I have had mid level Asko, Bosch and Miele in the past 10 years in that order. I have preferred Miele, Asko, and Bosch in that order. I actually replaced the Bosch in less than 1 year after installing it because of its small capacity when compared to the older Asko. In the Bosch, I could not fit all of my daily dishes in 1 load as "easily" as the other brands. This was a big surprise to me! I really hated the lack of capacity in the Bosch that I had. Using my dishes, Bosch has a poorly designed upper side rack relative to the other two. Asko and Miele has metal upper narrow side racks (these are used to hold wine glass stems in general) and Bosch uses plastic rack. Only one side has the rack on the Bosch in the model that I bought. Both Asko and Miele, I can fit coffee cups under the side rack and put something flatish on the "wine glass holder". With Bosch, I could not (the pastic would not go down) do this with my coffee cups. So I had about 3 lineal ft less of usable rack. Bosch also does not have enough steepness on the rack to drain water off the bottoms of the upside down glasses and cups, so they were more wet. Miele has a flip down rack even on the lower rack which increases the capacity when compared to the others. I use this alot, again increasing the capacity. When I looked at the Asko this time, I really did not like the odd third rack that Asko was touting on their upper end models. I seriously thought of buying another Asko but I wanted to try using the cutlery rack. Asko had the cutlery rack in the middle section and I thought that this would make the handing of the taller items more difficult. I don't have real life experience on this, just a hunch. After using the cutlery rack, I do think the cutlery rack washes them better.... In terms of cleaning abilities, they are all about the same, IMHO. For me, Bosch was the most sensitive to the type of detergent I used. In the old Asko, I sporadically used a rinsing agent. When used, I saw minimal difference. I have a Miele with built in softener but I don't use it. Both of these factors are proabably due to my soft water. I think they are all about the same for the noise level, all pretty quiet but not silent. The models are not super high end models where the noise level drops off significantly on the spec. Bosch and Miele have express or short wash but they were not able to clean my daily dishes well enough to use them in my daily use. Many people seem to be able to use these settings but I could't. I just run the normal wash. In my old Asko, there was a heating coil that you could turn on and off. I always had the heating coil turned off after "burning" a few plastic items that dropped down. I think they don't make them that way any more. Hope this helps.

Sorry,dont know anything about Asko except some users indicated "Ya had to learn how to load it" and then it is ok, so apparently it does have some idiosyncracies there. You can have it either way top cutlery tray or a conventionally located one in the Miele so that would not be a factor , I have the Optima, and we luve the cutlery tray on top and in fact that is why we bought it, 3 years ago it was the only one that offered it. I have always had KA dishwashers before, so I did not need "OJT" for loading the Miele ya just throw the stuff in, just like the KA. Drying , especially plastics probably not as good as the old KA, but part of that could be "Psylogical" For more than 30 years we reached in the KA to retrieve Hot dry dishes---ya know, "Old Dogs can learn new tricks"--but------- It takes a while. The Miele has been trouble free and it "Cleans Everything" including my wallet as I mentioned in a prior post, elsewhere! Good luck on your decision Gary

I don't like the dispensers in the frig. Refused to buy one with it or an icemaker in it. And it's getting difficult to buy a unit these days without at least an icemaker in it. Don't like the taste of water out of them most of the time and no thanks, I don't want to get used to it after a while. I prefer to go to the faucet. The water sits there in the plastic hose getting the plastic taste, mold and bacteria. No thanks. I'll take it from the sink then. I offended more than one who (and always so proudly) gave me a glass of water from the pus-pump. I take a taste, go to the sink, dump it out, rinse the glass and get some fresh water. And especially got one ticked when I washed the glass. She had just taken it out of the dishwasher too! With crud on it. Ugh. I don't understand people at times.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9u3n8qmVfw Please see my review of the Asko dishwasher on this forum. The attached link is a video My dishwasher doesn't have the knife basket on the top as shown in the video.