We have had our Miele for at least 8 years now, if I remember correctly. It's the closest thing you can get to magic. I have occasionally run it without detergent, when I got confused and forgot. And even then, the dishes come out sparklingly clean. We can load it to the gills (it holds much more than the clearly inferior Kitchenaid in our in-law kitchen), but it still works perfectly. Dishes are always clean and almost perfectly dry. The only exception are plastic containers that might have a few drops of water left on them. On the other hand, the Kitchenaid regularly requires me to hand-wash several items afterwards, as it inevitably leaves some things dirty -- even, when we pack it much less full than the Miele. As for the filter, I only check it when the dishwasher reminds me to do so. I haven't quite figured out the pattern, but it's only a handful of times per year. And the majority of cases, there simply isn't anything to clean. This is despite the fact that other than telling people to finish eating their foods, we don't do any scraping or pre-rising. Our dishwasher gets used about once a day. No problems with bad smells, other than we first got the dishwasher and used an off-brand detergent. Now, we usually use the Costco detergent packs, and it works great. We do have soft water though. If you have hard water, you might need a different detergent, or preferably you should use the Miele's built-in water softener. My family (in Germany) has been using Miele for at least five decades. But that doesn't mean all that much. They get an average of about 20 years of use out of them. So, I think in all this time, my Mom has only had three dishwashers. That makes it easy to justify the higher initial cost.

michael7374, we had only Whirlpools with disposals until seven years ago, and we were concerned, as you appear to be, that a filter-only dishwasher would add an extra chore or, worse, get clogged if we forgot to clean it frequently. Although we throw big chunks (chicken bones, large uneaten lettuce leaves, etc.) into the garbage before putting the dishes into the dishwasher, we do not rinse most dishes or even pots before putting them into the dishwasher. Nevertheless, we bit the bullet and replaced our last Whirlpool with a Miele (filter, no disposal) at the end of 2003. Our earlier worries were overblown, it seems. At first, after the Miele was installed, we religiously checked the filter at least once a week, but as time went on, the interval between filter cleanings started to get longer. And longer. We clean the filter about once a month now. The most common potential clogger that we find when we clean the filter is the glue from labels of bottles or cans that we run through the dishwasher before putting them into the recycling bin (so that they will not attract raccoons when we put the bin curbside for recycling pick-up). I expect that a disposal would have its own problems with that rubber-cement-like glue.

If you go to any appliance repair forum, you will find that after 4-5 years many of the dishwasher designs start to experience issues with dishes not getting clean and outright failures. A lot of these are related to compromises made to add what is called a "chopper" to the system that breaks up larger food residue. The issues are especially prevalent with Whirlpool machines which includes Kitchenaid. If you have a choice, get the machine without a chopper and choose the filter instead. Most european models use a filter and some of the NA models offer a choice on the higher end.

The highest end Miele's do not clean better, nor are they better built. They just have extra features, which it sounds from your description aren't very important to you. The differences between those two models are: -Custom door panel required on G5675 -2 extra cycles on G5675 -3D cutlery tray on G5675 -Control location (G5225 front, G5675 top) -Auto open drying on G5675 (opens door at end of cycle automatically) The G5225 is a really nice DW, with all the Miele "essentials": water softener, cutlery tray, China/Crystal cycle. I don't think you would be disappointed with it.