Best ice cube trays

How we judged these

• Published cube size and count

  The only specification that changes the drink. Tovolo publishes six 2-inch cubes, W&P four at 2.25 inches, OXO six at 1.75 inches. OXO does not publish either figure for its flexible trays, and we say so.

• Does the tray hold its shape when full?

  A flexible tray full of water is the reason freezers have ice puddles. A steel frame or a rigid outer container solves it; both are published features rather than guesses.

• Is there a real lid?

  A lid keeps freezer odor out of porous ice and lets trays stack. It is the difference between ice and flavored ice, and it costs a few dollars.

• Clear or cloudy, stated honestly

  Only directional freezing makes clear ice. Any tray that freezes from all sides makes cloudy ice, however good it is otherwise - and cloudy ice chills a drink exactly as well.

The trays, compared

Read the first two rows together. The Tovolo gives you more cubes at a slightly smaller size for a third of the W&P’s price; the W&P gives you a bigger cube and a tray that does not fold in half on the way to the freezer. Neither is wrong. If your freezer shelf is at chest height and you carry trays across a kitchen, the frame is worth paying for.

Why cube size is the whole argument

A cube melts from its surface. Volume grows with the cube of the side while surface area grows with the square, so a bigger cube carries more ice behind every square inch of melting surface. That is the reason bartenders use big cubes in spirit-forward drinks and small ones in a shaker, where fast chilling and deliberate dilution are the point.

The arithmetic is easy to check. A 2-inch cube is 8 cubic inches; a 1-inch cube is 1. A 2.25-inch cube is about 11.4, so the W&P cube carries roughly 40 percent more ice than the Tovolo one. In a glass, that is the difference between a drink that holds at strength for twenty minutes and one that is watery at the halfway mark.

The limit is the glass. A 2-inch cube will not enter a tasting glass, and it is tight in some rocks glasses. Measure the opening of the glass you actually drink from before you choose the tray — it is the single most common returned-item reason in this category and it costs nothing to avoid.

Cloudy ice is not bad ice

Cloudiness is trapped air and dissolved minerals. A normal tray freezes from all sides inward, so those impurities are driven to the middle and locked there. That is all the cloud is. It does not affect how cold the drink gets, and it does not affect taste in any way a normal person detects.

Clear ice comes from freezing in one direction, so the impurities stay ahead of the ice front and end up in a reservoir you throw away. True Cubes does that with an insulated shell and publishes an 18 to 22 hour freeze for four 2-inch cubes. The clear ice guide covers the cooler method if you would rather do it for free, and mold vs press vs machine puts the three routes side by side.

Which tray for which household

Buy the Tovolo King Cube if whiskey or an Old Fashioned is the reason you are here. Six 2-inch cubes per tray, a lid, and a price that makes owning two an easy decision.

Buy the W&P Peak if you have bent a tray before. The steel frame inside the silicone is the fix, the cubes are the biggest here, and individually molded compartments mean one cube comes out without twisting the rest.

Buy the OXO covered tray if your glasses are ordinary. At 1.75 inches the cubes fit far more tumblers than a 2-inch cube does, and the rigid container does the same structural job as a steel frame for less money.

Buy the OXO flexible two-pack as the background tray — the one that keeps the freezer stocked for soft drinks and for shaking, where small cubes are correct and a big one is wrong.

Buy True Cubes only if clear ice is the actual goal. It is several times the price of a plain tray and it earns that if the ice is going in front of guests. If it is going into a rum and coke, the Tovolo is the honest answer.

Getting better ice out of the tray you own

Four habits make a measurable difference, and none of them costs anything.

• Keep the lid on. Ice is porous and a freezer is full of odors. This is the single largest quality variable in home ice and the only one solved by a few dollars of plastic.
• Fill to the line, not to the brim. Water expands as it freezes, so an overfilled tray produces a sheet across the top that has to be broken, which is how trays get cracked.
• Freeze the tray flat and alone. A tray resting on a bag of peas freezes unevenly and the cubes come out in different sizes. On a level shelf with air around it, they come out matched.
• Rinse with water and vinegar occasionally. This is Tovolo’s published advice for hard-water areas, and it removes the mineral film that makes silicone smell faintly of the freezer.

One more thing worth knowing: ice that has been sitting in a tray for a fortnight is not the same ice you froze. It sublimates, shrinks and picks up whatever is around it. If a tray of cubes has been in there since the last time you had people over, dump it and refill. Fresh cloudy ice beats old ice of any clarity.