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My 11 year old Bosch has too many problems to be worth fixing, so I'm shopping for a new dishwasher this week. What's new in dishwashers these days? What have you found recently that you love (or hate)?
We love our bosch dishwasher- it's incredibly energy and water efficient and gets our stuff very clean. The only dishwasher I've ever liked this much is the Miele that we used in the last place we rented.
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We love our bosch dishwasher- it's incredibly energy and water efficient and gets our stuff very clean. The only dishwasher I've ever liked this much is the Miele that we used in the last place we rented.

How old is it and have you had any problems? What was it about the Miele that you liked so much?

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What was it about the Miele that you liked so much?

I am currently shopping for new appliances for an upcoming kitchen remodel, and have been looking closely at the Miele, specifically the Miele Excella G 2670 SCVi. It has the most cleaning cycles I have ever seen on any appliance, is as quiet as a dishwasher can be, and is incredibly spacious. I was a bit leery of all of this until I was visiting with a fried that has one, and she and her husband could not stop raving about it, and really who raves about a dishwasher? I played with it, and listened to it run, and I was sold.

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If you load it right and you have the correct water temperature, just about any dishwasher will get your dishes clean. We've been pretty happy with our Kenmore Elite. It has a number of cycles we never use.

ETA, my parents have a Bosch and it has given them constant trouble. Servicing for Bosch is also often quite poor. Around here you have to rely on Bray and Scharf, and their repair service, in our extensive experience, seriously sucks.

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Use to have an ASCO. Like it but only lasted 5 years of very moderate use. The repair person indicated that ASCO are prone to the electronics failures on the older models.

He recommend a Bosch and that is what we got. We also looked at Miele but Bosch was a better deal ($ wise) and we've been very happy with it. Very quite and can really load alot of dishes. We never prerinse and I've never had stuck on food issues.

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Servicing for Bosch is also often quite poor. Around here you have to rely on Bray and Scharf, and their repair service, in our extensive experience, seriously sucks.

Try Wuerstlins Appliance Service or Curtis Appliance Service, depending on where around here you live.

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I also love my Bosch dishwasher, which is about 2-3 years old. I don't know the model # off hand, but can post it later. We got it from Lowe's for not much more than a KitchenAid etc. It's sleek and so quiet that I had to learn to feel it before opening, lest I get sprayed with water mid-cycle. Cleans great.

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I'm not that happy with our Miele, which we got about three years ago. (G 892 SC Touchtronic)

While I especially like the top shelf for holding pieces of cutlery individually, we've had numerous problems with the soap dispenser not opening and with it not draining fully. It is quiet, though.

Before this, we had a KitchenAid (don't recall the model) and had no real problems to speak of. It had a timer for delayed start, which was pretty useful.

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We love our Bosch but given that in both our old house and our current one we used to have old, cheap noisy dishwashers, I think it would have been hard not to be impressed. The Bosch is incredibly quiet and while I like the half load option in theory, our family of four always seems to need the whole thing.

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KitchenAid, Asko, Bosch, Miele, Dakor, JennAir, Fisher & Paykal seem to be the favorite recommended these days. What's new seems to be the drawer systems, where it's more built-in and easy to pull-out. Apparently, there can be a lot of leaks if not installed correctly. What's also new & old is the continuing technology of "quiet" dishwashers, as well as the need to use less detergent. I didn't know until recently that European made dishwashers operate supposedly better if half the required detergent is used. Haven't really tested that out. Also new & old is flat paneling/integration, as well as having buttons on the top after you open the dishwasher door, as opposed to having it outside. This seems to sum it up too.

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I didn't know until recently that European made dishwashers operate supposedly better if half the required detergent is used.

I don't think it's true that they work better, but your typical European dishwashing cycle doesn't really need nearly as much detergent, since it pummels the crap outta the food bits longer. And if you're a Cascade user, using a half-amount is dramatically less likely to haze your glassware.

Do use the Jet-Dry dispenser tho.

Also new & old is flat paneling/integration, as well as having buttons on the top after you open the dishwasher door, as opposed to having it outside.

