't want to think about having to lay the tray flat in the freezer).

*At the time of publishing, the price was $17.

The 14-cube OXO Good Grips Ice Cube Tray's biggest advantage over other ice trays is its rigid plastic lid. Besides allowing easy stacking and preventing freezer smells, the lid also makes it simpler to portion your ice and refill the tray with water. After many years of using this tray, we haven't noticed it becoming brittle or exhibiting any other durability issues, unlike some of its competitors.

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For those who want to make dozens of cubes at once, and have the freezer space, this baby food freezer tray from Mumi&Bubi works very well.

*At the time of publishing, the price was $30.

If you’re interested in quantity as well as quality, and you’re willing to spend more money, Mumi&Bubi's Solids Starter Kit is a smart pick. Even though it's not designed as an ice cube tray, the $25 set of two 21-cube molds allows for easy removal and comes with lids for spill prevention and sanitary stacking. The high price and large footprint keep it from being our top pick, but it's a good choice for those who want to make a lot of ice at once and have the room to spare.

With easy-to-remove cubes and a lid that allows you to store the filled tray at an angle, Good Grips No Spill Ice Cube Tray is the best pick for most people (who don't want to think about having to lay the tray flat in the freezer).

*At the time of publishing, the price was $17.

For those who want to make dozens of cubes at once, and have the freezer space, this baby food freezer tray from Mumi&Bubi works very well.

*At the time of publishing, the price was $30.

There are countless styles of ice cube trays out there, making water into every size and shape of ice imaginable. We decided to narrow our focus to non-silicone trays in traditional ice cube shapes. Why not silicone? After long-term testing with our previous pick, the Tovolo King Cube tray, we found that after a few months, silicone starts to retain freezer burn smells and impart that flavor into the ice. Since the smell problem appears to be related to the material, we decided not to include silicone trays this time around.

During our research, we found that almost every traditional ice cube tray makes 12, 14, or 16 cubes; the trays with more cubes tend to have a slightly longer footprint in the freezer than those with fewer cubes. All of the trays make ice cubes that are about 20 grams each.

We also expanded the scope of our search to include less traditional options, including baby food freezer trays. Although most of them didn't fit what we were looking for, due to their silicone bodies, high prices, or both, one stood out as a smart choice for those who want to make a large number of cubes at once.

We found that lids can be great for keeping smells out, but some designs worked better than others. All prevented spilling when trays were being moved from the sink to the freezer. However, one poorly designed lid turned the freezing water into a giant hunk of ice. The best lid stops spills and smells, allows the tray to be stored at an angle, and keeps the tops of ice cubes clean when you stack multiple trays.

During testing, we wanted to see whether there were any major differences in cooling or melt rate based on the shape (prisms vs. half-moons) and surface area of the ice cubes. To do this, we poured 20 mL of water per mold in each tray (which turned out to fit perfectly in all six) and let the ice freeze overnight. The next day, we added four cubes of each to glasses containing 250 mL of water; the total mass of the cubes was between 77 and 80 grams, with some water lost during the freezing process.

Our results ultimately proved that the shape of the ice at this size doesn't make a substantial difference. Among the six trays, we recorded average decreases in temperature ranging from 41.11 percent to 45.65 percent, and ice mass loss of between 91.57 percent and 94.87 percent, after 17 minutes, across three tests. Those differences are too small to declare one shape as better than any other among these models.

With easy-to-remove cubes and a lid that allows you to store the filled tray at an angle, Good Grips No Spill Ice Cube Tray is the best pick for most people (who don't want to think about having to lay the tray flat in the freezer).

*At the time of publishing, the price was $17.

The OXO Good Grips Covered Ice Cube Tray makes 14 elegant push-up half-moon cubes, and has a rigid sliding plastic lid that protects the ice without retaining freezer smells, the way a silicone lid does.

Unlike the cheaper plastic trays from Sterilite and Rubbermaid, the OXO has a lid that allows trays to be stacked easily without dirtying the tops of the ice cubes. The lid's wavelike edge also allows you to turn the tray over to dump out as few or as many cubes as you’d like at a time.

