5 Best Ice Cube Trays | Lids That Lock Out Freezer Funk

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Three slim trays that squeeze 45 cubes into a freezer drawer you thought was already full.

If your freezer is too tight for a fat tray, this set fits where others won’t. Each of the three HANCELANT trays makes 15 cubes at 1.2 x 1.2 x 1.2 inches, giving you 45 cubes total, and the whole set is built thin enough to slide into a small freezer. Each tray measures 7.4″L x 4.6″W x 1.45″H and weighs 200 g, so it fits a cramped drawer without a fight. The silicone is food-grade and BPA free (no bisphenol A, a chemical some plastics leach), the lid keeps freezer odor out, and the trays are safe for the dishwasher, fridge, freezer, and microwave.

Size is the most-praised point in owner feedback on this tray, more than almost any other feature. Cubes hold their shape and don’t crumble, which matters if you are pulling ice out of a mini fridge for iced tea. The independent compartment design also means you push one cube out from the bottom and the rest stay put. As owners put it: “This make great ice & so easy to use since our ice maker in our fridge is broken.”

Now the honest part. Two areas come in mixed: ice removal and lid fit. The silicone is slightly flimsy, and a few people find the lid sits on rather than locks down, so keep the trays level when you stack them. None of that stops the trays from doing their job — they are rated 4.0+ stars across 1,000+ ratings, and plenty of buyers reach for them for freezing homemade baby food and fresh herbs in neat portions. Just don’t overfill, and rinse the trays before the first use.

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Eight trays, 56 cubes, one bar cart that never runs dry mid-party.

Volume is the whole pitch here. The Jrisbo set ships eight trays, each making 14 cubes, for 56 cubes across the pack — roughly four times the cube count of the two-tray GORCI. That’s a party tray set, not a daily-use tray. Each cube runs about 1.8*1.3*0.9 inches and holds about 0.88 ounces of liquid, small enough for herb cubes, coffee cubes, and tea cubes as well as plain water. The bodies are a TPE material with a wider bottom, so you press the soft base and the cube lifts out rather than prying with a knife.

Buyers praise how much ice you get from trays that stack neatly. The removable lids are the quiet hero: they keep freezer smell and taste out of the water and let the trays sit on top of each other. The color coding (four blue, four green) makes it easy to keep water trays separate from the ones holding coffee. As one reviewer put it: “ABSOLUTELY LOVE! I love that my ice never gets the funky freezer taste and they’re sooo easy to pop out of the tray.”

The trade-off is durability up top. The lids are the thin part — they flex and can crack with rough handling — and the cubes are on the small side, so check the dimensions if you want big slow-melting ice for whisky. The soft silicone bodies themselves release cleanly with a push, and each tray has its own lid so nothing leaks in the stack. Give a tray 30 to 60 seconds on the counter after pulling it from the freezer, and the cubes drop out on their own.

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The tray that turns filling into a 30-second job instead of a splash-fest at the sink.

A linked cavity is the trick here. The compartments are joined by an open channel, so water flows from one to the next and fills the whole 14-cube tray evenly from a single spot. The lid then acts as a fourth wall, closing off the channel to seal each cube on its own. The result is a tray that fills fast, splashes little, and holds 14 large cubes per tray across the two-pack. It’s made from BPA-free polypropylene, so this is the one hard-plastic tray on the list that earns its place.

Owners rate the fill experience highly: the linked channel fills all 14 cavities at full tap pressure with barely a spill. The large square cubes drop out with a small twist once the tray has sat a couple of minutes out of the freezer. Stacking is clean because the lid sits flat, and the lid also keeps drips in. “We use a lot of ice for our drinks,” owners mention. “I was looking for something that would last and was easy to fill.”

Here’s the wrinkle: release is the most mixed point on this tray. The thick plastic freezes slowly and resists a bend, so you twist rather than push, and the lid can be stiff to lever off — a few owners find the lid harder work than the cubes. The other rule is the fill line. Fill past it and the lid can freeze to the cubes. That said, the tray doesn’t feel cheap in the hand, and for anyone who has given up on floppy silicone, the rigid body is exactly the point.

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Curved cubes and a peel-back lid, built for hands that are tired of fighting a tray.

The shape is the story. Each cube in an OXO tray is rounded rather than sharp-cornered, so it slides out of its cavity instead of catching on a square edge. The lid is a removable silicone sheet that seals water in before freezing, then peels back so you can push the half-moon cubes out. That two-part construction — a rigid body with a soft sealing lid — is why this is the tray to reach for when a stiff plastic tray or a floppy silicone one is just too much work. It’s BPA free, the silicone lid lifts out for cleaning, and both parts are top-rack dishwasher safe.

Ease of release is the point owner feedback returns to most, and the curved cavities do as much of the work as the peel-back lid. The curved cube design means less prying, and the silicone lid’s seal keeps freezer odors from settling into the ice — the kind of ice that finally tastes like water again. What also gets noticed is how much the tray holds relative to its slim 1.1-inch height, so it stacks without eating the whole shelf. “No more fighting to get ice cubes out with my hand issues,” customers note. “Not only do you just peel back the silicone cover but the curved cube design allows them to easily release.”

The catch to plan around: once some cubes are frozen, the silicone lid won’t reseal on the empty slots, so you refill a whole tray at a time rather than topping up gaps. Filling and draining off the excess water also takes a little care. Value is the other piece buyers weigh, since this sits at the top of this list — reviewers call it a premium spend, though many consider it worth it. At 0.56 kg and 15.5″L x 5.7″W x 1.1″H, it’s the flattest, longest tray here, so check shelf depth.