The paneling thing has been a designer feature since people started lusting after SubZeros. I'm not a fan of the hidden top-edge controls, but I think Asko pioneered that in the 90s.

Pretty sure I've professed my love of Miele elsewhere, but beyond the it-works-really-well thing, it comes down to two features. One, the separate flatware tray totally rules. You'll never want to look at another basket of stuck-together spoons or hand-stabbing knives again. Two, the extended-height cavity, which Asko and Bosch started copying about 5 years ago. Look closely at most Mieles and you'll notice that the front panel is all door, instead of a short door and a fixed panel above the kick. That's because the pump and motor assemblies have been made ultra-flat, and the extra space both compensates for the height lost to the flatware tray and allows for a taller top rack.

That said, they're unreasonably expensive. The racks aren't quite as nicely made as Asko's, and the lower rack's layout is bass-ackwards...large plates fit better on the right side with the tines, than the elaborate left side. Purchased quite painlessly about 8 years ago from The Great Indoors, which is both a part of the Sears empire and has a low-price-match guarantee.

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I don't think it's true that they work better, but your typical European dishwashing cycle doesn't really need nearly as much detergent, since it pummels the crap outta the food bits longer. And if you're a Cascade user, using a half-amount is dramatically less likely to haze your glassware.

Do use the Jet-Dry dispenser tho.

The paneling thing has been a designer feature since people started lusting after SubZeros. I'm not a fan of the hidden top-edge controls, but I think Asko pioneered that in the 90s.

Pretty sure I've professed my love of Miele elsewhere, but beyond the it-works-really-well thing, it comes down to two features. One, the separate flatware tray totally rules. You'll never want to look at another basket of stuck-together spoons or hand-stabbing knives again. Two, the extended-height cavity, which Asko and Bosch started copying about 5 years ago. Look closely at most Mieles and you'll notice that the front panel is all door, instead of a short door and a fixed panel above the kick. That's because the pump and motor assemblies have been made ultra-flat, and the extra space both compensates for the height lost to the flatware tray and allows for a taller top rack.

That said, they're unreasonably expensive. The racks aren't quite as nicely made as Asko's, and the lower rack's layout is bass-ackwards...large plates fit better on the right side with the tines, than the elaborate left side. Purchased quite painlessly about 8 years ago from The Great Indoors, which is both a part of the Sears empire and has a low-price-match guarantee.

I like my Miele (Optima Series IIRC) and do enjoy the flatware tray. The other thing that is nice is that it taps into the cold water line and heats it itself so you don't have to worry about draining the how water heater.

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No recent experience here, we have a 5+ yr. old Kitchenaid that came w/ the house-no problems, moderately quiet. I have to say, though, that the Whirlpool generic dishwasher that we had onpost at Ft. Belvoir was the MOST quiet DW ever-I kept having to check if I turned it on, & it performed wonderfully for the 4 years we were there...an anamoly, maybe?

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At two o'clock in the afternoon of Wednesday, November 26th, in this year of our Lord (or the modern era, depending on your worldview) two thousand and eight, a Miele Optima series dishwasher was installed in my kitchen, much to my delight after more than a month of handwashing everything, but especially to the delight of MrP, who, because of the house rule, cleans up when I cook, and was therefore dreading the aftermath of the Thanksgiving Eve cocktail party for fifteen for which I was busy preparing.

The first test was to clean about 15 wine glasses and 36 assorted other glasses (well, why not - they had gotten dusty anyway), which the Miele did quite nicely in two quick loads. That night and over the next several days, what with holiday cooking and even more entertaining, it's cleaned plenty of assorted casserole dishes, mixing bowls, Cuisinart parts, and all the usual dinnerware. Here are a few random thoughts in case anyone finds the feedback useful.

The Optima series has 6 different cycles, which is more than enough for me. I've used them all except for 'pots and pans', because the pots and pans never go in the dishwasher. Ever. And all have worked well, but of course not at the miraculous level of gunk-removal claimed.

