Best Dishwasher for 2020

A dishwasher is a phenomenal investment. Compared with hand-washing dishes, it saves you time and effort, gets your dishes cleaner, shrinks your utility bill, and conserves energy and water. It’s a win on so many fronts. If you own your home and have the means, buy a dishwasher.

Today’s machines are so, so much more efficient than washing dishes by hand. A normal wash cycle with the Bosch 300 uses about 2.9 gallons of water and 1¼ kilowatt-hours of energy. Hand-washing a full load’s worth of dishes will guzzle about 27 gallons of water and burn the equivalent of 2.7 kilowatt-hours to heat it. You’ll save about 5,000 gallons of water and the equivalent of 300 kilowatt-hours of energy per year if you run the dishwasher four times per week. That’ll shave $66 off your utility bill, based on national-average prices.

Dishwashers are also better at sanitizing your dishes because they use much-hotter water than any person could tolerate with hand-washing. Some dishwashers can reach up to 160 degrees Fahrenheit on specialty cycles, which is hot enough to kill the huge majority of germs outright. On a normal cycle, 130 °F is typical (hotter than the 120 °F water that comes out of most taps, and hotter than most people’s pain threshold of 106 °F). Though that’s not quite enough to destroy microbes on its own, the extra heat makes it easier for the detergent to loosen the organic matter stuck to your dishes, so that it can wash away.

Of course, a dishwasher is also super convenient. Thanks to the new enzymatic detergents that came out earlier this decade, you don’t even need to prewash your dishes anymore. If a dishwasher saves you just one hour per week (and that’s a bare-minimum estimate) you get back two extra days per year to do anything else with your life. Plus, your wet, pruny hands and sore lower back will thank you.

We started by making a list of every dishwasher we could find. Dating back to 2014, we’ve tracked 230 distinct models (not counting color variants), and around 170 of them are still sold widely. Here’s how we sorted through them:

Crucial, bare-minimum features

First, we eliminated any models that didn’t meet the basic spec requirements that our experts told us to look for. Those must-have features include:

• Nylon-coated racks: Nylon is less likely than vinyl or PVC to crack over time and expose the wire frame underneath.
• A soil sensor: Also known as a turbidity sensor, it tells your dishwasher to extend or end the cycle depending on how much gunk is floating in the wash water.
• A stainless steel tub: This dampens the noise and speeds up the drying process compared with a plastic tub. In theory, steel tubs also last longer.

Very few models are missing the first two features anymore, but dozens of models still use plastic tubs. We cut them all from contention.

Important, useful features

Then we looked for the features that make dishwashers great, setting the best models apart from the pack.

• Flexible and intuitive racking: A height-adjustable upper (or middle) rack and a couple of sets of folding tines help make space for big and tall items like pots, trays, and large bowls. A third rack for utensils and cooking tools frees up room on lower racks, and keeps them uncluttered. We also paid some attention to the rack layout and tine spacing. Some racks have obvious zones—for example, a row of tines for bowls—to maximize the capacity. Other racks are more free-form. We tend to favor the zone approach, though it does have some downsides.
• Quiet operation: Anything less than 45 decibels is basically inaudible unless you’re standing right next to the machine. That’s as quiet as the background noise in a suburb at night, so if you’re a room away, you almost certainly won’t be able to hear it. Most dishwashers today are very quiet, but it’s easy enough to find one that’s practically silent.
• A good reputation for reliability and customer service: Yale Appliance publishes one-year repair rates, based on its in-house service records. Owner reviews are a good way to find out if there are widespread problems with particular models, and if the brand provides good service under warranty. All of these sources have their limitations, but when they’re combined, they add up to a reasonably accurate picture.

Less-important features

Some features or performance metrics seem important—like capacity or cleaning performance—but are actually so similar from model to model that they’re not worth fussing over. Others are a matter of personal preference. And a few are just bloat, adding no real value. We double-checked to make sure that our favorite models weren’t energy hogs or especially crappy cleaners, but for the most part, these criteria didn’t sway our decisions too much one way or the other.

