In Market for New Dishwasher. What Should I Buy? ****UPDATE****

I have been very pleased with my Kenmore Ultra Wash. I think we paid around $400 for it. Nothing real fancy, but it is all black which I wanted to match the rest of the appliances and it does a good job on the dishes. The only thing I have been a little disappointed, okay.. a lot.. is here lately I have noticed that the little door that holds the detergent doesn't always pop open during the proper time in the wash cycle therefore I have to keep an eye on it and open it manually.. Personally, I think the hinge on the door flap has gone bad and I am sure it can be replaced.. The dishwasher is about 3-4 yrs.old..I am sure just normal wear and tear or age on the hinge.. But, I am very pleased with the dishes coming out very clean and no spots... I use cascade or that electrolite..whatever detergent is on sale..
Good luck with all that!

We remodeled our kitchen in our old house before moving here, and had Kitchenaid everything. I wanted everything to match, all stainless steel, so that included what sounds like the exact dishwasher you just purchased. I thought it worked alright, until during one wash cycle a glass broke. We didn't realize this, but bits of the broken glass got caught in the motor and destroyed it. Our dishes were coming out dirty than when we put them in to be washed. We originally paid about $1,000 for the dishwasher, and it cost us over $600 to have it fixed. There should be a better screen or way of keeping bits out to protect the motor. After that, the dishwasher was never the same. My advice would be to be very carefull of breaking glass/dishware. After our experience, I don't think I would buy another Kitchen Aid dishwasher, the design just seems flawed.

We bought a frigidaire and it cleaned well, but the poles in the bottom that heat up and dry were very dangerous!! One of our daughters bottle lids fell during a wash and the poles were drying and it caught on melted the lid and started to catch on fire in the middle of the night while we were all asleep. It was under warranty and they were giving me a really hard time about fixing it. The finally replaced the drying poles, but the smell was so bad that the dishes were smelling burnt even after running cleaners through it. Finally, they agreed to replace it and we bought a Bosch with a child safety lock and all the buttons were on the very top so they were hidden under the counter. There was a vent that covered the heating poles and when anything fell to the bottom it wasn't melted. We love it and it cleans very well. You can even choose to do half a load and just load up the top rack. the top rack also adjusts up or down if you have something like a baking sheet to put in the bottom. sorry this was so long, but I just wanted to warn you about the drying poles that are exposed on most dishwashers. hope this helped.

I've had a Kitchen Aid for about a year and love it. I'm not sure which model it is but it's close to, or the, top of the line. Stainless tub, adjustable upper rack etc. I did buy the one with the extra knife/silverware rack at the very top. I took that thing out immediately. It takes up space and I just didn't use it. Kitchen Aid support has also been very good. They came out and adjusted our oven door, no charge, even though we installed the oven. They also shipped us a new cooktop as ours was loosing it's coating. We got ours at Best Buy and my husband is the one that talked with them about pricing since we bought several appliances. They were great. Hope this helps!

i have a kenmore elite dishwasher that is really a bosch just made for kenmore. it is really quiet and the water temp gets up to 170 so it truly sanitizes your dishes. it also makes its own hot water so it's good for the energy bill. we bought it at the great indoors and i think it was around $650.

You can't go wrong with Bosch- top of the line without the price tag. Shop for appliances at Sears or a specialty appliance store like Capital Distributing- you get the best overall product knowledge, better guarantees, and the best pick of all brands available. Appliances rank as such: Viking/Wolf/Dacor/Miele= top of the line with most expensive price tag; then Kitchen Aid/Jenn Air/Bosch- mid line & mid price range; then bottom of the line- Frigidaire & other no namers; be careful of GE- not necessarily a good product but high dollar price tag.

Happy Shopping & Good Luck,
D

TSF,

We just purchased a Frigidaire dishwasher (Aqua Surge w/Speed Clean) and we have been extremely happy with it. Frigidaire dishwashers didn't get great reviews from Consumer Reports, so we went to Lowe's not thinking of purchasing one. But when we got there, we saw the prices for Frigidaires were much lower than the highest rated Bosch, but with the same amenities. The Lowe's guy said that Frigidaire has worked out all the things that the reviewers said was wrong with them and now they work great. The dishwasher is super quiet and we don't even have to rinse the food off. It's been awesome.

Hope that helps!
A.