I've always been skeptical about such claims, probably because in my early adulthood I seem to have developed the notion that glassware (and by extension, plates, etc.) is never truly clean unless it's been through a hot chromic acid bath followed by three rinses in triple-distilled/deionized water, then allowed to air dry. So I'm one of those freaks who rinses everything off before putting it in the dishwasher, whose primary purpose is to sterilize, as far as I'm concerned.

Trying to break this habit, I've now put dishes in the Miele with scraping but no rinsing, and they came out okay. But mixing bowls that had egg and flour (from pasta) or flour and butter (from pastry) didn't, and had to be soaked to remove the gunk that had dried on. So I'm going back to rinsing. I'm still a freak. Oh well.

As far as loading goes, I'm convinced that appliance showrooms load their dishwashers with slightly smaller than normal dishes and glassware, much the way model houses use scaled down furniture to make the rooms seem larger (beware of that if you ever buy model-house furniture). Showroom wineglasses must be a helluva lot skinnier than mine are, for example. Yes, the Miele can get a lot of dishes in at one time, but not a lot of bowls, and the deeper they are the fewer fit. Which is true of any dishwasher, really. But be skeptical of extraordinary claims about how much stuff fits in, and think about how you use a dishwasher and what sorts of things you put in it before being swayed by such claims. I guess for a family of four or more the loading pattern works great, but since usually I'm cooking for two, only two dishes and/or bowls go in, and everything else is odd-sized stuff used in preparation rather than dining. All of which is to say, YMMV. But there's no doubt that the cavity is much larger than in the 11 year old Bosch.

What I do love about it so far is the flexibility. That upper cutlery tray does free up a lot more room on the bottom. The top rack can be set in a higher or lower position, so you can load small things on top to make room for really tall things on the bottom, for example. But the really cool thing is that you can raise/lower one side at a time, which helps odd-size pieces to fit in. Both upper and lower level racks have small partial racks for holding small items - the literature shows demitasse cups and such, but I've found it great for prep bowls and other small sized gadgets.

And it is truly quiet, though the 'normal' cycle is noisier than the 'light china' cycle.

Clearly it's way too soon to judge reliability, but so far I'm pleased with the choice.

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In restaurants/bars, the dishwashers/glasswashers are ridiculously fast (a few minutes). Although they may not be the most thorough, as long as you get all the food chunks rinsed off before loading, results are generally acceptable. These machines are also quite expensive (4K+). Is there any middle ground between these restaurant types (fast and expensive) and the typical home dishwasher (slow and cheap)? When hosting a dinner party, I'd love to be able to clean the plates/glasses from course 1 and have them ready for course 3 or 4.

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In restaurants/bars, the dishwashers/glasswashers are ridiculously fast (a few minutes). Although they may not be the most thorough, as long as you get all the food chunks rinsed off before loading, results are generally acceptable. These machines are also quite expensive (4K+). Is there any middle ground between these restaurant types (fast and expensive) and the typical home dishwasher (slow and cheap)? When hosting a dinner party, I'd love to be able to clean the plates/glasses from course 1 and have them ready for course 3 or 4.

I don't know of any that are close to that quick. Those industry dishwashers also use special detergents and sanitizers (like in beer making) to make the washing so quick.

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I don't know of any that are close to that quick. Those industry dishwashers also use special detergents and sanitizers (like in beer making) to make the washing so quick.

Also, the water temp is considerably higher than what you typically have at home.
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In restaurants/bars, the dishwashers/glasswashers are ridiculously fast (a few minutes). Although they may not be the most thorough, as long as you get all the food chunks rinsed off before loading, results are generally acceptable. These machines are also quite expensive (4K+). Is there any middle ground between these restaurant types (fast and expensive) and the typical home dishwasher (slow and cheap)? When hosting a dinner party, I'd love to be able to clean the plates/glasses from course 1 and have them ready for course 3 or 4.

And you could never put china in them or dishes that had ornamentation that wasn't glazed (which really you can't do with a dishwasher with a dry cycle either, but most modern dishwashers have cycles that don't have a dry cycle for this purpose) so you would have to be careful what plates you used.