This tray also has small channels for runoff between each ice cube groove, which means you can fill the tray by pointing the water spout at one end of the tray and tilting it. The other OXO tray we tested, which comes with a silicone lid, lacks this feature.

Although cheaper ice cube trays we’ve had in the past have cracked after becoming brittle in the freezer, we haven't had any problems with the OXO so far. In any case, as with all OXO products, if you have a problem with durability, you can contact OXO and get a replacement under its satisfaction guarantee.

The plastic lid may keep some smells out, but it's far from air- or water-tight. If you tilt the tray at an angle on the way to the freezer, the water will come gushing out. This tray is also pricier than some of the lidless models, but we think the lid is worth it.

Also, if you overfill the tray into the ¼ inch of space between the cubes and the lid, the ice will expand and make the lid stick. Just don't fill past the tops of the grooves, and you should be fine.

For those who want to make dozens of cubes at once, and have the freezer space, this baby food freezer tray from Mumi&Bubi works very well.

*At the time of publishing, the price was $30.

At about $25, Mumi&Bubi's Solids Starter Kit is twice as expensive as our top pick, but it comes with two trays that make 21 extra-large cubes each. The BPA-free, dishwasher-safe plastic trays are square rather than rectangular, measuring just shy of 9 inches long and wide and standing 1½ inches tall with the included lid in place. Each indentation holds about 25 mL of water, rather than the 20-mL capacity of the others we tested.

Although these larger cubes left the least amount of meltwater in our drink, they also didn't cool the drink quite as quickly as the smaller, 20-mL cubes in our tests, though the difference was pretty minimal. The shape of the cubes is very similar to the shape of the OXO's cubes, with a half-moon design that makes removal of a single cube easy: Push on the end and grab the other as the ice pops up. It's just as simple to knock out the entire tray into a bucket when you’re having a party.

The plastic covers on the Mumi&Bubi trays protect the ice from freezer burn and also allow you to stack anything on top of the trays. They also help prevent any spillage; even if the water sloshes around when you’re moving from the sink to the freezer, none of it will end up on the ground.

Because of the high price and large footprint, the Solid Starter Kit doesn't quite compete as the "best" option, but it's a smart choice for those who want to make a lot of ice at once. We’re actually a little surprised that Mumi&Bubi doesn't market the tray as an option for plain ol’ ice cubes, although based on the 4.5 star rating on Amazon, plenty of people love it for its intended purpose.

It's not uncommon for silicone ice cube trays to accumulate white residue and smells over time. We’ve found this to be true with Tovolo trays (which we used to recommend) during our years of testing.

The white residue is nothing to be concerned about. Tovolo tested it and found that it was made up of minerals deposited from the water used to make ice. The residue is more prevalent the harder your water is; still, there's nothing harmful about it.

The gross freezer smell that silicone picks up is a bigger issue, since it can give your ice a plasticky or chemically taste. If you’ve ever had cubes from a built-in ice maker that have been sitting open in the freezer for a few weeks, you’ll recognize the taste as freezer burn.

Both the residue and the flavor problems may stem from the nature of silicone. Even though its flexibility lends itself well to releasing large-form cubes that might otherwise crack more brittle plastic, the material may also have a tendency to hold on to both the hard-water deposits and smells.

Leigh Krietsch Boerner, former Wirecutter science editor, explained, "Silicone is kinda sticky, at least for certain molecules. Solids may be more likely to adhere there, so minerals from the water itself or molecules from other food in your freezer are flying around and see that silicone ice cube tray as a great place to land. And once on, I’m willing to bet that it's kind of hard to get off." (If you’ve ever tried to clean oil from a silicone bowl, you’ll know what she means.)

Tovolo told us these problems could be fixed. "The best solution is to clean your Tovolo ice trays in a dilute solution of vinegar and water about once per month," says Niesen, recommending a 1:1 ratio of vinegar to water. "Sometimes it is necessary to soak the trays in the solution for up to an hour."

She also recommended storing the trays outside the freezer when they are not in use. "Once the cubes are frozen, decant them into an airtight container so they stay fresh in the freezer," she said.

