Three Dish Up Some Cheap May Deals [PATCHED]

The KitchenAid unseated our longtime top pick, the Polder 4-Piece Advantage Dish Rack System. Although this dish rack could hold a substantial amount of dishes, ultimately it was subpar in comparison with current dish rack offerings. The wires screeched every time we loaded thicker dishes into it during our 2020 tests, and with open sides, it sometimes failed to prevent dishes from falling out.

But we still sought out the very best cleaners because they let you get away with using cheaper or gentler detergents, loading extra-crusty dishes, or running the quick cycle even with dishes that are pretty gnarly. The best cleaners might also offset some of the challenges posed by hard water (which makes detergents less effective).

The Bosch dishwashers did well with even the most ridiculous messes, including dried-on refried beans and cheese, plus burnt-on brownie batter in the bottom of a mug, loaded in the farthest corners of the top rack. This was true even when we used the cheapest powdered detergent we could find at the corner store near our office in Long Island City, New York.

Whirlpool Corporation sells a few dozen dishwasher models under the Whirlpool, Maytag, KitchenAid, Amana, and JennAir brands. It also makes all the dishwashers for IKEA and at least some for the Kenmore brand.

AGA, Bertazzoni, Forza, Smeg, Verona, and Viking are all noteworthy stove makers that, as best we can tell, have slapped their brand labels onto dishwashers made by some other company so that they can offer a matching dishwasher when you spend $2,000 or more on one of their ranges.

Egg yolk, oatmeal, yogurt, beans and cheese, and peanut butter emerged as some of the stubbornest soils that are regularly found in a dishwasher, so we designed our cleaning test around them. We microwaved egg yolks onto some plates and spread a gooey mixture of beans and cheese onto others. We coated bowls separately with oatmeal and yogurt. And we dirtied silverware with each of the aforementioned soils.

We learned that detergent makes a huge difference in dishwasher performance, so we repeated our test loads using three different kinds of detergent: Cascade Complete (the best-selling dishwasher detergent on Amazon, costing about 22¢ per load at the time of writing), Finish Quantum (a higher-end competitor to Cascade Complete, about 27¢ per load at the time of writing), and Great Value Automatic Dishwasher Powder (a generic powder formula from the corner grocery near our office, about 5¢ per load at the time of writing). The best dishwashers did a great job with the cheap powder alone, while others struggled until we tried one of the better formulas. We ran each cycle with each of these detergents at least once.