• Cleaning ability: Most of today’s dishwashers are fantastic cleaners when you use them correctly. At Reviewed.com, most models pass cleaning tests with flying colors. “We load the dishwashers properly, and we load them with filthy, filthy dishes—filthier than you would ever see in your own home. And 90 percent of the dishes come out 100 percent clean, probably even more than that,” former editor-in-chief Keith Barry told us a few years ago. Some wash-arm designs might work slightly better than others, and targeted spraying jets may help in some edge cases. But the basic designs work very well already, so we didn’t favor any extras.
• Drying style: About half of modern dishwashers have a heat-dry option, which essentially bakes any moisture off of the dishes. The other half are designed to rely on condensation, without adding extra heat after the final rinse. Heat drying works better on plastic but uses noticeably more energy. As long as you use rinse aid (which you really should now), condensation drying is totally effective for metal and ceramic, and uses very little additional energy. We do not favor either style, but make recommendations for both types, depending on your preferences.
• Cycles and options: Most people only ever use the normal/auto, heavy, and rinse cycles. Most dishwashers have more settings than that, and we slightly favored models with an option to run a faster, normal-powered cycle (at the expense of using more water and energy), but otherwise we didn’t pay much attention to these. In general, normal wash cycles are around 2 to 2½ hours long.
• Advertised capacity: This is measured in number of place settings. It’s an antiquated concept that doesn’t represent modern habit, like washing pots, trays, and cooking tools alongside bowls, plates, glasses, and utensils. So we didn’t pay much attention to this number. Most dishwashers hold somewhere between 14 and 16 place settings anyway.
• Efficiency: We didn’t prioritize this, because they’re all very efficient. Our only criteria was an Energy Star badge, and the vast majority of dishwashers qualify for it. To give you an idea of how marginal the efficiency advantages have become: The most efficient dishwasher (which is also one of the most expensive) will save maybe $10 of electricity per year compared with a typical Energy Star model, and less than 1 gallon of water per normal cycle.
• Waste disposal: Most dishwashers now use a filter to catch food particles. Filters almost never break, need to be cleaned only a couple of times per year, and help prevent food from redepositing onto dishes mid-cycle. Some people prefer dishwashers with a masticator (or grinder) to pulverize the food waste, but only a handful of models still have them anyway. This feature did not sway our picks one way or the other.
• Warranty: Most dishwashers come with a one-year warranty covering parts and labor. Some companies offer longer warranties on certain parts—though they’re not the parts that tend to break often. The cost of labor is rarely covered beyond the first year anyway.

The sweet spot for a dishwasher with all of the crucial and useful features but minimal bloat is between $650 and $850. The best models in this range are reliable, with plenty of flexible and easy-to-load rack space, and are functionally silent if you’re a room away.

You can get a perfectly good dishwasher for less money. They just tend to be a bit louder, or have fewer racking features. But below $450, it’s hard to find a washer that meets our main criteria for low noise, easy racking features, solid construction, and a stainless tub. They’re mostly plastic-tub models, and some of them don’t even have soil sensors.

Spending more can get you a few extra handy racking features, super-fast wash cycles, aesthetic improvements, and in a few cases, better reliability and longevity.

The racks are the 300 Series’s biggest advantage over its competitors. They’re larger, more adjustable, and easier to load than the others’. That’s useful if you have a big family or host a lot of get-togethers and want to be able to clean a huge pile of dishes in one go. But even if you have fewer dishes to clean, the extra rack space gives you some wiggle room to load large or odd-shaped items properly, so that they can get totally clean.

Most of the extra capacity and loading flexibility comes from the V-shaped third rack tucked at the top of the tub. We’ve read dozens of owner reviews that cite the third rack as the best feature in the 300 Series and other dishwashers. People find all kinds of different uses for them. Third racks are usually shallow trays meant for utensils, and that’s certainly one way to use this rack. That’ll let you take out the regular cutlery basket on the bottom rack to free up space for plates and pots. But the third rack in the 300 Series has a dip in the center that opens up extra space for spatulas, whisks, measuring cups, sippy-cup lids, and so on—slightly taller items that don’t have an obvious spot in the lower racks, where extra bowls and cups could make better use of the space. Most other third racks at this price are totally flat, which is fine for utensils but can’t always fit the cooking tools.

The 300 Series also has a handy height-adjustment feature on the middle rack (called RackMatic) that can open space for tall items, even in a tightly packed load. It has three height settings that you can adjust independently on either side, for a total of nine possible positions. So if you have a big pot and long-stem glasses that you need to fit into the same load, you can set the middle rack at a slant so that there’s enough clearance for both, even with the third rack in place. Most dishwashers at this price have adjustable middle racks, but they have only two settings: up or down, both sides fixed at the same height. We also find that the RackMatic feature adjusts more smoothly than other height-changing racks at this price.