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Is there any middle ground between these restaurant types (fast and expensive) and the typical home dishwasher (slow and cheap)? When hosting a dinner party, I'd love to be able to clean the plates/glasses from course 1 and have them ready for course 3 or 4.
Maybe a table top dishwasher is your solution? A quick google searched yielded this cool little gizmo. Others include larger tabletop models that might do the trick.
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All good to know. I've been informed off-thread that a particular Bosch model has a "quick" cycle that can handle the between-courses wash and is quiet enough to run during the party.

I've also just checked the bay that this would live in, and found that it's only 20" or so wide, which rules out the majority of built-in dishwashers (24" wide seems to be the standard). There are a few 18" options...or maybe a portable one? Whoever designed this apartment's kitchen is, well, not a cook.

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Haven't tried those, but I can recommend against the gel-encased ingredients tablets because they do not always completely dissolve in the wash cycle and end up gumming things up and/or creating a horrendous smell.

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Haven't tried those, but I can recommend against the gel-encased ingredients tablets because they do not always completely dissolve in the wash cycle and end up gumming things up and/or creating a horrendous smell.

As an anecdote to an anecdote, I haven't haven't had a problem using the combo powder/liquid in a gelcap for the past 2 years or so. Depends on the washer, maybe? Water temp? Brand of gelcap?

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I've been using the Finish tabs after reading good reviews. They are OK, but I'm thinking of trying Cascade's tabs because Costco has them on sale. Has anyone tried them?

I've been using them for quite sometime and they work much better than the powder I used before. Never used the Finish tabs so I can't compare the two, but Cascade tabs work well for me.

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As an anecdote to an anecdote, I haven't haven't had a problem using the combo powder/liquid in a gelcap for the past 2 years or so. Depends on the washer, maybe? Water temp? Brand of gelcap?

Okay, so it's official and public: My name is weezy and I have a crappy dishwasher.

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^ It could be the water. I've been reading a bit, mostly because I've been less than happy lately wiith our old dinosaur Maytag dishwasher, and the in depth reviews indicate that some brands (like Finish) don't perform as well in hard water. We have hard water, and a while back, the water in the heater was at about 140 degrees (we have a solar heater), and things were not super clean. That's why I thought I'd try another brand. After reading the posts above, maybe I need to use a longer cycle as well? Or buy something other than whiteware?

Edited to add a possibly-off-the-mark scientific thought. I wonder if the issue is the amount of solids that can dissolve in a given quantity of water. Hard water already has dissolved minerals in it, so maybe it can't absorb the detergent as well?

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^ I would venture combination of heat and amount of water. I've not trusted those tabs ever since I tried them and now use exclusively the Harris Teeter store brand dishwasher powder. It's worked great and mostly soda ash, so enviro-friendly. :-)

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I was planning on asking this question in a remodeling thread, but it seems apropos here, too. When designing a kitchen, should the dishwasher be to the right or the left of the sink if the user is right-handed? My wife and I have read differing "rules". But then there's also the school of thought that it doesn't matter and you'll get used to what you have.

Thoughts?

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I was planning on asking this question in a remodeling thread, but it seems apropos here, too. When designing a kitchen, should the dishwasher be to the right or the left of the sink if the user is right-handed? My wife and I have read differing "rules". But then there's also the school of thought that it doesn't matter and you'll get used to what you have.

Thoughts?

What I've seen is that the longest expanse of counterspace should be to the left of the sink for southpaws and to the right of the sink for right-handers. I suppose in most kitchen layouts, that would put the D/W to the dominant hand side of the sink.

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I was planning on asking this question in a remodeling thread, but it seems apropos here, too. When designing a kitchen, should the dishwasher be to the right or the left of the sink if the user is right-handed? My wife and I have read differing "rules". But then there's also the school of thought that it doesn't matter and you'll get used to what you have.

Thoughts?

It doesn't matter you will get used to it, or at least I did.
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Thread bump.

