Nostalgia Electrics RHP310 Retro Series Mini Hot Air Popcorn Popper

I love it!
I read the reviews about how this machine spat out hot kernels, and was possessed, etc. But I took the risk and bought it anyway. To avoid burnt popcorn, flying popcorn, and unpopped popcorn, fill the little red cap so that the kernels barely cover the surface. That's how many you should use. And as soon as you stop hearing pops, turn it off and pour it into the bowl. I didn't have to repop anything, and it all flowed nicely into the bowl. And there are complaints about the noise. All air poppers make noise like this. Some worse.

I recommend this to teens mostly. It's fairly easy to use, and awesome for study sessions and slumber parties. Also great for movie nights. I love this product!!!

Ejects 1/3 of kernels
This popper looks great but is poorly designed. Upside was it was less than $20. The biggest problem is that over the few minutes of popping time, about 1/3 of the kernels are ejected.

I've tried:
- Stale and fresh popcorn(not by design, I just had some stale corn...:))
- Different brands of popcorn
- Preheating the popper for ~5 minutes
- smaller and larger than recommended batches.

None of these things seem to have made a difference.
For kicks I 're-popped' the the ejected kernels from a recommended sized batch and got 2 more cups of popped corn out of it.

I bet a deeper or larger diameter well would fix this problem but oh well.
This popper is very lightweight, which doesn't inspire longevity.

Popcorn tastes bad; leaves lots of kernals unpopped
I usually pop white kernal popcorn in a pan on the stovetop, and it always comes out perfect. However, I saw the Nostalgia Mini-Retro hot air popper in the store, and I thought it might be a safer way for my teenagers to make their own popcorn. I had a hot air popper years ago, when I was in college, and it worked very well.)

I tried the Nostalgia popper twice, following the instructions inside the box. When I switched on the popper I immediately noticed that the motor is very loud, and the sound it makes is rattly and unpleasant.

Next, I noticed that the popcorn "measuring cup" (the red top of the popping chamber) is so wide and shallow that it is almost useless as an actual measuring device. Its width also virtually guarantees spilled kernals when one tries to pour them into the relatively narrow popping chamber.

When the popcorn stopped popping, about 1/4 of the kernals were still in the bottom of the popping chamber; they would not pop. When I...

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