If the 300 Series does need a repair, it’s covered by one of the better warranties and more agreeable customer service departments in the industry. Bosch covers parts and labor for a year, which is standard among most brands. It takes the less common step of covering the microprocessor (or printed circuit board) and racks for up to five years, and the tub for the lifetime of the unit, though not the cost of labor. That’s similar to KitchenAid’s warranty plan. The quality of customer service is harder to pin down, but from what we can tell by reading through thousands of owner reviews over the years, Bosch customer service seems to get more compliments and fewer complaints than that of some competing brands. It’s certainly not perfect, but the company seems to send technicians and offer to cover repairs more readily than some other brands do.

Running at a volume of just 44 decibels, the 300 Series is as quiet as a dishwasher really needs to be. Most people will barely be able to hear it even while they’re standing in the same room, and almost nobody will be able to hear it from a room away. It’s quieter than the typical background noise in a quiet suburb at night. Some owners have written that their Bosch dishwashers are so quiet, they at first couldn’t tell if they’d actually turned their machine on. Because the 300 Series models can be so hard to hear, most of the models with integrated (hidden) controls project a red dot on the floor to let you know that they’re running. Plenty of dishwashers are whisper-quiet now, but the 300 Series is still quieter than most of its competitors by a few decibels.

Beyond the usual normal/auto, heavy, and rinse settings, most dishwashers’ extra wash cycles or options aren’t usually useful (or used). But the 300 Series has a couple that some people might actually find worthwhile. The Speed60 cycle can wash and dry dishes in about an hour, with about the same strength as a normal wash cycle. That’s less than half the time of a typical normal cycle (though it uses a bunch more water and energy). We’re not aware of other dishwashers at this price that can pull that off. It also has an extra-dry option, which is supposed to help dry plastic (more on that in the next section). We haven’t been able to test it ourselves, and none of the reviews we’ve read so far mention anything about it.

All dishwashers are very efficient, and the 300 Series slides right into the middle of that efficient pack. It uses about 2.9 gallons of water per load in a normal cycle, beating the Energy Star standard of 3½ gallons per load. And it’s estimated to use about 269 kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, which is typical for midrange dishwashers, and slips in under the 270-kilowatt-hour limit for Energy Star certification. (That’s actually slightly more energy than the older Bosch models used, we’re not positive why.) A few midrange machines and several very high-end washers use even less energy, but very few use less water.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

The most common complaint about Bosch dishwashers (and condenser-dry dishwashers in general) is that they aren’t very good at drying plastics. Plastic cools off too fast for the moisture to get a chance to evaporate on its own at the end of a cycle.

Some people complain that the Bosch takes too long to run, but it’s perfectly normal—cycle times are relatively consistent across all dishwashers (a little longer than two hours, usually). The Bosch tacks on an extra 15 minutes of drying time if you don’t add rinse aid in order to compensate for the slower drying process. Most people who have condenser-drying dishwashers are perfectly happy with them. But if it’s going to drive you nuts, get a dishwasher with a heat-dry option, like this KitchenAid that we like. That’ll pretty much guarantee bone-dry dishes at the end of a cycle.

Some owners have pointed out that Bosch racks make it tough to efficiently load deep cereal bowls. It isn’t that Bosch dishwashers have less space, it’s just that the tines are laid out for thinner bowls. At home, I deal with this by just skipping tines. It cuts the usable capacity a bit but my cereal bowls always load fine and come out clean. It’s annoying about once a month when I have a really full load, but the rest of the time I don’t even think about it. Some people find it hard to get comfortable with the design though, so if it’ll be a dealbreaker for you, check out this KitchenAid that we also like.

As handy as we think the third rack on the 300 Series can be, some people don’t like it. It does take longer to individually notch utensils into the third rack than to just dump them into the regular lower-rack cutlery basket. Some people wash only a traditional mix of plates, cups, and utensils, so the room on the third rack for odd-shaped tools doesn’t mean much to them. And the third rack can also get in the way of tall items on the middle rack, though we think that’ll be pretty uncommon with the 300 Series’s adjustable rack.

