Works great. Did two batches so far. Absolutely a great product. Well worth the price. No smell, quiet, small carbon print, no assembly required. Used paper towels, napkins, coffee grounds, dried out fruits, cardboard, etc.

First Impressions from a product engineer:
- I had never heard of this technology so I was immediately fascinated by it - a way to help my immediate environment
- Nice looking unit
- Would be better if it was narrow fronted and deep as opposed to wide and shallow. Takes up more horizontal counter space the way it is
- You have a live hinge on the back of the unit but wing nuts on the activated charcoal holder (back one). Design out the wing nuts, too small for many hands and easy to drop/lose
- Initial setup - the bags of activated charcoal are too much for both holders so should be zip lock or just mention pour it into the back container and then the top one. It reads like one bag should go in the back and one bag should go in the top. Better yet just supply the charcoal in bags that fit the containers they go in
- The manual says to unplug the unit to pull out the basket - this is very inconvenient. You should have a switch to prevent inadvertent operation with the lid off (if its not there) allowing the power to be plugged in while you are filling it. Actually I just ignore turning it off, it beeps at you when you pull the top off but that is fine.

Now that I have used it for a few weeks:
- Makes very nice organic laden dirt. I am not terribly scientific about what goes in, but what comes out looks good and my plants so far have liked it.
- It's a bit louder than my dishwasher at about 55dBA, so I start it before I leave for work. It is not bad, I just have an incredibly quiet house so it is loud in comparison to other devices
- it is nice to be able to clean the composting chamber in the dishwasher but the lid you cannot - it is not sealed and fills up with water.
- you do have to slide it out from underneath the counter in order to pull out the basket or put larger amounts of waste in it, a slightly smaller chamber that is shorter or the chamber being in the front rather than the side would have improved loading.
- My kitchen trash can no longer smells, and the Lomi does not either (unless you pull the lid off without processing the garbage)

It's a keeper, and while it takes up a little more counter space than I would have liked, it does exactly what it is supposed to do and does it well. it appears to be well engineered and well made, so I hope future models take into account user's comments and suggestions.

Need to test, but a like

The media could not be loaded. I appreciate the relative simplicity of the product "” it's somewhat smaller than a fish tank and makes a bit more noise than one when operating. This is a considerable footprint "” taking up about 2x the space as the compose bin I thought it would replace. Instead, given some of the restrictions on what you can compost, I now how TWO compost dispensers "” the LOMI and my previous compost pail, for all the things the LOMI can't/won't ingest.

I suppose I had a naive or overly optimistic idea about what this product is or what it would do for my life, or maybe I just watched the sciencey video and thought, "Oh hey, now that I have a garden, I can create a closed loop for the food I eat and the food I grow!" How very East Bay of me.

My household of four does a fair amount of cooking and have consistently composted and recycled. When I read LOMI's estimate of the frequency of running the device, I thought it must be a joke.

"We recommend running Lomi every 2-3 days if there is waste inside to prevent unwanted odours."

If you want to produce compost that's going to nourish your garden, it needs to run for 24 hours. In a household of four, that's just not feasible. We easily fill out LOMI up daily, and there's no way we're buying a second one to keep up. It also makes this whirring/humming noise while in operation, and it's so large that you can't shove it under the counter or otherwise muffle the noise. It needs to be 6" away from the wall too, so it basically takes up a bunch of room and is a buzzkill if you have any guests over. I mean, I guess you can gloat about your world-saving bonafides but that line of conversation will only be interesting for 3 minutes, not 24 hours.

There are three modes the LOMI operates in "” Useful Compost (24hr), Plastic Composts (??), and Excess Energy Usage Nullying the Purpose of the Product Compost Mode (4hr). The LED UI is hard to read, and the long-press mode chooser operation is counterintuitive. I've used the 4hr mode a couple times and it basically cooks your compost using an unknown amount of energy (sadly my house isn't solar powered yet) and apparently zapping most of the useful nutrients that the 24hr slow cook mode preserves. You also need to add these seltzer pills that I guess help with the breakdown process "” and so it's like, am I actually reducing my waste by using this thing (guilt abounds).

