Dishwasher Tip of the Day

Lots of lots of dishwashers, but how do you pick? What do you need?

These days, being 2008, all dishwashers clean pretty well. They are all reasonably quiet, aka. quieter then your old dishwasher. So you have the basics covered. There is one other hidden bit to watch out for (da da dun): squishy racks. That right, squishy racks. The racks that hold the dishes in place. On the lower end models, the coating on the racks, over time can crack and flack off. That leaves rusting metal exposed in your dishwasher, touching your otherwise clean dishes.


Dishwasher with minor rack damage, showing a little bit of rust

In some cases in can get so bad that it may ruin and entire set of dishes but covering them in rust if your continue to use the dishwasher with large amounts of rust exposed. The solution is to look for racks you can't squish with your fingernail. When that is the case, you've likely found racks with a nylon coating.

Also, Bosch has been long esteemed as making some of the quietest dishwashers out there. They achieve this by doing something a little bit different. Instead of running the top and bottom spinny-water-shooty-thingies at the same time, they alternate. You may or may not like the idea of that. The other way they do that is by being really expensive and using three layers of insulation. But recently they have started to make cheaper models, and even the less expensive models have gotten good reviews.

Consumer Reports has some additional notes on buying a dishwasher.