It turns out we need to replace the Kenmore dishwasher that we were hoping to save from the old kitchen to put in the newly remodeled version. As is often the case during construction, we found that the washer had been leaking some water over time, so we're trashing it. The last discussion on this thread regarding fave brands was in 2008, so I'm re-energizing the thread to ask if anything is new in your thinking or whether the brand you were excited about 5 years ago has burned you enough that you want to blow off some steam here. It seems that Bosch is the hot brand right now but we love, love, love our (expensive) Meile vacuum cleaner we've had for many years. Haven't started looking, yet, but wanted to hear what you all have to say.

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I just got a Samsung installed last week (HH Gregg, $439 on sale).  My verdict thus far:  Meh, at best.

It is extremely quiet, which is good.

But, it doesn't have a delayed start function -- my bad, I didn't check for that, but I miss it.  The shortest wash cycle is still an hour long and I don't think it doesn't a very good job cleaning.  The heavy wash cycle is 2 hours long, plus another hour or so for drying.

In addition, take a few things along to try loading into the racks.  I'm having a devil of a time finding the best stack for my dishes -- I'm having a hard time fitting in more than one lasagne type pan, for instance, if I have bowls in there, too.  Also, I  hate the silverware baskets going all the way down one side instead of up front & center.  I can't just open the door a crack and drop in a teaspoon.

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Thread bump.

It turns out we need to replace the Kenmore dishwasher that we were hoping to save from the old kitchen to put in the newly remodeled version. As is often the case during construction, we found that the washer had been leaking some water over time, so we're trashing it. The last discussion on this thread regarding fave brands was in 2008, so I'm re-energizing the thread to ask if anything is new in your thinking or whether the brand you were excited about 5 years ago has burned you enough that you want to blow off some steam here. It seems that Bosch is the hot brand right now but we love, love, love our (expensive) Meile vacuum cleaner we've had for many years. Haven't started looking, yet, but wanted to hear what you all have to say.

We had big problems with our Miele and finally caved (after several expensive repairs) and replaced it after only 6-7 years.  We now have a Bosch, which is already not getting our dishes clean.

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We have a $900 Bosch in our kitchen and like it OK, but in many ways prefer our old Kenmore because it is easier to load efficiently and less finicky with what you put into it. It seems that most DWs now have simply a filter system that you must clean regularly and that means you must carefully remove all solids before you load. Models with food grinders do not have these restrictions and therefore are far easier to maintain and less susceptible to the clogging of the filter that can cause dishes to remain dirty. I looked into this again recently and discovered that Kenmore does not make food-grinder models anymore; Kitchen Aid does, so I would suggest looking at KA very closely. It's often said the disadvantage of the grinder models is that they are noisier, but at the high end I don't think there's much of a difference. In fact, our new Bosch is less quiet than our old Kenmore was. And really look carefully at how the racks in the Bosch are designed and if they fit your daily needs. I find it a constant struggle to fill the space efficiently.

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We now have a Bosch, which is already not getting our dishes clean.  

We have a $900 Bosch in our kitchen and like it OK, but in many ways prefer our old Kenmore because it is easier to load efficiently and less finicky with what you put into it. 

Can ... I ... give this website a plug here?

Okay, no.

But I'm going to give our members a plug. Where else are you going to find this level of unbiased, critical discourse about an important, everyday household item?

Yes, you can probably dig up a website that thinks this brand isn't the Second Coming, but why bother? I already know from Pat and Banco (both of whom I trust implicitly) that I'd look twice, three times, before investing big money in a Bosch.

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This discussion is a little depressing.  I've been nursing an old Maytag along for several years now, just waiting for it to move on to that big kitchen in the sky.  It cleans the dishes beautifully, but it is making that "my motor is on the way out" noise, so we know it will need replacing soon.  Has anyone checked Consumer Reports?

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I have a Whirlpool "Silent Partner 1" that is about 3 years old, bought at Lowe's on sale. It is very quiet, does a good job cleaning and has the silverware caddy in the front door. Delay function allows 2,4 or 6 hour delay. It's made in Ohio. I like it very much. Not fancy, and brings no prestige factor, but it does the job.