On the plus side, I will say that it's like a pretty cool science experiment moment the first time you turn a bunch of random food scraps into a dry, non-odorous pile of dirt. They should probably incorporate this trick into the next Mortal Kombat as a Finish Him move. Seriously, it's that neat. But if it takes 24hrs to complete, that might make the game really boring and then you'll wonder why you bothered in the first place.

So, I'm mixed on this thing. Technology is cool and all "” but sometimes really isn't necessary when you have a perfectly functional bucket.

UPDATE:
I have attached some photos showing the energy consumption and some final product. The power consumption is about 500 watts when it is running. A full batch of compost consumed just under 1 kWh of energy over about 14 hours. I turned about 3 - 4 quarts of rough product into about 2 to 3 cups of compost. Based on the fact that energy in my part of the US consists of roughly 37% coal, 25% natural gas, 30% wind, 3% hydroelectric, 4% solar, and 1% other, it is safe to predict that my carbon emissions was between 500g and 600g to produce the compost. FYI, it takes about 1.12 pounds of coal (1000g CO2), 7.36 cubic feet of natural gas (500g of CO2), or .08 gallons of oil (600-750g of CO2) to produce 1 kWh of energy. The estimated emissions of hydroelectric, wind, and solar is about 50g of CO2 emissions.

It is easy to think your mulch is going to come out perfect every time if you read the writeup or watch the videos or commercials for this or similar products. I have made mulch in piles and portable rollers. Living in the cold, dry Rocky Mountain West, it is really difficult to make mulch in time to plant using standard methods. By the time your pile is really cooking, you are harvesting your July crops. The rollers are even more difficult because of how difficult it is to get a good mixture of green and brown media into the roller. Once again, in a cold, dry climate, you are harvesting before you get your first real batch of mulch.

Enter the Lomi or similar products. It is part dehydrator, part composter, part grinder. The final result is a ground media / mulch hybrid. It handles egg shells and citrus peels far better than the outdoor pile in cold climates. It can break down pineapple cores, banana peels, and limited meat or fat trimmings. That is pretty impressive. If you get enough rotten, juicy produce mixed with the peels and other drier materials, you get pretty good product. If you are mostly dry, expect something that resembles pebbles cereal. If you are too wet, expect stinky, muddy sludge stuck to the pan. Get the mix just right, and you get decent mulch. Proper mulch should smell similar to soil. It should be loose, but you should have no problem packing it into a ball. Reading a few gardening books or a little Internet research will help you get the dry to wet mix better for your climate. Expect a trial and error learning curve. It is okay to mix too dry with too wet with close to right mulch. Nothing is not usable. Keep in mind that if you plan on using mulch in a garden do not put bones, produce stickers, compostable plastics, pet waste, sanitary waste, or other not truly compostable products in the Lomi. As a side note, stringy items like kale, spinach, flower stems, asparagus, and similar items need to be cut up or else they will bind up around the grinding mechanism.

It is about the size of a bread machine. It uses a fair amount of energy.. You can hear it running. It is certainly louder than my 20 year old dishwasher or 10 year old refrigerator. You can smell it running. If you store media in it before running a batch, it can get pretty ripe. It is loud and smelly enough that I store it and run it in the garage. If you are sensitive to noise and / or smell, this is not a great countertop device so plan on storing it elsewhere. For convenience, I use a small covered waste can next to my trash can that I dump into the Lomi a few times per week. So far, no fruit flies, but it isn't summer yet either.

Ultimately am I happy with it? The mulch that I have produced looks and feels pretty good. I will mix it with other mulch and renewed soil this summer to see how well it works in my vegetable garden. I like the idea of taking my egg shells, juicer waste, vegetable trimmings, tea bags, coffee & filters, rotten veggies, and other compostable waste and putting it into my garden instead of a landfill. I like the idea of producing a batch regardless of it being below zero outside or 100 degrees outside. I don't believe I am saving the world with it, but I hope it will make my garden better.