Our feeling is that if you won’t need the third rack very often, you can always just take it out, and slide it back in as needed. There’s no two-rack dishwasher at this price that we’d recommend over the 300 Series, so look at the third rack like a toss-in feature, if that makes you more comfortable.

Like the vast majority of new dishwashers sold today, the Bosch 300 Series has a mesh filter to catch big chunks of food so that they don’t redeposit on your dishes or clog up the pumps or jets in your dishwasher. Bosch recommends washing off the filter in your kitchen sink for about one minute once per month, but you can usually stretch it out to a few months between cleanings (I do) and still maintain top performance. If you can’t stand the idea of cleaning a filter, a couple of decent alternatives are available, but we promise that maintaining your filter is not a big deal.

Variants

The 300 Series (our main pick) comes in 17 variants. The differences are mostly aesthetic, and they all perform identically. The best-selling variant has visible controls and a recessed handle with a stainless finish. (That’s the one we’ve linked to most often in this guide.) But they also come in black, white, or panel-ready finishes, and with scoop handles or bar handles.

Some retailer-specific models come with extra features, but most of them aren’t very important. Young children might mess with the buttons on front-control models, or hang from the bar handle like a jungle gym. But apart from those practical considerations, your choice should mostly boil down to personal taste, so you should pick whatever you’re comfortable with. Here’s a chart to help you sort through all the options

The KitchenAid KDTM354ESS is another great dishwasher that’s better at drying plastic than our main pick. Some people also think it’s better at neatly holding cereal bowls. However, it might be less reliable than our main pick, and its racks aren’t quite as versatile overall.

The KDTM354ESS has a heat-dry option, which is its most obvious difference from the Bosch 300. If you have a lot of plastic dishes and want them to be bone-dry right at the end of a cycle, the heat-dry option (labeled as ProDry on the control panel) can do that. It’s also useful for sanitizing bottles and cans for DIY projects. On the downside, it uses more energy than just letting moisture evaporate and drip off the dishes, though you don’t need to use the heat-dry option with every load. If most of your dishes are ceramic and metal, heat drying isn’t much of an advantage over condenser drying (like the Bosch). But if you strongly prefer a heat-dry option, the KDTM354ESS is the best value of the bunch.

It’s also easier to load deep cereal bowls into the KDTM354ESS. The tines are just arranged better for this purpose than the Bosch 300 Series’s. For some people, it’s an important-enough reason to pick KitchenAid over Bosch.

The KDTM354ESS also has a slightly deeper tub than our main pick, and an array of targeted jets on the back of the tub (called ProScrub), which can make it a little bit easier to fit and thoroughly clean big casserole dishes or similar wares.

According to the evidence we’ve seen, KitchenAid dishwashers have been less reliable than Bosch dishwashers over the past few years. But that seems to have changed recently. Yale Appliance found a one-year repair rate of 9.5 percent from 2017 through the early part of 2018, which is similar to what we’ve seen for Bosch. The owner reviews for the KDTM354ESS itself have consistently been excellent, with an average rating of 4.6 stars (out of five) across more than 2,100 reviews at Home Depot. That’s a sign that it should be a reliable machine.

For most people, the KDTM354ESS probably won’t hold as many dishes as our main pick, and might be trickier to load neatly. It has no third rack, so you’ll need to find space for utensils, cooking tools, and other small items on the other racks. The middle rack adjusts to only two positions total—up or down. Though we’re skeptical of advertised capacities, it’s worth pointing out that our main pick (the Bosch) can apparently hold 16 place settings, whereas the KDTM354ESS holds 15. More people, more of the time, will be able to fit more items into the Bosch.

At 44 decibels, the KDTM354ESS is the same volume as the Bosch 300, and should also be practically silent from one room away.

Like the Bosch, the KDTM354ESS meets Energy Star water- and energy-efficiency standards (though it uses more than a half-gallon of extra water per cycle). Both models have similar cleaning cycles and options, too. However, the KitchenAid usually costs a couple hundred more than the basic Bosch model.

This dishwasher is available in stainless steel (KDTM354ESS), which is the more popular option, and in black stainless (KDTM354EBS), which usually costs extra. The slightly older KDTM354DSS is also still widely available, and is essentially the same dishwasher. The KDPM354GPS is a newer version of this dishwasher, with a recessed pocket handle and a specialized finish (called PrintShield) that supposedly resists fingerprints. It, too, is available in black stainless (KDPM354GBS). Otherwise it’s basically the same machine.

