Dishwasher recommendations?

I hate to buy appliances, it seems like the newer ones don't have the long-term reliability that we would have expected in the past.
 

I need a new dishwasher, anyone have suggestions?

Don't know about new stuff, but we are happy with our Amana dishwasher, 10 years with no problems.  Our dryer is also Amana, also no problems, and so is our washing machine.  None are fancy versions, just the basics.  I'm a believer in simple for reliability, don't need or want a million different cycles.

This seems to come up every year or so and Bosch is always the winner. 

About a month ago, I brought home a Maytag and so far it's amazing.  The sound rating isn't as quiet as others - 50 dBa - but it's basically silent, even directly under it.  Stainless tub, chopper blades, a removable filter basket right in the front, and nylon coatings on the racks.  My mom & dad have a Bosch and it's a great unit.  Slightly quieter than the Maytag and it has a third rack at the top for the silverware.  It's nice, but it's also about $400 more.  And I don't think it's $400 nicer.

There are 9 people in my household.  Nine.  We dirty a lot of dishes and the dishwasher routinely gets ran 3 times a day.  We've bought new & used of several different types and brands over the years.

Trust me, a gently used Bosch is the answer.

(The only downside to Bosch is no heating element to dry the dishes.  We just pop the door open after the cycle and let them air dry)

Bosch has a terrible rack design too. The kitchenaide I replaced with a Bosch last year on forum recommendation could fit way more stuff in at a time and had heated drying. Liked it a lot better than the $1100 Bosch. About the same noise level as well. 

Bosch

In reply to Indy - Guy :

Bosch says keep the door closed and the heat from the cycle dries them quicker. Kitchen Aid used to sell against no heating element, now 80% of their models don't have one...

Our current dishwasher is a Bosch 500 with the 3rd rack. It's pretty awesome. 

I replaced a high-end Kitchenaid (which was perhaps the world's worst ever piece of product design) with the $1100 Bosch model about a year ago.  The only gripe I have with the Bosch is the racks, but part of that is getting used to loading it differently.  At first, I thought the skinny top 3rd rack was useless, but I'm finding things to put up there and it's a pretty handy feature.  Both dishwashers were quiet, the Bosch almost amazingly so. 

My recommendation is Bosch, but the cheapskate in me would also be looking at whatever Costco is selling in the $600 range.

In the last 3 places I've lived I have replaced the plastic tub dishwashers with models that had stainless tubs.  There is a huge reduction in noise going from plastic to steel; I'd never go back to plastic.

I am sure you all know, but at least on my Bosch, the racks are height adjustable. You can move them up/down with a button on the side. 

Bosch dishwasher pump: 

Viking pump:

I kinda love my viking dishwasher. 

Our 10 year old KitchenAid started acting up recently and repeated diagnostics and parts cannon blasts failed to get it to work repeatably.  Wife liked the three rack Bosch units so that's what we have now.  Very quiet though racks to some time to get used to.  

I recommend the electro-hydro-mechanical types of dishwashers, because they make their biological back-ups less grumpy.

I'm probably the only person to stump for GE. I paid a little bit more for mine to get stainless inside rather than ceramic but its 44 db of superb washing. I installed it myself 3 years ago and the only downside I have found is where you pour the liquid jet dry into starts to leak out a bit right before it gets full. It convinced me to get a GE range and front load washer and dryer. All were great out of the box except for the clothes washer. We fought with the supplier through 4 units. The first was DOA the 2nd and third made crunching sounds when washing and the 4th is good.

Hit up a website like CNET and search.  The problem I find is that manufacturers keep upping their game, which means they're adding features and tweaking performance.  It seems like every few months the top rated washer is a GE/Bosch/Whirlpool/whatever.

I buy appliances like I buy cars.  I don't buy new, and I research the crap out of them.  Any test website can take 10 brand new dishwashers, run some dishes through, and test how clean the dishes are.  They can report about how they like the buttons, how well it cleaned peanut butter off a plate, and how it looks, but they can't report about how well they work after 30, 90, or 300 loads.  CNET has unbiased ratings on some used appliances, but the real thing you can look at is how new brands performed over the years.  You might find that Bosch is consistently good while Kenmore has been up and down.  When I bought a new dishwasher with the ex in 2012, Bosch was the favorite.  When I bought a used one for my house in 2018, I got a used GE that was a darling for its time.

Above all, look at the trends for parts availability.  Kenmore (and related) is notorious for proprietary parts.  Most dishwashers have a generic hookup for things like water supply and drain, but Kenmore likes to make you buy only their parts.  They make adapters, but I don't like to play those games.  All of them drop parts supply after a while, but Kenmore makes it so hard to use regular, $10 hoses from Home Depot.

