The dishwasher died yesterday. It’s a Kitchenaid that’s only six years old. The Bosch that preceded it lasted eight years, and so did the Bosch before it. According to Consumer Reports, Bosch is the most reliable brand. My definition of reliability is fifteen years, which happens to be age of the Maytag washer and dryer pair I bought for $700 on a no sales tax weekend in 2008.
Samsung is supposed to be one of the less reliable brands, but that’s what I bought today for $399 at Lowes. CA says it cleans and dries very well, and I like the handle. I’m less enamored of the door’s pulley mechanism as seen in the photo. Here comes the fourth dishwasher since starting this weblog!
The dead Kitchenaid dishwasher has the same pulley/spring arrangement as the Samsung.
I wish I could remember how long we’ve had our Bosch. It’s been pretty good. We had originally an old Kenmore that worked fine, but was noisy. It had travelled with us from our rental unit in Belmont, and when we bought it, it was a portable unit. It lived that way in our house until we remodeled the kitchen, at which point we (well, our contractor…) removed it from its standalone cabinet, and installed the kit (still available, like 10+ years later from Sears) to transform it into an under-cabinet unit. When another friend was remodeling their kitchen, they gifted us their “temporary” dishwasher, which they had purchased when theirs failed, but it was only intended to tide them over until they got a nice new one with the remodel.
It was almost new, and did run a bit quieter than the old kenmore, but it did *not* clean the dishes as well! So frustrating to feel like we’d moved backwards. The Bosch has been super quiet, and also very effective. Every so often it reminds us that we need to clean out the filter by leaving things filmy, but when we keep up with it, it’s great