Dishwashers: don't get steamed.(Buyers guide)

Steam cleaning and targeted spray jets are some of the new options manufacturers have added to help scour away dirt. But our tests found that sparkling dishes can be yours for just $350 without those options.

In fact, none of our Quick Picks, including a $350 Whirlpool model, needed either feature to remove the oatmeal, egg, tomato sauce, and other hard-to-clean foods we allowed to harden overnight before washing.

Four of the 47 dishwashers we tested have a steam option. With identically dirty loads, we compared the wash performance of a Jenn-Air, Kenmore Elite, Maytag, and LG using each dishwasher's Normal cycle and its Normal cycle with steam. The difference in cleaning was slight, but the cost of the machines, $850 to $1,500, wasn't.

Separate spray jets had a bigger impact on cleaning. In our tests, those concentrated jets removed baked-on food better than the Normal cycle alone. But dirty dishes must be loaded in a specific spot. Called TurboZone, Power-Scour, or ProScrub, depending on the brand, it's now available on models costing $600.

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After months of testing and almost 9,000 dirty dishes, here's what else our tests revealed:

Dishwasher drawers deliver little. Kenmore's Elite Drawer dishwashers, $1,400, claim they are "ready for what life dishes out." But that wasn't our experience. The first two machines we bought didn't drain properly. A third didn't have any problems but its washing was unimpressive, ranking last in our Ratings. The $1,000 Fisher & Paykel DishDrawer excelled at washing but is noisier than models that cost hundreds less. And 25 percent of this brand's dishwashers bought in the last few years have needed repairs, according to our reliability surveys.