But would this really solve both issues? We decided to conduct an experiment. We had an 8-month-old Tovolo tray that had been sitting in a mostly empty freezer and exhibited both the residue and stink issues. We cleaned the silicone tray in vinegar-water, as directed by Tovolo. After an hour in the bath, the trays still smelled of freezer burn, though the scent wasn't as assertive as it had been before. We washed a plastic Rubbermaid tray in plain soap and water. Then we filled one side of each tray with distilled water and the other side with filtered Los Angeles tap water, which tends to be quite hard. We froze the trays for 1½ weeks, melted equal amounts of each of the four ice samples, and examined the meltwater for residue and taste. This experiment was repeated once for confirmation.

As expected, the distilled water left no residue from either the plastic or the silicone tray. The cubes started far more clear than the filtered-water cubes and melted clear.

With filtered water, the smaller cubes from both the plastic tray and large Tovolo cube contained equal amounts of mineral residue once melted. The silicone tray didn't display the lacy white residue it had prior to the vinegar cleanse; the deposits likely build up over time and use. We suspect that all filtered water ice always has that residue, regardless of the ice cube tray; it's just that the sticky silicone trays hold onto the residue that would otherwise be trapped in the ice.

However, the taste test really separated the plastic tray cubes from the silicone tray cubes. Both the distilled water and filtered-water ice cubes from the plastic tray tasted as expected. But spoonfuls of both the distilled water and filtered-water cubes from the Tovolo tasted distinctly of acrid freezer burn. Even a second soak in vinegar water didn't help the tray release the smell of freezer burn. We wouldn't want this gaggy meltwater mixing with a tumbler full of expensive Scotch.

Our previous pick was OXO's Good Grips No Spill Ice Cube Tray. We liked the innovative silicone lid which allows you to fill the tray from the tap, pour off the excess, and stick the lid on using the surface tension of the water. This design means you can stack the tray anywhere in the freezer, even at an angle, without spilling the contents. However, after long term testing we found that the silicone lid imparted the flavor of freezer burn to the cubes. Also, the moat around the outside of the tray created useless and messy shards of ice that would fall out and turn into puddles of meltwater.

Joseph Joseph's QuickSnap Ice Cube Tray, which has been updated to include a lid since we tested it, offers a unique way to remove the cubes. Each of the 12 divisions has a silicone switch mechanism embedded in it. Water freezes into it, and then when it comes time to remove a cube, you move the rubber back and forth to loosen it. Most of the time, this causes the cube to pop right up at you. Cool idea, but it didn't always work.

Both Sterilite's Stacking Ice Cube Tray and Rubbermaid's Easy Release Ice Cube Tray are pretty much quintessential, white plastic ice cube trays. Each holds 16 cubes and comes without a lid. They stack just fine and make perfectly acceptable ice. There's nothing special about them, though. You might find these bundled in multi-packs for a low price though, so they’re not a bad idea if you need a lot of ice at once.

We wanted to like the No Spill Ice Cube Tray from Fox Run, but it turned out to be more problematic than expected. The 14-cube tray is the last of the models we tested to come with a lid. You’re supposed to snap the lid into place onto the empty tray, and then open up a cover in the center that reveals a 1½-inch hole underneath. Pour your water in through the hole to fill the tray; the lid is supposed to prevent any water from spilling out. The problem is the design doesn't prevent overfilling, and when you put too much water in, you end up with solid chunks of ice rather than individual cubes. Even when the tray was filled to a lower level, it was problematic. Almost every cube cracked when we removed them, leaving shards of ice behind.

Onyx's Stainless Steel Ice Cube Tray and Lekue's Ice Box both look cool, but their over-$30 price tags kept them out of the running.

The Container Store's Covered Ice Cube Tray makes 21 cubes, but because it is made of rigid plastic and has a middle row, it's hard to remove individual cubes; it's more of an all-or-nothing kind of deal.

Nick Guy

Nick Guy is a former senior staff writer covering Apple and accessories at Wirecutter. He has been reviewing iPhones, iPads, and related tech since 2011—and stopped counting after he tested his 1,000th case. It's impossible for him not to mentally catalog any case he sees. He once had the bright idea to build and burn down a room to test fireproof safes.

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