As far as we can tell, Miele dishwashers are the longest-lasting dishwashers you can buy. No independent sources publish any data about long-term reliability. But word-of-mouth from around the industry suggests that Miele makes the sturdiest machines. The Miele dishwasher in Wirecutter’s test kitchen is about 14 years old, and it just keeps running. A few Wirecutter staff members (or their families) own Miele dishwashers; one of those machines is also 14 years old (and has never needed repairs) and another is 17 years old (some repairs needed). Chris Zeisler of Repair Clinic, a resource for spare appliance parts and DIY repair instructions, told us that today’s typical dishwashers, like the other picks in this guide, will last eight to 10 years with proper upkeep. Miele claims that it builds its products to last for 20 years of average use, and we think that’s accurate. The company has made that claim for long enough that it would’ve been exposed by now if it were false.

So by the numbers, you’d buy two dishwashers in the same amount of time as you’d own one Miele. Depending on any repairs, you may or may not save money with a Miele in the long term. But it’s actually a strong possibility. In the short term, Miele dishwashers are just about as reliable as the other top brands. According to Yale Appliance, Miele dishwashers have a one-year service rate of just 5.95 percent.

The Classic Plus G4998SCViSF has a feature set that’s pretty similar to our Bosch and KitchenAid picks’, including an adjustable middle rack, a few sets of folding tines, and a short-cycle option that cuts the run time to about 100 minutes. It’s similarly quiet—actually a little quieter at 42 decibels, though they’re all so hushed that it hardly matters. More similar to the Bosch, it is a condenser-dry model, though it actually draws in cold air from outside of the dishwasher to speed up the process, so it might be more effective at drying plastic than our main pick. Like most dishwashers, it uses a filter to capture food particles. It also has a tray where you can (optionally) add water-softening salts, which can really improve performance and longevity if you have hard water.

Some people find that, like Bosch dishwashers, the Miele’s racks aren’t so well-suited to certain kinds of American-style dishes, like deep cereal bowls and large plates. The G4998SCViSF comes with an adjustable third rack, though, that will slide to accommodate taller items in the middle rack, or drop down to make space for larger utensils like whisks. You can also adjust the height of the middle basket to accommodate tall items as necessary. The Miele user manual (PDF, pages 28 and 29) says that you can adjust the middle basket on a tilted angle to accommodate plates up to 13¾ inches. We think that between the two adjustable racks you should be able to accommodate a wide range of dishware in various sizes.

If a Miele dishwasher does need repairs at some point outside of the one-year warranty, which is likely, it might cost more than service for other brands. It’s sort of like owning a German car: You need to go to the specialty technician, where the time and parts cost extra. Miele’s service network is also a little narrower than other brands’, so before you buy, you should check to see if you live somewhere Miele has a presence. And as reliable as Miele dishwashers are, there is always a chance (as with any appliance from any brand) that your particular unit will give you trouble, so brace yourself for that possibility.

If you need a narrower dishwasher designed for an 18-inch cutout, the Bosch 300 Series SPE53U55UC is a quiet, effective, reasonably priced pick. For anyone with enough space, the full-size dishwasher is the obvious choice—these 18-inch models don’t cost any less, they’re simply smaller.

We scoped out about 20 other compact dishwashers from Arctic King, Asko, Avanti, Blomberg, Beko, Danby, Edgestar, Electrolux, Fagor, Frigidaire, GE, Kenmore, Miele, Smeg, Summit, and Whirlpool. In the end, we think that Bosch is the best bet for a reliable, full-featured compact model that performs like the best standard-size machines without veering into the luxury price range.

The SPE53U55UC is sort of like a narrower version of our main pick, just without the third rack. It does have the great nine-position adjustable upper rack, and some folding tines, which makes it more flexible than most compact dishwashers. Overall, it holds about half as much as a full-size, 24-inch model can, but that’s to be expected based on the size. It’s a condenser-dry model with a filter. It uses a bit less water and energy than full-size models. We expect the cleaning performance to be just as effective. It even has a tray for water-softening salts, which helps smooth out any performance problems caused by mineral-rich water supplies.