The best ice cream maker I've ever used is on sale at Walmart for Memorial Day (2024)

Just in time for summer, and to celebrate Memorial Day, Walmart has slashed the price of Ninja's viral ice cream maker, the CREAMi.

If you're on TikTok, you've likely heard of the appliance; for the past year or so, Ninja has employed food influencers to promote it across the app, to much success; the CREAMi dominated my algorithm for a massive swathe of last year.

Ninja Creami Ice Cream Maker, $199 $110.29 from Walmart

I reviewed one as part of my roundup of the best ice cream makers for The UK Sun last year and was seriously impressed by it.

They capitalize on an expired patent filed by the makers of the Pacojet, the machine used in professional kitchens to make ice cream. (A Pacojet retails for around $7k at the time of writing).

The technology at the core of the Creami is the same as that of a Pacojet, and it's very different from most home ice cream makers.

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Let me explain: with a normal home ice cream maker, you first have to make your ice cream base (a mixture of milk, cream, sugar, eggs, and whatever flavoring you're using), before chilling it for at least four hours.

Once it's chilled, you pop the mixture into your ice cream maker to churn, which takes approximately an hour.

Once it's finished churning, it'll be at a soft-serve consistency, meaning that if you want it to have the texture of a more typical ice cream, you'll need to pop it into the freezer for a few more hours.

Put simply, while it yields incredibly silky ice cream, the process is a pain in the neck.

With machines like the Pacojet and the Ninja, the process is much simpler.

The first step is the same; you make your ice cream mixture. However, rather than chilling it, then churning it, then freezing it, you simply pour the mixture into a Ninja-supplied container and bung it into the freezer until it's completely solid.

Once it's frozen, you pop the container into the Ninja Creami, press the button, and three minutes later, you'll have ready-to-devour ice cream.

The machine uses an admittedly loud process called "micropureeing", which employs a very sharp blade to chip away at the frozen block of ice cream while adding air, which results in an impossibly smooth consistency.

Although it's predominantly an ice-cream maker, this version of the Creami has four other settings, including Sorbet, Milkshake, and Lite Ice Cream.

This deal at Walmart takes its price from $199 to $110.29, a saving of $88.71. That's a discount of around 45%.

Because Ninja has distilled the technology of a machine that costs $7k into a machine that usually retails for $199, it obviously isn't as robust as a Pacojet, and if you're making ice cream several times per week, you might want to invest in something a bit sturdier.

However, I'd say that this entry-level model is good enough for most ice cream enthusiasts.

Reviewers agree with me when I say it's the best ice cream maker out there, with one Walmart reviewer writing: "If you like ice cream, you NEED one of these!"

Another gushed: "I absolutely love my Ninja Creami. I have used every day since I bought it. The price was amazing. It was on sale when I bought it and I even went back and bought my son one. So easy to use."

And another initially reluctant buyer said: "I bought this because my wife wanted it. I am not a huge ice cream person so to be honest I thought it was a total waste of money. But happy wife happy life so I bought it. I think I like it more than her... it's amazing."

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They continued: "Try making just plain vanilla. Best I have ever had in my life. I swear. I'm in love with something I [thought was] a total waste of money."

Ninja Creami Ice Cream Maker, $199 $110.29 from Walmart