Ninja CREAMi Scoop & Swirl review: can it replace the ice cream van?

For twenty-odd summers, a van playing Greensleeves slightly out of tune came up our street in Hillsborough every warm evening. Then, three years ago, it just stopped. Nobody told us why. Our grandsons still stand at the front window when they hear any jingle at all, even the one from the bin lorry reversing.

So when the Ninja CREAMi Scoop & Swirl landed on the list of things to test, I put my hand up. Ninja sells it on its own site as the Ninja Swirl by CREAMi, model NC701UK, and the shops call it Scoop & Swirl. Same machine. The promise is simple: proper whippy ice cream, pulled from a handle on your worktop.

I fixed washing machines and hoovers around Sheffield for 19 years. That leaves you with a habit. I don't just ask whether a thing works. I ask how it's built, what it sounds like when it's struggling and which part I'd be replacing in three years. I used it for six weeks, made 49 tubs and kept every receipt. Here's what I found.

One machine, two names, and why it isn't a churn

The ice cream makers I grew up with froze a liquid while a paddle stirred it. The CREAMi flips that round. Your mixture spends a day in the freezer until it's rock solid. Then the tub goes in the machine and a spinning blade bores down from the top, grinding the ice into crystals too fine to feel on your tongue and whipping air in as it goes. Less a churn, more a very determined drill.

On top of that, this model has a second trick. Once the tub is processed, the machine can push the dessert out through a nozzle on the front when you pull the lever. That's the soft serve bit, the twisted rope that sits up in a cone. There are six soft serve programmes (Ice Cream, Light Ice Cream, Fruiti, Frozen Yoghurt, Soft Serve Gelato and CreamiFit) and six scoop programmes (Ice Cream, Light Ice Cream, Gelato, Sorbet, Frozen Yoghurt and Milkshake), plus Mix-In and Re-spin.

What I wanted to know was whether it's close enough to the van, whether it's worth the extra over a plain CREAMi, and whether the noise would get it banished to the garage.

How I tested it

I bought it at full retail and used it from 30 May to 10 July. Every tub went in a notebook on the kitchen windowsill: the recipe, how long it had frozen, the freezer temperature, the programme, the run time and whether it needed a Re-spin. Pauline, my wife, added a column called "was it nice" with a tick or a cross.

For noise, I used the sound meter I used to take on call-outs, one metre from the machine, at worktop height. I timed every programme and kept the receipts for every pint of milk and carton of cream, because Pauline wanted to know if this thing would ever pay for itself. It's the same routine the whole team follows, written out on our how we test page.

Week one: the garage freezer mistake

My first tub came out like sweet sand. I'd frozen it in the chest freezer in the garage, which runs at about minus 24°C, colder than the kitchen one. Straight into the machine, Soft Serve Ice Cream programme, and the lever pushed out a crumbly, pale dust that wouldn't hold a shape. Rory, who is five, looked at his cone and said "it's broken, Grandad." Harsh, but fair.

The fix was dull and it worked every time. Let a tub from a very cold freezer stand for 10 minutes before you lock it in, and if it still looks powdery, press Re-spin once. From tub four onwards I froze everything in the kitchen freezer at around minus 18°C, and the problem stopped.

The whippy test: van versus worktop

With the van gone, I bought two soft serve cones from the café at the edge of Hillsborough Park, carried them home in a cool bag (a bit droopy by the gate), and put them next to two Swirl cones made from whole milk, double cream, sugar, a spoon of custard powder and a drop of vanilla.

Six tasters: Pauline, our daughter Nicola, her husband Jordan, the two lads and Mr Bramall from next door, who wandered round because he heard the machine. Blindfolds were tea towels. Four of the six picked the Swirl cone as the café one. Ellis, who is nine, picked correctly and was very smug about it all afternoon.

It's six people with tea towels on their heads, so don't take it to the bank. But the texture is genuinely smooth, with that springy, airy bite that makes whippy ice cream different from a scoop. A Flake pushed into the top held up for as long as a Flake needs to.

The scoop side, and what Pauline did with the rhubarb

The scoop programmes process the tub in place and you eat it with a spoon, like any other CREAMi. Gelato was dense and rich. Milkshake was the grandsons' favourite by some distance.

The surprise was Fruiti. Pauline has an allotment, and in June we were drowning in rhubarb. She stewed it with sugar and a bit of ginger, froze it and ran it through Fruiti. What came out of the nozzle was sharp, soft and pink, like rhubarb and custard sweets in whippy form. We made nine tubs of the stuff and gave three to neighbours.

• Soft Serve Gelato wants egg yolks. Leave them out and you've got decent vanilla wearing an Italian name badge.
• Fruit needs to be ripe or stewed. Under-ripe strawberries gave us a sour, icy tub. Stewed rhubarb never failed.

