My first excursion into the world of ice cream at home was with a Cuisinart ICE-21, the kind of maker where you freeze the bowl in advance

I actually use it all the time, because I do not need to chill the bowl for many hours first

The fact you do not need to freeze a bowl and you do not need to worry about the bowl getting warmer and limited the times you can use it,Open a great door to me, you can do more than one ice cream flavor, whipped cream, etc continuously

but I suspect that one of the Cuisinart units where you pre-freeze the bowl would do just as good a job at making delicious, high-quality ice cream for only about $

I have used hand cranks, and the ones where you freeze the bowls in your freezer.

The bowl is rather small, like how it's stated

so you don't have to freeze the bowl first

The pricing is a bit steep for one of these...but considering that it is basically a fully refrigerated unit (meaning you do not need to pre-cool the bowl, or keep adding ice while the ice cream is churning)