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We have a $900 Bosch in our kitchen and like it OK, but in many ways prefer our old Kenmore because it is easier to load efficiently and less finicky with what you put into it. It seems that most DWs now have simply a filter system that you must clean regularly and that means you must carefully remove all solids before you load. Models with food grinders do not have these restrictions and therefore are far easier to maintain and less susceptible to the clogging of the filter that can cause dishes to remain dirty. I looked into this again recently and discovered that Kenmore does not make food-grinder models anymore; Kitchen Aid does, so I would suggest looking at KA very closely. It's often said the disadvantage of the grinder models is that they are noisier, but at the high end I don't think there's much of a difference. In fact, our new Bosch is less quiet than our old Kenmore was. And really look carefully at how the racks in the Bosch are designed and if they fit your daily needs. I find it a constant struggle to fill the space efficiently.

The design with the Bosch is a little weird.  We can't really figure out how to fill it efficiently either.  The prongs are spaced oddly in some places for fitting anything.  It's unclear why it's laid out the way it is.

Cleaning the filter didn't help with the problem of things not getting totally clean.  We're now back to scrubbing everything pretty well clean before putting it into the dishwasher.  That's something we always did way back when, but later dishwashers came with instructions saying things didn't need to be cleaned before going in.  Even so, it's not like we're putting in things covered with chunks of food.

All that said, the Bosch is overall better than the Miele was.

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What detergent is everyone using in the not-so-clean dishwashers?  Our does much better with the Cascade packets than it did with Finish.  Something to do with the hard water, I read.

We use the Finish powerball thingies. I think it's important not to use any kind of "gel" style detergents or packets that are encased in a soluble jacket. Both rely on gums or thickeners that build up in your DW and decrease its performance. I think Consumer Reports made this point some time ago.

BTW, Bosch usually tops out the CR reports, though I haven't looked recently. They are very well made machines. But I think they assign a heavy priority to water and energy efficiency which the European (esp. German) customer values perhaps more highly than most Americans do. We want something that scrubs our barbecue sauce and fried eggs off our plates and we don't want to dick around with it.

The higher-end Bosch models have a special compartment for water softener that allows you to compensate. They even come with a litmus paper to test your water so you know what setting to put it on. We did that when we got ours, but the test showed our water was fine as is. Deutsche Grí¼ndlichkeit.

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I would avoid Frigidaire dishwashers - ours from 2009 has needed several components replaced at about the 3 year mark, including the expensive electronic control board.  However, it works OK when it's working and has the food disposal.  Our Florida vacation condo has a Kenmore (made by Bosch) from 2012.  It is much quieter but doesn't have the food disposal so you have a filter you have to clean.  We haven't had any problems loading it.  I don't think we've used the turbo mode cleaners on it.  I would conditionally recommend it, based on not having had any repairs or complaints from tenants and we've been happy with it when we're there.  But we haven't been using it nearly every day like the Frigidaire at home.

We keep the Finish Powerball all-in-one tablets at both places.  They're rated a Consumer Reports Best Buy and can frequently be found at Costco on sale.  Lots of detergents got worse for a while after the phosphates ban came in, but the manufacturers finally are getting the new detergents right.

Currently Consumer Reports highest rated best buy dishwasher is the Bosch Ascenta SHX3AR7[5]UC.

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We have a Bosch that we have now had for probably over 6-7 years (I can't remember exactly) it still cleans dishes well, it isn't noisy and we haven't had any problems with it.  I really like it.  It's also easy to remove pieces to clean bigger items (the utensil pack and any prongs) the prongs also easily fold down.  I can actually get a lot in my dishwasher, I don't have a utensil rack though and wouldn't want it.  

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I'm in the early process of selecting new appliances and checked Consumer Reports -- Bosch, Kenmore, and a third (LG, Samsung?) topped out their list. Looking at the dish washers in the store, I'm inclined to stick with my stand by, Kenmore.

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