Less sugar, more protein, still worth eating

Here's the personal bit. In spring the practice nurse told me my blood sugar was creeping towards borderline. Not a crisis, but enough to make a man of 66 look sadly at a 99. Was the Light Ice Cream programme a real option, or a punishment?

With semi-skimmed milk, a smaller amount of sugar and a sweetener, the first spin came out a bit dry. One Re-spin later it was creamy enough that I stopped thinking about what wasn't in it. Across 12 lighter tubs, I re-spun 9. Plan for that and you won't be disappointed.

Jordan, our son-in-law, goes to the gym five mornings a week and drinks protein shakes he describes as "wet cardboard." One chocolate shake, topped up with milk to the line, frozen and run on CreamiFit, came out thick and fudgy. He now makes his own tubs at ours on Sundays.

Noise: I measured it so you don't have to guess

This is the downside, and it's a real one. At one metre, my meter peaked at 84 dB while the blade was going down through a hard tub. My wet and dry vac in the garage reads 81 dB from the same distance. Each programme runs for roughly two to three and a half minutes, so it's short, but it's properly loud.

For a family pudding at seven in the evening, nobody minded. For a late spoonful when Pauline had gone up, it was out of the question. Mr Bramall says he can hear it through the party wall, "but only faintly, and I know what it means now."

Size is the other thing. The Swirl is 44.5 cm tall and weighs 9.45 kg. The gap under our wall cupboards is 46 cm, so it slides in with a finger's width to spare, but I pull it forward to use it so I can get the tub in and out without scraping my knuckles. Measure your own gap before you order.

What a repairman looks for after six weeks

I didn't take it apart, it's under a two-year guarantee. But you can tell a lot from the outside if you know where to look.

• The paddle and shaft: no wobble, no wear marks on the plastic hub after 49 tubs. That's where cheaper machines start to go.
• The motor note: no change in pitch between the first tub and the forty-ninth. A motor that's labouring changes pitch before it fails, and I listened for that on every run.
• The seals around the nozzle: still tight. The dispensing parts clip together firmly and didn't loosen.

"All that racket is a motor grinding through solid ice, and ice fights back. If anything gives up in year two or three, my money's on the gears. The day it starts to sound gravelly, ring Ninja while you're still covered." Clive, week five

Six weeks is not a durability test, and I won't pretend it is. It's on the list for a re-check next summer, like everything else on our tests in progress board.

Cleaning, and the freezer drawer problem

Tubs, lids, the paddle and the drip tray go in the dishwasher. The nozzle parts need rinsing every time you make soft serve. I skipped it once, on day 11, and the next morning there was a stiff plug of old vanilla in there that took a bottle brush and five minutes of muttering to shift.

The bigger adjustment is the freezer. Every tub needs 24 hours frozen flat, and only two come in the box. Our under-counter freezer took three at most before something had to go to the garage. Ninja has sold four-tub bundles on its own site, which is the version I'd look for.

The freezing time is what really changes how you live with a CREAMi, any CREAMi. You don't fancy ice cream at eight o'clock and have it at ten past. You decide yesterday.

What a tub really costs

Pauline's question, answered with receipts from our local supermarket. The comparison is a tub of similar size and quality from the freezer aisle.

Across our 49 tubs, we saved about £2.70 a tub on average. At £269.99, that's 100 tubs before the machine has paid for itself. At our pace of roughly eight a week, about three months. A couple making one tub a week would need nearer two years.

Ninja Swirl by CREAMi specs

Right for your kitchen, or not?

Alternatives worth a look

If the whippy cone isn't the point, look at the Ninja CREAMi Deluxe (NC501UK) first. It has an RRP of £249.99 and is often cheaper, uses bigger tubs of around 700 ml, and can process just the top or bottom half of a tub, which is handy when one person wants a small bowl.

The original CREAMi is the budget choice. Smaller tubs, fewer programmes, the same basic texture. One warning: the Swirl's 2-in-1 tubs have the nozzle built in and aren't the same as the tubs for the other models. And if you're weighing up which big gadget deserves the worktop, Tracey asked the same "is it worth it" question of a far pricier machine in her Thermomix TM7 review. For everything else our team has lived with lately, have a look through the blog.

Six weeks on

The Swirl is still on the worktop. The lads check the freezer drawer before they've taken their shoes off, and Pauline is planning what to do with the gooseberries. It's loud, it's heavy and it makes you plan a day ahead. But a proper whippy cone at home, for pennies, turned out to matter more in our house than I'd have guessed when the box arrived.

What readers ask us about the Ninja Swirl