A quiet, well designed dishwasher

Like glenn01, I was also replacing a builders grade dishwasher, although mine was only a few months old. The builders grade GE was very noisy and left food particles on top of the cups after a supposed cleaning cycle. I've been buying Kenmore appliances exclusively for the past 30 years but recent experiences with Sears made me very reluctant to ever buy from them again. I also did a lot of research and decided to buy this Whirlpool at a local appliance store. I found it on sale for $511.

Most dishwashers in this price range will do a very good job at cleaning. My primary concern was noise level since my house has an open floor plan with tile floors. This model is definitely the quietest dishwasher I've ever owned. Even Sears rates this model as slightly quieter than their Kenmore. Bosch makes a dishwasher that is even quieter than the Whirlpool but with fewer features in this price range and without a built-in food disposal. As glenn01 noted, the Whirlpool is not silent but I can sit 25 feet away and watch TV without having to turn up the volume while the Whirlpool is running.

I've gone through many dishwashers over the years and have always soaked my pots and pans and washed them by hand. When I had the Whirlpool installed three weeks ago, I decided to put it to the test and it passed with flying colors. Now everything goes in the dishwasher without pre-rinsing and comes out clean. If I'm not going to run a cleaning cycle that evening, I do run the rinse cycle. This rinse cycle only uses 2 gallons of water which is much less water than if I did the pots and pans by hand. Also, the middle and top washer arms are feed through a channel that runs along the back wall of the tub rather than up the center which frees up a lot of space in the bottom rack for those pots and pans. Having the silverware basket in the door frees up even more space. The basket does take a little getting used to but I found that attaching it to the lower rack can cause larger items to interfere with the soap dispenser if you're not careful.

I've used the Power Scrub feature a couple of times and it seems to work okay. It does a good job of cleaning George Foreman grills with nasty baked on items. It also cleans my dirtiest pots and pans. I don't bake so I haven't put it through any really tough tests.

Some other features I really like are tines with clips so they don't fall over by themselves, a light on the panel that tells you whether the dishwasher load is clean or dirty and the smooth touch front panel. All together, this is a very well designed appliance.