Stepping up to the plate: while no dishwasher bats a thousand, many are fine cleanup performers.(Buyers Guide)

Dishwashers are doing their best these days to be well-behaved members of the household: We're seeing more models that are reasonably quiet, energy-efficient, and stylish. But there's still room for improvement. The ideal machine--one that would clean pots and pans as well as dishes thoroughly and silently, while only sipping water and energy--doesn't exist. No dishwasher we've tested excels at every task. Still, many models do a fine job and are moderately priced.

This report rates 32 standard-size under-counter machines with such leading brand names as Frigidaire, Kenmore, Maytag, and Whirlpool. We also include foreign brands (Asko, Bosch, Fisher & Paykel, and Miele).

Prices ranged from a low of $300 for the Hotpoint HDA3400F and the Frigidaire FDB635RF to $1,500 for the Fisher & Paykel DD602. Most models fell in the $400 to $800 range. The high-priced machines tended to be a bit quieter and more energy- and water-efficient than less costly models. They also tended to look sleeker, offering niceties such as partially hidden controls and the ability to match the front panel to your kitchen cabinetry. But, as in past tests, we found no real link between cost and washing performance.

We did find one factor, however, that boosted washing performance--though it had nothing to do with the machines themselves. In tests for this project we used, for the first time, one of the new enzyme-containing detergents now on the market (Cascade Pure Rinse Formula Powder, to be specific). It significantly improved washing scores--now, half the dishwashers are rated Excellent for washing, and most of the rest are Very Good, an across-the-board improvement that we attribute largely to use of an enzyme detergent. (See our dishwasher detergent report on page 44.)

TESTS AND RESULTS

We tested the machines using a full load of ten place settings coated with a formidable mix of hard-to-clean goop. All were left to dry overnight before washing the next day on the normal cycle. Afterward, we checked for water spots, food residue, and grit.

As noted above, most of the dishwashers did an excellent or very good job of getting dishes clean. The most substantive differences we found were in energy efficiency, water use, and noise. The least energy-efficient models tended to be those with dirt sensors. Sensor models are supposed to adjust the amount of water used according to how dirty the dishes are, but we've found that some aren't as "smart" as they should be, often sending in more water than appropriate. Because our energy scores take into account not just the energy used by the dishwasher but also the energy used to heat the water fed to the dishwasher, many sensor models did poorly on energy use.