Given the fact that we all likely have an upscale neighborhood in our area, there is someone selling a top-notch appliance with high reliability ratings somewhere near you.  There is someone in everyone's neighborhood who bought a dishwasher three years ago and then did a kitchen renovation and they just have to have the latest trend in smudge-free stainless (or insert whatever trend)

Having said all that rant, I ended up with a used GE.  It works.  It cleans dishes.  It doesn't have bells and whistles.  It takes in hot water, squirts it on dishes, and shuts off.  I paid $100 for it because some swanky couple 20 miles away decided that they didn't want black appliances anymore.  Fortunately, I did.

I've been happy with our LG. The tub is stainless, and the upper rack is adjustable, and it's quiet enough that I need to pay attention to know if it's running once the fill cycle ends. 

I think it was about $400-500 several years ago so it's probably more now. 

Depending on settings the cycle times can be long (3.5 hours for heavy and extra dry, 2 hours for normal) due to lack of heating element, but it does have a night dry setting to cycle a fan periodically and move air around the tub. I normally run it at bed time so the cycle time isn't an issue  

The only times I have trouble with something not coming clean is if someone loads it in a way that the arms aren't able to rotate.

Any new recommendations or is Bosch still the consensus? 

When you go shopping, take a couple of your most used dishes with you and see how they fit in the racks. We did that and had to eliminate some of the brands because they were just not designed well enough to accommodate our kitchenware. That was more important then getting a few months extra life out of one.

I have a Whirlpool. My parents coincidentally bought the same one at around the same time. We all love it. If you don't go with Bosch, you can confidently go with Whirlpool. I think that's basically their slogan: "Whirlpool: For when you don't buy Bosch."

We replaced a Samsung that I installed a year and a half prior because the Samsung: top rack rusted immediately, turning into dirt and falling apart; bottom rack rusted almost immediately after that (prongs breaking off and falling into the tub); and the front door seal turned to schmoo, melted, and started leaking. ALSO, the feet on the Samsung were really large plastic threaded bolts that would, over the course of a cycle or two, work their way in and unlevel the damn thing, thus ripping the bolts out of the cabinets on the side. Absolute trash. The warranty people were really good, though, because they told me that, since the rust didn't start causing it to fall apart until the 13 month mark, they wouldn't warranty it.

In case you're wondering whether my water is basically battery acid, no, I don't think it is. My previous dish washer was at least five years old, and it was perfectly-functional when we replaced it. The Whirlpool has already exceeded the lifespan of the Samsung with no issues at all.

We are looking at buying new appliances later this year, or next year. And me being the stickler for things matching, they will all be the same brand and model line so they match. The Bosch dishwasher in my old apartment was awesome............the electric range was terrible. The cheap GE range that came in our house is 4x better at 1/4 the price. 

We also have a Samsung washer and dryer (not front loaders) that have been flawless for almost 8 years since we purchased them new. And see people constantly crap on them for how bad they are. So I honestly have no idea what to think anymore.

In reply to z31maniac :

I'm the opposite; I want the best appliance for each application, so I think every single one of my appliances is a different brand. We have a Wolfe range, Bosch dishwasher, Panasonic built-in microwave, and a Whirlpool refrigerator. Oh! One repeat, our wall oven is Bosch as well, and I admit I bought that one because it's what would fit the opening I didn't want to resize.

@AWSX1686: Bosch still gets recommended for dishwashers. They've had a bit of drama just this week as the new 500 series dishwashers only make certain functions available in the app, meaning you have to connect the DW to your network and install an app on your phone, but I think it's stuff like the "rinse only" cycle which I've literally never used on my 800 series. Otherwise I haven't heard anything bad about them. RevRico didn't like his (as mentioned above), but I'm still happy with ours after at least 15 years of use.

We have a small town appliance dealer close to us and we buy all our appliances there. We just replaced our 15yr old Frigidaire with another, almost exactly the same for $400CDN. The old one was still working but developed a small leak and I didn't want to bother fixing a 15 year old machine.

I believe the appliance store machines are better quality than the box store machines

z31maniac said:

We are looking at buying new appliances later this year, or next year. And me being the stickler for things matching, they will all be the same brand and model line so they match. The Bosch dishwasher in my old apartment was awesome............the electric range was terrible. The cheap GE range that came in our house is 4x better at 1/4 the price. 

We also have a Samsung washer and dryer (not front loaders) that have been flawless for almost 8 years since we purchased them new. And see people constantly crap on them for how bad they are. So I honestly have no idea what to think anymore.

 

Yeah, see, I bought the front-loader Samsung washer and dryer around the same time that we bought the dish washer, and those things have been excellent! Samsung electronics are great, too. But their dish washers have a reputation, I guess.