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dishwasher
Jan. 21st, 2023 12:38 pmКупил посудомоечную машину, написал им ревью:
I've got this Maytag machine for $650 including installation, which was a good deal. My last machine was a GE, and broke after 5 years. If you wonder whether a plastic vs stainless steel tub makes any difference, the answer is "not really", because the plastic tub was fine after 5 years. The pumps and other mechanicals were fine. What broke was the control board. GE has this very nice sticker right inside the machine with a QR code that sends you to the parts ordering web site (Maytag doesn't). I've got the control board for $150 but it turned out to be not the broken one, the broken one was another board inside the door. So I've said, instead of spending another $150, I can as well get the whole new machine for $500. Not so fast, as it turns out, the typical thing is also to pay $250 for installation, to the total of $750. So $650 from Costco is a good deal. In retrospect, GE took their board back and refunded the money (the first time I see a company taking back electronic component that had been installed). If I've found that before buying the new machine, I would have tried getting another board instead.
From reading the reviews about installation, I was concerned about it. But it worked very smoothly. Mostly. The delivery and installation (and removal of the old machine) are done by different people. The delivery was supposed to be done at 11 am, and the installation at 1 pm the same day. But it snowed on that day, so the delivery got delayed until 1 pm. The installation people however happily showed up at 11 am, despite the snow, found no machine, left. The installation had to be rescheduled a week later.
As far as the washing itself is concerned, my expectations from all the previous experience tend to be rather low. The diswashers are not really dishwashers but dish rinsers. They're great at removing the fat from the dishes but not the stuck-on remains of the food. They'd remove the paint from the cups but leave the food remains, and dry them up to make them even harder. Yes, I've tried the Cascade capsules that are advertised to remove everything. They'd dissolve the aluminum pots and make them look like rust (but in aluminum!) but not remove the stuck-on remains of the food, and they would never fully dissolve, leaving the detergent patina on everything. Yeah, you can do some better if you do a very light load with dishes widely spaced, and keep the dishes wet, but who does that?
This Maytag did better. In the long wash plus long dry mode, the cycle takes only 3 hours versus GE's 4, and it does remove the detergent fully. The cups from Ikea made from some really weird plastic to which the fat clings never got clean in the GE machine with any detergent, they always ended up with some hard-to-scrub-off white residue, so that we stopped washing them in the machine. They come out clean from Maytag. Then I've tried the "power blast" mode (3.5 hours total). It does actually remove the dirt from the dishes and utensils! Very good. And perhaps the advice from the instruction to put the utensils dirty side up helped too. But without the power blast mode it's not enough.
I also really like how the dish holders are placed in the lower rack, so that you can make two rows of large plates, or three rows of smaller plates, or put some stuff sideways in the middle between two rows of plates.
What doesn't work so good: The drying is poor. Even after the long dry cycle, the tops of the cups still have puddles of water on them, that splash on everything when taking the dishes out. They were bone-dry with GE. Maybe Maytag needs to add another hour of drying or dry more intensely. The tips of the knives in the utensil rack tend to get bent by the rotating arm, unless carefully positioned: they poke through the mesh at the bottom, and the rotating arm is too close. They need to raise the floor of the utensil basket by a quarter-inch, maybe I'll add some spacers of my own. The long knives have to be positioned carefully in a corner, or the upper rotating arm will hit their handles. This is because the upper rack is placed low. It allows to put bigger things into the upper rack but it limits the vertical space in the lower rack a little too much, it would be better to raise the upper rack by an inch.
I've got this Maytag machine for $650 including installation, which was a good deal. My last machine was a GE, and broke after 5 years. If you wonder whether a plastic vs stainless steel tub makes any difference, the answer is "not really", because the plastic tub was fine after 5 years. The pumps and other mechanicals were fine. What broke was the control board. GE has this very nice sticker right inside the machine with a QR code that sends you to the parts ordering web site (Maytag doesn't). I've got the control board for $150 but it turned out to be not the broken one, the broken one was another board inside the door. So I've said, instead of spending another $150, I can as well get the whole new machine for $500. Not so fast, as it turns out, the typical thing is also to pay $250 for installation, to the total of $750. So $650 from Costco is a good deal. In retrospect, GE took their board back and refunded the money (the first time I see a company taking back electronic component that had been installed). If I've found that before buying the new machine, I would have tried getting another board instead.
From reading the reviews about installation, I was concerned about it. But it worked very smoothly. Mostly. The delivery and installation (and removal of the old machine) are done by different people. The delivery was supposed to be done at 11 am, and the installation at 1 pm the same day. But it snowed on that day, so the delivery got delayed until 1 pm. The installation people however happily showed up at 11 am, despite the snow, found no machine, left. The installation had to be rescheduled a week later.
As far as the washing itself is concerned, my expectations from all the previous experience tend to be rather low. The diswashers are not really dishwashers but dish rinsers. They're great at removing the fat from the dishes but not the stuck-on remains of the food. They'd remove the paint from the cups but leave the food remains, and dry them up to make them even harder. Yes, I've tried the Cascade capsules that are advertised to remove everything. They'd dissolve the aluminum pots and make them look like rust (but in aluminum!) but not remove the stuck-on remains of the food, and they would never fully dissolve, leaving the detergent patina on everything. Yeah, you can do some better if you do a very light load with dishes widely spaced, and keep the dishes wet, but who does that?
This Maytag did better. In the long wash plus long dry mode, the cycle takes only 3 hours versus GE's 4, and it does remove the detergent fully. The cups from Ikea made from some really weird plastic to which the fat clings never got clean in the GE machine with any detergent, they always ended up with some hard-to-scrub-off white residue, so that we stopped washing them in the machine. They come out clean from Maytag. Then I've tried the "power blast" mode (3.5 hours total). It does actually remove the dirt from the dishes and utensils! Very good. And perhaps the advice from the instruction to put the utensils dirty side up helped too. But without the power blast mode it's not enough.
I also really like how the dish holders are placed in the lower rack, so that you can make two rows of large plates, or three rows of smaller plates, or put some stuff sideways in the middle between two rows of plates.
What doesn't work so good: The drying is poor. Even after the long dry cycle, the tops of the cups still have puddles of water on them, that splash on everything when taking the dishes out. They were bone-dry with GE. Maybe Maytag needs to add another hour of drying or dry more intensely. The tips of the knives in the utensil rack tend to get bent by the rotating arm, unless carefully positioned: they poke through the mesh at the bottom, and the rotating arm is too close. They need to raise the floor of the utensil basket by a quarter-inch, maybe I'll add some spacers of my own. The long knives have to be positioned carefully in a corner, or the upper rotating arm will hit their handles. This is because the upper rack is placed low. It allows to put bigger things into the upper rack but it limits the vertical space in the lower rack a little too much, it would be better to raise the upper rack by an inch.
